Everyone's talking about Derek so let's talk about Derek. But let me begin with a proviso straight off. This sort of show isn't my sort of thing at all. No great surprise to you I'm sure, given I had a hand in writing two series of Miranda. At the moment, there does seem to be quite a lot of comedy that's high on atmos and pathos, aiming to tug the heart strings rather than tickle the ribs. I'm thinking about programmes like Him and Her, The Cafe and Roger and Val Have Just Got In. These shows have found a devoted audience and critics seem to like them, but they're not for me. My saying they're rubbish or inferior would be like disliking raw fish and criticising a chef for serving sushi. You get the idea. (I do dislike raw fish, by and large)
So, to Derek. And I'm sure you can smell the elephant in the room. Is it right or moral? Is Ricky Gervais mocking people who clearly have severe learning difficulties? Despite previous comments and tweets by Gervais which were either thoughtless or intentionally provocative, I don't believe Derek is mean-spirited. Quite the opposite in fact. Derek is portrayed as being so kind and good that he's almost being held up as an example to the rest of us.
If anything the show is rather thoughtless with regard to the elderly who are treated as props. It seems odd that a show can take place in a nursing home and for no single elderly character to have a more than one or two meaningful lines. But the show's about Derek, not them. I understand that.
Flaws and Quests
Overall, though, we have a comic problem. In a comedy, lead characters need to have flaws on their character and clear quests. Moreover, these character flaws need to interfere with and frustrate their clear quests. The characters need to deserve their sufferings and trials because they don't listen to advice or they're proud or a snob. If Captain Mainwairing would only listen to Sergeant Wilson, he wouldn't make such a fool of himself. If Basil Fawlty weren't such a ludicrous snob, he might find he is much more calm and relaxed. If David Brent wasn't so sure he was a very good boss and a natural comedian, people might actually start to like him.
Derek has flaws, and they're not his fault, and so comedically it's hard to generate comedy stories, scenes and moments. It's okay for bad things to happen to Derek's friend, Dougie the Caretaker, played by Karl Pilkington, because he's mean about the old people and doesn't respect human life. In fact, he's saying the elderly have no quality of life - when his own is clearly lived in a small, dull bubble. It would have been nice to see this character called on this - and we do see that he fixed that picture he wanted to throw away. But it cost him nothing.
Now clearly, I'm banging on about formulaic comedy and lots of people would like to see something different or new or experimental. And that's fine. But most comedy is formulaic underneath, although it's often well disguised. In fact, it's unclear whether this is a comedy drama, or just a drama. Either way, characters needs quests, drives, flaws and set-backs.
Casting
The other problem for me was the casting. Ricky Gervais is obviously brilliant in The Office - and Extras. He also does a great job in Ghost Town, which is a lovely movie that works well for him. I didn't feel he carried this one off so well - partly because he's already bringing baggage to the part. And if the audience are watching baggage, they're missing the jokes. Others may feel differently, but I would have cast someone else in that part. Gervais clearly has an eye for casting because he's found another fantastic female lead in Kerry Godliman. But Gervais' performance made me feel uncomfortable, and that's not a good start. It also reminded me of the character with the wig and glasses Andy Milman plays in When the Whistle Blows - the sitcom within Extras. This is not a good thing.
Some have criticised the mock-doc format. It's true that the format didn't really add anything, but it's a ubiquitous shooting style now, so this didn't bother me one way or the other.
My other criticism would be that nothing really happened in the first ten minutes. I get that it was slow and going at its own pace, but it felt like the show was treading water. There was probably time to set up the old lady dying and Derek's relationship with her. There was probably time for Dougie the caretaker to get his comeuppance. But as with all of these things it is worth noting that Ricky Gervais makes more money in a day that I do in a year. He clearly knows what he's doing. But that's my boringly technical analysis of his show.
Showing posts with label Roger and Val. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger and Val. Show all posts
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Panel Games and Sitcoms
It was Gore Vidal, apparently, who said ‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’. One has to admire his honesty. He went even further. He also said ‘It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.’
It’s hard to work in the comedy in Britain without feeling like things are a competition. In a sense they are. Comedy budgets are limited. I follow Chortle and all those news feeds as much as the next paranoid writer, and whenever I see a sitcom commissioned that is nothing to do with me (which is virtually all of them) part of me feels a pang of envy.
But it’s a rare feeling these days, since I often see a newsflash entitled ‘New show for [insert name of comedian here]’, click on the link and discover it’s another new panel game. My reaction in that situation is the opposite to the feeling above. I always think ‘Oh, what a shame. They should have given him a sitcom.’ The first time I experienced this feeling, it took me by surprise and I realised that my gut reaction to panel game is general disinterest.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by this surprise (keeping up?). With the exception of Have I Got News For You?, I gave up watching panel games a few years ago. Even though QI regularly contains comedians I like very much, I’ll only watch it if it’s on. And nothing else gets a look in. Mock the Week, Eight out of Ten Cats, this new one with highly talented Rhod Gilbert, Genius with the lovely Dave Gorman and that one on Dave with Marcus Brigstocke, who's great – I just don’t watch these shows. Occasionally it feels like there’s no British comedy on, especially audience comedy with lots of jokes in. There is – they’re almost all panel games.
So, what’s wrong with panel games?
Nothing, really. They’re often very jolly. But to me they’re just strings of jokes. Jokes without context. Some would argue ‘Jokes? What’s not to like?’ Granted, some of my favourite comedians, like Milton Jones or Tim Vine, tell jokes without much in the way of context (that’s the impression that’s given. In fact, both Jones and Vine skillfully and subtley create the right atmosphere for their jokes – with stage presence, stage craft and other jokes).
It’s context and most of all character that makes jokes particularly funny. To take the most overplayed example, a man falling over is quite funny. Del Boy trying to look cool and yuppyish, standing next to Trigger, falling through the bar, is much funnier. Characters have stories and lives of their own. Every decent joke counts double or triple when a character says it – and even more so when they say it at a funny point in a funny story. The funniest moments of our lives are not telling to jokes to each other, but moments that we can’t describe to anyone else because ‘you had to be there’. Sitcoms, at their best, create those moments.
Panel games are like bags of chips – a guilty pleasure that satisfy a basic craving, but don’t really enrich your life like a nourishing meal.
So why are you bringing this up?
I mention this because I’ve been thinking about ‘jokey’ comedy at lot recently. I’ve been trying to write one. A few, in fact. But one in particular which is in the Black Books/Father Ted territory – a genre of sitcom which is immensely popular, partly because almost all of it seems to be written by Graham Linehan, who's toner cartridge I am not worthy to replace.
Certainly, Linehan’s work is very inspiring, but I arrived at the Father Ted party very late. I completely missed it when it arrived on our screens in 1995. I’m not sure why. It’s only in the last five years that I really caught up – and I’m still not sure I’ve seen every episode. Bizarrely, I did latch on to his much overlooked work on BBC2, Hippies with Simon Pegg (whatever happened to him?). When the series first aired, I wasn’t wild about it. But I watched some repeats a few years later and really enjoyed the show (especially the episode involving the court case).
But my original inspiration was an equally forgotten show from 1993 – Mr Don and Mr George, a show I have referred to in the past. It is full of superb jokes, clever routines and wonderful silliness. Even a few catchphrases. You can watch the whole lot on 4oD on Youtube. I thoroughly recommend it.
And yet, Mr Don and Mr George was not a success. It’s largely forgotten. (It has arguably done better than Linehan and Matthews’ first sitcom from the following year, Paris, starring Alexei Sayle and Neil Morrissey. As far as the internet is concerned, this show does not exist. I’d love to see it – and I’d love to know what Mr Linehan learned from the experience, given that it’s been hit after hit since then). But I have been thinking about why Mr Don and Mr George was not a success – and Father Ted was – so I can learn the right lesson from this.
I think the reason is this: Mr Don and Mr George had tons of wonderful jokes – like any old panel game – but we don’t quite care about the characters enough. It’s a weird relationship and the characters don’t really have any context, and so the jokes are floating in the air. Perhaps it’s a function of the fact that the characters sprung from a sketch show.
Whereas we believe in Father Ted and Father Dougal. We believed they existed and we wanted them to succeed, whereas I think we were just curious about Don and George. We also cared about Bernard Black (I still do). And we care about Moss – even though we know almost nothing about him.
The thing to learn, I think, is that it’s not just about the jokes (stupid). It’s about who says them, how and why and whether it matters.
What is frustrating is that at the moment, we have panel games on the one hand, and non-audience character comedies on the other. The former are stuffed with jokes and one-liners, the latter sparsely sprinkled with them.
It’s as if British writers are convinced that single-camera non-audience shouldn’t have jokes in them but be all character (Tina Fey would show that this isn’t the case) Roger and Val is obviously the most extreme example. Again, I stress that that many people liked Roger and Val. And lots of people say nice things about Him and Her, which is not to my taste. But I find it puzzling when one reads comments like those by Claire Webb in the Radio Times who says that Him and Her is ‘Masterfully scripted and short on laughs’ and ‘more Beckett play than the zany fare you might expect from a BBC3 sitcom’. Yes, she did say that the script was masterful. And didn't have enough laughs in it. And yes, she did use the word ‘zany’.
Him and Her and programmes like that are fine. But I like stuff in the middle – audience comedy with proper jokes in proper characterful context. But it seems like this stuff is very carefully rationed. Why? 6 Miranda’s a year and 6 IT Crowd's every 18 months is not enough for me. And QI and Mock the Week aren’t filling the gap.
It’s hard to work in the comedy in Britain without feeling like things are a competition. In a sense they are. Comedy budgets are limited. I follow Chortle and all those news feeds as much as the next paranoid writer, and whenever I see a sitcom commissioned that is nothing to do with me (which is virtually all of them) part of me feels a pang of envy.
But it’s a rare feeling these days, since I often see a newsflash entitled ‘New show for [insert name of comedian here]’, click on the link and discover it’s another new panel game. My reaction in that situation is the opposite to the feeling above. I always think ‘Oh, what a shame. They should have given him a sitcom.’ The first time I experienced this feeling, it took me by surprise and I realised that my gut reaction to panel game is general disinterest.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by this surprise (keeping up?). With the exception of Have I Got News For You?, I gave up watching panel games a few years ago. Even though QI regularly contains comedians I like very much, I’ll only watch it if it’s on. And nothing else gets a look in. Mock the Week, Eight out of Ten Cats, this new one with highly talented Rhod Gilbert, Genius with the lovely Dave Gorman and that one on Dave with Marcus Brigstocke, who's great – I just don’t watch these shows. Occasionally it feels like there’s no British comedy on, especially audience comedy with lots of jokes in. There is – they’re almost all panel games.
So, what’s wrong with panel games?
Nothing, really. They’re often very jolly. But to me they’re just strings of jokes. Jokes without context. Some would argue ‘Jokes? What’s not to like?’ Granted, some of my favourite comedians, like Milton Jones or Tim Vine, tell jokes without much in the way of context (that’s the impression that’s given. In fact, both Jones and Vine skillfully and subtley create the right atmosphere for their jokes – with stage presence, stage craft and other jokes).
It’s context and most of all character that makes jokes particularly funny. To take the most overplayed example, a man falling over is quite funny. Del Boy trying to look cool and yuppyish, standing next to Trigger, falling through the bar, is much funnier. Characters have stories and lives of their own. Every decent joke counts double or triple when a character says it – and even more so when they say it at a funny point in a funny story. The funniest moments of our lives are not telling to jokes to each other, but moments that we can’t describe to anyone else because ‘you had to be there’. Sitcoms, at their best, create those moments.
Panel games are like bags of chips – a guilty pleasure that satisfy a basic craving, but don’t really enrich your life like a nourishing meal.
So why are you bringing this up?
I mention this because I’ve been thinking about ‘jokey’ comedy at lot recently. I’ve been trying to write one. A few, in fact. But one in particular which is in the Black Books/Father Ted territory – a genre of sitcom which is immensely popular, partly because almost all of it seems to be written by Graham Linehan, who's toner cartridge I am not worthy to replace.
Certainly, Linehan’s work is very inspiring, but I arrived at the Father Ted party very late. I completely missed it when it arrived on our screens in 1995. I’m not sure why. It’s only in the last five years that I really caught up – and I’m still not sure I’ve seen every episode. Bizarrely, I did latch on to his much overlooked work on BBC2, Hippies with Simon Pegg (whatever happened to him?). When the series first aired, I wasn’t wild about it. But I watched some repeats a few years later and really enjoyed the show (especially the episode involving the court case).
But my original inspiration was an equally forgotten show from 1993 – Mr Don and Mr George, a show I have referred to in the past. It is full of superb jokes, clever routines and wonderful silliness. Even a few catchphrases. You can watch the whole lot on 4oD on Youtube. I thoroughly recommend it.
And yet, Mr Don and Mr George was not a success. It’s largely forgotten. (It has arguably done better than Linehan and Matthews’ first sitcom from the following year, Paris, starring Alexei Sayle and Neil Morrissey. As far as the internet is concerned, this show does not exist. I’d love to see it – and I’d love to know what Mr Linehan learned from the experience, given that it’s been hit after hit since then). But I have been thinking about why Mr Don and Mr George was not a success – and Father Ted was – so I can learn the right lesson from this.
I think the reason is this: Mr Don and Mr George had tons of wonderful jokes – like any old panel game – but we don’t quite care about the characters enough. It’s a weird relationship and the characters don’t really have any context, and so the jokes are floating in the air. Perhaps it’s a function of the fact that the characters sprung from a sketch show.
Whereas we believe in Father Ted and Father Dougal. We believed they existed and we wanted them to succeed, whereas I think we were just curious about Don and George. We also cared about Bernard Black (I still do). And we care about Moss – even though we know almost nothing about him.
The thing to learn, I think, is that it’s not just about the jokes (stupid). It’s about who says them, how and why and whether it matters.
What is frustrating is that at the moment, we have panel games on the one hand, and non-audience character comedies on the other. The former are stuffed with jokes and one-liners, the latter sparsely sprinkled with them.
It’s as if British writers are convinced that single-camera non-audience shouldn’t have jokes in them but be all character (Tina Fey would show that this isn’t the case) Roger and Val is obviously the most extreme example. Again, I stress that that many people liked Roger and Val. And lots of people say nice things about Him and Her, which is not to my taste. But I find it puzzling when one reads comments like those by Claire Webb in the Radio Times who says that Him and Her is ‘Masterfully scripted and short on laughs’ and ‘more Beckett play than the zany fare you might expect from a BBC3 sitcom’. Yes, she did say that the script was masterful. And didn't have enough laughs in it. And yes, she did use the word ‘zany’.
Him and Her and programmes like that are fine. But I like stuff in the middle – audience comedy with proper jokes in proper characterful context. But it seems like this stuff is very carefully rationed. Why? 6 Miranda’s a year and 6 IT Crowd's every 18 months is not enough for me. And QI and Mock the Week aren’t filling the gap.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Do People Really Talk Like That?
It's a question worth asking yourself all the time as you write. Do people really talk like that? There are plenty of moments where, if you're honest with yourself, someone has only really said something in a certain way in order to provide the set-up for a joke.
A stand-out example of this for me was the much un-loved Frank Skinner sit-com Shane. I watched an episode a year or so ago and rather enjoyed it. The only bit that diminished my enjoyment was that Frank Skinner had almost all of the jokes and that everyone else had feed-lines. On top of this, the feed lines didn't always sound right or natural, which telegraphed the fact that a joke was on the way and therefore spoiled the joke (and also made one aware that the whole programme is a conceit, which is not something you want to remind your audience of). Sometimes it's hard to avoid a clunky set-up line, especially when the joke you have in mind is a real cracker. But the skill of the writer is to make the dialogue sound real, or natural, or at least real enough.
When The Office came out, the critics and the industry went wild. Here was 'real' dialogue. This is true. The dialogue did sound real (although let's not forget that the character add times spoke directly to camera, in a documentary, and the they played fairly fast and loose with the docu-format).
The Office was truly brilliant as a non-audience show. (Critics then, bless them, returned to studio sitcoms and slammed them for being contrived or fake or silly, when, as I often say on this blog, the audience do realise it's a contrivance and they're okay with that). The Office, though, had an effect though on other writers, who wanted to write dialogue like the dialogue in The Office, and number of other shows, mostly forgotten, came and went that focussed on awkward silences and ennui. Spaced was another groundbreaking show that inspired another generation of writers, and created 'a way of talking'. Let's not forget Peep Show and The Thick of It.
Likewise, monstrously successful shows like Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld have almost created a 'way of talking' that really trips of the tongue and gives a show a feeling of pace. This is fine - if you're an American writer and writing for American audiences. But sometimes this kind of wise-cracking talking finds it way into British comedy.
The reason I mention this is because one or two shows recently - and the odd movie - have felt very unreal to me because of the dialogue and 'way of talking'. It's as if the writers were writing a show that were designed to sound like other shows. It's impossible to tell whether this is intentional - either because the writer in question is writing that way because he/she thinks the audience will like it, or because he/they likes it and it sounds good, or because he/we don't realise we're doing it.
The example that made me shout at my television the most was a movie on TV called Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel - directed by a good comedy director and had funny actors in it. But it felt like the script was half-way between Hitchhikers and Hot Fuzz. That sounds like a good place to be - but it was just that and only that. It was only influences. I didn't believe any of the characters, or the set-up - and this was highlighted by the fact that people in real life just don't talk like that. What's more, the Hot Fuzz area is dangerous because it is a movie heavily influenced by other movies.
Screenwriters need to know how real people talk and write concise and characterful dialogue in that style. If you spend your life watching movies and TV, and TV influenced by movies, and movies influenced by TV, you'll end up trapped in an unreal life that doesn't connect with reality. Decent writing is about truth. If there's no ring of truth - in situation, character or dialogue - it's just someone talking cliche's or secondhand speech. If you're doing that, stop writing now and get a part-time job, get married and have a child, go into politics or just do something that isn't about TV.
Grandma's House, Roger and Val Have Just Got In, The Great Outdoors, - three brand new BBC comedies inexplicably premiered over July/August - do not fall into this trap, I'm pleased to say. Nor did Rev earlier this summer. In all those programmes, the characters feel real - like they are based on truth, not based on something based on truth. And truth, not wisecracks or contrived 'sexual chemistry', ultimately, is what keeps people watching.
A stand-out example of this for me was the much un-loved Frank Skinner sit-com Shane. I watched an episode a year or so ago and rather enjoyed it. The only bit that diminished my enjoyment was that Frank Skinner had almost all of the jokes and that everyone else had feed-lines. On top of this, the feed lines didn't always sound right or natural, which telegraphed the fact that a joke was on the way and therefore spoiled the joke (and also made one aware that the whole programme is a conceit, which is not something you want to remind your audience of). Sometimes it's hard to avoid a clunky set-up line, especially when the joke you have in mind is a real cracker. But the skill of the writer is to make the dialogue sound real, or natural, or at least real enough.
When The Office came out, the critics and the industry went wild. Here was 'real' dialogue. This is true. The dialogue did sound real (although let's not forget that the character add times spoke directly to camera, in a documentary, and the they played fairly fast and loose with the docu-format).
The Office was truly brilliant as a non-audience show. (Critics then, bless them, returned to studio sitcoms and slammed them for being contrived or fake or silly, when, as I often say on this blog, the audience do realise it's a contrivance and they're okay with that). The Office, though, had an effect though on other writers, who wanted to write dialogue like the dialogue in The Office, and number of other shows, mostly forgotten, came and went that focussed on awkward silences and ennui. Spaced was another groundbreaking show that inspired another generation of writers, and created 'a way of talking'. Let's not forget Peep Show and The Thick of It.
Likewise, monstrously successful shows like Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld have almost created a 'way of talking' that really trips of the tongue and gives a show a feeling of pace. This is fine - if you're an American writer and writing for American audiences. But sometimes this kind of wise-cracking talking finds it way into British comedy.
The reason I mention this is because one or two shows recently - and the odd movie - have felt very unreal to me because of the dialogue and 'way of talking'. It's as if the writers were writing a show that were designed to sound like other shows. It's impossible to tell whether this is intentional - either because the writer in question is writing that way because he/she thinks the audience will like it, or because he/they likes it and it sounds good, or because he/we don't realise we're doing it.
The example that made me shout at my television the most was a movie on TV called Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel - directed by a good comedy director and had funny actors in it. But it felt like the script was half-way between Hitchhikers and Hot Fuzz. That sounds like a good place to be - but it was just that and only that. It was only influences. I didn't believe any of the characters, or the set-up - and this was highlighted by the fact that people in real life just don't talk like that. What's more, the Hot Fuzz area is dangerous because it is a movie heavily influenced by other movies.
Screenwriters need to know how real people talk and write concise and characterful dialogue in that style. If you spend your life watching movies and TV, and TV influenced by movies, and movies influenced by TV, you'll end up trapped in an unreal life that doesn't connect with reality. Decent writing is about truth. If there's no ring of truth - in situation, character or dialogue - it's just someone talking cliche's or secondhand speech. If you're doing that, stop writing now and get a part-time job, get married and have a child, go into politics or just do something that isn't about TV.
Grandma's House, Roger and Val Have Just Got In, The Great Outdoors, - three brand new BBC comedies inexplicably premiered over July/August - do not fall into this trap, I'm pleased to say. Nor did Rev earlier this summer. In all those programmes, the characters feel real - like they are based on truth, not based on something based on truth. And truth, not wisecracks or contrived 'sexual chemistry', ultimately, is what keeps people watching.
Friday, 13 August 2010
Happy Tuesdays: Mr and Mrs Smith
I listened to Will Smith's Mr and Mrs Smith the other day - part of the Happy Tuesdays season of pilots on Radio 4. It was a show about a married couple undergoing counselling, and starred Will Smith and Sarah Hadland.
I rather liked it. In fact, I like it a lot.
Why? Here is one reason. There were lots of jokes in it - making me and the studio audience laugh. I like it when that happens. It seems strange to point this out, but there are some comedies out there with scant few jokes in, both on radio and television. It's not that these comedy have lots of jokes that are lame, or misfiring or don't work. It's just that there aren't any in the first place - and yet the show can still be billed as comedy. Which is odd.
If you follow me on Twitter (do so here), you will have seen my mild disappointment with Roger and Val Have Just Go In - which appeared to be a well-cast, well-directed comedy, but one without any jokes in. After 7 minutes, I tweeted that I would be requiring a joke soon. And after 15 minutes, I tweeted that I was going to bed. Which I did. My problem was not that the show wasn't any good. It's just that it wasn't trying to make me laugh out loud with jokes.
It struck me that this is tantamount to making pornography but not including any sex scenes. Now, one could argue that there are much subtler ways of creating the same erotic effect - and that the most sexually charged films do not need to contain sex or nudity but that's not the main reason people buy pornography, I don't think.
Lots of people have tweeted how marvellous they thought Roger and Val was, and that it was clever and subtle and warm et al. And that it was very funny and made them laugh out loud. So clearly, I have more mainstream preferences. (eg I'd take Seinfeld over Curb any day.) I'm pleased that the show is finding an audience, and that the BBC are not trying to sell a pup. They've made something that really connects with people. Well done, Beeb. I just wanted to laugh. And found the show wasn't interested in making me do so all that often. So I went to bed.
Mr and Mrs Smith, on the other, made me laugh out loud plenty of times. From the moment Will started quibbling about the cost of the session and the lost minutes, a refund, and then working it out on the calculator on his phone, I knew I was going to enjoy it.
But the show was more than a succession of jokes (as if that were easy to do anyway). The characters inter-played well - or at least disappointed each other again and again. The format of the characters explaining it, and cutting in to actually hear the event being explained, worked. It can be muddling, but I was never in doubt as to what I was listening to - which always fights comedy. (Confusion is the enemy) There were plenty of call-backs and running jokes too and overall it didn't feel like any lines were wasted. Every line delivered in terms of being a joke, revealing character or advancing the plot - and many did more than one of those things.
If I had one suggestion for the show, should it be commissioned for a thoroughly merited series, I would make a plea to warm up the central characters a little. This doesn't mean making them 'likeable', but making their failings and foibles more forgivable. Will Smith's character throughout the show was worried about getting back in time to see Avatar with his lifelong best friend. This was funny and he wouldn't give up on it, so provided a really good distraction and quest for him, that was fighting the romantic weekend at every turn. It's just his desire to sacrifice romance for his friend seemed a little unreasonable and hard to forgive. It might have been better if these was some extra reason why he had to see Avatar with his friend on that particular day - something stemming back to a poignant moment in childhood or adolescence. It could have served the plot well in demonstrating how Will's character is unable or unwilling to let go of the uncomplicated life of being a single man. I'd also say that his job as a would-be novelist is also a little self-indulgence and needs some sort of redemption.
But all of these changes are just a minor adjustment in detail and tone. There's a lovely show here that's properly funny. And it'll be even funnier if we care even more about Mr and Mrs Smith. More please, Radio 4.
I rather liked it. In fact, I like it a lot.
Why? Here is one reason. There were lots of jokes in it - making me and the studio audience laugh. I like it when that happens. It seems strange to point this out, but there are some comedies out there with scant few jokes in, both on radio and television. It's not that these comedy have lots of jokes that are lame, or misfiring or don't work. It's just that there aren't any in the first place - and yet the show can still be billed as comedy. Which is odd.
If you follow me on Twitter (do so here), you will have seen my mild disappointment with Roger and Val Have Just Go In - which appeared to be a well-cast, well-directed comedy, but one without any jokes in. After 7 minutes, I tweeted that I would be requiring a joke soon. And after 15 minutes, I tweeted that I was going to bed. Which I did. My problem was not that the show wasn't any good. It's just that it wasn't trying to make me laugh out loud with jokes.
It struck me that this is tantamount to making pornography but not including any sex scenes. Now, one could argue that there are much subtler ways of creating the same erotic effect - and that the most sexually charged films do not need to contain sex or nudity but that's not the main reason people buy pornography, I don't think.
Lots of people have tweeted how marvellous they thought Roger and Val was, and that it was clever and subtle and warm et al. And that it was very funny and made them laugh out loud. So clearly, I have more mainstream preferences. (eg I'd take Seinfeld over Curb any day.) I'm pleased that the show is finding an audience, and that the BBC are not trying to sell a pup. They've made something that really connects with people. Well done, Beeb. I just wanted to laugh. And found the show wasn't interested in making me do so all that often. So I went to bed.
Mr and Mrs Smith, on the other, made me laugh out loud plenty of times. From the moment Will started quibbling about the cost of the session and the lost minutes, a refund, and then working it out on the calculator on his phone, I knew I was going to enjoy it.
But the show was more than a succession of jokes (as if that were easy to do anyway). The characters inter-played well - or at least disappointed each other again and again. The format of the characters explaining it, and cutting in to actually hear the event being explained, worked. It can be muddling, but I was never in doubt as to what I was listening to - which always fights comedy. (Confusion is the enemy) There were plenty of call-backs and running jokes too and overall it didn't feel like any lines were wasted. Every line delivered in terms of being a joke, revealing character or advancing the plot - and many did more than one of those things.
If I had one suggestion for the show, should it be commissioned for a thoroughly merited series, I would make a plea to warm up the central characters a little. This doesn't mean making them 'likeable', but making their failings and foibles more forgivable. Will Smith's character throughout the show was worried about getting back in time to see Avatar with his lifelong best friend. This was funny and he wouldn't give up on it, so provided a really good distraction and quest for him, that was fighting the romantic weekend at every turn. It's just his desire to sacrifice romance for his friend seemed a little unreasonable and hard to forgive. It might have been better if these was some extra reason why he had to see Avatar with his friend on that particular day - something stemming back to a poignant moment in childhood or adolescence. It could have served the plot well in demonstrating how Will's character is unable or unwilling to let go of the uncomplicated life of being a single man. I'd also say that his job as a would-be novelist is also a little self-indulgence and needs some sort of redemption.
But all of these changes are just a minor adjustment in detail and tone. There's a lovely show here that's properly funny. And it'll be even funnier if we care even more about Mr and Mrs Smith. More please, Radio 4.
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