We seem to be enjoying a mini golden age of British comedy series at the moment. In ascending or from good to superb current shows include:
Motherland (BBC – all available to stream on demand). I‘ve never been a parent to a young child, let alone a mother, so the school gate politics of this are outside my area of experience. Nevertheless, everyone will recognise the struggle for one-upmanship, and the social awkwardness that comes from worrying about what other people think of you more than what you think of them. In the pilot it seemed to me as if Anna Maxwell Martin had been parachuted in from a different programme, but now her character is more embedded (particularly in her friendship with the wonderful Diane Morgan’s character) she seems much more at home, even when every nerve in her being is screaming that she wishes she could be anywhere other than where she has found herself.
The Detectorists (BBC) kicked off its third series last night with more understated observations of middle aged male friendship, beautifully scripted, acted and filmed. It’s almost an opposite to Motherland in that there are no monsters here, just real people getting along or not in an entirely believable way. As if that wasn’t enough we get The Unthanks’ Magpie playing over a scene portraying the changing population over the unchanging landscape. Actually, I found that montage a little overdone – the shiver that runs through The Detectorists when Lance blows the newly found hawking whistle was effective enough by itself. Bliss.
The End Of the ****ing World (Channel 4 – all episodes available to stream on 4OD) is the best of the lot. It’s a good thing this is all available to stream because once you start watching you have to see it to the end, as I have done twice. Two nihilist teens, one who feels nothing and one who feels too much, go on the lam in his father’s car. What she doesn’t know is that he is planning to kill her, figuring that it is time to work his way up from killing animals. So dark it’s barely a comedy, we’re a long way from Hi De Hi here. Praise is due all round but the two young leads, Alex Lawther and Jessica Barden, are outstanding, and deserving of all the apes, ivory, peacocks and Baftas which will surely be piled upon them. It’s up there with The Handmaid’s Tale as the best thing I have seen on television this year.
As if all that wasn’t enough The Detectorists was followed by a repeat of The league of Gentlemen from the first episode. Have I missed any out?
I agree The End Of the ****ing World is brilliant, watched the whole series in an evening last week.
Lets not forget there’s also Red Dwarf XII currently running on Dave. Red Dwarf lost its way on the BBC but the Dave reboot, going back to its roots of being four idiots in space, is well worth watching.
Detectorists, I’m afraid, just isn’t for me. I’ve tried with previous series but I end up watching one or two and then forgetting it’s on and not being bothered enough to catch up.
Just watched the same series.
Laughs…no!
I find quite a lot of quality British comedy is of the gentle variety. Not may laugh out loud moments but I’m not too bothered about that, we have Taskmaster for that sort of thing.
Although it’s dropped off considerably since the first series, Josh still has it’s moments and the one with Jennifer Saunders in was particularly good. Man Down seems to be finding it’s feet again.
For belly sitcom belly laughs it’s still the US to look for, I’m a bit behind, but what I’ve seen of the new series of ‘Curb..’ is brilliant.
I found what I saw of the first series of Josh pitiful but have dipped into the second series and found it much improved. It is very patchy, so perhaps I just asw a duff episode of series 1. Even at its best though it’s pretty low grade stuff. I’d probably have given it up on it altogether if I didn’t have a bit of a crush on Beattie Edmondson.
It’s fairly badly acted but I like all the participants so give it some leeway in a way I never would to something with a cast off unknowns. I thought series one was the strongest but I think the current series is better than the last.
Agree re Taskmaster – really is a must watch in our house. It isn’t just funny, it’s fascinating to see how the contestants’ brains work differently. Like all the best things it’s a really simple base idea.
This season of Curb.. is a little hit and miss IMO, parts have been very funny but Larry seems to have become a parody of himself – The film he made ‘Clear History’ is worth watching, he basically plays a milder version of the Larry character. It’s worth watching just to see him in a wig and beard – oh, and Kate Hudson
Larry was always a parody of himself!
I’ve been enjoying Man Down. It’s far from subtle, but every episode has at least one set-piece that has my properly roaring with laughter. Like last week, when Dan realised the truth about his favourite childhood toy. Oh, and Gameface with Roisin Connaty has been pretty great too.
Does The End Of get any better than the first episode which for me was fuck*** awful?
Sorry, but for TV comedy you have to go USA – Crazy Ex, Modern Family, The Good Place are all miles and miles and miles above anything currently being made in the UK (and that includes the delightful Detectorists)
If you didn’t like the first one, which was superb, the rest of it wouldn’t change your mind.
The Good Place is fantastic, but hard to talk about without going into spoilers… my advice to any potential viewers is to give it a few episodes, as I think it takes a while to establish how it manages to consistently confound your expectations of where it’s going…
Otherwise for me, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (E4) and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) fill the clever/stupid void left by 30 Rock, and Modern Family still makes me laugh.
Mind you, my absolute recent favourite is Master Of None (Netflix) with Aziz Ansari, especially season 2, which is a quantum leap improvement over the first season, and unreservedly recommended (I’ve already watched it twice-through…)
Seconded – Master of None. The whole story arc of the second series was a proper drama. But I also loved the little one off episodes, like the experimental one that followed lots of different characters about whose paths all overlapped one NY night.
I find Master of None incredibly hit and miss.
It’s automatically very entertaining because the lead character basically IS a very good friend of mine. Looks similar, same dress sense, same manner, same sense of humour, hangs out in exactly the same social circles, etc. If someone had set out to sketch him in a TV show, they honestly could not have done any better.
I also really, really like the one off episodes. The “Thanksgiving” episode in season 2 was an absolutely superb half hour of TV; funny and poignant and very, very clever.
Where I think the show falls down is the overall story arc, and this was particularly true of season 2. I simply don’t care if a pair of selfish, narcissistic bell-ends ultimately pair off. It was clumsy and graceless and a real bum note, particularly as it became clear that (once again) the second half of the season would see us move away from the lovely little vignettes he’s so good at to focus on this insipid soap opera instead.
More of the one offs, less of the Mills & Boon please.
Series 2 of The Good Place got off to a wobbly start. Jury’s still out, but I enjoyed the first one.
I loved the first season of Master of None, but found the second one to be a huge disappointment overall. It had some very good moments but some of the acting was just terrible between Aziz and his love interest [I can’t recall her name], good lord it was bad.
Aw. That was some of my favourite bits.
I so wanted to love it. Maybe I need to re-watch it
If you like Modern Family, check out Life In Pieces, if it comes to a TV near you. It’s almost CBS’ version of Modern Family with the parents (James Brolin and Dianne Weist) and their grown kids and their families. Each show is four short stories, hence the title.
Yes, ‘Life in Pieces’. It’s on Amazon Prime Video.
We binge-watched the first season after honking like seals at the first episode. The dialogue is fast and all of the large cast are given at least one zinger per episode. The bald-headed son-in-law steals most of the scenes. But that’s because he’s funny.
Tom Hanks’ son acquits himself well, too.
Betsy Brandt (Marie in Breaking Bad) was good too.
Agreed. Season 3 is up. Though it may have been there a while. I haven’t looked until just now.
Thanks for the reco, I love Modern Family so I’ll check it out.
Modern Family is still good, but what I find frustrating that they don’t know what to do with the kids when they grow up. Manny and Alex at college should have lots of potential for storylines, but we only see them when they visit home. And they still haven’t figured out what to do with Hayley.
Does Modern Family suffer the same fate that befell Outnumbered (to me anyway) in that it gets less funny as the children get older?
It’s trying hard to overcome that very problem and even though every episode has at least three fabulous one-liners it isn’t quite as funny as back then (still funnier than any UK show I have watched recently)
Agree US comedy is better at present which is pretty unusual. Looking forward to the next Catastrophe because I thought that was excellent.
Not sure any recent comedy is the match for Fawlty Towers which for me remains the pinnacle of British comedy.
Anybody see “Back” recently? I thought it was quite good. I have been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm from start to (almost) finish recently. Brilliant stuff! Agree US is on top.
Back took a couple of episodes to hit its stride (or perhaps for me to put the Mark & Jez characters to one side) but I thought the final 3 shows were great. Jeff the bar fly was a very strong character – enjoyed how he dealt with the underage drinkers and the dog-napper.
I watched the first episode of Motherland last night – mainly because I’ve liked what I’ve seen of Diane Morgan in Charlie Brooker’s TV programmes. Being a without child, and a man, I could empathise with these characters immediately. I thought the series looked like it had potential, and I especially liked the ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ traffic warden joke.
Oh yes, that traffic warden moment was masterful.
Yes, I enjoyed it too – enough in there to suggest that as it gathers momentum it could be really good. Mind you Mrs BB observed that my enjoyment of the show was not unconnected with the fact that Anna Maxwell Martin is in it. There may be some truth in this….
The BBC has been absolutely nailing comedy in the past few years. Some favourites of mine have been Uncle, This Country and the mighty People Just Do Nothing.
Going a little bit further back, Whites and Rev were both wonderful.
And The Thick of It has to be my favourite comedy of all time.
Yep. PJDN and Uncle are both aces, although they can tend towards the soapy too, just like Detectorists. I thought Catastrophe fell over the edge as regards the life/gags balance, but I’m hanging in there as I’ve been down with Shazza since Pulling..
Ideal was very weird but very good, I thought.
This Country on BBC 3 was pretty funny.
Fleabag was good – perhaps not as good as The Guardian wanted it to be – but very solid nonetheless. Olivia Coleman as the stepmother was great – mean spirited and funny.
I’ll need to give fleabag another chance. It didn’t really hit the spot with me and I gave up after episode one.
Fleabag was very, very good – don’t let the Guardian’s championing of it spoil your enjoyment.
The sitcom genre seemed to be sidelined in favour of the Comedy Panel Show.
Attempts to re-ignite the sitcom may have found an audience, but are they part of the “classic” tradition?
Mrs Brown’s Boys – inexplicably massive
Citizen Khan – Citizen Kahn’t do comedy
That one starring Jason Byrne that has been all but forgotten
Red Dwarf still alive and kicking.
Upstart Crow was pretty good
I think I should mention W1A.
Yes.
No.
Exactly.
The fact is this is about identifying what we do most of best and finding fewer ways of doing more of it less.
“Totally!”
“Fantastic!”
“Bollocks!”
Oh, bravo.
Well, you’ll know more about what to do with this than I do, but… brilliant.
The best British TV comedy is unbeatably great.
I’ll see your “Don’t tell him, Pike!” and raise you “Trago Mills!”.
A vote here for Count Arthur Strong, incredibly well written, brilliant slapstick and characters that you really cared about.
And of course the Beeb have cancelled it.
Not many things are as subjective as what makes you laugh, and I put Arthur Strong right down there with Mrs Brown’s Boys. I know that Ross Noble adores him, and Ross Noble is possibly the funniest stage comic I have ever seen, but Count Arthur Strong only ever made me wince.
Anyone watch Can’t Cope Won’t Cope recently on the BBC? ( I think that was the name). A quiet little triumph. Two twenty something girls and their adventures in Dublin. Went to some quite dark places.
Yes – very good, but wasn’t that about three years ago?
This is like every conversation I ever have about anything. Sigh. Where do the years go?
I enjoyed “Bad Move” with Jack Dee and Miles Jupp. In the old tradition of ITV comedy, in a good way
Love Detectorists, have high hopes for Motherland. Catastrophe is great too.
A couple that have slipped by relatively unnoticed, ‘Rovers’ on Sky 1, a gentle comedy set in a none league football club [a love of football is not required] starring Craig Cash and Sue Johnston, it is, unsurprisingly, reminiscent of The Royal Family and Early Doors in tone, and it has some lovely feel good moments as well.
And ‘Mum’ which was on BBC2 last year was a delight. The first episode and the trailer don’t do it justice. It was a funny warm treat of a show and is supposed to be returning for a second series this year…
Oh, forgot about mum. Yeah that was great.
Posting this led me to download the series from Amazon. F me it’s even better than I remembered. Lesley Manville is superb as Mum, (Cathy) artfully negotiating her way through the assorted cast of arseholes and nice but dim characters that surround her, with only would be love interest Michael on the same planet as her.
I checked out first episode of The End Of the ****ing World cos of this thread. Absolutely hooked already. Excellent telly. Thanks so much for the nod. Another programme I’ve watched just one episode of and got hooked on immediately is (US programme) American Vandal. I’m so looking forward to watching the rest of both these series now.
You’re welcome! As we’ve seen from other responses you either get it or you don’t but I thought it was terrific (and I can say with any spoilers that it keeps up the standard of the first episode all the way through).
Watched the last episode of Gameface last night and was highly impressed. Roisin Conarty managed to combine plenty of laughs with telling a credible and nuanced story about fucked up relationships and frustrated ambitions.
The Detectorists has been excellent from its beginning; brilliantly written and two masterful performances from McKenzie Crook and Toby Jones at its centre.
Count Arthur Strong was a classic, although it seems the Beeb has dropped it now. I saw the stage show earlier in the year and it was brilliant.
Haven’t seen The End Of the ****ing World, but comments above are making me think I should give it a try.
What a useful thread. I’ve nothing to add but have been taking copious notes.
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls025874212/
That’s a lot of my Xmas present shopping sorted, providing these shows are available on DVD.
I’m so out of touch that (thanks to finding a box set in a chazza for six quid) I am now discovering Jonathan Creek for the first time
I’d like to throw ‘Quacks’ into the mix. Lost at 10pm on BBC2, victorian situation but modern, anarchic, gruesome(ish), gender politics, cracking cast (Rory Kinnear, Rupert Everett, Lydia Leonard etc). One of the few things that have made me laughout loud in the last year. I’m on to my second run through and it has continued to improve.
Thanks PP. Yet another that sounds very promising.
But what Gatz says above is true for all comedy: you get it or you don’t.
And watching an unfunny comedy is far worse than watching a lame thriller.
New entry klaxon! Gone to Pot: American Road Trip, which started last night on ITV. Extraordinary stuff. They have taken the current trend of sending a group of ageing celebs to a hotel somewhere sunny, California in this case, and added weed.
OK, so it’s not a sitcom as such, more ‘The Great British National Treasure Bake Off’, but it’s a stronger man than me who can resist the appeal of anti-dope John Fashanu musing on which might happen if he tried a toke, went psychotic and unleashed his inner martial artist, or Christopher Biggins throwing a massive whitey on a psychedelic bus after eating too much of a nonagenarian chef’s cannabis ice cream (not a sequence of letters anyone ever expects to write).
Forget monkey tennis, someone has let Bri loose on the schedules and I can’t wait for part 2.