G&TV: Lovett Goes to Town (1990)

It’s a tricky thing trying to launch a new TV vehicle around a particular actor or comic. Sometimes you have bags of acting and comedic talent wasted on a dreadful script and sometimes the talent have an on-screen personality akin to sand paper being rubbed violently all over your brain, and make jokes so terrible by today’s standards that fan sites 20+ years later have to quickly change their article plans because they don’t have the brain power to handle it correctly.

No risk of that with our Norman, however, as this month we take a look at his I, Lovett-esque contribution to BSB Galaxy’s The Last Laugh series, information on which is quite thin on the ground but we can definitely assume the channel offered rehearsal facilities in Edinburgh.

It’s a perfectly nice 20 minutes of gentle Norman Lovett observational comedy with a twist of the absurd, but the issue will always be that this man needs an audience. Even if a lot of the episode is filmed on location in and around Edinburgh, even a laugh track recorded after the fact would’ve helped the atmosphere enormously, because otherwise Norman’s non-sequiturs end up falling flat more often than not because this is essentially 20 minutes of slightly adapted stand-up. That’s not to say the episode isn’t without laughs, with Andrew Dallmeyer’s strange shopkeeper being a particularly strong element, as well as Norm performing magic to a plant for its birthday.

Aside from anything else, this is 20 minutes that is guaranteed you make you smile, so… you’re welcome.