Bottom - C/D?

i don't think it's genius because it relied too much on the archetypal M&E schtick in play for 10-15 years prior to Bottom (Young Ones, Dangerous Brothers, Filthy Rich & Catflap...)

it was funny tho, esp. the first two series. i think it went very bad after that, so i'll say overall dud (never saw Guest House Paradiso - don't want to).

"All Gold, Frankenstein, and Grrr!"

(Classic, obviously)

What people always tend to miss, however, is the essential Beckettian nature of Bottom. It's about two guys, hanging around, trying to amuse themselves until something happens. Little surprise Rick & Ade ended up in 'Waiting For Godot' at one point. This is made explicit in the second half of the 2001 live show - they end up behind the stage in a room they can't get out of. Once they realise the futility of trying to escape it just becomes about them passing time, and is possibly one of the best things they've done as Richie & Eddie.

another Eastenders connection there (the burglar being played by Paul Bradley aka Nigel)

"Righto."

A total 'C'.

Richie: Who are you??
Grim Reaper: I.....am.....death!
Richie: [pause]...I SAID WHO ARE YOU?

Classic!

My favourite R+M panfight was the one where vic's trousers kept falling down.

xpost

the episode featuring Robert Llewellyn, Julia Sawalha, the short runtish guy i forget the name of and Chris 'unfunny' Langham is also good (Sad Ken!)

Ooh, that's good to know. It's only ever been half remembered for me, cos I've only seen it once, when it was first on. Still, sign of a great gag, that it's still in my head (in structure if not detail) ten/twelve/whatever it is years later.

jesus christ i watched two episodes of this last night and pissed myself laughing

it is just RELENTLESS

Eddie: Err right. "Ironmonger", six letters. Oh, got it! "Harold".

Richie: "Harold"?

Eddie: Yeah, well he's an ironmonger, isn't he? Harold the Ironmonger, remember? We ate his dog!

Richie: Oh right, we bloody won that bet, didn't we?

Eddie: No we didn't, that's why we had to eat his dog.

Richie: What about pin the tail on the donkey?

Eddie: We haven't got a donkey.

Richie: Well er, pin the tail on the chicken.

Eddie: We haven't got a tail.

Richie: Well pin the sausage on the chicken.

Eddie: We haven't got a chicken.

Richie: Well pin the sausage on the fridge.

Eddie: Or a pin.

Richie: Sellotape a sausage to the fridge.

Eddie: We haven't got a sausage.

Richie: Put a bit of Sellotape on the fridge!

Eddie: Not much of game, is it?

Classic.

Should've done a re-run of a few of these after Mayall's passing.

it looks as though it could have been made at any point between 1975 and 1985 -- 1992 seems FAR too late!

Richie: Ahahahaha... oh, who'd be me, eh?

Eddie: In the film, Giant Haystacks.

That's probably my favourite live show gag. Either that, or

Richie: That's easy for you to say, NORMAN.

1992 seems FAR too late!

Actually it probably looks like a show that might've had even more resonance had it been made in 2005, just that period pre-financial crisis and welfare cuts. It fed into a lot of ugly assumptions most people make about the dole.

This + Rab C Nesbitt, maybe.

I think it has resonance and impact regardless of when it's watched but I take your point. I really meant just the look of it, the low-rent shabbiness of it, feels incredibly 70s. I was shocked when Richie mentioned "The Gulf War".

I got a Rising Damp feel from the way it looks and the way the characters dress, sure.

They were 90s characters who had stumbled on the set of Steptoe and Son

People say it drops off a little in the third season and it's so hard for me to imagine this, it just does not put a foot wrong AT ALL so far (i'm a couple of eps into season 2 now). They always take the joke further than you think they will, they always fucking twist it

I love how the simmering undercurrent of Richie's rage is that he always feels he was cut out for better things than this, how can he be lumbered with this life - and Edmondson is the opposite, he just doesn't give a shit, this is maybe even better than what he imagined

that dialogue you post is like something out of a dog latin sitcom

Trust me, they sell it

Binge watching this all-time favorite. I still think it's hilarious but, yes, it's from a very different time.

it looks as though it could have been made at any point between 1975 and 1985 -- 1992 seems FAR too late!

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 9 September 2014 22:49 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

it does feel like it was consciously harking back to an earlier era of sitcoms, even more than Rising Damp and the 70s it owes a lot to Hancock's Half Hour (obviously Richie is Hancock, Eddie a kind of amalgam of Sid James and Bill Kerr). It feels almost like it takes place outside of time and space though, like the two of them are condemned to spend all eternity trapped together in this dingy flat (and the same in the live shows where the set-up would be that they were in a prison cell together, or marooned on a desert island together or something), just these two wretched idiots hitting each other forever

there's something strangely innocent and chaste about Bottom, like it's self-consciously rude and puerile, but it's a 10 year old boy's idea of rude and puerile, it feels different from rude and puerile American comedies that tend to be more raunchy, that have refences to sex and drugs that feel 'knowing', like the audience and the comedians are meant to enjoy being the hip, in-the-know people who dig these kind of references, whereas in Bottom the whole vibe in unknowing.

is this kind of obsession with 'naughtiness' that is also sexless and almost prudish a specifically British thing? I remember Barry Humphries once talking about a Barry McKenzie strip he submitted to Private Eye in the 60s that featured a threesome, and how the Eye was explicitly committed to being offensive and going beyond the boundaries of what was then considered good taste etc, but that Richard Ingrams was genuinely offended by this strip and didn't want to run it, and Humphries thought this illustrated a distinction between an essentially prudish/British/schoolboyish version of offensive/rude humour and a more earthy, bawdy version that existed elsewhere in the world. Also, a key dimension of the humour in Bottom is the obsession with crapness which feels very British, maybe something specific to a country that was once a great power and now isn't, e.g.

I love how the simmering undercurrent of Richie's rage is that he always feels he was cut out for better things than this, how can he be lumbered with this life