Harry And Paul - Dud Or Dud?

Not that I was expecting comedic brilliance but this is seriously bad and unfunny.

it is truly dreadful.

The Cafe Polski sketches I think qualify as racist.

cafe polski is actually buchannan's on brackenbury street in hammersmith.

(5 minutes further down the road and they could've used any of about half a dozen real polish coffee shops)

the multilingual-manager-at-half-time sketch from the first episode also strayed into dubious waters a couple of times, i thought.

you can see the thought process here: "we're the elder statesmen of british humour! not for us the shackles of alternative-comedy political correctness." sadly, not for them the shackles of, er, jokes, either.

Ah right, I thought I recognised it from somewhere (xp).

Seeing as both Enfield and Whitehouse have now more or less come out as Tories anyway we shouldn't be surprised but it is depressing to watch, especially as the Armstrong and Miller rerun which followed it totally pummelled it into the ground in terms of humour and wit.

Paul Whitehouse? PaulShitehousemorelikeamirite?

I read a thing about him in the Radio Times recently and he was all "ho ho I was a naive leftwing student indie type but then I GREW UP AND AM NOT LEFT WING AT ALL NOW so that's probably why (whichever writer/performer it was) wanted me."

KILL THEM

So, the "Dragon's Den" preview be the funniest thing 'in' it?

(xpost)

"ho ho I was a naive leftwing student indie type but then I GREW UP AND AM NOT LEFT WING AT ALL NOW so that's probably why ADOLF HITLER wanted me."

The Dragons Den sketch in the first episode was the most embarrassing and unfunny thing either of them has ever done, I think.

xpost that post could qualify for "Craig Charles" source, and "Jim Davidson" whichever writer/performer? (Allegedly)

xpost...

xpost again..

Um, you've not seen most of the emb/unfun stuff they've done then?

Certainly haven't seen the series Enfield did for Sky which was apparently even worse.

That's the one. I saw one, I think.

I was amazed, in that the pitfall that "On the Buses" fell into when they made the feature film, (i.e. got more sweary and thought that was a substitute for no actual laughs..) was what HEnf fell into when found themselves in less 'restrictive' arena.

And I quite liked him up til then.

Seeing as both Enfield and Whitehouse have now more or less come out as Tories anyway

enfield's always been an uneasy fit with the left-wing funneez gang; whitehouse i don't know about.

was enfield part of that vile "rik mayall and other cunts take on the euro" advert that did the rounds in cinemas a few years back? i can't remember who else was involved. vic reeves was, wasn't he?

Yes, and also Jools Holland, Johnny Vaughan and Geldof. The latter's always had half a foot in the Tory door anyway but the other two don't surprise me at all.

johnny vaughan! there's a footnote in history.

(anti euro != tory. tony benn was anti euro. may still be)

i turned on and saw the clarkson island sketch. weak in every sketch show that's done this exact same joke.

still that was better than what little i've seen of katy brand

Katy Brand appears to have come directly from a freshman year student radio comedy show.

she appears to be pioneering a form of shorthand satire/parody which is one step above playground "look i'm celebrity X and i'm a fucking idiot"

(that step above = dressing up a bit)

we need a new Victoria Wood

ilx should write a comedy, that'd be good

you're just looking for an excuse to black up

i had a 3-year long excuse that ended this june, and didn't take it then

BLACKED UP LOUlS JAGGER is on a broomstick throwing poo from his bum at everyone in the pub and saying 'You are all a bunch of nobheads' at them and getting a bit of a semi on.

everyone has a big shocked face

then it is the averts for a bit cos you not got enough stain remover and crusha

KINDLY OLD MAN FERGUS O'REILLY stops by to give everyone some magic tea, with the effect that a mysterious blue filter appears over the camera lens

(next time it's LEWIS, k)

BANRIQUIT:‘Vile wench! You will not respect me? I have provided for you; struggled for you, and for what reward? Your refusal? If I had known that pledging my troth to a sow like thee would lead to such ingratitude then I would never have let myself be led so blindly.’ I heard a sound like a snapping twig, then that of a child wailing.

ACROBAT: This is not you Henry. This is not you! I know not what has happened, be it the work of drink or…or a demon, but you are not my Henry! I have done nothing to deserve the raising of your hand.’

BLACKED UP LEW1S J4GGER, NARRATING: Of course this was not the first time I had witnessed such a coil, but something about the quarrel shook me from my torpor. Something about the impassionate, instinctual quality of the man’s voice; the wary, defeated woman’s tone that told me there was more to this clamour than mere marital squabbling.

RONAN: My country, it's a terrible thing for comedians at the present!

GARETH: Oh yes, terrible! What a terrible country for the joke-telling!

It would help if the painstakingly crafted characters were satirising types of people that actually exist.

PETER GLAZE: Oh No It Wouldn't?

anti euro != tory

appearing in an absurd anti-euro advert that featured rik mayall dressed as hitler shouting: "ein volk, ein reich, ein euro!" = a cunt. seriously: anybody who had anything to do with that little farrago can fuck off from here to eternity.

This year is worse than last year.

Katy Brand can learn how to spell 'arse' and then kiss mine.

For real right wing lols, Piers Morgan is interviewing Jim Davidson on BBC1 right now...

not on BBC1 scotland he's not

caught a bit of this awful rubbish earlier. it is awful rubbish not even worth discussing

saw an advert katy brand wherein she was singing to the tune of a ting tings track and saying that robyn and white stripes and goldfrapp and peaches (and presumably the ting tings) were all the same. is this comedy?

That Brand "joke" is not even factually correct, never mind not being comedy.

I think a lot of this can be traced to "The Fast Show". The same set of jokes over an over again with only slight variation (ie, the woman who believes her backside is too big is dressed as a nun this week, the guy who lives in a shed has been eating broccoli, etc.). Add to that sketches that were just laughing cruelly at the misfortunes of others - Paul Whitehouse is a vulnerable old man who has no friends or family and is crushingly alone, but the audience is invited to laugh the character and mock him when he slips in some dog shit/his house gets burnt down/some kids taunt him.

Difference being the Fast Show had jokes in it.

xp IT'S PATHOS

Exactly. None of these shows has the wit or humanity to come up with something as brilliant and funny and genuinely moving as Ted and Ralph.

Ted and Ralph being a Linehan & Matthews creation anyways.

Ah, that explains it all then.

Little Britain to blame for the likes of Katy Brand more than the Fast Show IMO.

saw an advert katy brand wherein she was singing to the tune of a ting tings track and saying that robyn and white stripes and goldfrapp and peaches (and presumably the ting tings) were all the same. is this comedy?

More fake reassurance to 50-year-old solvent retards that they can stick with their Eagles albums, it's all been downhill since 1975 honest, this modern music and it all sounds the same, can't tell if it's a boy or a &c. morelike

Mind you, it's a shame that Ronnie Barker died before we could see the Two Ronnies doing the White Stripes...

This modern comedy all sounds the same to me

Oddly enough, Jim Davidson said something very similar to Piers Morgan on his show last night.

Modern comedy not as funny as "Tarkus"

The shop being called "I Saw You Coming" was funny, for instance, for one episode, maybe 2. But the desire (laziness?) to keep it going is very tiresome.

I find it amusing that at the beginning, as 2 old soviet leaders, they look completely bored and 'couldn't give a shit'. Which is pretty much how one feels after watching it.

Yeah I'm not really counting the League of Gentlemen, and in any case that was at its best when it moved away from catchphrase comedy, or only wheeled a character out once a series.

I just generally prefer sketch shows when each sketch is a one-off. Fast Show/Little Britain/any Harry Enfield = an exercise in slowly killing a joke stone dead.

Monkey Trousers might be worth a rewatch

i heard that was unbelievably terrible on ITV

The old Jewish hip hop DJs - seriously, wtf were they thinking?

isn't that weird al yankovic's schtick

The worst thing about that routine is that it actually does give rise to the notion that neither of them has actually listened to any hip hop since about 1995, if indeed they listened to any at the time rather than Crowded House or World Party.

Charlie Higson's celebrity playlist on iTunes lacks hip-hop but is quite interesting all the same

> The shop being called "I Saw You Coming" was funny, for instance, for one episode, maybe 2. But the desire (laziness?) to keep it going is very tiresome.

was "Modern Wank" last week. but yes, same sketch, different name

> Monkey Trousers might be worth a rewatch

"Monkey Tennis"

I was criticising this to a friend last week in a popular London "CAF" and the bloke beside us interjected to say he thought it was really funny. Then proceeded to outline the Clarkson Island sketch to me. Was so awkward.

Great black pudding tho.

Enfield and Whitehouse used to be able to kick Cannon and Ball in the street.

that clarkson sketch was really weak, but taking the piss out of clarkson has become both tiresome and too easy nowadays.

I really liked the black and white sketch set in the B&B where Paul runs through a lists of sweets he invented, hoping the proprietress (Harry) has heard of them. I thought it was strange and beguiling.

how many people who said it was awful watched it again this week anyway? and why?

I guess we're expecting it to improve after a few episodes, and also everyone loves a train wreck.

i know not to watch this. even if there was a couple of funny bits after all, so what?

to be honest i watch barrages of shit on that ibbc player, just because it's there and i'm usually bored sat in front of my pc.

i just watch Top Gear repeats on Dave every night

that clarkson sketch was really weak, but taking the piss out of clarkson has become both tiresome and too easy nowadays.

This is no reason not to do it though. Just do it better please comedy writers.

Cassetteboy did it best and all subsequent attempts are automatically redundant.

I didn't watch it on Friday either.

I watched it on Sunday afternoon in a Harry & Paul/Mock the Week/Buzzcocks triple bill of comerdee on iPlayer. Spent the rest of the day recovering from my aching sides.

Reminds me of that bit in High Fidelity where the guy's determined to have the worst birthday ever and he rents the three least funny videos out of the shop and watches them all in a row.

least funny as in 'supposed to be a comedy but crap' or 'most depressing'?

The former.

I also liked the sketch in the coffee shop, where Harry mentions it's his birthday and then has a vision of the blonde Polish waitress coming out from behind the counter to give him a kiss, which develops into a full-on passionate embrace. He snaps out of it to see the two women behind the counter instead openly mocking him in Polish and rolling their eyes. Written down it's nothing very special or interesting but the sheer joy the two actresses had in being bitchy amongst themselves made it fantastic.

Then again, I watched The Bill this week and thought it was great, so my current telly taste may be, as Paulson says of the US financial regulatory regime, suboptimal.

how many people who said it was awful watched it again this week anyway? and why?

― koogs, Tuesday, 23 September 2008 00:04 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Very occasional moments of glory, e.g. the old Americans.

I think I missed that one. But while I would happily never watch another episode, there were still comforting chuckles throughout - Tony Blair, the helpful builders, Dragon's Den. Nelson Mandela still crap though. And e.g. the 1940s50s Basic Instinct was a reasonable concept that just wasn't worth the execution.

The Dragon's Den sketch is useless and pointless - (a) they can't impersonate the DD people to save their lives; (b) the programme's already beyond parody.

The Blair "gag" was a 30-second routine which dragged on for ages and painful ages. What happened to the FAST Show?

Enfield ought to be taken out the back of the barn etc. for the Mandela thing.

I kept swapping between it and From Dusk Till Dawn on C4 to see how much better the latter worked as an "Enfield and Whitehouse" routine. It was equally unfunny and pompous.

Hmm, bits of it a little amusing...

They do both look like "returning to what we used to be really good at, not trying too hard, but looking old while doing so"

Which makes the Blair sketches somewhat ironic.

I do like the fishermen sketches. Bit of a Ted and Ralph style slowburner and probably not as good but very well done, especially the one this week about watching a Plath documentary on BBC4.

That having been said, the On The Buses sketch was fairly pointless and lacked a proper tag.

Point seemed to be to allow Paul Whitehouse to do a Bob Grant impression

Enfield certainly wasn't busting his gut to do a Reg Varney.

As usual I get the feeling that Whitehouse is carrying Enfield somewhat in this series.

Indeed, though Whitehouse is crap in most of this too

I caught an ep the other week and found myself enjoying bits of it. undisputed highlight: the posh old doctors/tengential update of Rowley Birkin (I suppose) - "forty, forty-five years..." has already become a catch-all catchphrase rounf our way, used whenever someone comes on all wistful/forgetful/etc.

This series isn't very good, but yeh, whitehouse is so carrying enfield. You can tell which sketches are written by who as well - if it's nonsense then it's probably whitehouse, if it's weak character sketches it's probably enfield, and so on.

The russian billionaire going "I like, I buy" from the last series has become a catchphrase for us as well, re any kind of impulse purchases, so I guess there's some worth in there somewhere.

I wouldn't watch it at all if I could be bothered to watch more BBC4 docs on iPlayer instead of just going straight for the comedy.

Does Harry Enfield actually write? I assumed Whitehouse wrote most of it.

Those "selling shit to posh people" sketches have Harry Enfield's grubby handprints all over them - I just assumed that he'd have some writing input.

Ahh, he's listed as a writer in the credits:

http://www.comedy.org.uk/guide/tv/harry_and_paul/details/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7656578.stm

Comedian Harry Enfield's BBC show has been labelled "disgraceful and distasteful" by members of the Philippine community in the UK.
A petition has been launched condemning the Harry And Paul show for a sketch in which one man urged another to "mount" a Filipina maid.
The Philippine embassy in London has written to the BBC and the Press Complaints Commission about the scene.

Silly

ratings must be on the slide

Tho in fairness, it is a bit dailymail at times eg the football manager with the multi-lingual squad.

Oh hang on, was that russian billionaire sketch from Armstrong and Miller instead?

It's Back!

Some of it is quite clever.

Some of it is funny.

Some of it is neither.

But none of it is both.

2 bits were clever. (The Notting Hill one, and, um....)

The Beatles bit was a little funny.

That's about it.

None of these shows has the wit or humanity to come up with something as brilliant and funny and genuinely moving as Ted and Ralph.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 16 September 2008 07:52 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Ted and Ralph being a Linehan & Matthews creation anyways.

― Venga, Tuesday, 16 September 2008 10:49 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Ah, that explains it all then.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 16 September 2008 11:09 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Truth.

Gotta admit to finding it funny when they used to do Nelson Mandela advertising drugs.