[I must admit that this is a revised version of some comments I already posted on a Guardian blog] Peter Kay is someone I’ve observed more from afar than anything. I’ve never watched Phoenix Nights (shoot me now), and I’ve only caught bits of his various live routines. I enjoyed the Amarillo video enough, but I really wasn’t sure what I was going to make of his one-off X-Factor take-off on Channel 4 last night.
Overall, I was disappointed – it just wasn’t funny enough.
The programme was brilliantly close to the real thing. And that, for me, was its problem. The original is already a pastiche of itself with over-hyped editing, long pauses, whooping audience, over the top comments and so on.
I’m sure that they’ve simply employed many of the staff who usually work on these shows to get the look exactly right – from the stage set to the choreography and the editing.
But that makes taking the mickey out of it very hard to do.
The main problem was with the players. While the “contestants” were all comedy actors including Kay himself as “Gerladine”, the show was held together by presenters, judges and “celebrities” who were all playing themselves and had to read lines that had been written for them. And they just weren’t good enough. While those shows are scripted anyway, they’re not expecting to be getting laughs. In this instance, they were – it’s a Peter Kay comedy after all.
I think it would have been funnier if Kay had perhaps played more characters himself – perhaps all the contestants. Or if he’d had comedians taking the place of the presenter and judges. Instead, we had Cat Deeley, who is a perfectly fine presenter, but who wasn’t funny delivering her lines.
And I’d have liked a little more subtlety in some of the gags. There were some nice jokes about how little of the price of the phone vote went to charity. But once we’d seen it several times onscreen, we didn’t need Deeley telling voicing the joke as well. Just leave it for those who read it to get it.
Also, it was very odd scheduling to put it up against the Strictly Come Dancing results show. Undoubtedly it would be most appreciated by people who love the shows it’s mimicing.
While there were some entertaining set pieces like the two women from 2 Up 2 Down being winched into the air to retrieve balloons and cats in a truly tasteless piece of choreography, and one of them falling out of their chair only to not be rescued by Rick Astley until he realised that his line in the song was imminent and he had to drop her.
But overall, I thought the gags wore thin, and I didn’t bother with the second half.
Finally, given that this wasn’t live, there were a few bits that perhaps should have been bleeped for a pre-watershed show. “Dr” Fox mouthed an expletive in close-up that definitely shouldn’t have been left in, and a blowjob gag really isn’t suitable that early on. A week or so ago, Bruno Tonioli made a tasteless gag that got him a swift look from Bruce on Strictly Come Dancing. Not clever, but it was live. I’m no prude, but rules are rules and ours are pretty good. So either it should have been edited or gone out a bit later. And I hear that the language was “fruitier” later on. Again, you can curse and swear as much as you like post watershed, but not in a programme that partially airs before the watershed. I really dislike the idea that a show that straddles the watershed should be acceptable viewing for kids earlier on, but not later on. This show is bound to have had a decent sized audience of kids, so it’s a bit schizophrenic to have the final part essentially unsuitable for kids (I know we could get into a massive conversation about whether shows aimed at kids like, say, Skins, are really suitable, but that’s for another time). Be one thing or another – not both.