Three channels, three comedies, three types.

This week I tackle three different forms of comedy on BBC One, BBC Two and BBC
Forty-Two¹, 'The Crouches', 'Q.I.', and
'Little Britain'. Luckily BBC Four also shows 'QI' so I knock down all the
straight-forward names of BBC tv, and I get a really strange introduction...

For those of you that don't know (probably all of you), The Crouches is a sit-com - apparently - about a black family living in London - apparently. Written by the same man who wrote 'Rab C
Nesbit', a programme which I found funny when it was first shown but now find dull, 'The Crouches' attempts to send up black family life, though you cannot actually tell this and from the terrible script it could apply to any family regardless, give or take a few words. This is sit-com that thinks that kids disrespecting their parents is funny. This has only ever been funny when it is Bart and Homer Simpson, no-one else. It didn't work with 'Forty-something', and still doesn't
work with 'My Family'. I had to sit and watch as the brilliant Danny John-Jules ² is relegated to a few appearances as co-worker Ed. Technically this saves his appearances... but I'm just biased when
it comes to The Cat!

The jokes aren't funny, the grandfather's lines are like they're straight from 'Carry On' films and the canned laughter - the producers obviously unable to find an audience - grates across the brain when the simplest lines get a huge roar of laughter, while any kissing scenes get a huge 'OOOOOOOH!'. I also wonder of whom the jokes are aimed at. Apparently a lot of black men are hired on the London Underground. Didn't know this but that could just be my own ignorance from being many, many miles away out of London...

Another in the long line of unfunny, boring, repetitive 'family' sit-coms which have been unleashed. I personally haven't been able to find a sit-com that I like which has spawned since the Millennium. Please avoid, Boudica had more laughs than this.

'Q.I.'.... It's witty, informative and educational... Stephen 'Proper Schooling' Fry plays
the Q.I. master which is supposed to look like a palindrome³ for IQ (Intelligence Quota) though it is actually an


abbreviation for Quite Interesting...

Simply put, Fry asks a question that is 'impossible' to answer, and he, on a completely biased
basis, awards points if he thinks the celebrity panel given answers are interesting enough from 1-10.
Ten points goes to anyone who gives the obvious answer: This usually being regular Alan Davis whom
ended up having his buzzer be the sound of the 'obvious' horn! That's all there is to it, bar the
occasional sarcastic or funny answer such as an answer to 'Where is the most boring place in
Britain?' being given as the Big Brother house to much applause.

I enjoy this merely because it's a bit of fun. It has no point except to be just that, and chances
are you'll learn something interesting. I found out that Britain has two moons, Antarctica is the
driest and wettest place on Earth and that space is beige coloured. Seriously.

'Little Britain'. What best describes this show? Erm.. It's the poor person's 'League
of Gentleman'. It's so much like it that it's even got one of the League: Mark 'Sam Kisgart'
Gatiss as script editor! Entertaining enough, the show satirises different aspects of Britain
including Wales with its 'Only gay in the village' sketches which have a Welsh village's 'only
gay'⁴ who is so upset that he is the


only gay in the village that he scares away any others.

In England there's 'Emily Howard', Britain's worst transsexual, though this would actually work
better if the guy playing her didn't play other female roles... While in Scotland, the local hotel
owner speaks all information in verse and song on his pan pipes.

Before each sketch, Tom 'Big Scarf' Baker introduces each. He's the funniest aspect of the
show, especially when he claimed there was 'nothing on except repeats of 'Doctor Who',
'Medics' and that episode of 'Blackadder II', I was in...'

The problem with the show being that the jokes are the same with each regular character: 'I'm
Emily Howard, and I'm a lady'; 'Oh it's tough you know being the only gay in the village'. The
supposed cripple continues to leap up and walk every time his flat mate isn't looking. The Weight
Watchers woman makes, that's right, fat jokes. She's also so like 'League of Gentleman's'
Pauline the Dole Worker it's ridiculous.

Some things do raise a chuckle every time, however, such as the two sunbathers in Scotland are
pouring rain water on themselves but the novelty will eventually wear down after the series has ran
its course. Funny, but only because we've seen it before. Worth watching if you've got nothing
better though.

Keep Surfin' people!

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