Comedy
A badly missed opportunity: How the Middle Classes Ruined Britain reviewed
BBC2’s How the Middle Classes Ruined Britain (Tuesday) began rather promisingly. ‘I’m a working-class comedian who voted Leave,’ announced presenter…
Billy Connolly and the death of free speech
I hope readers will forgive me for returning to a subject I addressed here recently. It was a reflection on the…
Entitled white men won’t like it – which is why I did: Late Night reviewed
Late Night is a comedy starring Emma Thompson as a chat-show host in America whose ratings are in decline and…
Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport
After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…
Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed
‘Unfunny, boring and utterly unrelenting,’ says the Guardian’s one-star review of Chris Lilley’s new sketch series Lunatics (Netflix). And if…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love Our Planet
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love this latest masterpiece of the genre: Our Planet. The Netflix nature…
There’s little difference between Question Time and Britain’s Got Talent
The contestants for the 13th series of Britain’s Got Talent, the variety show which starts on Saturday, certainly showed variety:…
Now – as in the Soviet Union – making a joke can be a dangerous, life-changing mistake
I was surprised to learn that the novelist Milan Kundera celebrated his 90th birthday on Monday. I had no idea…
It’s shocking how many Michael Jackson fans are still determined to take his side
Halfway through the first part of Channel 4’s extraordinary documentary Leaving Neverland (Thursdays), I flicked through the comments on social…
Promising but, compared to the first series, short of laughs: Fleabag reviewed
BBC2’s MotherFatherSon announced its status as a classy thriller in the traditional way: by ensuring that for quite a long…
I’ve never seen Coogan better or Partridge funnier: This Time with Alan Partridge reviewed
Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of…
One masterpiece, one dud and one interesting rediscovery: Pinter Five reviewed
One masterpiece, one dud, and one interesting rediscovery. That’s Pinter Five. Victoria Station is a hilarious sketch which might have…
The best tribute possible to the greatest comics ever: Stan & Ollie reviewed
You mess with Laurel and Hardy at your peril. Their fan base is essentially the entire world. Samuel Beckett adored…
According to BBC4, what was one of the ‘most important inventions in modern music’?
Here’s a tricky quiz question for you. What word completes this sentence from a BBC4 documentary on Friday: ‘The world…
My one-night stand-up hell
At 8.45 p.m. I was back in the toilets again feeling pure terror. In front of me was a narrow…
Radio 4 treats its radio listeners as second-best in favour of those who listen to podcasts
How very odd of Radio 4 not only to release The Ratline as a podcast before broadcasting it on the…
Self-Help goes mainstream – can Marianne Power survive her own quest?
Is there anyone left who’d still be mortified to have it known that they’d purchased, or maybe even benefited from,…
Rory Bremner: Why comedians are getting political
The brilliant Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell describes doing stand-up at the Edinburgh Fringe as ‘exams for clowns’, and even though…
Is Frank Skinner the new Alan Bennett? Edinburgh Fringe round-up
For recovering teetotallers, like me, Thinking Drinkers is the perfect Edinburgh show. On stage, two sprucely dressed actors perform sketches…
Full of bog-standard, if annoyingly effective, emotional manipulation: The Foreign Doctors Are Coming reviewed
Surprising I know, but judging from The Foreign Doctors Are Coming (Channel 4, Tuesday), Britain mightn’t be such a bad…
Robert Redford turns his hand to radio
Much ado is being made of the latest listening figures, which have suggested that the percentage of those aged between…
Comedy is entirely unsuited to the ‘Edinburgh hour’
Edinburgh. Why do comics do it? We invariably lose money. Even if you don’t pay for your venue, the cost…
Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t funny – especially when he’s mocking the powerless
Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series Who Is America? isn’t funny. But then, nor was his terrible 2016 movie The Brothers…
Barry Humphries on Trump, transgender ‘rat-baggery’ and causing maximum offence
‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather…
