Looking Up

Not sure if you’ve caught this fairly quietly introduced sitcom on BBC2 yet but, if not, I would strongly recommend heading over to the iPlayer to find Home Time. I would imagine that this kind of comedy is not everyone’s cup of tea but there is a growing tradition in the more successful recent of the genre of slow starts building up cult following. The Office and Gavin and Stacey being the examples that everyone is probably trying to emulate. Indeed, the director and producer

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Tags: bbc2, Comedy, Coventry, Emma Fryer, Gavin-and-Stacey, Home Time, iPlayer, Kerry Godliman, Sitcom

Welcome to the World, Neil-lar 

Like The Office before it, the first series sneaked onto the schedules with no so much a fanfare as a whisper; word of mouth and critical recommendation followed and the soon-to-be cult viewership began to fall in love with this cast of wierd and wonderful characters; series two aired and the plaudits and awards have been thrust upon it along with hundred of thousands of extra viewers; and now a Christmas Special has been comissioned and you can be sure it will be BBC Three’s

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Tags: BAFTA, BBC3, Britcom, Extras, Fawlty Towers, Gavin Stacey, James Corden, Matt Horne, My-Family, Ruth Jones, Sitcom, The-Office

Christmas Review #5 of 12

“From the makers of Friends” is the kind of tagline for a new sitcom that is all but guaranteed to add a pretty big slice to the viewing figures. Fortunately, for fans of Friends, this new ensemble comedy, The Class, ticks all the right boxes and gives us a welcome break from the constant loop of Friends repeats that appears to be cycling through ad infinitum on E4 a thousand times a day. The comedy here is driven by a the fact that the main players all used to go to school together and

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Tags: E4, Frasier, Friends, Last of the Summer Wine, My-Family, The Class

Christmas Review #3 of 12

“Happily ever after” is how Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant brought The Office to an end as Dawn and Tim finally got together and even David Brent himself found someone special in that most memorable of finales, four year’s ago.  Trying to force lightening to strike in the same place a second time has proved tricky but there were many great little moments throughout the two series of Extras that led me to think that the Christmas Special finale would be well worth watching and

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Tags: Andy-Millman, Ashley-Jensen, BBC, David Tennant, Extras, Hale and Pace, Ricky-Gervais, Stephen-Merchant, The Ivy, The-Office

The World Against Me

The second series of Jack Dee’s BBC2 comedy, Lead Balloon, is now well underway and thankfully, after a pretty shaky start, it’s right back on track. There’s something refreshing about portraying what is essentially Jack Dee’s on-stage persona in a domestic situation where he can be even more grumpy and put-upon than usual and, most effectively of all, play off the people around him. In the latest installment, “Points”, anti-hero Rick has been penalised with points on his

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Tags: bbc2, Jack-Dee, Lead-Balloon, Points, Rick-Spleen, Tony Hancock

Staying In

Series one of Not Going Out was a delightful surprise. A Friday night, BBC1 comedy in the slot that had brought us the funny-for-five-episodes My Family and much other forgettable fayre, suddenly threw up a little gem. It didn’t baulk away from its comedy as so many other, more knowing, 21st century sitcoms tend to do and neither did it rely on extreme characterisation that encourages the audience to “laugh at” instead of “laugh with”. No, here was a comedy that was just

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Tags: Andrew-Collins, BBC1, Comedy, Lee-Mack, Not-Going-Out, Tim-Vine