Jonsmad

[Jonsmad]

“all Iain Lee rocks”

That sounds like a really good plan too. Lets all grab pointed flat ones and make him say multiple Jehovah’s

[Jonsmad]

No, no worries. It’s a good tip. I’ll remember next time, just to link.

[Jonsmad]

We are talking Knick knack. If so I hope Presto is on the DVD and I might get it.

[Jonsmad]

Sorry.

[Jonsmad]

Speaking of Saturday night live mentioned in this thread. Both Volumes best of’s are out now on DVD and recently Friday Night Live was released, also with Hattie Hayridge on it. I enjoyed Michael Redmond on it who went on to star as Father stone in Father ted. He always had an air of uncomfortableness between him and the audience which he perpetuated I think. I would want to be in a lift with him.

[Jonsmad]

Yeah I agree. I thought it was satirical, but optimistic, and it would depend on the age or opinions of the viewer whether they saw an enivormental message or a wacky imagained robot film.

I saw echo’s of ET, Short Circuit and R2D2 in it. Really enjoyed it.

Dam what was the short Tanya? I arrived late at the Cinema got there just as the opening titles started, on the main feature and didnt think I had missed anything.

Was the captain voiced by that guy out of Crub your enthusiasm, sounded like him, (I watched Steve Coogan pop up in that show recently). It was kind of like the holly senility angle only this time it was the humans forgetting all there knowledge and talents.

[Jonsmad]

Died?

He was here just a minute ago.

With routines like 7 words, no wonder he was a hero in the world of G and T.

[Jonsmad]

I was worriedly expecting boredom, after finding from last weeks preview clips that this would be set entirely inside one set. This despite loving David Renwick’s Beast in The Cage episode of one foot in the grave, and many other examples of this kind of closed setting.

Far from it, It was the most edge of my seat viewing Ive had since watching the Empty Child. It built up the mystery and tension and danger brilliantly. Portraying possession by an intelligence and human nature as the enemys in really great performances. That culminate in that line “I told you it was her.” I’m sure they ignored saying anything about this being more like real life and the modern world for fear of any media flack, but it felt very London tube bombings or plane hijacking to me.

Unlike Pete I dont expect any follow up though. A lot the new series is about hiding threads, like another mention of a lost planet/moon and rose’s face again, but I dont think the monster of midnight is anything like that.

Can someone tell me if going to the back on the room counts as the shortest dr who running ever in an episode :-), and killing the entertainment system was an injoke against Eurovision time slot problems surely.

Felt weird the dr not using his Tardis to make the trip, but I think they sold the idea of it’s being leisure or his wanting to talk to people about it enough.

And I think david troughton being called “the professor” is a slight nod to the heritage there, though not a very knowing or obvious one.

Nigel Kenedy eletric violin who theme.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4NCfM8UGkq0

[Jonsmad]

It’s watchable. In the sense that it exsists on a DVD and you can press play.
How actually enjoyable the experience is, is another matter. I’d happily lend
you the DVD Danny if you didnt think that was an insult and it was just me trying to get rid of the thing. Yeah I’ve seen it. I bought the DVD out of curiosity, didnt have high expectations and they werent raised any by watching it.

None of the characters strike you as anything much more than the actual actors they are, on a set, trying to act out a script about a con. They try but they dont
gell together as an ensemble team feeding off each other much, and Dennis Waterman is worst as a putupon ex-police/butler character that wavers and moans and is uncertain in loyalty with the peice, he seems like he’s improving on his own,
in a corner of the film.

As a comedy it’s got the central caper theme and little more than that to it.
Which doesnt entertain or sustain the full lenght of the film. If you’re generous it’s a faintly amusing central idea, executed best in the A-team style amature building of the fake buggy.

Chris Barrie is good on screen, but his comedy elements are supposed to be
drawn from the costumes he wears in his disguises, and you just feel a bit
bad for him having to go that route in a poor comedy script. Ok so we know
that from the giant hairstyle in red dwarf, or the gingham dress etc that
he will throw himself into it, but if it’s not backed up with more to it,
he’s not given enough reason or screen time to play with it. He does his best
with those moments but it’s more fun watching him in the moments when he’s not been dressed up silly, where he’s closer to that tomb raider supporting character kind of vibe, but then you just end up wishing he’d been cast in a better film.

Fairly well produced, nicely shot, star casted, under written, under rehearsed, miss directed, forgettable con caper, lacking depth, laughs or thrills. I’m surprised they didnt call it Moonfaker.

[Jonsmad]

There is (and quite wonderfully so) so much new who discussion on this site,
I think you need a seperate who forum. Ganymede and Tardis? It’s a far more popular topic than dwarf is around here, understandably.

[Jonsmad]

You can always watch virgin which is showing the old ones.

Takeshi’s castle is far more amusing.

[Jonsmad]

I see, that makes sense then, as your dwarf references so closely echoed the relevent scenes, I was thinking if you had been referencing Stoneybridge why no nasal voices and everyone in drab brown suits, but no it wasnt the case
then.

Just read this today taken from scottish newspaper the daily record…

Absolutely stars eye reunion after long-awaited DVD release

GETTING together for the first time in 15 years to watch cult Scots sketch show Absolutely has made the team want to work together again. Gordon Kennedy, Jack Docherty, Peter Baikie, Morwenna Banks, Moray Hunter and John Sparkes’ surreal silliness is still loved by top names in British comedy talent, including Paul Whitehouse, Ian Hislop and Jo Brand.

The show ran from 1989 until 1993 on Channel 4 and subsequently influenced a generation of comics, including Matt Lucas and David Walliams, from Little Britain.
But because of Channel 4’s bizarre rules not to repeat their shows – for the past 15 years, apart from a run on the Paramount comedy channel, it hasn’t been seen.
Until next month, when all four series will be released for the first time on DVD.

For the team, eager to offer more to fans than just the shows, they got together to add commentary to episodes and talk about working together. And while they have remained friends and business associates through Absolutely Productions, producing television and radio shows, including Trigger Happy TV and Armstrong & Miller, it seems watching themselves has made them realise they’d like to have a last Absolutely hurrah.

Jack Docherty revealed: “Our one big regret is that we didn’t do any live shows.
“We were never all available at the same time. We were going to and Morwenna wasn’t available, then we were going to and my first kid was born, so I couldn’t do it. “We are talking about the possibility of doing something live, either a tour or maybe something on television. But we’ll see.”

“Watching the shows again and doing the commentary has certainly made me want to work with the other five again.” Gordon and Peter were the two on the team that set about sorting out the extras for the DVDS – doing interviews and making up some very funny special features. But even Gordon, who plays Little John in BBC One’s Robin Hood, admits he was blown away at how well the old sketches have stood the test of time. He added: “I was surprised, I didn’t cry as much as I thought I would and laughed a lot more. It was much more optimistic than even I thought.
“You get a group of Scots watching comedy and you’d be expecting a suicide half way through. “But I thought it was OK and was surprised how much it made me laugh after all these years.”

Jack, who was an early star of Channel 5 and had his own chat show – reckoned getting back together was like an old band who hadn’t toured for ages, looking at their past glories. He laughed: “It’s seeing us all being young with full heads of hair and slightly thinner. “It’s forced me to go on a diet. “Since I’ve done the commentary, I’ve lost a stone and a half and have another stone and a half to go.”

So what is all the fuss about over the release of the DVD? Fans will remember the councillors of Stoneybridge saying the name in a nasal whine. The Stoneybridge Olympic Bid sketch was voted number 30 in Channel 4’s The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches Of All Time, making it officially funnier than both Monty Python’s Nudge Nudge sketch andThe Lumberjack Song.

Then there was the ultra-boring Calum Gilhooley and his blue anorak, the rabid anti-English Scot Mac McGlashan, Little Girl who sat on an oversized desk and Frank Hovis, usually seen reporting his life from the seat of a filthy toilet.
The 28 episodes always had a surreal element to them and created grotesque characters or silly ideas, such as in Kids, where the group used kids as golf clubs and even as shotguns while robbing a bank.

Gordon said: “When we were filming it people were almost crashing their cars driving by. First, they thought it was an actual bank robbery and then the saw me were using kids as weapons. “It was sensory overload and there was a few near misses.” Of course, it’s Stoneybridge that were perhaps their greatest sketches. It featured all six of the Absolutely team, discussing topics as only people in villages can. Stoneybridge became so popular the team got a letter from two students from Manchester who had found a Stoneybridge on South Uist.They hitched up there and knocked on people’s doors asking them to speak in the nasal accent. “Lucky we weren’t sued for that one,” roared Gordon, claiming the team never knew there was a real place with the same name. He joked: “I’ve actually driven past Stoneybridge in the dark in a car and yelled ‘sorry’ out of the open window.”

Absolutely began with the friendship between Pete and Moray, who have known each other since they were five. They went to George Watson’s in Edinburgh where, in their early teens, they met Gordon and Jack – whose real name is John Docherty – slightly later. The four began doing charity comedy shows together and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe as The Bodgers. The Bodgers then transferred to Radio 4 in the middle Eighties in a show In Other Words …The Bodgers.

John Sparkes, known to fans of Scotland’s Naked Video as anorak-wearing poet Siadwel and Morwenna Banks were brought in for another Radio 4 show Bodgers Banks & Sparkes. From there, the team got a Channel 4 pilot and Absolutely was born. As well as writing and performing, they also produced the shows themselves.

For any comedian, this was gold dust. Gordon said: “The six of us were given the keys to the playground. “Doing everything ourselves meant it wasn’t as diluted as comedy shows now, which have executives and script advisors and marketing people.”
Three million viewers regularly watched Absolutely, a ratings figure Channel 4 can only dream of nowadays. They were refreshing because after the political motivated comedy of Spitting Image and comedians such as Ben Elton they went back to being silly.

After Absolutely finished, with all the other projects the six were involved with, none of them thought about releasing an Absolutely DVD until a fan, who runs a website on the series, raised a petition and sent it to Channel 4. Gordon was groomed for telly presenting stardom, the original presenter of The National Lottery, but gave it up to go back to acting. Now in Robin Hood, he laughed: “I’m running around a forest like a seven year-old with a big stick. I’m doing alright.”

Absolutely Everything, the boxset includes the four series and is available on May 5.

[Jonsmad]

The only quality problem I really noticed was on the pilot episode, which I assumed was the best quality copy that still exsists, with it’s obvious VHS drop out problems. And what exactly have they done differently on the ad breaks then John I just assumed those were the usual transitions?

The stoneybridge bit I had in mind was their insistance that “Maigret” must wear a moustache against her will because the rest of the council has them, which in the next sketch then turns into a growing chin beard, before the idea dissappears, and I wondered whether this had influenced the idea that everyone in GNP must all wear Doug’s goatee as a company beard.

[Jonsmad]

I’m loving this…

I’ve got as far as half way through series three.

My memories of the great enjoyable stuff from watching Absolutely the first time round on TV 89-93 im now seeing also within context of later comedy shows it seems to have influenced, or at least ideas spun off from ideas used in Absolutely and done further on similar themes elsewhere,Bits of ideas in the fast show, vicar of dibley, father ted and others and was stoneybridge an influence on The Movie: Yeah No Yeah no then, I hadnt quite twigged the link before from memorys, had to actually see it again.

Must crack on and watch the rest soon. But one more dwarf connection,
Look closely and I’m sure Tony Hawks makes an appearance in one sketch so far.

[Jonsmad]

Doctor Dwarf part 67108524

Doctor: She’s a Generated Anomally

Cat: Nice to meet you Jenny Who?

[Jonsmad]

What? No! You Can’t! Leave GNP?

But now The Movie: Yeah, No, Yeah, No will seem all dated.

:-(

[Jonsmad]

Absolutely Everything – DVD box set. Out April 28th

All 28 episodes – 15 Hours and 52 minutes

Special Features:

Selected Episode Commentaries

Absolute Beginnings
Absolute Remembered
Absolute Characters
Absolute Music and Animation
Absolute Other Bits
Absolute Pictures

[Jonsmad]

I was watching an Indy movie on a projector and something blew up on screen as part of the film, and then the ground shook, and I briefly thought Blimey this Dolby 5.1 is amazing stuff. Now I think they should make all films in Richter 5.3 if only such a thing were possible.

[Jonsmad]

Nice to see Duct Soup, five times bashed, Marleen, that gets a big, thumbs up from me. It’s always been my least favourite. I’ve hardly ever rewatched that one. Dull soup I call it.

In VI they put the crew on Starbug to make it “more confined” for better drama and comedy, then at the start of VII made it expand, then in Duct soup squash everyone into some confined duct water system in order to try and create more confined drama/comedy again. Which is the point at which for me, starbugs layout starts to make the least sense ever.

I’d overlook this in a better episode but I find lots of the character dialouge, traits and jokes boring in this episode. I normally really like sitcom episodes that follow the small environment setup, like “beast in the cage” in One Foot in the Grave, but it’s been discussed elsewhere how the look and lack of audience in and VII’s action/comedy/adventure direction feel becomes totally wrong for a small environment sitcom setup, where Dwarf has excelled in the past in this.

Cat’s lack of tact I find dull, the gay theme with kochanski I find dull, Krytens antics are grating by this point. Lister gets maybe one good comedy speach, and
then it feels like it’s marooned 2 only there isnt a good 2nd character to bounce off. In no other episode do I miss Rimmer and Chris Barrie more.

The very end of the episode Krytens speach sounds more like notes on the episodes setup, and is far too knowing, and those pipe noise sounds at the start and end, annoy me as much as they were supposed to annoy kochanski.

It’s better with the Squeaky Gibson story in, which just adds salt into the wound of the broadcast version that the best bit was cut for timing or taste.

[Jonsmad]

Yeah true. It’s the fact that they are advertising the joint slot too. Which made me cringe a bit.

Thankfully not with a both shows footage combo clip trailer. (though It’s early days on that) But with one of those written schedule cards naming both shows and times, with a voice over. So I think It’s a package slot they are going to persist with.

“And now on Dave, The Scifi Comedy Diamond & Turd hour”

[Jonsmad]

Yeah, sorry I probably didnt make my post very clear.

I’m aware of the school teacher sex lesson from MOL that Phil was mentioning, I was just trying to offer him an alternative cleese nude scene, for his contemplation.

Perhaps Romance with a Double Bass could turn your head Phil, have you seen that?

[Jonsmad]

Phil Wrote: “John Cleese ? I can?t imagine anything other than his sex scene in The Meaning of Life. I?m not even kidding when I say that scene probably isn?t very far from reality.”

Are you saying Phil that the sight of a six foot man dancing around with his underpants on his head and talking russian doesnt do it for you?

And your deffinately a real limp wristed caricature, because you didnt list Carol Cleveland. I’d give her Marriage Guidance Counselling any day.

[Jonsmad]

Before Series one was repeated or released on video
I used to think Rimmers line in Better Than Life…

“So I said to Holister…” was some kind of bad misspronounced “Hol Lister” combo. Because I didnt realise that was the captains surname, and I thought he was trying to start a boast about something heroic he imagined, that had happened on ship during his time since being dead, as opposed to when he was alive with the original crew. Even though it’s lister that calls Holly as Hol. Which makes me twice as dumb.

[Jonsmad]

I rate cruise of the gods. And Jack Jones is singing at my local theatre soon, I was thinking of going along to see if he’d sign the dvd. And yeah Walliams is good in it and his character liked John Pertwee a lot too, didnt he.

[Jonsmad]

Warning contains spoilers for anyone who doesnt want to hear more about
this DVD before buying it.

…..

Well there is good and bad with this DVD release. Picked up my copy this morning.

First the bad. Advertising “commentaries” on the back of your dvd and not saying how many or who is bit a of marketing angle rip off in my mind. People may assume 12 commentarys and them being full cast. Neither of which is true.

2ndly the non appearance of Rik, Ade, Chris Ryan, and Ben Elton on this dvd in the documentaries and commentary is a huge gaping hole in this attempt at being some kind of 25th year celebration. Alexi and Nigel are interesting, but cant carry the whole documentary from everyone view point and the complete non mention of Chris Ryan is an insult, yeah so we didnt expect a huge focus on him, but no mention at all in the documentary, though this is made up for in the commentary.

3rdly although, lengthy and interesting the main documentary lacks structure, it’s got a good begining and a good end with people saying which bit they liked most. The middle wanders all over different aspects of the show without much focus. Sure they do split the memories up by series a little, but the end of the young ones and the bus comes up 3 times I think in different bits.

…

And now the good bits, Sebs comment that more of Lise Meyer is a good thing, is spot on she’s great and a real indepth insight, as is tons of Ed bye and Paul Jackson. In fact the Ed Bye stuff that is “prop related” is fantastic and fits in like an early chapter on him before Red Dwarf (which he mentions once) documentaries cover his later work.

Any kind of dream we might have had of a huge cast for these doccos from the excellent Red Dwarf documentarys (which this disc is copying the style of) are sadly limited to Andy De la Tour, Mark Arden, Geoff Posner, but it’s nice to see them and get their input. The talking is wider than some previous young ones doccumentary stuff thats come before so we do get some new insights.

The talking about special effects and animation is great stuff, and early glimpses of neil pre young ones I’d never seen, though I’d seen the rik poet ones. The way they cover the flash frames topic is very well done.

Well better than no commentarys at all, are 2 commentarys over “Demolition” and “summer holiday” by Paul Jackson and Geoff Posner. Both a delight to listen too over the first (pilot) and last show. Paul Jackson despite getting the odd fact wrong, pretty much never lets a gap appear in the commentary and is interesting through out the 70ish minutes these two shows cover. Just like a
good commentary should do this sheds new light onto the show, pointing out,
people, effects and recording techniques that I hadnt thought of before in relation to the show. They cover other episodes too sometimes with in the plot,
and find out the inside exclusive on what happend to spg! and which main stream comedy double act influenced vyvian trousers.

I’ve checked if the Jools Holland song is edited out or not, and excellently it’s there! Ace. so better than my USA dvds. So I dont know if this means these are all uncut episodes. What else was trimmed before on US or UK release?

The guests stars and band get there own short featurette which isnt much but it’s nice it’s been included to highlight this aspect of the show, no one new is interviewed in this section either though.

Menu’s are reminisent of the young ones computer game style box, with messyness
and an overhead veiw of a bubbling lentil pot, and let them play to the end for a small surprise. The slip case packaging is nice. I like the rat on the spine.

This could have been a whole lot more, but the little more that it is over previous uk sets, is greater than just leaving this show extra less. I enjoyed the documentaries and glad they made some kind of effort to beef up a uk box set release. I’m still keeping my region one set to go along with it. I would have wished for deleted scenes, out takes or more cast involvement, but without that in the budget they could have at least included comedy connections, the usa box set extras or more boom boom footage to flesh this out to something truly all the more encompassing.

[Jonsmad]

Yeah, It’s an idea that came to my mind too, while in bookshops and seeing the
huge range of who, torchwood etc stuff that comes out now as talking books and having hugely enjoyed the recent Dirk Maggs, hitchhikers audio series and current Dirk Gently Shows, a lot can be done with sound.

The 3rd hitch hiker series had a dvd release show casing a dolby surround mix, along with video making off.

[Jonsmad]

Pulling that BBFC trick,
Here are the documentary extras for the box set.

Run Time 75m 10s
The cast for this work includes: Mark Arden, Andy Le Tour, Lisa Mayer.

Widescreen, DVD additional material – THE YOUNG ONES DVD EXTRAS,

13:23:15 ALTERNATIVE REBELLION – THE COMEDY BEHIND THE YOUNG ONES
50:27:02 SILVER JUBILEE 25 YEARS – THE MAKING OF THE YOUNG ONES
11:19:05 THE GUEST STARS – THE OTHER YOUNG ONES

Wonder if Chris or Norman are in the third featurette.

[Jonsmad]

A love letter to TV
Peter Serafinowicz on his new sketch show

The vacillations of the American TV industry always come in for a lot of flack. But if it wasn?t for the delays and rethinks of indecisive networks, Peter Serafinowicz wouldn?t have his own BBC Two show tonight.
It was while he was bored in Los Angeles, hanging around between auditions and a role in a sitcom that never aired, that the actor shot a comedy sketch for his own amusement. Then he banged it on YouTube where it so impressed Beeb bosses that they decided to put his name in lights. And with a name as long as Serafinowicz, that?s quite a lot of bulbs.

The fairytale passage to primetime was surely help by his previous form. He?s appeared in everything from Shaun Of The Dead to Black Books, not to mention the cult success of spoof science show Look Around You, and the voice of Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace.

But, over a coffee in a family deli near his West London home, he insists it was the YouTube clip which swung it ? cutting through months of meetings and pilots to get the commission.

?It?s probably the biggest reaction I?ve had to anything. It had something like 100,000 hits in three days,? he said. ?And where it would take months and months to turn your ideas into something people could watch, now you can put something together instantly.’

The clip was a spoof Hollywood entertainment show, O! News, reporting on a bold new look for the Oscars statuette. It was inspired in part by the wall-to-wall TV coverage leading up to the awards in LA ? and partly down to sheer boredom.

?My girlfriend, Sarah Alexander, was out there doing a pilot called Teachers, that was very loosely based on the British version, and I went with her.

?I also heard they were casting for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, for the role of a cast member/writer for this show that was supposed to be like Saturday Night Live. I?m a huge fan of Saturday Night Live and a huge fan of Studio 60 creator Aaron Sorkin, who also did The West Wing, so it was a part I really wanted

?I had to make up a sketch for the show. So I did an impression of Alan Alda, doing the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, that whole hologram speech. They?d done things like that that on SNL before, stars? audition tapes for Star Wars, so I sort of nicked that idea but I didn?t think anyone?s going to do Alan Alda.?

The Alda impression, which pops up in the BBC Two show, did the trick and he got down to the final two. ?We had to audition for Sorkin, which was terrifying to meet a hero. But I didn?t get the part, and I was really fucked off,? he admits

But Serafinowicz did win another role, in a Friends-style show called Our 30s. ?Everyone was trying to do a version Friends, but set a bit later on ? when the characters are all in their thirties,? he says. ?But it just didn?t happen. The one I did, there were nine main characters ? far too many.?

But he was still obliged to hang around in Los Angeles waiting for work to start on that aborted sitcom. ?I couldn?t do anything because I was committed to this show,? he said. ?So I had this idea of doing a showreel.

?Also, My brother James was bored back in England, and we?re like best friends as well, so I said, ?Why don?t you come out here and we?ll make something.?

?On the TV in LA, from about January everything on TV is Oscars, Oscars, Oscars ? they can?t help it that?s all they do there. So we decided on that. He had a video camera, a semi-professional one, about ?1,000 and I?m a bit of a whiz on my Mac, so we put it together very cheaply.

?It?s amazing what you can do these days. What used to be a ?1million studio in a Soho post-production house you can now do on a ?1,000 laptop and a few hundred quid for an editing programme.

?YouTube has totally democratised the whole process, too. The revolutionary thing about it was that you could email a link to someone and five minutes later they?d be watching it. You didn?t have to email a 5MB WMV file that would probably look shit, even if you could play it, and you didn?t need to make sure you had the right codec for it to work.?

Codecs? WMV files? Serafinowicz is talking more like an IT geek than a cutting-edge comedian. But not only is the 35-year-old a self-confessed technofreak, his anoraky tendencies extend to comedy, too. His conversation drops the names of Saturday Night Live cast members, an obscure cult US series called Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which he cites as a favourite, and even the NBC executive who championed Seinfeld, who he calls ?a bit of a comedy icon?. The man certainly knows his comedy stuff.

Comedy seems to run in his family, too. His brother James, who co-wrote the new show, worked on the Brass Eye paedophilia special, Big Train and The Mark Steel Lectures (and they previously collaborated on Blankety Blank sketch for Comic Relief starring the cream of British comedy), while his brother-in-law is Father Ted and IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan. In fact, it was Linehan who introduced him to YouTube.

?He sent me this link to Chronicles of Narnia, these two white guys doing gangsta rap ? Andy Samburg and Chris Parnell from Saturday Night Live. It was brilliant ? one of the most perfect things: so silly, sweet and stupid.?

Serafinowicz is genuinely enthused by the possibilities Web 2.0 creates. But isn?t there a fear that the cult of the amateur, and the fact that internet content needs to fit in to short chunks, means that the days of quality, long-form TV like his beloved West Wing could be numbered.

?Maybe,? he concedes. ?This show is like a love letter to television, before it all disappears. How will these old programmes survive when everyone will be able to download anything they want.?

?There?s not mystique about being on TV anymore. You see these people go on Jeremy Kyle and carry on their miserable lives as if the cameras weren?t there, there?s no prestige about it. That?s why we came up with Michael-6, a robot talk-show host (right). The people in our sketch just ignore him.?

The Peter Serafinowicz Show was initially intended to be an impression-based show, but they soon broadened out the idea to encompass all sort of TV spoofs, from pared-down gameshows like Heads Or Tales, to adverts that make Cillit Bang?s Barry Scott look demure.

?There?s a definite naffness to doing impressions,? Serafinowicz says. ?Funny impressions can be funny in their own right, but often for about ten seconds, that?s it. That?s the sort of thing that put me off. It was a block for me.?

His range of impressions was also limited by his size. He?s 6ft 4in and used to be quite heavy-set, although his stint in LA got him in physical shape too, as he embraced the Californian fitness culture.

?I thought I if I?m doing impressions, I need to be as malleable as possible,? he said. ?I?ve got distinctive facial features: big bulgy droopy eyes, big nose? There?s a limit to what I can do. I don?t want to impersonate people I don?t even look like, so I try to do people who have at least got similar features to me, like Paul McCartney or Al Pacino.

?So I?m limited anyway, and I didn?t want another obstacle, so I lost a lot of weight.

?Also, I thought if I?m going to be in America, you?ve got to be on top of your game. Not only is everyone there really funny and talented, everyone?s really fit, too.

?A friend of mine Amy Poehler, from Saturday Night Live, describes going to LA from New York as like coming out of a nightclub. You think you?re pretty cool, but then the lights come on a 3am and you realise your make-up?s all over the place, your clothes are a mess and you?re looking really haggard. That what it?s like getting off the plane in LA.

?You go for audition there and you sit in a room with six Brad Pits, three Keanu Reeveses and a Justin Timberlake ? and they?re all clever and witty and ultra-talented and that?s the world. You?re competing against these people, so you have to be your best.

?The image is that LA a nasty, soulless place ? and that is the truth ? but what is also true is that it draws immensely talented people from around the world.?

Serafinowicz was especially pleased to meet South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker while in Hollywood ? and they asked him to voice the character of Darth Chef after Isaac Hayes sulked off the show, upset at their mocking of Scientology. ?They were real heroes of mine, and I got to meet them,? he says proudly.

From the look of the new show, he has tried to capture some of the outrageous silliness of South Park ? without too much of its crudeness. That said, the most noticeable change to the redesigned Oscar statuette featured way back in that original O! News report was that it had a proud phallus.

?We wanted to make the statue different, and were racking our brains thinking what it could be. Then I said the phrase I think a lot of comedy writers have when they?re trying to think of something. They?ll say, ?Not this, but?? so I suggested ?Not this but? the Oscar has a cock.

?I think you say that if an idea feels a bit Route One, ?The Oscar has got a cock ha-de-ha?. But we didn?t come with anything better than that, and sometimes the simple idea is the best.?

You can see how Peter Serafinowicz?s simple ideas worked out on Thursdays at 9.30pm on BBC Two.

Interview by: Steve Bennett

[Jonsmad]

I thought it was watchable. Not as great as I’d hoped. Liked the O news bit,
and the masterclass. Found the 1st sketch a bit too naked video, and I think
it’s hard to do anything new with advert spoofs these days, but there’s
no doubt he’s got a lot of talent, and the sureal nature of his look
around you shows continued I felt with some of these sketches. Great to
see benedict wong again.

[Jonsmad]

13 years of age in 1988, big fan of the Young Ones and Fawlty Towers and Python by this point. Read the blurb in the paper about a new comedy show set in space. I thought, That sounds shit. Didnt bother watching it, probably read an Eagle or Oink Comic instead and went to bed.

Then later at school, everyone raving about the show and calling everyone else a smeg head, and me feeling left out for having missed it. So first episode was Future Echoes, and the recaps at the start of the show really helped back then. Started recording the show off the tv by series 3 premier. And Waiting so so long for a series 1 video release and a chance to see how it all began, by which time all I could really remember was bits of Me2 and the catchphrase of saying “Fish”
multiple times, which me and friends used to do all the time.

[Jonsmad]

Additional…

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/casablanca.html

[Jonsmad]

From a Scottish newspaper interveiw with Gordon Kennedy,

“We’re hoping to bring a DVD out for the first time next year,” he said.
“It occurred to me after some of the extras on River City told me how
much they loved it.”

“There’s a guy called Absolutely Andy who’s run a petition to get the
show released on DVD. So I’m determined to get us all back together to
do a commentary for the DVD.”

But the bad news is, there’s no chance of any new material. Gordon said:
“I’m still really proud of it. We wrote it performed it and it was
successful. But it makes me very cautious for ever wanting to do it
again. We got away with it the first time…”

[Jonsmad]

Everything in all versions of red dwarf is cannon.
Because alternate dimensions and changes to timelines
happens a lot. So that would make it a cannon with several barrels.
And a lot of balls.

[Jonsmad]

Madness and motorhead are on the dvd region 1 i have, I think all the other
songs are there.

It’s only the bob dylan song they had trouble clearing I think.
Most of the bands that appear in the show singing their own songs
get a few of some kind for appearing I guess so are happy to clear
the song rights. But Dylan isnt singing that one, it’s jools holland,
rowland rivron and some bloke out of the police, so maybe dylan gets
lets money or perhaps he doesnt like the version who knows.

[Jonsmad]

The only major ommission from the shows I could see missing on the original release in Region 1 dvd, was the Jool’s holland super band Bob Dylan number was cut completely from “cash”. Dont know about the UK dvd’s though.

[Jonsmad]

“Why would Rimmer, a lowly 2nd technician be at the helm of a job that would
put the entire crew at risk?”

Because like German tourists, the stupid are everywhere.

Back in Red Part 2.

RIMMER

“I’m concerned over some of the safety procedures on board, sir. There’s a
potentially lethal scenario concerning drive plates, sir.”
Obviously, anyone who mis-repaired one of these plates would have to have a
brain the size of a leprechaun’s testicle.”

I think both senarios are true in that Rimmers direct testicle brained
incompetence caused the accident. But if tried through health and safety law
style investigation it’s likely higher ranking personel in JMC would
be implicated and sustain higher penalty. Based on current uk law only,
It would depend on what risk assesment paperwork had been filled in
before about the accident area.

[Jonsmad]

Interesting announcement about Tate. I feel sorry for the people who cant Fucking stand her. I can see what you dont like and that must be deeply annoying you all right now to the point of voodoo.

Im not about to defend her appointment, I’m probably in agreement with the
“Back for a whole series? Pfffft.” statement.

But playing satan’s pit advocate for a moment, If series one and two had a theme of rose and whichever dr’s mutual feelings for each other and the tate christmas special was about loss, and series three had a theme about marthas unrequited feelings, then where does series four go with a companion theme?

Maybe It’s a season about being stuck with someone you hate, the dr hating donna as much as you all hate tate, but he cant get rid of her, he keeps dropping her off on the worst planets and back in the worse time periods, and she keeps getting tortured and stuff, but then keeps popping back up in the tardis like she did before by magic and it ends with him asking the daleks nicely to exterminate her, and you could tune back in just for that maybe?

Maybe after two growing into have a go hero sidekicks (three if you count mickey) It will be nice to have a crap horror film twisted ankle cliche style character around who never gets better at dealing with monsters, she could be the new teegan.

Do you think dr who is going to go more comedy now with a comedian/actress cast? Maybe she will play a different comedy character each week.

[Jonsmad]

Looks like Doctor Dwarf got a bit overshadowed in favour of
ripping off big film trilogys instead this week.

As the Masters funeral pire became very
return of the Jedi/meets LOTR sauron’s ring.

[Jonsmad]

Ganymede and Titan, will carry on the flame of red dwarf whatever happens
alone in an otherwise RDfansiteless universe, and out of shake and vac.

[Jonsmad]

Is it cruel of me to have placed all of the garden fountain statues
faces up against the conservatory windows, just before my father sits
down to watch the recording of last nights Dr who “blink” later today ??

(evil laugh) :-)

[Jonsmad]

Time to bring in an academic to further this swearing debate…

[Jonsmad]

I cant stand George MacIntyre, In “The End”, mainly the acting
and delivery is rubbish.

I like how they cut his part down in the remastered version.

[Author]

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