Tuesday night seems to be new comedy night, and I certainly can’t claim to have watched any or all of them properly, but there’s something suspicious when a pair of programmes appear from 10.35 on BBC1 after the news without any notable previewing.
First up there was Doctors and Nurses which stars Adrian Edmondson. This is the only sitcom of the trio, but it seems a little lost despite the decent cast which includes the delectable Abigail Cruttenden.
Then there was Revolver, which I believe had a pilot show sometime last year. If a sketch show is going out at 11.05pm, you just know it must be rubbish, and indeed it is. The USP with this show is that all the stars are those you’d forgotten about from programmes of yesteryear with people like Leslie Philips and Melvyn Hayes. Sadly it’s dreadful, shot in a strange wide-angle lens style, which lots of bleaching effects. I didn’t laugh once, and it’s actually quite hard to watch such is all the effects they’ve layered onto the programme.
At the same time on BBC3 was Sort-it-out Man with a pair of “superheroes” stopping people talking on mobile phones in cars or “making out” in the street. The production qualities of this make some of those Jackass style knock-offs look like a Hollywood epic. Why the hell should we accept programmes that look like they were shot on Hi-8 camcorders? PD150s are quite cheap, and can look perfectly fine. This looked dreadful. It raised more laughs than Revolver, but not many.