TV Review: Monkey Trousers

Starring: Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer, Steve Coogan, John Thomson

ITV1: Friday10pm

ITV2: Thursday 10pm

Spinning off from the questionably successfulAll Star Comedy Show of April ’04 comes the oddly titled Monkey Trousers. Knowing that it has been conceived by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer partially explains the show’sname.

            Technically Monkey Trousers is ‘another sketch show’ but the twist comes with an extensive cast hailing some of the top names in comedy from today and days of yore.

            Sketches carried over from the pilots of last year so far include Geordies In Space, Croc Botherer and Mortimer’s work of genius Worst Estate Agent (a man who knows nothing about the important details of the house he’s selling but still witters on about the mundane aspects like windows, cupboards and corners). New characters include the show’s namesake, Monkey Trousers who is Reeves with buck teeth and rickets who can only talk in a guttural series of ‘ooks’, ‘eeks’ and the occasional ‘monkey trousers’. I presume he will be placed in a number of situations where talking will be imperative to the situation; this week he was a hostage negotiator and the joke being he was a very good one.

            As can be expected there were a couple of misses amongst the hits and a few sketches that seemed derived straight from other shows. Mackenzie Crook’s ‘sneezer’ was juvenile and pointless; John Thomson’s take on those personal claims ads started well but then became tired by the last version and it seemed strange to introduce a running gag in a half-hour show and change the format of it thereby negating part of the recurring humour, then there was Tim Healy’s naturist, Dave Fletcher, which was a version of The Fast Show’s zookeeper.

            Overall, the patented abstract comedy of Reeves and Mortimer is a success partially due to the involvement of so many different actors and comedians. ITV have been a bit of a late bloomer in the innovative comedy stakes recently and even though they have gone ahead with airing this show they still seem uncertain about it by pushing it, unnecessarily, to such a late slot. It’s a start though and the show is definitely worth watching to see who will be on later.

Note: Ghost apologises for the images used, but he's searched for 'Monkey Trouser' on Google images and got nowhere as regards the offical log - so he used this one instead. It will be rectified as and when we find better images.