There weren't many laughs in this second episode, which also suffered from a tendency to go back to misfiring sketches all the time. As always with these shows, there were a few gems tucked away -– but I was pretty stony-faced throughout....A sketch-by-sketch assessment:
Wavy-armed Historian: David Mitchell as a pompous historian who can't deliver lines without waving his arms about to exaggerate what he's saying. This wasn't particularly funny (as I'd never noticed real historians do it), and it was stupidly returned to a number of times, growing ever more tedious.
Dame Rape: Very amusing dig at how harmless pantomimes fall victim to political correctness these days, but taken to the extreme in a sketch where a theatre director wasn't allowed to feature a Dame getting raped or someone ejaculating the panto cow.
Cooking Vets: A rather weak sketch about vets who claim to be helping sick animals, when in fact they're cooking them to eat. Pointlessly returned to for a few times too many.
The Numberwang Board Game: Quite obvious self-mocking of the show's popular Numberwang sketches from last year, but very funny in places. I particularly liked the 200-sided dice!
"The Woman With The Second Head That Keeps Calling Her Bitch". Another pastiche of documentaries that only really exist for viewers to gawp as peoples' abnormalities. This one wasn't as brilliant as last week's "The Boy With An Arse For A Face", but two-headed Tina still raised a chuckle or two.
Hostage Negotiator: I wish M&W would do more of these studio-based sketches, as it's just more enjoyable seeing them time gags to live reactions. This idea of an office-based hostage negotiator whose heart isn’t really in the job wasn't that funny, but when the sketch returned later with his colleague revealing he writes "porn storylines", it got me laughing quite a bit.
Villain Mod Cons: A "Bond Villain" wants to install a rotating bookshelf into his lair, but the working class handyman keeps shooting down his elaborate plans with common sense structural reasons. This wasn’t that funny, especially because Austin Powers poked fun at Bond villains to much better effect over 10 years ago now.
Speedo. Undoubtedly the best sketch; a fun parody of US dramas like Shark, featuring a maverick lawyer with a House-like limp called Speedo. Very funny in places, particularly when the actor playing Speedo died on-set and was replaced by a black actor.
Gay T-Shirt: One of the "behind-the-scenes" sketches (although I didn’t recognize where they were filming), this time with Robert Webb making fun of Mitchell's "Get Go" T-shirt that he bought to make him look gay. Lame.
Episode 2 was pretty dry stuff, and the quantity of material was much lower than last week's jam-packed show, meaning a few sketch ideas kept recurring -- unfunny ones, sadly. Everything just seem very strained and hollow. I really hope an effort is made to perform more stuff in front of live audiences, as it really helps sell the comedy and makes the performances better. Greater quality control is also needed -- as sketches like "wavy-hands historian" and the "cooking vets" were painfully dull and should never have made it past the ideas phase.
28 February 2008
BBC2, 9.00 pm
