#oneaday, Day 47: 6 Brit Comedies You Should Watch*

There's a specific breed of British comedy that's been around for a few years now that's a far cry from the "old school". Mostly, it can be recognised by the presence of any or all of the following people in the cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Mark Heap, Dylan Moran, Tamsin Greig, Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Kevin Eldon, Stephen Merchant. Yes, I know there are others, but the above-mentioned each have a number of different shows to their name with a considerable amount of crossover. Also, they're the only ones I can remember the names of without resorting to Googling.

Anyway. This specific breed of British comedy is quick-fire, clever and often quite surreal. As such, it doesn't appeal to everyone. There are some items on this list that Americans in particular find very difficult to fathom. And indeed some Brits find it quite hard to fathom, too. But I can highly recommend at least giving all of them a shot if you're not already familiar with them. And if you are already familiar with them, the UK-based people (and those who are clever at faking UK IP addresses) will probably be interested to know that all the Channel 4-based ones are available via YouTube.

So, onward then.

Spaced

It'd be remiss of me not to mention Spaced, probably the most accessible of all these shows, even though I'm pretty sure most people are very familiar with it by now. A tale of relatively normal people in circumstances that are frequently anything but normal, it's a stylish show crammed full of smileworthy cultural references and some truly wonderful character work. It put Simon Pegg and Nick Frost firmly on most people's radars, and is pretty much the reason Shaun of the Dead exists.

There are so many amazing scenes, but this has to be my favourite.

Black Books

Black Books is some gloriously surreal character-driven comedy based largely around the wonderful chemistry between Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig. It's a simple show with some completely off-the-wall humour that is a little too much for some people. But it managed to hold its own for three seasons, which is pretty good going for a low-budget Brit comedy, even if our seasons are considerably, considerably shorter than an American season.

Like Spaced, there are a ton of fantastic scenes to choose from, but it's difficult to beat this one.

Big Train

Big Train is a sketch-based show on which Pegg, Heap and many others had one of their first "big breaks". It almost defies description, such is the diversity of the sketches in which they engage. But it carries the cast's trademark surrealist humour, allowing you to escape into a land of pure nonsense.

Garth Merenghi's Darkplace

A great idea for a show, this. Darkplace is a fictional TV show presented with occasional talking-head segments from completely fictional writers and actors. The TV show itself is convincingly low-budget and awful—so much so that it's intentionally unintentionally hilarious—and the whole thing is a fantastic parody of the terrible crap that we see on our TV at times.

The IT Crowd

Another piece of genius small-scale character-driven comedy, this one has successfully made the transition across the pond for many people. Featuring a cast who are perfect comic foils for one another, a setting which most people can relate to and a variety of mundane-yet-hilarious situations, this has to be one of my favourite shows.

Green Wing

I've only just discovered this as I'll confess I didn't quite "get it" when it was first shown on TV, though this was probably largely due to the fact I only ever caught little bits of it. It's a heavily stylised show set in a hospital with very little discernible medical content, and one of the strangest casts of characters you'll ever see. I am now addicted to it

There. Enjoy. Should keep you busy for a little while.

* Unless you're American.**

** Maybe. Give them a chance at least.

#oneaday, Day 260: In Between

I don't watch much TV, unless you count DVD box sets of favourite series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. British TV has three main types: utterly terrible (Last of the Summer Wine, Dad's Army, anything involving Eamon Holmes), moderately inoffensive (usually involving people wandering around houses going "hmm, it's got character") and bloody brilliant (Spaced, Black Books, The IT Crowd, QI). One of the latter category I will always make an effort to watch is The Inbetweeners from Channel 4.

For the uninitiated, The Inbetweeners is a show about a group of four sixth formers (college-age 16-18 year olds, to the Americans among you). And it doesn't pull any punches whatsoever. Rather than being the sanitised view of school/college life that you see in most shows, this show is how it is. At least if you grew up in the late 90s or beyond. Possibly before; I couldn't say, since I only went through my late teens once and did so in the late 90s.

By "realistic", I mean "foul-mouthed, disgusting and sex-obsessed". And yet the characters involved are somehow likeable despite being, in many cases, terrible human beings. It's the contrasts that work well; there's Will the "specky twat", Simon, who is relatively normal despite stropping at his parents every five seconds, Jay the sex-obsessed, lying arsehole and Neil who is so very, painfully stupid. They're the perfect comic foils to each other, and the best thing about the show is that I know (or have at least met) all four of them at some points in my life. And no, I shan't be sharing who each one of them reminds me of!

The other thing that works so well is the variety of scrapes that they all get into. They're all situations that will be familiar to anyone who remembers being a sixth former. Getting your first car and it being crap. Panicking over sexual encounters. Taking advice from your friends even when you know they're a bunch of complete fucking idiots. And finding your place in the world.

I'm probably making this sound deeper than it actually is; mostly it's a comedy show with a wide variety of gross-out humour and a foul mouth. But despite its extremeness at times, it remains consistently entertaining, hilarious and, at times, horrifically uncomfortable.

If I didn't know so many people who loved watching it, I'd say it was perfect viewing for an exclusive audience of teenage boys… or at least those who remember being teenage boys. But judging from my Twitter feed there are a wide variety of people who love the show and feel much like I do; they'll make a specific effort to watch it and will happily quote it at every opportunity.

Channel 4, despite being the home of Big Brother for so long, has long been the home of awesome shows like this. Let's hope there are many more like it in the future; and that audiences around the world get to enjoy them too. With the content as it is, I couldn't say if it would ever make it onto American TV (tonight's episode featured Simon punching himself in the dick whilst shouting "GET BIG, YOU CUNT!" for example) but for those of you across the pond who like the idea of "kids talking like kids" and doing things that kids do, be sure to check it out.

#oneaday, Day 49: End of the Week

Hello! Short entry tonight as I have, despite spending most of the day thinking "I should write my blog", ended up in bed. Oh well.

This weekend I have: tidied up, washed up, completed Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney and finally got around to watching a DVD from New Zealand that my parents got me a while back.

The DVD is worthy of further attention. It's called Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby and is a comedy-drama about the titular supply teacher coming in to a rather difficult school and finding his traditional views are rather at odds with the touchy-feely nature of modern education.

Gormsby is a wonderful character, and frequently comes out with some of the most offensive things I've ever heard, which seem even worse in the high school context. My favourite has to be his nonplussed attitude after finding a drawing of himself on his blackboard with the slogan "Mr Gormsby takes it up the arse".

"I would like the boy who did this," he says, "to come forward and take his punishment like a man. I'm not going to give you detention and I've been forbidden to use the cane, so the one who is responsible for this defamation… I am going to fuck. And this won't be that namby-pamby buggery you'd get from your music teacher. No, boys, no-one who gets rogered by Gormsby comes back for seconds."

The humour is incredibly rude throughout – so much so that I'm not surprised I've never seen it over here. But it is hilarious and, in the words of my wife, "they should show it on teacher training courses".

There. Done. Good night!

One A Day, Day 42: TV Time Machine

Jane and I have been watching some old TV recently, thanks to the magic of YouTube Shows, YouTube's new(ish) section that now contains TV shows officially uploaded by the broadcasters, and not broken into 9-minute chunks. Okay, there are irritating adverts at the beginning, midpoint and end that inexplicably always freeze at exactly the same moment, but it's a small price to pay for a huge amount of content from Channel 4 and, should you have ever found anything worth watching on there, Five. The big plus over the BBC's iPlayer service is that it's not just for catching up on programmes up to seven days after they've been broadcast. No, the new YouTube page is a replacement for Channel 4's old 4OD (aka "4 On Demand") service, which used to only work on PCs via Windows Media Player and some proprietary software to log in to the service. The move to YouTube means that you can watch these programmes on anything that can "get" YouTube, including devices like the PS3 and Wii.

I've been watching a few different things on there, including Whose Line Is It Anyway's gradual change from British comedy showcase (including early sightings of Stephen Fry, John Sessions and numerous others) to the almost-fixed cast of Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles and the rotating "other two" that is more familiar to those who picked up on it quite late.

Most recently, though, Jane and I have been watching Drop The Dead Donkey, a satirical newsroom-based sitcom which ran from 1990-1998. It was prepared and broadcast at incredibly short notice so it could always be bleeding-edge topical. Each episode on YouTube helpfully starts with a brief summary of that week's news events, so when the characters name-check the things that went on (as they frequently do) you have at least a vague idea what they're talking about.

The funny thing about …Donkey is that, despite being twenty years old (a fact which my wife is not at all happy about) a lot of the things in there are still just as relevant today. In particular, we have the interfering management busybody "Gus", who habitually shows up with a smarmy "Hello! Remember, I'm not here. I am just a sort of managemental support unit" whom is a fine example of everything that is wrong with corporate usage of the English language these days. We also have roving reporter Damien's blatant attempts to "spice up" his on-location reports, including one wonderfully perverse sequence where he is being bothered by people wandering past in the background waving, so he borrows a grenade from a passing soldier and lobs it into the background to cause a panic.

These things are still relevant today, as Charlie Brooker's Newswipe (all of which can also be "unofficially" found online – with the full knowledge and appreciation of Mr Brooker, I might add – thanks to this fine chap on YouTube) frequently comments on. It's always nice to find something that is still entertaining after a good few years, particularly if you never got the chance to catch it first time around, like I didn't. …Donkey clearly had such a low budget (both in terms of time and money) that it is all about the characters and the situations, and that's what makes it such a success. There's no special effects to laugh at, and everyone's hairstyle and clothes are (relatively) normal. These things make it somewhat timeless – so if you've never seen it, why not give it a shot?

On a side note, if you want yet another online TV site to check out, you can do far worse than check out SeeSaw, which also has a ton of content from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five. ITV's content is conspicuously absent from both SeeSaw and YouTube, but that's no great loss, given the fact that most programmes on ITV are enough to make you want to kill yourself.