- Viper Squad Ten -

[ Friday, July 22, 2005 ]

Pedigree Comedy
Starbuck [16:50] Comments: 3 []

Yesterday wasn't proving to be the best of evenings, so I was most grateful to the BBC for 90 minutes of wonderful comedy to really turn around my mood.

It was great to see the return of John Birdand Stephen Fry in Absolute Power - nice to have something satirical to sink your intellect into.

And having finally seen my first episode of the Catherine Tate Show, I can now see why my old Barbers' keep on banging on about it. Very fresh and laugh-out-loud-funny character-based comedy.

Starbuck's fantastic Brent impression!

But it was the return of Ricky Gervais in Extras that really got me squirming with joy and embarrassment.

Fave moment:

Ben Stiller: "Who are you?"
Andy: "Nobody"
Ben Stiller: "That's right. And who am I?"
Andy: "It's either Starsky or Hutch, I can never remember?"
Ben Stiller: "Was that supposed to be funny?"
Andy: "You tell me, you were in it."

It laughed me up bad.

Most icky moment - Ricky's character Andy Millman, the Bosnian refugee, and the photo of his slaughtered wife "sunbathing"...

No compromise for the American audience, but no compromise is needed on HBO. Gervais is a true British Larry David (the God of Awkward from "Curb Your Enthususiasm", the best American comedy around).

And its always good to see the same dodgily-humoured-but-ever-endearing Ricky that offended us all on those 2 minutes "11 O'clock Show" slots and "Meet Ricky Gervais"...