Posts tagged comedy
The Ood Cast S02E01 – Four Doctors & a Funeral
Mar 10th
“There’s texture to it, there’s weirdness to it, there’s a Hinchcliffe Doctor Who-ness about it.”
And so with the grinding and wheezing of millennia-old engines, the second season of the Ood Cast pulls itself into corporeal existence. This week on the show we get a bit over-excited about the new series, wave aside petty disputes about season numbers and bow ties, reaffirm our mission statement to be a force for optimism and enthusiasm in Doctor Who fandom and then spoil it all by talking about James Corden. We then descend into a heated discussion about things that are pink and deadly. Plus, in an Ood Cast exclusive, we present an audio trailer for Richard Curtis’ episode of the new series. All this and a jingle about geeky pedantry.
Classic Ood Cast!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:36 — 27.3MB)
The Robin Hood Tax
Feb 10th
I don’t let my day job entrude on the pages of this blog very often but this is such a well put together film, the performance is brilliant and the impact it could have on the lives of the world’s poorest people so immense, I couldn’t resist it.
Please take the time to watch it, it’s more than entertaining enough to fill three minutes of your life and it offers a concrete and very real way you can take a small action that could change the world.
We’re all doomed
Jan 21st
The Tories are going to get into power. It’ll be like the 80s all over again. We’re in a fix.
But until then there’s this …
To see more (and to make your own), go here - http://mydavidcameron.com.
Let’s make the most of it while we can. The guy is going to be our leader soon.
Our leader.
It’s like a horrible dystopian nightmare.
The Ood Cast: Episood One – Beginnings
Jan 19th
Chris Fosten writes:
It’s here. The Ood Cast: Episood 1. (That’s right, we’re busting out puns right from the get go – that’s just how we roll.)
The most important thing we want everyone to know before we start (and we say it on the podcast too) is that we love the show. Utterly. Even when we are disappointed by what we see, we love it.
Even, it seems, when we have quite large, uber-geeky reasons for never wanting to see that hour of TV again, we still do. And we still go and buy the DVDs.
Because, to us, Doctor Who isn’t something we can take or leave. It’s almost the thing that has been with us since we were wee bairns in the highlands. Or small children from the south of England (delete according to the way you wish to think of us).
In the words of countless Mitchell characters in Eastenders (so I’m told), “It’s family”. And it is.
Chris has said on this very blog that the Doctor has had a massive effect on the way he chose to do things (I’m still a little unsure about the blazer and the celery in the lapel, although I’m sure we’ll all get used to it), but for the three of us who make up the male contingent of the podcast, it’s something that rings a – cloister – bell. (Ha! See what I did there?! Oh, never mind)
Laura brings a fresh and sharp view to proceedings to prove that we are just old school idiots sometimes. And that sometimes we do have a point. But not all the time.
We would readily admit that we are sometimes critical. But it’s simply, and only, because we love the show and like to sit around daydreaming about what we’d like to see happen next, or how something should be done.
That could be just me.
And sometimes, life really doesn’t come to any harm if you ask a few questions about things.
Join us for our little journeys through (limited) Time and (cramped) Space. We’d all love you to.
This song is ending, but the story never ends … I’m kidding, that was a terrible line.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:29 — 34.4MB)
The Stairwell Recommends: Podcasts & Leisure Wear
Jan 13th
Today, I’d like to bring everyone’s attention to the numerous advantages of the humble podcast.
These are as follows:
1. They’re free.
2. They feature a wide range of the world’s best comedians, thinkers and assorted artistic types.
3. They’re free.
I can’t for the life of me work out why they’re not more popular. There are podcasts out there that dance all over the faces of the vast majority of mainstream comedy shows. Being independently produced they are also blissfully unconcerned with the sort of stuff that habitually leads to creative stagnation – money, demographics, marketing, pandering to the lowest common denominator … right through to coherence and sanity. Of course it’s a continuum like any other sort of broadcast media but generally speaking you can find more genuinely original, challenging content on a podcast than can be found anywhere in the TV schedules .
Want some recommendations? Thought you’d never ask. These can all be found on iTunes as I guess it’s the most well know podcatcher but if you get the podcasting-bug don’t be afraid to check out some of the independent sites.
Okay so …
Daniel Kitson – This guy is awesome. He’s one of those stand-ups that never quite got the national acclaim of middle of the road comedians like Michael McIntyre and Peter Kay but he’s incredibly sharp and really funny. He reminds me of Jim.
Only funny, like I said.
Carpool – The guy who played Kryten, Robert Llewellyn, in Red Dwarf gives celebrities lifts in his car and then has a chat with them on the way. Surreal but brilliant.
Mark Kermode – Best film critic ever.
Adam & Joe – This is probably the most consistently funny podcast I’ve ever listened to and regularly makes me laugh out loud. They are both hugely talented. Song Wars – where they challenge each other to make up songs around different themes each week is particularly awesome.
As It Occurs To Me – Richard Herring wrote and recorded these, one a week, for 10 weeks and then released them unedited. He used no pre-written material, finding things during the week to generate content. By the end it’s more like a fever dream than a comedy show. But the person having the dream is very funny so it’s also incredibly compulsive to listen to.
Penny Arcade: Dungeons & Dragons Podcast – This is a real oddity. The guys who run Penny Arcade sit down to play a new version of Dungeons & Dragons. One of them has never played a role playing game before. They then proceed to rip the piss out of their earnest Dungeon master for the next few hours. “I am Jim Darkmagic. Of the New Hampshire Darkmagics.” It’s really, really funny.
The Odd Cast – “Listening to this podcast is like being down the pub with your best friends – the conversations are not always coherent but you can be sure of some witty banter with some film, tv, life, love and comedy put-downs all thrown in.” Not my words, the words of an anonymous iTunes reviewer (which might possibly have been us).
Also – Leisure Wear – like pyjamas but warmer. I love my new trousers. I’m telling you, Leisure Wear is the way forwards.
The Stairwell Recommends: Misfits
Jan 6th
The golden age of British television is well and truly over. Anything with even the tiniest, weakest spark of creativity and originality has long since been extinguished – drowned in the murky swamp water of what passes for modern television listings. It’s a simple mathematical formula, so straight forward that even the current specimens of pond life masquerading as TV executives can understand it without getting their crayons out to write it down.
Reality television and lifestyle shows cost next to nothing to make and pull in millions in ratings. All you need to do is commission another vacuous mess starring either a washed up celebrity or ordinary members of the public with ’special’ talents (ie. being more irritating than scabies) and then sit back and watch the cash roll in. Why hire actors with screen presence and charisma? Why avail yourself of directors with vision or writers with a story to tell? You’re not going to make any more money off of it so why bother?
It’s not a problem unique to the UK, American television (historically laughably weak compared to its British counterpart) also suffers from the same blight. The difference is they have the money to support both the tat and the sublime ideas that come along every once in a while and make the whole thing worthwhile. And that’s why they’re currently wiping the floor with us when it comes to quality drama. If you haven’t seen these series then I suggest you stop reading the blog right now and go out and buy some box sets. They are, in order of jaw-dropping-disbelief-if-you-haven’t-seeniness, the following:
The West Wing, Firefly, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Dollhouse (actually anything by Joss Whedon – Buffy, Dr Horrible, even Angel in later series), The Sopranos, Arrested Development … I could go on but this has already turned into a rant and I haven’t even got to the point yet.
*Deep cleansing breath*
The fact is that even with the current British system, good shows do slip through occasionally, normally sitcoms like Outnumbered or Pulling – modest shows that hide their radical hearts behind genre tropes – wolves in sheep’s clothing. There are also some shows with massive ambition and creativity that are successful despite it all and against the odds – but that’s just basically Dr Who (and I’ll devote a whole series of podcast to that soon).
Finally there are aberrations, new shows from channels that are ironically also the main culprits when it comes to pumping excrement into the schedules – the BBC3s and ITV2s of this world, full to the brim with Top 100 shows and programmes about other programmes hosted by foetuses in designer clothing. The worst of these is E4, which is like T4 but all the time and just as unwatchable.
However every now and then E4 will have a go at original programming and surprise itself. Skins is awesome. The Inbetweeners is laugh out loud funny.
And now there’s Misfits, a show which you can guarantee started with an executive walking into his editors office and saying something like “Alright, hear me out, it’s X-Men for the Skins generation.”
And that’s exactly what it is but despite all that it’s pretty damn good. The characters are interesting, it’s actually fairly funny and the concept is great – young offenders get hit by lightning and get superpowers themed around their deepest desires. A disgraced athlete with the ability to turn back time, an awkward recluse who can turn invisible – that sort of thing. The powers are well handled, the actors range from fine to quietly impressive and the whole concept is milked for every last joke, twist and scare it can provide. I’d take a hundred episodes of it over anything Big Brother, X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing have ever produced.
It’s hugely derivative of course (Marvel’s Runaways, the aforementioned Skins, Buffy, it even nicks some stylistic and thematic tricks from quality BBC fare like Life on Mars and Being Human) and it’s not always as funny or as clever as it thinks it is but what it does have is a rough, brash confidence that allows the viewer to overlook these failings and concentrate on what it does well. Which is deliver twisted, memorable stories a cut above most things currently on British TV.
Consider this the first Stairwell recommendation of the new year.
Ken Campbell: Beyond our Ken
Oct 13th
I was meant to go to an Arthur Russell retrospective at the ICA this evening but dropped everything and bought a ticket to the Olivier when I found out the National Theatre was hosting a celebration of the life of Ken Campbell as part of its Platforms series.
Now I didn’t know Ken personally nor had I ever seen any of his prodigious body of work (before tonight at any rate). I am, however, a member of the London impro community and you can’t hang around with that crowd for very long without realising how important Mr Campbell is. In fact, he seems to be stamped indelibly onto the lives and careers of some of the greatest improvisors I know.
You see I came to impro just a few months after Campbell’s death and it seems to me that his absence still defines a part of the London scene. People talk about his theories and opinions all the time, it’s very much ingrained into the fabric of the community. I feel very sad that I came so close to meeting such a great man and in many ways the fact that I didn’t puts me in a different comedy generation to my contemporaries. I’m PC – a Post Campbell improvisor.
Of course, he was much more than just an improvisor. By all accounts he was a genius, a superb writer and performer; a brilliant, erratic, eccentric curmudgeon with a real gift for supporting others. The evening I just spent at the theatre was a bit like him – just off-the-wall, balls out crazy.
For a start it was meant to be just over two hours long and ended up closer to three and a half, the cast a glittering ensemble of powerhouse comic talent from John Sessions to Toby Jones by way of Nina Conti and the guy who played Alf Garnett. Everyone spent the whole evening talking with Campbell’s voice – a kind of a cross between an Essex wide boy and a goblin.
The acts themselves were amazing – monologues and extracts from Campbell’s plays (one of which The Warp is over 22 hours long if performed in its entireity). Someone mimed being bacon frying (ask me to demonstrate), another stripped naked to his socks and copulated with a giant golden apple. There was an inspired sketch revolving around a 20ft long piece of black knicker elastic and an extract from Macbeth translated into Pidgin English.
My favourite moment came from Nina Conti, who was bequeathed all Ken’s ventriloquist puppets in his will. She told us how she had spent the best part of this year “trying to find new voices” for them all. Conti has always been a master of making puppets live and breathe, a strange alchemy where she is almost able to split her soul in two and this was a bravura performance. The last puppet she hauled out of her trunk was a mini version of the man himself. At the very end of her act she begun to pack him away only for mini-Campbell to exclaim loudly “Don’t put me back into another box”.
It was a brilliant moment, both hilarious and heart breaking. Everyone on stage obviously had so much love and respect for the guy but that didn’t stop them scoring a cheap laugh out of his death. You got the feeling that he would have approved entirely. Even after she shut the trunk, he kept protesting in a muffled voice. I still can’t shake the notion that there were two people on stage during that scene.
The evening culminated with the entire cast engaged in an improvised haka, the finest proponent of which (chosen by audience reaction) recieved Campbell’s entire DVD collection of Jackie Chan films*. It was just that sort of an evening.
Certainly not your average night at the theatre.
But then it wasn’t your average life either.
* Ken had been told by the spirit of Laurence Olivier, via a seance, that Jackie Chan was the world’s greatest living actor. His collection of Chan DVDs was so large, it had to be wheeled on stage on a trolley.
