1615: As Yet Untitled

There was an interesting show on the TV channel Dave recently — yes, the Dave of my inexplicably popular Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave post — that was, conceptually, very simple but managed to work extremely well. The show in question was Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, a peculiar take on the chat show that was supposedly completely unscripted and off-the-cuff.

Davies hosted the show, accompanied by four guests, usually from the world of comedy. And not the newer brand of comedy that I talked about a short while back; the kind of comedians I liked in my twenties and still like now. People like Bill Bailey, Kevin Eldon, Ross Noble — that sort of calibre of performer; contemporaries of Davies himself, I guess. Performers who, in their own comedy material, do a good job of speaking conversationally to the audience rather than relying on heavily scripted routines, skits or one-liners. One-liner-centric comics such as Milton Jones, who are often seen on panel shows alongside people like Bailey, Davies and Eldon, were conspicuous by their absence, since their form of wit isn't really conducive to a flowing conversation.

And this is an important point, because that's all the show was: a bunch of people sitting around a circular table, drink in hand, and having a conversation. And like any conversation between a group of friends, the topic meandered from one thing to another at a moment's notice, with all the natural flow and surprising twists and turns of a real conversation. One moment they'd be talking about dieting methods; the next they'd be talking about whether or not you'd grab a magic floating poo if it appeared in the air before you. (Would you?)

The format — such as it was — worked really well, and it played to the strengths of its participants. Everyone involved seemed very relaxed and natural at all times, and this led to some convincing, free-flowing conversations that were entertaining to observe. The audience was acknowledged and involved without the participants playing up to them deliberately, and it really made me want to see more stuff like this — it couldn't have been particularly expensive to produce, after all!

When I think about it, I guess all Davies and his team were doing with As Yet Untitled were applying good practices from another related medium — podcasting — to television. And it really worked well. Podcasts are often simply groups of people sitting around chewing the fat, usually on a particular topic but sometimes not even having that much focus — Kevin Smith's podcast is a good example of this — and such was the case with As Yet Untitled. It was nothing more than a group of friends sitting around talking about whatever they felt like — and in the process it managed to feel infinitely more involving, interesting and entertaining than any number of overly manufactured, lavishly produced, completely false-seeming shows like The X-Factor, Britain's Got Talent or My Dog Can Do This Thing With a Ball That is Quite Good. It was simple, raw, pure; it didn't need to be anything more, and so it wasn't.

More, please.

1612: "Box Set" Implies Boxes Are Involved

If you'll indulge me a moment, I need to complain about something. It's not anything particularly important or relevant to the world at large, but it has been bugging me recently.

I'll preface this by saying that I accept that language is in a constant state of flux, as much as many of us may not like the way it is changing on a seemingly daily basis thanks to the fast-moving nature of Internet culture. I accept that words and phrases change their meaning as time goes on — there are probably hundreds of words and phrases we all use on a daily basis that would have meant something completely different fifty, a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ago. That's fine.

What I'm not so cool with is when there's an obvious attempt by someone (or a group of people) to change the meaning of a word or phrase to something that really doesn't make sense in the slightest. There are a number of examples of this in modern parlance, but the one that is bugging me in this instance is the use of the term "box set".

What does that term mean to you? To me, it means a box of something — usually some form of "complete collection". In the case of DVDs and Blu-Rays, a box set would include multiple discs and encompass either a complete season or a complete run of a TV show, or perhaps a movie and discs of special features. In the case of music CDs, a box set might collect together a band's singles or albums, or, again, provide a collection of tracks that you might not be able to get in another way. Even books can come in box sets — I used to have a box set of The Lord of the Rings that, rather than splitting the whole story into three volumes, split it down further into its smaller constituent novel-size books, making it seemingly much more digestible. (I still never made it all the way through, but I made it further than I probably would have if I were trying to plough through three volumes of several hundred pages apiece.)

The key thing all of those have in common is that a box is involved. They're a physical object. They're a box, containing a set of things. A box set. Do you see how that works? Pretty straightforward, no?

And, then, do you see how utterly stupid it is for digital TV services to refer to both video-on-demand and channels broadcasting a show's complete run back-to-back as "box sets"? There is no box involved. There is no physical object involved. It is not something you can collect and own; it is not something you can keep. They are not even the same thing. They are, respectively, a complete series available for video streaming, and a complete series being broadcast back-to-back on live television. Granted, the term "box set" is much more concise and people probably know what it means. But that doesn't stop it just being bloody wrong, all right?

I get the feeling this is the work of some marketer who thought it would be a jolly smashing idea to attempt to rebrand the term "box sets" from its increasingly irrelevant meaning with regard to physical media. After all, if physical media is on the way out, why not take a term that's becoming obsolete and try to use it differently?

Because it's dumb. Stop it.

1594: The Changing Times, As Seen Through the Lens of Challenge TV

Challenge, for those of you not in the UK, is a digital television channel whose programming consists almost entirely of gameshow reruns from the '70s, '80s and '90s. There's the odd bit of original programming and occasional repeats of more recent stuff, but for the most part it's about enjoying old gameshows.

One of the most interesting things about rewatching old gameshows in 2014 is pondering the sort of people who are on them — specifically, their jobs. In the older stuff you get on Challenge — stuff like Blankety Blank, 321 and any number of other shows with wobbly cardboard sets and LCD readouts of the participants' scores — people tend to have very straightforward jobs. "I'm a plumber," one contestant will say. "I work in a shop," another will say. "I'm a newsagent," another will say.

Compare and contrast with the sort of contestants you get on today's shows — best exemplified by Challenge's repeats of shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Catch Phrase and The Chase — and it's a very different situation. "I'm a management consultant," one will say. "I'm a business development manager," another will say. (Andie informs me that this is the new name for what we used to know as "salesmen".) "I'm an information technology technician in an educational establishment, specialising in campus-wide distributed network solutions," another will say. (I made the last one up. Sounds convincing, though, doesn't it?)

Notice the difference? That's right, modern jobs all have utterly meaningless titles. Rather than being a straightforward description of what the person actually does, modern job titles obfuscate the person's true purpose behind layers of doublespeak, presumably in an attempt to make everyone seem more important than they actually are. It's probably the same reason that Asda has a "Colleagues Entrance" instead of a "Staff Entrance", and why Waitrose employs "partners" instead of, you know, people who work in a supermarket.

It's a trend that's grown over the last ten or twenty years in particular, and it's not a particularly positive change for the use of clear English. There seems to be a mistaken assumption that using the longest, most complicated and fiddly words possible to describe something makes it sound more "formal" and "intelligent" — it's the same reason why people in suits incorrectly use "myself" instead of "me" when they're trying to impress clients or superiors — but I'm pretty sure that most of us are wise to this little trick by now. Any time someone starts "myself"-ing at me, I just want to shake them and say "speak like a normal person! Do you talk to your friends like that?"

Actually, talking about this conjures up a number of fairly amusing mental images, the first one of which that sprang to mind was — don't judge me — a management consultant having sex and breathlessly gasping that "the copulation between myself and yourself is approaching its conclusion, please prepare the personal cleanliness solutions for the removal of errant ejaculate from those areas in which it was unintended to fall", by which point he would have probably already jizzed all over her tits anyway, rendering the entire statement moot and the pair of them sitting in slightly uncomfortable silence, both wondering why he can't just say "I'm gonna cum" or "unnnnnggggghhhh" like a normal person.

[glances back at how this post started and where it ended up.]

I, uh… sorry, I don't know what happened there. That sort of escalated quickly, didn't it? Oh well. It's late, all right? My brain is wandering to weird places and I apparently need to get some sleep.

1592: Funnymen

I really enjoy a good bit of stand-up comedy — emphasis on the good — and so it was with some delight that I recently discovered the work of Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. is someone whom I'd heard mentioned before — mostly by my American friends — but I'd never checked out his material before. I'm always oddly wary of American stand-up — I think it's because I'm conscious that a number of stand-ups from the British Isles have struggled to make an impact in the States, so I find myself wondering if the reverse is true, too. Past experience — the best example I can think of being Bill Hicks — has demonstrated that good American comedy can very much still be funny on this side of the Atlantic, though, so I'm aware I'm being irrational; it's just one of those things.

Anyway, Louis C.K. is extremely funny. I've watched two of his stand-up shows on Netflix and the first episode of his TV show Louie to date, and all of them have had me properly laughing out loud. He seems to strike a good balance between shocking — his discussion of the words "faggot" and "cunt" during the opening section of one of his shows is a particularly good example of this — and witty, intelligent, observational comedy with just a touch of cynicism. Meanwhile, Louie appears to show that he's a good character actor, too, with some wonderfully deadpan scenes throughout — my favourite being "…can you stop smiling exactly the same way at me every time I look at you?" "…No." — coupled with just the occasional dip into absurdity. I'll have more to say about that when I've watched a few more episodes, I'm sure.

The reason why discovering Louis C.K. is such a pleasure is because I feel UK comedy isn't in a particularly good place right now — at least not the stuff you generally see on TV. There's still stuff like Dara O'Briain and Russell Howard being shown on repeat-centric channels such as Dave, of course, but the main face of British comedy right now appears to be Russell Kane, whom I just simply don't find particularly funny. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or simply because I don't like his style, but I find the show he comperes — BBC Three's Live at the Electric — fairly excruciating to watch, not only for Kane's sequences, which are by far the strongest element of the show (which isn't saying much) but for the truly dreadful, painfully unfunny sketches and skits that punctuate the format.

Louis C.K., meanwhile, has a style that I very much like. There's an air of seemingly defeated cynicism about a lot of it, with occasional crescendos into furious anger about something or other. He never seems to take it too far, though; the rants tend to stop before they become too preachy, and any tension built up through the yelling is usually defused nicely by a pithy comment or a reminder of what he was talking about beforehand. It's a style I really like.

Anyway, if you've never checked out the comedy of Louis C.K. and you've been meaning to, I'd encourage you to do so at the next opportunity. I've really enjoyed what I've seen, and I hope there's more material out there to discover. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying the Louie series.

1555: Rebels Against the God

Having finished To Love-Ru a few days ago, I decided to jump into another show I'd heard of but didn't know much about: Angel Beats!, a show from P.A. Works and Aniplex, with a story and character design from two members of Key, the folks behind Clannad. (I mention this because the latter aspect is particularly noticeable; the show has the same gorgeous, well-animated style as Clannad, though thematically it's rather different.)

Angel_Beats_-_12_-_Large_17_7482

I'm only three episodes in so far but I'm very interested to see more already simply because the premise is so unusual. Unfolding in the afterlife, the show follows the exploits of a group who call themselves the SSS — a group of people who are attempting to resist a non-specific "god" to prevent themselves from being "obliterated" and subsequently reincarnated. Each of the characters clearly has their own story to tell about how they died and why they don't want to give up and accept their fate; three episodes in, we've already seen a couple of them, and I predict there will be quite a few tearjerking scenes before the end.

Like Clannad, though, Angel Beats! doesn't rely purely on wringing out your tear ducts until you can't cry any more. In fact, even more so than Clannad, there's a heavy dose of humour to the proceedings, and it's often rather black in nature. In the second episode, for example, the main cast are attempting to find their way to a hidden base from which they can procure weapons and supplies for their fight against what appears to be God's representative, an emotionless young girl called Angel who constantly thwarts them with her mysterious, seemingly supernatural powers. Along the way, it becomes apparent that the "anti-Angel traps" that had been set along the route have been activated, and one by one the group gets picked off in a series of gruesome manners. One guy gets crushed by a rock; another drowns; another is sliced to ribbons by being too big and muscular to duck under an arrangement of laser beams. In most shows, this sequence of events would be a horrifying tragedy, but since all the characters in Angel Beats! are inhabitants of the afterlife, we're quickly reminded that something that would kill you in reality will merely inconvenience you for a few minutes if you're already dead. I sense this is something that's going to come around again in the future.

One of the things I'm enjoying about the show so far is how it juxtaposes darkly humorous sections like the aforementioned — trust me, it is funny despite all the violence — with sections that are just plain dark. The sequence where leading lady Yuri explains her regrets from the latter days of her life is utterly heartbreaking, for example, as is the story of how songstress Iwasawa shuffled off the mortal coil and found herself in the afterlife. I'm pretty certain that the rest of the cast will have a similar tale to tell — with the final story undoubtedly being reserved for the currently amnesiac male protagonist, who is thoroughly confused by the whole situation he finds himself in.

The show's beautifully presented; aside from the aforementioned lovely art and glorious animation, the soundtrack is excellent, too. There's been heavy use of diegetic music in the episodes I've seen so far, with the lyrics often being relevant either to the specific situation the gang finds themselves in, or their overall situation in the afterlife. It can sometimes be a challenge to keep up with the two sets of subtitles running at once — one for the music, one for the dialogue — but it's worth attempting. (It's also nothing compared to the bizarre way the show handles teasers for the next episode: short clips from the episode of characters talking, all overlaid on top of each other at a more and more frantic pace until you can't possibly take any more.)

So that's that. At three episodes in I'm hesitant to say too much more at this juncture, but I've very much enjoyed what I've seen so far and am looking forward to watching more. I'm sure I'll have further thoughts when I have a few more episodes under my belt.

1552: An American Workplace

Finally reached the end of the American incarnation of The Office today, and I was very pleased with how it all wrapped itself up. I was very pleasantly surprised with the series as a whole, in fact — though the early stages of the first series where it was literally nothing more than a word-for-word remake of the English version were… not poor, but disappointing; and the latter part of the complete run did perhaps drag on a little longer than it needed to. Still, the finale was good, and the nine seasons of episodes meant that by the end you have a very strong understanding of all the characters involved.

I liked the balance it struck between some genuinely touching stories and somewhat formulaic character comedy. Many of the characters in the show almost had a "catchphrase" — not literally, but an iconic means of behaving — but the show, on the whole, managed to ensure that these party tricks weren't used so much that the people using them became one-dimensional joke machines. Angela's prim and proper attitude was subverted by what happened to her in the later seasons with regard to her relationships, for example, while the seemingly alcoholic Meredith points out in the last episode that the side of her captured on film — the side that drank too much, frequently got her tits out and behaved completely inappropriately — was only part of the entire picture.

And this was part of the point, really. As a spoof "docudrama", both the English and American versions of The Office play with the idea that it's possible to steer a narrative that you have no external influence on through careful, selective editing and manipulation after the fact. It's a common trick in reality TV; some shows even supposedly have disclaimers that you may not be portrayed entirely accurately if you appear on them, because the footage will be edited to fit the "script" rather than to give a truthful picture of what actually happened.

In the case of The Office, of course, the whole thing was scripted and planned out from start to finish, and it was, at times, hard to forget that side of things. Jim and Pam's romance was a little too perfect at times — even with the several pieces of tension introduced in the final season. Similarly, characters such as Dwight, Erin and Andy were almost too much of a caricature to be truly "believable" at times; this certainly didn't hurt the show if you treated it as an ongoing comedy drama rather than attempting to suspend your disbelief and treat it as an ongoing documentary, but it did lose a little of the magic that the English original had.

That said, thinking back to the English original version, David Brent was an obvious caricature that, on many occasions, behaved far too ridiculously to be "believable" as a real person. The difference is that alongside his obvious nonsense, everything else was a lot more understated. The Tim and Dawn possible romance was constantly left dangling — something the American version simply couldn't do with the considerably larger number of episodes it boasted — and even when it seemed to "wrap things up" had a certain degree of ambiguity about it. Not so much with Jim and Pam — though again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing; Jim and Pam's relationship and how they overcame their difficulties and stuck together was a pleasantly heartwarming tale when all's said and done.

On the whole, then, I really enjoyed the whole series, and the last couple of episodes were an excellent finale to the entire run. It's a very distinct beast from the English original — I'm not sure if it's better overall, but it certainly managed to maintain our attention for nine seasons of twentysomething episodes each rather than the original's two seasons of six episodes each.

It's a good watch, then; less dependent on outright uncomfortable comedy than the British original, and more focus on slow, gradual character development over time. The whole run could have possibly stood to be a couple of seasons shorter — things dragged a little in the middle — but it started and finished very strong, and I'm very glad I took the time to watch it from start to finish.

The question is, then, what's next?

1550: Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave

It's been a while since I talked about how shit adverts are, so let's talk about how shit adverts are. Or, more accurately, how shit those annoying "bumpers" or whatever they're called before and after every ad break on a particular channel are.

I'm thinking of two specific examples here, but I don't think I've ever seen a good one, even thinking years back. Remember the annoying girls frantically scrabbling around with a hammer and a bowl of popcorn before Friends came on? I don't think I can ever remember what that was fo– wait, Wella Experience, so I guess it did its job to a certain extent. Or did it? Annoying girls frantically scrabbling around with a hammer and a bowl of popcorn before Friends came on didn't make me want to purchase any of Wella's Experience products, whatever the hell they were. No; it made me irritable, and it made me fast-forward the moment the screen faded for the ads whenever I watched the episodes on video, which is how I typically ended up watching Friends.

The two specific examples I'm thinking of from 2014 are both from the channel Dave, it of the perpetual Top Gear, QI and Mock the Week reruns. The first is for Admiral multi-car insurance, and the second is for Alpen.

They're both shit, and not just because they're repetitive — although by God they're both repetitive as fuck when they're repeated a considerable number of times every evening — and they're both shit for the same reason: they don't make any sense whatsoever.

Take the Admiral ones. Here's one. (Actually, these are a little different from the ones that air on TV, but these are the ones that Admiral has inexplicably chosen to upload to their YouTube account.)

And another.

They appear to be attempting to make a catchphrase out of "ooh, that's primetime!" because, you see, they accompany "primetime" shows on Dave. Trouble is, that doesn't make any sense. "That's primetime!" isn't something people say, and it's not something you can force people to say. Not to mention the fact that the ads don't have anything whatsoever to do with what they're supposedly advertising — multi-car insurance. And no, saying the words "multi-car insurance!" during the advert when something completely incongruous is going on is not advertising multi-car insurance. Like the annoying Wella girls, these ads make me less inclined to ever make use of Admiral's services.

Then comes Alpen, who have much the same problem. Alpen, as the campaign goes, sponsors "characters on Dave", or in other words, the shows that are on in the mid-to-late evening and typically involve recognisable, well-known comedians.

A month or so ago, Alpen's campaign made a reasonable amount of sense. There was a dude tramping around his alpine apartment eating porridge. Geoffrey Palmer said "porridge full of character", then there was a close-up of the porridge. Fair enough.

Now, however, there's a bearded bloke who waffles on some idiotic nonsense about what he thinks characters "are" ("Characters have eyes in the back of their head! Hello, mountains!" — he's standing in front of a window with a view over some mountains), then Geoffrey Palmer says "Alpen sponsors characters on Dave" with a rather worn-out voice, as if he knows what he's being asked to do is utterly stupid. And no porridge, full of character or no. (Unfortunately there's no videos of these sequences easily available. Sort it out, YouTube!)

I just don't understand why or how someone signed off on these. Both the Admiral and the Alpen ads are clearly supposed to be funny, but they're also obviously composed by people who have absolutely no idea how to write comedy and thus have absolutely no business whatever writing comedy. Or attempting to, anyway.

Anyway, yes. That's what I've been thinking about this evening. What a happy and exciting life I lead, no?

1542: Terebi Desu

Our new TV arrived today at some ungodly hour in the morning — which felt all the more ungodly for the fact that excellent Vita dungeon crawler Demon Gaze had kept me enraptured until 3am — and I've been having a bit of a play with it. (For the curious, it's a Samsung Series 6 55-inch LED TV; it has a catchy three thousand-digit model number but I have no idea what it is.)

When Andie suggested we grab a new TV, I was a little concerned that it might not be a significant upgrade over what we already had — a 40-inch Samsung, albeit one that is now about four or five years old. After all, despite the fact that my previous TV was an end-of-line model when I bought it — making it much cheaper — it was pretty good. Three HDMI ports, built-in Freeview tuner, full 1080p support — it had pretty much everything I needed, though it would have been nice to have an optical output port. Everything I connected to it worked just fine, though, ranging from the PlayStation 2 through the SCART port (yummy, blurry standard-def picture) to the various games consoles and PC through the HDMI ports.

With the previous TV working just fine, why buy a new one, you might ask? Well, having spent this evening playing some Final Fantasy XIV on it and having watched some anime and TV on it earlier… yes, it was a good investment. The increase in size is extremely noticeable — it's big enough to have a touch of "peripheral vision" now, giving a much more immersive feel to both video and games — and the LED screen is lovely, bright and clear. I have no idea if I've optimized its settings appropriately — I've put the PC input into Game mode, because prior to that there was noticeable input lag, but haven't really fiddled with much else — but it certainly seems to look very nice, although as Andie pointed out, the bigger the screen you get, the more of a dog's dinner standard-definition footage and TV broadcasts look. Oh well.

It's a Smart TV, too, which means it has two remotes, one of which has a trackpad rather than, you know, just being normal, plus "apps" for doing shit old, dumb TVs don't do. There's stuff like BBC iPlayer and Netflix built into it, for example, and even apps for things like Spotify and the like. (There are also games to download, but somehow I don't see them being particularly worthwhile, and as such I will be giving them a wide berth.) I'm not entirely convinced how much I will use the "smart" features over time, but it's nice to have them there, I guess — not to mention the fact it is seemingly now impossible to buy a new TV that isn't 1) "smart" and 2) 3D.

The 3D thing surprises me somewhat, I must confess. I thought 3D TV and gaming had been a colossal failure, and yet all the televisions we looked at over the weekend were 3D in one form or another. The TV we ended up getting is "active 3D", which is supposedly better because you have to turn the glasses on before they work properly (and for some other reasons, too) and sure, it's quite fun — we watched a couple of trailers in 3D earlier and it was quite cool — but it's not something I can see myself using a lot of, and certainly not for protracted periods of time. It will almost certainly be something to show off to people who come and visit, but little else.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with it. It fits nicely on our TV stand and doesn't look too big or too small, and it's a noticeable upgrade over what we had before — plus the almost bezel-free design, with the picture going right the way to the edges of the front of the unit, looks absolutely smashing.

I'm sure I'll be taking it for granted before long — and I'm not looking forward to moving it when our new house is sorted — but yes; I'm glad we got it. And now I'm off to bed because I've been staring at it all evening and I think my eyes could probably do with a rest!

1502: The Only Shortcut That Matters

Looking for something to watch over breakfast the other day, I decided I'd check out Ricky Gervais' latest work Derek. I was expecting Gervais' usual brand of "cringe comedy" exemplified by The Office and Extras — perhaps with additional cringe factor thanks to the character he was portraying — and not anything special. Over the course of the show's few episodes, though, I was very pleasantly surprised to find what is, without a doubt, Gervais' finest work to date — and not just from a comedic perspective.

Derek, lest you're unfamiliar, centres around Gervais' titular character, a middle-aged guy who may or may not be autistic and who works in a nursing home. Joining him in the main cast are his friends Dougie the caretaker (Karl Pilkington essentially playing himself) and Kevin the unemployed, along with Hannah — the manager of the nursing home — and the various old folks who they take care of together.

It's one of those shows in which not a whole lot happens, yet what does happen always feels meaningful. In keeping with Gervais' previous shows, it's presented in "docudrama" format, with candid footage interspersed with talking head shots from Derek and the gang reflecting on what's been happening. Over the course of the series, we get to know Derek and his friends extremely well, seeing them through both happy times and sad ones.

Derek is unsurprisingly the highlight of the show, initially appearing to be a bumbling, gurning simpleton but occasionally showing flickers of sharp wit — such as the sequence where he makes Kevin explain a dirty joke to him until it's not funny any more, then explains to the camera afterwards that he did get it really, he just pretends not to because he knows it annoys Kevin.

More than wit, though, Derek is in possession of an incredibly compassionate soul — and he's not the only one. Hannah is described by several characters as only caring about the happiness of others, even at the expense of her own, and she constantly wrestles with the path her life has taken, wondering if she might have done things differently if she hadn't dropped out of school early. There's a particularly awkward scene where one of her former peers at school shows up to bring her mother in to the home, but Hannah comes off best out of the whole exchange by the simple virtue of not having alienated everyone around her.

It's an incredibly touching, moving show throughout — and not just at the times when one of the elderly residents of the nursing home passes on. There's at least one moment in every episode where something very simple but utterly profound happens, and it moved me to tears on more than one occasion. The last episode in particular, in which a long-term resident of the home finally passes on and causes all of the cast to reflect on their respective life situations, is both heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time — particularly when we see the normally gruff, "laddish" Kevin break down in tears as he comes to the realisation that Derek "took the only shortcut that matters: kindness."

Critics of the show have called it transparently emotionally manipulative, and perhaps it is — the liberal use of Coldplay on the soundtrack is testament to that — but personally I'm not sure there's anything all that wrong with that. In Derek, Gervais has written an unusual but admirable character whom we could all do to observe the positive traits of; he's also crafted a show that is enjoyable, eye-opening and which encapsulates the philosophy of "don't judge a book by its cover" very neatly. It's well worth a watch — just have the tissues handy.

1486: Funny Ha-Ha

As I type this, a Dave broadcast, repeat, whatever (probably repeat) of a Frank Skinner stand-up show has just finished. It made me laugh rather a lot. I haven't watched a Frank Skinner show for quite some time and I was pleased to see he doesn't appear to have changed all that much — he still primarily tells imagery-heavy stories about sexual encounters, and in doing so paints quite the vivid picture with his words.

Catching this show got me thinking a bit. I haven't watched a whole lot in the way of stand-up comedy for a long time, whereas it used to be something I really enjoyed doing. I think part of this is due to the fact that I don't really know who's good these days — and the little modern stand-up I have seen doesn't really appeal all that much. This may partly be due to the fact that you tend to catch stuff like this on Dave or BBC3, the latter of which in particular is aimed at young and stupid people.

Comedy goes in cycles and phases, and the comedians who are popular at any given moment give a good snapshot of culture at the time. A few years back when Eddie Izzard was popular, for example, that kind of fast-paced, clever humour was fashionable — everything tying together. Today, it seems that one fashionable style of comedy is the string of unrelated one-liners, one after another — funny, sure, but it doesn't quite "click" with me as much as the intertwining threads of something like Izzard's comedy.

I haven't seen a lot of musical comedy of the the kind best exemplified by Bill Bailey and Tim Minchin recently, either. This is a real shame, because both of these performers are clearly very skilled musicians as well as witty comedians. Both still occasionally show up on comedy panel shows — a good means of catching favourite comedians long after their standup isn't seen quite so often on the television — but, you know, I'd pay good money for a new Bill Bailey show.

I saw Bill Bailey live when I went to the Edinburgh Festival from university, and it was a magical experience. I, and many of my companions who were also in attendance, immediately fell in love. Many of us were familiar with Bailey's work on TV shows, but perhaps not his stand-up; after that, meanwhile, it wasn't long before all of us went and picked up all his DVDs.

I don't really have a point to all this. Perhaps I'm asking in a roundabout way whether there are any good comedians out there who are worth seeking out. For reference, I enjoy stuff like Bill Bailey, Eddie Izzard, Dara O'Briain and that sort of thing. (I've even been known to enjoy Michael McIntyre, though as I recall you're not supposed to admit that sort of thing. But ah, fuck it.) Any must-see comedians out there that I'm missing out on?