The All Star
Comedy Show
Thursday 29th April, 10pm , ITV1
Was it everything that the title
would have had us believe? It did indeed contain a heady mix of the finest
comedians (male and female) who have graced our TV screens over the past decade
but would that deliver a ’66 World Cup Squad or end up that brown mix of
plasticene?
Not funny
Angus
Deayton and Linda Robson. They did two skits which I found eye-rollingly
predictable and dull.
Ronnie Corbett. What a damn
shame. Set in a West Country pub and Corbett being blamed for starting WWII and
shooting Kennedy (actually taken from the Little Britain
radio show).
Funny
Vic Reeves’ ‘Big-Nosed Man’. This
was straight off Smell Of… Melancholic, surreal, the ladder.
Brilliant.
Bob
Mortimer’s ‘Unknowledgeable Estate Agent’. Hilarious in his patheticness and
enthusiasm to sell a house without knowing the slightest thing about it.
His ‘Croc Botherer’. An unsubtle
take on The Croc Hunter (which has been done many times before)
but still got me going as Mortimer jumped on a python and called it ‘gay’.
Middling
‘The Boffins’ could either be the
next ‘Scorchio’ or just plain irritating after a while. Each scenario they were
placed in required them to announce proudly that they were boffins and not, in
fact, members of any sub-class in the hierarchy of intelligence colloquialisms
(“Do I look like an egg-head?”).
‘
Norman
’s
Back’ a crime unit is set up to catch a renegade Norman Wisdom who has been
riding his bike through hedges and accosting women, screaming, “Mr. Grimsdale,”
at them.
‘Musical Instrument Double
Entendre’ was amusing but seemed to have just been taken from Finbar Saunders
out of Viz.
The main
trouble as I see it was trying to get characters to become familiar quickly so
they can achieve an easy laugh with using catchphrases and have enough sketches
to include as many comedians as possible but only having half an hour in which
to do it.
It was all so brilliantly
dead-pan acted that, given the backing of a dedicated slot and enough episodes,
The All Star Comedy Show could be
ITV1’s The Fast Show. I get the
impression that it may exist purely as a one (or two as it is) off to show,
'Look what we can do.'
Definitely
worth a look-in next week because you may never see these fine comedians in the
same room together again. Apart from drunk at the next comedy awards of
course.
Next week’s
episode will be a display of new characters but with the return of ‘Croc
Botherer’, ‘Big-Nosed Man’ and ‘Geordies in Space’.
