Distraught at their abscense, but would have ruined their dazzling careers

Jon and Andy were brought in at a very late stage to script edit that pilot, because it was shit. And most of indeed was. There were about 3 funny moments in it. Worse than a show that is on late night three times a week? God yes.

Personally speaking, I find the title fucking annoying. Oh well.

I noticed the similarity too. "Wow", I thought, that TV transfer was made quickly. Then I reread.

Despite the crap response to a series of this, the Way It Is had a pilot at the same time and have had no news on their situation at all.

Well the title was originally going to be "Free Range World". And "Modern Life Is Rubbish" was put forward too, with the intent of using the Blur song as the theme tune. Luckily that was rejected before they realised Modern Life Is Rubbish was a Blur album and no such song actually exists.

I'm sure Blur would have knocked one up for them.

All you need to do to perfectly capture their sound at the time of that album is to do a cover of "Roll Out The Barrel".

Roll out the Barrel's more like Parklife than Modern Life

To be honest I don't think the title music is going to be the biggest problem with this show.

I dunno, everyone panicking about this, when you only have to watch BBC Wales' "Lucky Bag" to witness the true shitefest of horror that modern sketch shows have decended into in the 21st century...

Discuss. Discus? Javelin?

Yeah that show is awful, thats what I don't like nearly all modern comedy, Big Train is a prime example, but was probably the best you can do with that kind of stuff. Like a lucky bag sketch is two gangster having a gun fight in a back alley then suddenly hear an ice cream van chime and drop their guns running off shouting ICE CREAM! Very cliche wanna be subversive modern rubbish.

I thought those Ice Cream sketches were in that rather funny Scottish sketch show that was on recently. Damned if I can remember the title. Anyone?

Big Train was good. And I hear there is to be another series.

>Big Train was good. And I hear there is to be another series.

Yay! That should keep the arguments going for another couple of years...

>I thought those Ice Cream sketches were in that rather funny Scottish sketch show that was on recently. Damned if I can remember the title. Anyone?
>
Chewin' The Fat. I only saw the odd one- like Naked Video it was incredibly patchy- veering from abysmal to funny and back in the space of two minutes. There was a good sketch about National Gallery on Tour, whereby a couple of paintings were hung in the back of a transit which pulls up on a Glasgow housing estate... can't remember the punchline though... sorry...

Big Train had the potential to be good. The cast was great (with the exception of Simon "Guest House Pardiso" Pegg) so it must have been Graham Linehan's writing that was the problem. But Black Books is so good. It doesn't make sense! It hurts my brain!

Why don't you like Simon Pegg, Squidy? Just interested.

He just annoys me. I've seen a lot of him (Big Train, I'm Alan Partridge, Hippies, GHP, Spaced) and he always plays that same 'cheery, student-y, kinda attractive, idiotic yet likable scruff with a heart of gold and a streetwise attidude' character, and it pisses me off.
Look at, say, Kevin Eldon or Mark Heap. They are much better actors and play a wider variety of parts than Simon Pegg, yet are widely ignored by the casual viewer who would rather watch middle-of-the-road sitcoms like Hippies and Coupling than more (I hate the word) 'alternative' (but, more importantly, funnier) programmes like People Like Us or Jam. Look at The League of Gentlemen. It started off as a dark, original and deeply unsettling sitcom/sketch show for the late-night BBC2 audience. Now it's turned into a pleb-pleasing, all mugging, Red Dwarf-esque 'cult comedy', ditching jokes in favour of "eerrr, that was SICK!" reaction-making scenes. Maybe one series shows ARE the best, Brass Eye, Knowing Me Knowing You, etc.

I seem to have strayed from the point a little, but I think I see Simon Pegg as a metaphor (pronounced "metaffer") for all the bad, 'non-alternative', 11O'CS-style comedy on our screens at the moment.


To be fair, though, I've never seen him live, I've never seen his stand-up act (if he had one), and he was kinda good in Guest House Paradiso (however, the fake vomit was 'kinda good' in Guest House Paradiso).


Over-rated! That's the word I was searching for for the last five minutes. Simon Pegg is over-rated, whilst others more worthy are not. Spaced was all whip-pans and TV references rather than situation and jokes.

I can't think of anything else to say. I'm going to bed. Goodnight.

Just thought I should tell you that my right index finger is literally BLEEDING through over-use of the mouse and keyboard.

I'm going to get a plaster and go to bed.
See you tomorrow.

Nice posts Squidy, I completely agree, that pretty much encapsulates Big Train as well. It was just too 'late 90's scruffy student karrazzy) stuff, it wasn't that bad, but it could of been so much more. All comedy shows are being affected by this new culture, the Zoe Ball/Jamie Theakston culture - vacous talentless people on every bloody TV program wearing their nice brand new clothes and a nice auto-cue full of 'WHATZUP!' jokes and 'popular' subjects to talk about such as BIG BROTHER. It seems we get one of these comedy/talent recessions every 20 years or so, and then somethinb BIG comes along and takes us by surprise, I mean Python exploded onto the scene when there wasn't much good comedy going on, except maybe Milligan's Q which only started a few weeks before. I just hope we're going to get our own Python now, then all this waiting watching wall to wall shite on TV might just be worth it.

"I think I see Simon Pegg as a metaphor"

I think you mean you see him as symptomatic.

I probably would if I knew what it means.

I think there's some real problems with some of the ideas expressed on this thread. Firstly, I don't think one can lump Pegg in with the 'mainstreaming' (hate that word, but can't think of a better one) of things like LoG. Kevin Eldon certainly gets more praise than Pegg on this thread, and outside of the internet community, the 'plebs' (another horrible word) probably have never heard of either. Yes 'Spaced' had a lot of references, but so does The Simpsons - if done well they can be very, very funny. I don't see why comedy has to be universal. And there are some cracking visual gags - esp. in the clubbing episode. But I digress...

The other thing... Steven, I actually agree with you about the state of modern TV, but we need to be careful about the idea that Python just happened out of nothing - there was a lot of good comedy in the 60s (Establishment, TW3, Frost Report, Pete n' Dud, At Last the 1948 Show, etc. ) which fed into Python. Similarly I think there are bits and pieces around now (some, not all, of Big Train was funny; Black Books is v. good) which might lead who knows where.

Yes Al, but most of the programmes you mentioned were actually written by the Python team, as well as that kids show they did 'A brief history of Britain'. And the beyond the fringe team were good, but nowhere near as good as the pythons. I think obviously the Goons was the first real comedy program, I don't like it myself, I have no idea why, but I can see where everything that followed stemmed from it. But that wasn't really that many good comedy shows in the 50's-60's, I mean the count is a lot higher in the last 20 years, but of recent years the comedy quality has dropped such a massive amount it's disgusting.

>Yes Al, but most of the programmes you mentioned were actually written by the Python team, as well as that kids show they did 'A brief history of Britain'.

The kids show was callled 'Do Not Adjust Your Set' - and of the shows I mentioned only 'At Last the 1948 Show' was chiefly future Python writers. (Although Cleese was in 'The Frost Report'.) A really good book on all this is 'From Fringe to Flying Circus' - I can't remember the author's name, and I don't know if it's still in print, but it's really worth reading.

Palin and Jones were also drafted for the Frost Report, and they were all damnded to write sketches which all culminated on the punchline. The disdain the writers got from this process was the prelude to the zany Python sketches, which tried at best to avoid punchlines, ending on absurdity, or a Gilliam animation to get out.

Oops, yeah Do Not Adjust your sets and A brief history of Britain were both kids shows the Pythons worked on. Both long lost and forgotton now, like most of the 1948 show, shame.

'From Fringe To Flying Circus' is by Roger Wilmut, and there was a copy of it in my school library. Only looking back does that seem remotely odd... It's long out of print now, but I'm forever seeing copies turning up in second-hand bookshops. It's worth seeking out.