The mysterious rise and rise of Dave Lamb... anyone?

Had its moments. Just unfortunate that the worst performance in it happened to be Rhona

Agree with previous postings on subject- but give it time eh?

I know they drafted in some extra writers near the end of production to 'gag it up'. Time will tell

The show appeared to be short of people that could actually act - seen as though Rhona can't act, then she should have surrounded herself woth actual actors, to try to rise here performance. But who found Sue's character believable?
Also, i'm getting prettey bored of this kind of realistic, 'relationship nightmare' type sitcoms - whatever happened to nosensical programs? ITV are even about to make a '30-something relationship' sitcom, for god's sake - which highlights the fact that the idea is a bit long in the tooth.

When it first started I thought "This is awful". But as it went on I thought "This is pathetic".

It didn't offend me.

Why do so many British sitcoms nowadays have those music stings between scenes? It's supposed to make the show look American, but the only reason why *we* get said stings is because that's where the ad breaks originally went. Inserting them into a BBC sitcom is ridiculous, surely?

Rhona Cameron is tiny and rude in real life, by the way. But I like her.

<Rhona Cameron is tiny and rude in real life, by the way. But I like her.




I have no qualms about her height, just her inability to act.

>Why do so many British sitcoms nowadays have those music stings between scenes? It's supposed to make the show look American, but the only reason why *we* get said stings is because that's where the ad breaks originally went. Inserting them into a BBC sitcom is ridiculous, surely?

More and more programmes, factual and fictional, seem to be made this way, even on the Beeb, for precisely the reason you give - advert slots, either for the Americans or the British cable market. This current BBC2 series on the brain, (which is rather good but could lose at least five minutes of beautifully-shot slo-mo padding per show), for example, is clearly set out into five-minute chunks, presumably to allow it to be shown with ease on the Discovery Channel or similar.

I quite liked the short scenes with the black fade between them. It added pace.
I didn't like the rest of it. I know "it's too early to tell", but I said that about Many Shittered Thing. Rhona and Mel/Sue can't act or deliver comic lines. The "naturalistic" style of Big Train might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's better than the Mel/Sue "barely contained hysteria" school.
The opening scenes were quite promising, but the attempt at Seinfeldian plotting left me cold. Having her take flowers from a road-side was a good idea, but they threw it away. "Hey, it's that woman who took the flowers from the roadside tribute." (I've paraphrased that to make it a bit funnier). Hilarious. In the hands of the Seinfeld writers it would have led to half-an-hour of torment (probably for George).
Here's how they should have done it: Mel/Sue arrives at the hospital being chased by a mob, not understanding why. She finds Rhona and tells her about it, and it slowly dawns on her what happened. Potentially funny, whereas just showing us exactly what happened made the "punchline" too obvious.
However, I look forward to the later episodes if they have hired more writers. I think S.Lee is right about that - AS&J and Weekending are the only shows who have really tried that and I think that is not enough evidence to support the Corpses' position against teams. There is no reason why a team of writers can't be brought in to improve an under-realised format. The important thing is that there is a distinctive style rather than lowest common demoninator committee writing. Don't forget, On The Hour was the product of a team of writers. Kinda.

I think the "team" working on OTH had quite clearly divided areas that they worked on. e.g. Morris wrote his own stuff, Ianucci did the editing stuff, and so on.

Rhona is obviously awful and it should have been obvious to all concerned that it would be awful from day one. I heard her talking about it on Woman's Hour the other day - apparently it is exactly what her life is really like, and (surprise!) she made no mention of the fact that it had to be rewritten at the last moment when someone had the nerve to point out that she'd forgotten to make it amusing. She also explained the title - "I thought it should be called Rhona, because, well, it's not about anything else." Reminded me of audience discussion shows that are just vanity vehicles for the presenter, and usually have the title in huge handwriting hanging up at the back of studio, e.g. "Vanessa", "Esther."

"Trisha"

Yes, that too.

a better example would be Roseanne since she had a comedy show -- of her own name -- and went on to host a chat show. I can't see the same for this Rhonda lark

Ummm... Mel's character was different, but she played her the same as "Hello, I'm Mel Giedroyc, you may remember me form my partnering with a quizi-dyke". Especially the trailer where she talks about someone's head on someone else's body: that's *so* LL style of voice that it's... well.


I didn't like Rhona, it appears to be riding on the 'we've got a gay person as the main character' merit to bother with a snappy storyline or jokes that make me laugh (i laughed what, once?). i realise it was only the first, but surely they would make a special attempt to make the first a flagship. Maybe a little time to get into their stride...

I'm confused ... I thought the one on the show (Mel?) was supposed to be the ("Libertarian" - Ed) That would make sense, wouldn't it? Didn't someone say there was some sort of on-set affair?
Please, can someone explain which is which before I cry.

Sue has short hair dyed an odd colour. Therefore, she *must* be gay.

Both of them have categorically denied being gay, although Mel does enjoy a very close relationship with her guinea pig, Nigel Tuffnell.

I really wish I didn't know this stuff.

As a presenter ("Gaytime TV", a whole host of witching-hour ITV dross) I have always found Rhona Cameron the most irritating, smug, whiny-voiced caricature of a media tart since (insert own choice of least favourite female presenter).

Imagine my surprise when I saw her do stand-up and discover that she was very personable and bloody funny.

Imagine my crushing disappointment on watching her show when she managed to revert to her original persona. Judging by her stand-up, the show is a totally missed opportunity.

>The mysterious rise and rise of Dave Lamb... anyone?

And yes, I don't understand this man's ubiquity either. (He was the slightly ugly balding bloke you'd forgotten all about, in case you're not sure who he is.)

I missed it tonight. Was it (in the words of Bruce Forsyth) "so much better than last week's"?

I also missed Love Is A Many Splintered Thing, but that was intended.

Rhona was as bad as last week. I remember reading an interview were she said she was fed up of unrealostic sitcoms, and wanted to makes hers based on the mundane and the real things that had affected her (or words to that affect). So then, who here has gone to a bottle bank and met Omar Sherif? OR gone to a tailer, and acted in a father/Daughter relationship with him because you want a fuckin' Leather Jacket? No? Must just be Rhona then

A Many Splintered Thing, on the other hand.. i'm not saying it was the best thing ever, but i think it was probably the best episode of that show i've seen - i actually laughed at it. Perhaps it was the fact that Davies had been dumped by his mitress and wife - who became 'involved' with his agent. Maybe the old cliche is true: Sitcoms onl;y work if the lead character is a loser...

Mel Gedroiche (?) was appalling. I think it was a case of comedian overload and not enough acting. They are trying do something which Ellen already does well but with the twist of it being shit to the point of qualifying as a true 'British sitcom.'

Does Rhona have any timing? She seemed to rush through her lines/gags like there was no tomorrow. Whoosh, there goes the setup. Zoom there went the punchline.
Huh, went me. She did seem to be the weakest part of the show.
Mel had a shakey start but got better once the character was placed in a ridiculous situation that required mucho hamming up.
Bar Bloke (don't know his character name, don't actually remember any of the characters' names) played his 'standard male dullard', required in all female based sitcoms these days, pretty well.
Can't be arsed to go through the others, sufficed to say that the scenes with the tailor were the best parts of the episode. Rhona should take line delivery lessons off him.

MM

They seemed to be aiming for the mundane-situation-escalating-into-insanity territory of Seinfeld. But it didn't work.
The Omar Sharif thing was too silly to fit in with the semi-realistic tailor bit. Maybe if they established that Mel/Sue/Ellen has wacky adventures and Rhona has mundane ones?
Dave Lamb was pretty good.
Maybe Rhona will get more confident with this kind of material - her timing wasn't quite as bad this week.
It's a bit unfair that she has been given a sitcom based on being a "name" and not on the quality of the material or her acting ability.
Also, I once saw her on that Ruby Wax dinner talk show thing. She asked some mountaineer: "While you were up there [in 30 below temperatures, on some hill somewhere] ... did you masturbate?". Dappy bint.

I found a copy of the Daily Mail in the pub the other night and it had a rave review of Rhona in it. Maybe it's destined for great things.

>Rhona is obviously awful and it should have been obvious to all concerned that it would be awful from day one. I heard her talking about it on Woman's Hour the other day - apparently it is exactly what her life is really like, and (surprise!) she made no mention of the fact that it had to be rewritten at the last moment when someone had the nerve to point out that she'd forgotten to make it amusing.

Okay, let's clear up a little bit of a misunderstanding, shall we? Here are some facts:

-- 'Rhona' took four years from first draft to first broadcast. It is almost entirely written by Rhona Cameron and Linda Gibson.

-- Almost ever 'incident' in the entire series, and this should be taken as being different from 'plot', really happened to one of them at some point in their lives. Yes, Linda Gibson really did sit opposite someone on the tube who ate a baked potato with jam and followed by another baked potato with jam.

-- When the first two episodes were recorded in the studio they didn't feel quite tight enough. As a result some extra writers were brought in to, ostensibly, 'punch up' the scripts of the other four. In reality their function was threefold:

1. To bring a fresh set of brains to the project unencumbered by four years of development, who could tighten scenes, brainstorm better lines (particularly out of scenes) and add the occasional spur of the moment joke that hadn't occured to anyone else.

2. To use Rhona and Linda's natural desire to be proprietary about their own material to propel them into working harder on it themselves before the other writers came in each week.

3. To watch rehearsals and actually laugh at the jokes that everyone else had seen over and over again.

-- IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT TELEVISION PROGRAMMES #251: Programmes are not necessarily broadcast in the order they were originally recorded or written. The first episode was actually recorded fifth, the second, third. Possibly the only episode to go out in the place it was intended will be the last.

-- IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT TELEVISION PROGRAMMES #104: Not all the material in an episode is filmed at the same time. The first episode contained a large amount of location shooting done well in advance, in fact before the first ever studio recording, and by the time Rhona, Linda and the production team decided it needed a little more buffing up, those could not be changed, constricting changes to the rest of the script in the process.

-- Rhona is the most succesful attempt yet at trying to bring some of the style and ethos of American sitcom to the farce-ridden British format. Yes, there haven't been many others -- Coupling, and something on a few years ago that had Tony Gardiner in it called Grown Ups both made a variably good stab at Friends -- but that shouldn't really inform one's opinion.

These are the facts. How do I know? Because I was there. And I think it's important not to have half-truths wafting around waiting to become gospel.

Love the show or hate it, it is entirely Rhona Cameron's and Linda Gibson's, and they worked damn hard to make something of their first chance to get what they wanted on television.

Just thought you should know.

Um... you seem to be vaguely implying that what I said in that paragraph was untrue. But then the rest of what you said seemed to support what I said very well. Plus it is definitely and obviously awful, as was "Coupling," and the self-concious aping of some suposed "American" style is like being force fed hamburgers by someone from Hampstead who has just discovered McDonalds.

Okay, perhaps I should refine myself a little. I chose to preface my post with a paragraph of yours because it intrigued me, but I'm also attempting to counter some of the assumptions made in other people's posts about the possible 'true to life' nature of entire plot strands in episodes (obvious nonsense) and the implication that people had to be brought in to 'make Rhona funny' after she couldn't deliver herself.

Of course, you dislike the show, that's obvious; but I never suggested you should like it. All I'm doing is rectifying a few mistakes in peoples impressions of the process the show went through. Whether you like it or not is not one of those.

And as for your facile, pompous, and frankly blinkered neo-reactionary comment on the importation of American culture (America=McDonalds=trash. Brilliantly incisive.) I have but one response:

Name a British sitcom made in the last ten years that's anywhere near as good as Seinfeld or Larry Sanders. Or even (braces himself) Friends, for that matter.

On the other hand, if you didn't like any of those I apologise. I just think you're wrong.

My point about the 'realistic' plot was based on something Rhona herself said in a interview - i may her paraphrased what she said, but that's because i don't have the interview to hand. In the interview Rhona had siad she was sick of unrealistic British sitcoms, and hers would focus on Realistic situations. What is the plot of not the main focus of a tv show such as Rhona - a show cannot be built on incidences alone - they have to be connected.

Anyway, if you are right One Day Soon, it still doesn't matter - the program is a poor imitation of American sitcoms - not matter how close to the 'ethos' of such shows it is - it is poinless in that respect because it does not equal or come near to the quality of the American shows it appears to be aping. I'd rather have a 'farce-ridden British sicom' then a second rate Seinfeld lite, or whatever the fuck it is.

Having said that, i enjoyed reading your points - you seem to actually know about the industry - do you work for it? If so, i'll bow down to your knowledge - for now.

PJ, thank you.

>And as for your facile, pompous, and frankly blinkered neo-reactionary comment on the importation of American culture (America=McDonalds=trash. Brilliantly incisive.)

Balls. I'm sure it's hardly worth mentioning that I not only love the Simpsons, I love McDonalds as well. Read the sodding paragraph again, you "blinkered, pompous" anus! (What could be more pompous than the phrase "neo-reactionary"?)

What if, say, The Body Shop suddenly decided to get into the fast food business, and decked out their shops with pictures of baseball players and trained all their staff to say, "How y'all doin' today?" and "Have a nice day! We're American you know!"

Or how about Russian pop music - endearingly hopeless, randomly and tastelessly combining together Elvis and the Human League. Outsiders doing their very best to fit in and missing the boat by miles. That's "Rhona"!

The badness of "Rhona" is partly derived from the fact that it is an obvious and terrible immitation of the much better originals produced in the US. Even "Ellen," which was average by US standards, effortlessly soaks "Rhona" in lesbian piss.

I will say one thing for "Rhona" - I actually enjoy watching it because I like feeling my skin crawl with embarrassment sometimes.

And the title music, by the way. Is it ironic? Or are they actually hoping to sell this back to the Us and thought they should finish the job by making the poor girl warble a jaunty sitcom tune in a Scottish/American accent?

"When the cidy is your hoom" indeed.

Can I just say that I haven't found anything on the Internet this fun for ages?

No, I'm sorry, there isn't time.

>The first episode was actually recorded fifth

So I hate to be the one to break it to everyone, but that means surely it should have been one of the better ones, as the 'actors' should have warmed to their roles.

Look out for the spectacular first recording with the AHaart jeans, or whatever the hell it was.

And incidentally, whilst I personally can't bear US sitcoms, I accept that many people do. That does not mean to say that it is good to emulate their styles. WHY are people so desperate to be like the US? Surely they have delevoped their methods to accompany the society and culture etc surrounding them, so, not being the US, why do people seem to assume they would work well over here? The US have mainly failed at recreating 'our' shows - Men Behaving Badly, Fawlty Towers (Paine?! Oh, purlease!) among many others, and similarly we've been just as unsucessful with versions of Married with Children (some god awful thing with Russ Abbott and Susan Kyd) etc. I realise Rhona is not quite of this catagory, being an 'original' piece, but I just feel they prove how there is a reason behind why countries differ in their approach to sitcom.

Bits I've seen seem to be word for word Rhona C's stand up routine. It's two fragmented I feel and requires more of a linear quality to hold people's attention. And whoever it was who made the comment earlier about throwing away the roadside flowers joke - I couldn't agree more. When I saw it I didn't even HEAR the punchline as the woman spoke over some audience laughter or something, which made the whole joke redundant - but as it was so PAINFULLY obvious from the second Mel/Lisa spotted some much nicer flowers and went to get some, it didn't need to be pointed out anyway. In fact, by making it so predicatable, it left the audience knowing what would happen and waiting to find out how the reveal would occur and what hilarity would ensue. As it was, there was nothing. No reveal, or hilarity.

I don't think I would admit to 4 years worth of work on that.

And those stings between scenes. If the coldness and the acting and the writing and the lack of comedy isn't enough to make you switch off, those bloody stings will!

Hmm, I wonder whether South Africa decided to buy the programme when it was being touted in front of them a month ago? Perhaps I should have put a message in their publicity bump.
Warning: May cause drowsiness

>Hmm, I wonder whether South Africa decided to buy the programme when it was being touted in front of them a month ago? Perhaps I should have put a message in their publicity bump.

So you have access to South Africa's publicity bump?

And what the fuck is that?

It's a well known abbreviation for bumf or bumph or however that is supposed to be written. Not a very good one though, as it doesn't really shorten the original word...
OK, it was a mistake. Forgive me!

I don't see how the facts that most of the incidents were based on real life happenings or that it took 4 years to make are relevant. The important thing is that the attempt to reproduce the ethos of American sitcom (not, in itself, a bad thing) didn't work. The acting was bad and the episodes didn't hang together. Maybe they should have MADE FUNNY THINGS UP instead of putting their lives down on paper.
If the first 2 were actually shot later, all that means is there is no hope of improvement.

Rhona doing basic stand up would have been better. Instead of trying to adopt a format which rarely works.

And the Fitz was just bizzarre.

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Hmmm...lasts night's episode was surprisingly good in places. I just kept wishing they'd spino ff the script and ad lib, but still..."it's strange we both like fish.."

Lesbian humour is marvelous.

I once shagged a lesbian

Darren irrespective of your leisurely fornication your succint and pleasurable name 'Darren D' never fails to put a smile on my face.