Dead Ringers - surprise or what?

This is where the might of Radio 4 comes into its own - as seen previously with Chris Morris etc, evil comedic talents nurtured on the radio are always going to pish all over gurning TV personalities. Also bonus points for having, like, OLD people dressing up funny.

The Gladiator renovation-of-St-Albans thing was fantastic.

Fav bits were kirsty wark (excellent impression) and the gladiator bit, im sure the second builder was thick!

this was the second comedy thing in less than a week that i've immediately regretted not taping. (the other was harry hill's tv burp (Harry Potter, Dr Who: FITE!) which actually used a lot of the same targets: mr bargain hunt, celebrity fat club...)

props to the st albans builder though, playing along like that

I had some doubts about the Thora Hird sketch until the Stannah-stairlift-up-the-hill bit which had me in fits.

Not wanting to be R4 smug or anything but, ah sod it, some of us have known about this for yonks.

Was a bit "Hello, I'm Kirsty Wark" - in case we couldn't work out it was Kirsty Wark (who it didn't look like). Equally I'm still not sure if Culshaw's newsreader was supposed to be Sissons or Buerk. Still it happily sits in the middle ground between celebrity obsessed populist Alistair MacGowan, and highbrow it doesn't have to be funny its satire Rory Bremner. I wonder how good a program made of all threes best bits would be though.

But yes, I was surprised how good it was.

I've got to say that the Gladiator renevation thing was hilarious ("decking?"), but the rest of it didn't match up to my expectations.

Now, Harry Hill's TV BURP on the other hand was the funniest thing I've seen in yonks!

Sounds like I should've bothered watching this, but I'd heard the R4 version a few times and thought it was rubbish (poor impressions, scripts neither funny nor accurate as parodies) so I didn't. Is it better, was I just unlucky with the radio versions, or will I hate the TV version too?

I was surprised at how bad it was.

I don't know what that Roman general / ancient ruins business was about, though the script was OK. The Parkinson sketch had sth going for it too.

It wasn't all bad.

the impressions were pretty good but the only bit that made me laugh was the gladiator bit. "what do you want to do with the walls?" "fortify them".

(Good God, for a second I thought you people were talking about the Cronenberg movie.)

what was surprising about it's badness, pf? i thought it was the usual boring thing to find something bad or disappointing.

didn't see it, but I agree with Rebecca about the R4 version, v.much

I thought it was dull, desperately dated in style, with technically pretty mediocre impressions and very short of good jokes. There was a hint of worrying conservatism and a reactionary nature in places too, I thought at the time, but can't remember where now.

Martin that's the same impression I get, as with most other R4 comedy, even Radio Active (which was always basically "let's laugh at the proles for preferring commercial radio" - very funny public school humour, like Private Eye at its best, but public school humour of the snobbiest kind nonetheless).

that's why On The Hour was so good and so IMPORTANT: a smartbomb hurled at Radio 4's heartland ON RADIO 4 ITSELF (the Louise Botting song, the never-ending play, the "eavesdrop on the Welsh" etc), pretty much unique as such. Morris, Iannucci, Coogan, Lee & Herring ... all have done much since, but rarely have any of them done better.

I just expected it to be quite good. It wasn't as 'quite good' as I expected. Don't know if I'd go as far as Martin S.

But one sign of its badness was the way it pushed the old 'Bush is Dumb' line - which I have never regarded as remotely helpful or insightful, and which I think no-one on ilx (for instance) would bother using anymore. There is so much real stuff to be said about Bush & Co - whether by eg. Michael Moore or someone you prefer to him; this prog's whole line on him felt not so much irrelevant, but actually politically evasive to the point of being reactionary. Maybe in that regard Martin S is right after all.

Have enjoyed the R4 version for some time and thought the TV version was good. it does require more suspension of disbelief than we're used to on TV as far as the look of people, but that's no problem. One glaring omission: there was no Doctor Who sketch, these are some of the best bits of the R4 programme because one of them does a very good Tom Baker impression.

Its still not Weekending or Spitting image though. There's still no really cutting, incisive, event type satire on TV or radio. Dead ringers, 2DTV and Bremner, Bird and Fortune are nowhere near this quality or stature. Both really ought to be revived. Regular biting and incisive satire is as important as a free press.

spitting image was rubbish, ed!!

It was still better than Dead Ringers, Mark!!

there were a few Doctor Who sketches in the Dead Ringers tv show pilot, which was on about 6 months ago. surprised no-one else saw it...

Yeah, Dr Who! That's the kind of cutting satire we need! That'll frighten them!

Mark and Andrew are both right about SI and DR. But how much good satire has there ever been on TV? I revered Peter Cook as much as anyone, but there really was little Cook satire on TV, and what there was was sometimes made too easy by the fact that anything anti-establishment seemed fresh and shocking and new then.

Chris Morris is the man, obviously, but most of his work is satirising the media processing of news and politics, not so much the news and politics itself. That's not a criticism (I kind of suspect that this is more important and valuable today), but I would like to see some sharper mainline satire now and then too.

I suppose what surprised me was that there was any attempt at satire at all on Dead Ringers, since there very rarely is on the radio. (Saddam Hussein gags are a bit one size fits all, and while I agree about the Bush stuff I can't help but find it funny).

Satire is very hard to do except in small doses - and especially hard to do when the politicians often do it to themselves. (On Chrsi Morris I think the process is what should be satirized - what is exactly what Bird & Fortune).

Harry Hill's TV Burp = v.v. disappointing.

I think it's jolly enough (TV Burp), but it's HH marking time, and just doing a bit of messing about with the TV review format as a hook/excuse, rather than him stretching himself.

It's the easyness of the targets that bugs me though.

I felt the same way about the radio version, Graham (haven't seen it yet).

Robin, I was talking about HH,

dead ringers = utter utter rub. A few good jokes buried in awful scripts and overly laboured setups. The improvised bits (ie Parky) were way better.

Yes, there is no great daring or bite in HH - but that's not his style or genre or intent. I think that's an important criticism of DR, but not usefully applicable to a family entertainer having fun.