What did you folks think of "How Do You Want Me"? I thought it was good, underrated and not promoted by BBC2 at all. Black Books was enjoyable, especially the episode about trying not to drink the papal wine. Bill Bailey and Dylan Moran work well together. Mind you, so do Bill Bailey and Simon Pegg... OW! Who threw that? I did see Dylan Moran do a stand up act in Edinburgh a few years ago and he died on his feet .

I found Black Books pretty delightful, it had a different struucture every episode, had interesting things going on, *jokes!*, and Omid Djalli at one point.

"They'd have to be the kind of pencils where you draw the cow, and the cow comes to life..."

The small bits of HDYWM I did manage to catch (thanks to the Beeb's disinterest in it) were promising - particularly Moran losing it in the school Gym... didnt like the way it was shot though - reeked of The Savages style romsitcom mimsy, which didn't sit at all well with the script.

Black Books, I like. Only saw a couple of eps, but the one with Bill Bailey freaking out after a night of espresso and Sweeney videos was priceless.

>didnt like the way it was shot though - reeked of The Savages style romsitcom mimsy, which didn't sit at all well with the script.

Oh, I don't know. I thought the way it was shot made you think it was one thing, the way it was written something else. Peter Serafinowicz (sp?) was excellent, too.

Yup, Bill Bailey acting all Sweeney like was excellent.

>Yup, Bill Bailey acting all Sweeney like was excellent.

"You have...beautiful eyes...."

Subbuteo player in hair is one of my favourite comedy moments of the past decade.

I once saw someone with a script for "Perfect World" series 2, on a train from Guildford to Waterloo. He wasn't laughing.

"You know what you are? You're a beard with an idiot hanging off it."

You see? Good comedy becomes classic comedy when everyone's had a chance to see it twice. God bless video recorders and the human meomory.

Black Books has moments just as quotable as the best of Ted / Blackadder... take your pick.

Familiarity breeds warmth.

The bit I saw looks superb... i'm completely misquoting, i'm sure, but it goes a bit like this -

BERNARD - You're always making up diseases... what was that one about the fudge cake?
MANNY - Dave's Syndrome..
BERNARD (triumphant) - AHA! It's always surnames, actually!
MANNY (even more triumphant) - WRONG! Because the police got to him before they could find out his surname.

or summat like that... anyway, it's funnneee. Or is it all a hoax? etc.

I think its easily the best comedy of the millennium so far (not My Hero, RT readers). Any ideas when the new series will start?

blurb on the front said rehersals were happening late september, if thats any help...

has/is the first series been/being repeated on E4, by the way? I'd really like to get it on tape...

I liked Black Books. Apart from the fact that it was well-written and well-structured, it was also refreshing in the sense that it avoided the general trend towards let's-make-it-reflect-life-as-closely-as-possible-and-create-characters-where-people-will-say-ah-well-we-all-know-one-of-those etc, and instead allowed itself to revel in silliness and unrealisticness.

RIGHT NOW IM EATING SCRAMBLED EGGS, WITH A COMB, FROM A SHOE!

> RIGHT NOW IM EATING SCRAMBLED EGGS, WITH A COMB, FROM A SHOE!

Well, I'm eating Bran Flakes from a bowl, with an actual spoon! Beat that.

I don't understand how Simon Nye could have written both Beast and How Do You Want Me. They're both so different. HDYWM is all measured and atmospheric, with no concessions towards set-up gags. Beast has jokes so screamingly obvious you can see them coming yesterday. That episode in the first series for instance, when a member of staff keeps buying phallic paintings without realising. That was dreadful.

I know they're both different genres, one a comedy/drama, the other a sitcom. But still!

Surely that's the genius of the man? Pleasing different people at different times? And if you want to sneer at my use of the word genius, please, feel free.

>Surely that's the genius of the man? Pleasing different people at different times? And if you want to sneer at my use of the word genius, please, feel free.

I've no problem with him writing for different audiences (Men Behaving Badly is patently not written with fans of slow moving character drama in mind, but there's nothing wrong with that). It's the difference in quality that puzzles me. Even MBB at it's lowest never quite stooped to doing a "Naked Man Riding a Pig" gag like on Beast. That series comes across like a first draft of something he did in his lunch hour. I have a theory that he just does easy things like Is It Legal and Beast to earn money while he works on pet projects like How Do You Want Me. I hope that's the case, anyway.

"I found a place where I wasn't contractually obliged to sleep with foreign businessmen...and that's not nothing, that's Something!"