A Comedy on This Day: Vic Reeves Big Night Out (25 May 1990)

Its Spandau Ballet, and they're laughing at an orphan who's fallen off his bicycle

 And this is where it begins... Watching this is funnier now than it seemed at the time. The strain of having to establish a raft of characters, situations, rituals - and an unfamiliar ramshackle comic idiom - made it quite an effortful 25 minutes to view. In retrospect, now that I know how each episode was structured, I can pick up on the amusing ideas and variations without the initial "What is this and how does it work?" reaction.

 The audience reaction is fascinating, especially as we get to see them several times, including some hostile and bewildered faces amongst the crowd. Although some have come from the old New Cross Albany Empire audience and are primed to know what to expect, a lot of them don't know what they've let themselves in for. There's a quality of hesitancy and not knowing where the jokes are to their collective responses, and you can sense a greater uncertainty in Reeves' performance because of this. This went after the first few episodes, after which presumably everyone who went to the recordings had already seen them on television. I think that I actually prefer this to the response to what happens by the second series, when the audience seems full of Wonder Stuff fans, cheering every catchphrase and encouraging rather shouty performances from the stars.

A Comedy On This Day: Peep Show - Jeremy Broke (16 May 2008)

(Dobbie walks away)

MARK (internal thought): Did the right thing there, pretty sure. DON'T listen to you heart. That's what no one tells you, but that's probably the real grown-up truth.

 Some of its viewers seemed to respond primarily to the more grotesque incidents (in this episode Jez in a sperm bank, trying to stimulate his masturbatory impulses with the unpromising visual material of the Queen's head on a £20 note), but Peep Show was always so much more than that. Its one of the most subtly and elaborately structured comedy programmes, and one that I can return to again and again. The viewer's access to Mark and Jez's thought processes means that we gain an insight into why these characters will always by the authors of their own misfortunes, as well as the mechanics of how they contrive to get into appalling messes.

 Both men's difficulties this week stem initially from momentary lapses of judgement - Jez enrages Mark by stealing a sausage off his plate, Mark approaches a woman in a bar whom he already knows isn't interested in him - with each station of their subsequent escalating misfortunes referring back to their previous thoughts and mistakes, and forming a thesis (about Jeremy's impulsiveness and Mark's yearning to prove himself by claiming to have a girlfriend).

 On top of this, there's the novel-like cumulative narrative interest in the development of on-going storylines (the terrible workplace of JLB Credit, Mark's divorce), helped by some acutely good long-term casting. Olivia Coleman might be a very familiar face now, but her ability to convey Sophie's rage and exhaustion in her one scene in this episode has a real conviction to it, and shows sides to her character that weren't apparent in the early series.

 Peep Show's Croydon/anywhere setting and style also provide an interesting historical document of the textures and patterns of everyday life, changing over a decade. For example, Mark attends a speed dating session in this episode, as such a person might do (albeit without pleasure), for only a few years in the noughties. Are they much of a thing anymore? I would have thought that dating apps would have killed off most of them by now.

A Comedy On This Day: Vic Reeves Big Night Out (10 April 1991)

 This is one series that does seriously benefit from being watched sequentially. Much of what I found funny about it at the time was the pleasure of close viewing, recognising an idea or character from a previous show, and seeing how it gets inverted or developed. Its something that gets a bit lost when you watch an edition cold.

 Watching this again in middle age, it’s exhausting just how shouty they were at this stage, something I had a higher tolerance for when I was young.

 This week's opening song is 'The Grand Old Duke Of York', performed with a mini brass band. I'd forgotten how grim the travails of the Man with the Stick become in the second series, once he loans out his children to Reeves. This week he gets momentary access, when a cage containing three children in miniature paper helmets is wheeled out, before Reeves sends them back for "shark testing".

 I've always liked cockney Labrador Greg Mitchell, who this week appears three times, sharing his enthusiasm for Mike Harding, Max Boyce and Barbara Dickson, before each time regretting his confidence. You can also see him behind the desk, dancing to 'Oh Mr Songwriter' at the end, a counterpoint of puppet canine fragile cheerfulness against the monster egotism of Britain's top light entertainer and singer.

A Comedy On This Day: Father Ted - Speed 3 (27 March 1998)

 Father Ted chides the lecherous milkman responsible for a Craggy Island population boom of hairy babies that he should have been more careful, and Pat Mustard asks, "You wouldn't be advising the use of artificial contraceptives, would ya, father?" Ted squirms. I do like it when the occasional Church doctrinal joke gets dropped into the merriment of Father Ted, just momentarily placing the characters back into a professional context, reminding the viewer of the incongruity of the bizarre happenings.

A Comedy On This Day: The IT Crowd - Aunt Irma Visits (3 March 2006)

 There's an appealing handmade quality about the IT Crowd. Its not just because it was still a studio audience sitcom made at a time when these were largely considered to be old hat. Its also something in the performances - exaggerated and quite broad while remaining psychologically true - and the way that the jokes are set up that differentiated it from a lot of other television comedy at the time. I think that it’s a quality of the pleasure of sharing funny ideas. Its crammed full of very ingenious and elaborate jokes but is keen to ensure that they all register so that the viewer can enjoy them, rather than to demonstrate their creators' smartness and taste.

 It's cheerful nature can also conceal quite how highly ambitious it is. The premise of this episode - Moss and Roy picking up Jen's PMT by osmosis - is fraught with pitfalls. Its only once you think of the many ways that this theme could be handled badly (it could be condescending, in poor taste, over-elaborate or overly right-on) that you fully appreciate how well achieved it is, and the range of funny mileage that it gets from the idea. But what I like best about this series is that its one of the best depictions of how friendship between men and women can work in television comedy. Indirectly, its a programme about how three friends get on with - and care for - each other in a way that feels convincing, optimistic and true.

A Comedy On This Day: Desmond's - Hold De Front Page Part II (5 February 1990, also Part 1, 29 January 1990)

 The second run of Desmond's is a series flying with confidence and optimism. You can hear it in the audience's enthusiastic responses - at seeing characters and places that they recognise who have rarely been shown on television before - and see their appreciation lift the performances of the large ensemble of inexperienced actors, experienced performers like Ram John Holder (Porkpie) who haven't had much TV exposure before, and major actors who have rarely been given TV leads before (Carmen Munro and Norman Beaton).

 Now given a 13-episode run by Channel 4 (series one had six) Desmond's had the space to try new things out and take some risks. Such as doing a two-part story with a cliffhanger, the tale of an armed siege at Desmond's barber shop. The first part works very well, because of the surprise and novelty of the situation, to which all the regulars respond in character.

 This second part is more problematic, with the situation escalating beyond the shop into exterior scenes of the police responding in the street and an attempt at a satirical portrait of the media reaction, which don't exactly play to the comedy's strengths. The problem created by the situation - combining a convincing siege drama with a funny comedy - becomes more and more problematic to deal with, and the acting holds the story together by the end, particularly Carmen Munro's innate ability to convey maternal authority.

A Comedy On This Day: Chance In A Million - Winning Streak (3 February 1986)

 Chance In A Million's elaborate join-the-dots plot construction (in which every implausible action has a logical reaction, sometimes several scenes on) sometimes impresses me more than it amuses me. I found the simplest things in this episode to be the most enjoyable ones - Tom's handling of the tricks in his Paul Daniels magic set (the first prize that he wins on his unlucky lucky day), and a well-worked sequence where Tom helps a woman in the street with her box of groceries and ends up helping an identically-dressed lady to unintentionally steal them. The latter is an OB sequence on a rainy West London street, achieved without dialogue or sound in one fluid shot, filmed overhead from the other side of the road - something that could have worked in the earliest days of the moving image.

A Comedy On This Day: The Comic Strip Presents - Gino - Full Story and Pics (28 January 1984)

 Oh great, this is one of my favourites, and I can't have seen it since this DVD came out in 2005. A road movie about a young man on the run, it looks and feels more like a Euston Films Armchair Cinema than a comedy. Its greatly helped by Keith Allen's performance as Gino. Despite Allen's hell raising reputation he was perhaps the best of the Comic Strip team at quiet muted acting. He's very good at holding the viewer's attention and understanding over the long stretches of the film where Gino has little dialogue and responds instinctively to events, keeping inconspicuous while looking over his shoulder for how to get out of peril.
 
 What Allen does is funny because we emphasise with his situation, whereas the people whom he encounters on the run and who block his path have their outlandish and grotesque sides. They're all well-drawn cameo characters, making good use of what the performers can do, both the team members and guest actors like Lionel Jeffries. Adrian Edmundson's intense playwright ("Do you like plays for young people?") feels like the sort of condescending adult who I might have met in London Youth Theatres in the early nineties.

 Gino (Allen) hides under a table in the playwright's living room when he sees the police in the front garden. Oblivious to the danger, the playwright (Edmundson) starts to read his script to his captive:

"This is a good bit - This guy is about your age and he meets a sailor at the pub. He says, 'I bet she's good at it!', nodding to the girl at the bar. 'Sailor: Not me, mate, I'm queer! What d'you see in girls? I don't know' - it's supposed to be north country, I can't do the accent..."

 One of my favourite comedy scenes, that. One thing that makes it sing is how Adrian Edmundson's intonation perfectly captures the speech patterns of a London man of the left who would have been born in about 1940.

 Alanah Pellay's camp performer who needs get to Capital Radio in half an hour in Gino's stolen cab is a sympathetic character. I always find the rather caring way that the two men respond to each other quite touching (Gino does get Pellay to the studio, Pellay notices Gino's cuts and is solicitous). There's nothing sympathetic about the Rik Mayall character, though - perhaps the most convincingly repellent part that he ever played - and in just a few well-judged shots and lines Dawn French conveys the hell of their marriage very well.

  There's a terrific sense of actual place in this film, from the warren of suburban roads where Gino tries to escape on foot, to the recognisable but now-changed 1983 Central London seen through the Taxi windows, to the blank Essex beach and countryside sped through by Robbie Coltrane's wrecked drunken driver. The combination of place, immediately involving situation, well-considered characterisation and understanding of what special qualities every performer could bring to the production always make this one a pleasure to watch.