Gigglebox: Christmas & New Year Edition

Gigglebox

Well, did you see it?  Did you?  No, I didn’t either.  What a thoroughly pathetic year for Christmas television: almost nothing but repeats and talking head shows trying to force unwanted nostalgia down our throats.  The latter do a good job in providing work for many ‘celebrities’ who would otherwise be unable to get on TV without sleeping with Wayne Rooney, but I couldn’t give a monkey’s about The Best Christmas TV Ads Evar!!1.  I have Virgin+ specifically so I can fast forward through adverts at every possible opportunity – I’m not going to sit down and watch a show full of the bastards and be told how great they are or how they signify Christmas.  If the only thing that makes you feel all ‘Christmassy’ is a 30 second clip of some trucks going along a road then your Christmases as a child must have been shit.

The Royle Family

Anyway, let’s get to the real TV with writers and actors and everything.  Why not start off with The Royle Family and their umpteenth Christmas special?  I can’t help but feel that if this programme actually had any life left in it they would still be making regular series rather than rolling it out every year to make people feel a bit better about their squalid little lives by comparison.  Having said that, I quite enjoyed this year’s special.  The Royle Family was always well written, the actors are perfect for their roles and it really does make me feel a bit better about my squalid little life.  Clearly the show suffers from not having more regular outings but the characters remain fairly consistent and anything is an improvement on last year’s special.  There were a few big belly laughs and even more little ones to keep you going for an hour or so while you are forced to be with your family.

Shooting Stars

We also had the Shooting Stars Christmas special, marked out as being special by having some bells shaken at random over the opening titles.  I am and have always been a fan of Vic & Bob but their recent offerings have been hit and miss.  Maybe I don’t want to admit that I’m growing tired of the show – I’m definitely not bored of Reeves & Mortimer – but Shooting Stars seems to be getting stale.  The most recent series was better than the previous, but this is almost entirely due to the inclusion of Angelos Epithimiou as a more than adequate replacement for George Dawes.  He couldn’t save the Christmas special though; not that it was bad, just a bit boring.  I don’t think I’m alone in wishing that the comedy duo would move on to new pastures, perhaps another series like Catterick or even a re-iteration of one of their earlier shows.  They truly are the kings of surreal comedy and it seems that the panel show format is limiting them in how much comedy they can squeeze into each episode.  The guests themselves are almost entirely redundant, adding nothing to the comedy other than being the target of a few jokes.  There was talk last year of a possible move to a new show akin to Night Out or The Smell Of and I hope this pans out, for their sake more than anything else.  They need room to ply their comedy wares. They need the kind of disjointed freedom that only a sketch show or sitcom format could provide.

Come Fly With Me

Continuing the theme of disappointing shows, Come Fly With Me debuted on Christmas Day; the latest show to come from Matt Lucas & David Walliams.  Following on from the huge success of Little Britain it would have been easy for them to keep the same formula and play it safe, which is basically what they have done.  The show revolves around a number of sketches about a group of larger than life characters who work in and around an international airport.  When I say ‘characters’, I of course mean Matt Lucas and David Walliams dressed up and doing silly accents.  When I say ‘larger than life’, I mean totally unbelievable and sometimes borderline racist.  The show produced two solid laughs for me, one was for a joke that managed to catch me off guard and the other was for a brilliant bit of (borderline racist) absurdity.  Other than that you could see the punch lines coming a mile off, there was little by the way of original thinking (or funny material) and the show just stank of mediocrity.  Lucas & Walliams were vocally criticised for the repetitive catchphrases that ran throughout the many variations of Little Britain.  It seems that for this new show they have dropped the catchphrases but are happy to continue with one dimensional characters. It’s an early appraisal but I shan’t be going out of my way to watch anymore.

Father Ted Special

Ending on a bit of a high note, I tried to watch Father Ted night on Channel 4, however I was with my family so my night mainly consisted of watching approximately 30 seconds before being interrupted for 5 minutes while my Mum offered to make me a 17^th cup of tea; or my dad told me again how Father Jack is now in Emmerdale. What I did see of the shows and documentaries was, as expected, great viewing.  Father Ted is a firm favourite of mine and I’m sure of yours too.  The episodes shown were two of the best and the two mini-documentaries were interesting, funny and touching – I could listen to Graham Linehan talk all day.  I can’t say much more other than find them and watch them; a must do for any Father Ted fans.

It was a pretty poor couple of weeks for TV on the whole; when Eastenders is the most complained about show you know things are bad.  Here’s to some better comedy over the coming 12 months – there’s a few interesting projects on the horizon, so let’s keep our collective fingers crossed.