I thought it was fab! Made me laugh out loud several times.

Bits like the shark falling through the roof were perhaps a little contrived (straight out of The Young Ones: "I'll just place this cream cake precariously on this pile of books..."), but the conspiracy stuff was fun, well staged and well performed.

I second Martin's motion. Overall, I really liked it. Mind you, I've just got off a plane, so I could be coming down with a judgment-impairing virus. I'll watch it again in a few days to make sure.

Oh thank God! I thought I was going to turn out to be the only one!

What a perfect day.

S'not bad, although he is reminding me more and more of Alexei Sayle...no idea why!

I dunno... he's not as far out as Alexei Sayle, is he? I mean, Alexei Sayle really gets into the surrealism but Armando Ianucci is always quite grounded in reality.

I was really scared at the start it was going to be another handheld fly-on-wall type comedies. Phew.

BTW did anybody go to late nite comedy at the Tron in Edinburgh this August? Well the compare there so bases his persona on Armando Ianucci. Just thought i'd say that for no reason what so ever!

I'm looking forward to the rest of the shows now. What has AI been doing for the last x years anyway?

walking about, social incompetence, pies... you're spot on there. alexie sayle is a good thing.

i dispair. this is the producer of on the hour and KMKY, i expected so much more. whats this tosh with joe from adam and joe? thats rubbish as well.

I thought it was okay. After a three year absence it was an interesting tactic to return with quite a subdued piece of work. I'll certainly stick with it, although I fear that it doesn't have enough steam or strength in structure to last eight weeks.

The pacing is fair enough, so long as the material doesn't sag. There were several patches which did this. The IRA sketch went on for a week, when with a little more economy it would have worked as a 20 second quickie. Having seen one of the later "we're in telly" sketches I can't imagine the joke lasting all that well across the series. It's a one sketch idea. The reliance on name-calling grew weary too.

As to the sketches, the sheer size of the cast and their lack of presence caused problems too. It felt like a Glam Metal Detectives effort in terms of over-rehearsed renditions of perfectly good ideas. As was pointed out with the preview tape that did the rounds not so long ago, there was a definite sense that you were seeing the same people again and again, all delivering well meaning but transparent performances. Obviously this happens with any sketch show, but there is a point in a succesful sketch show that part of your brain suspends this and sees the multitude of *characters* instead.

The only sketch which really came together was the dinner party sketch which flowed nicely, built in tension rather effectively and had a number of performers who hadn't been over-exposed earlier in the show, however much they lack presence. Armando's self-cursing when he cocked up a joke was the most convincing moment. In fact, with AI being the strongest performer it seemed odd that he was so underplayed, only serving to highlight the lacking elsewhere.

I don't mind Iannucci following on from his 'Facts and Fancies' tendency of basing his work around the little conspiracies of life. It's quite a traditional area of comedy in that sense, and whereas there were elements of "let's-do-a-Jam" about it, these rarely became overbearing and stuck to an accessible path, rather than being obtuse for the sake of it as I feared.

I'm not sure what I'll make of it in eight weeks, but it was an engaging enough half-hour. The approach quite appeals to me, so we'll see.

Very enjoyable. Nice to see Iannucci dispel the myth raised around him as the shadowy all-producing, all-writing puppeteer. Besides his anchoring of Armistice, I think this is his first central role in a series. His performance was enticing; a cross between Paul McGann and Woody Allen on magic mushrooms.

In interviews Iannucci has been describing the show as a mixture of 'weirdness' (ooh .. that'll be the dark stuff then) and dealing with his personal phobias. For all the Corpses' condescending criticism, I agree with them about the needless black humour so evident in recent shows. The word 'weirdness' immediately brings this to mind. What's more, by intending to assume a personna ridden with phobias, fears and misconceptions, Iannucci threatened to become a hapless sitcom character - the bastard lovechild of Mr Bean and Lee Evans if you will.

However, neither of these fears were proved true. He carefully avoided drawing our sympathy as the witless protagonist with a hefty dose of surrealism (not simply dark monged tunes and little girls saying 'fuck'), mixed with a Mamet inspired sense of miscommunication. At times this didn't work of course; the cultured football supporter making the joke about foreign cuisine for example - simply a case of look at him, look how different he is. Don't you understand? HE'S TRYING TO FIT IN! The dinner party sketch too; hardly a step above Mark Williams in the Fast Show getting his coat.

There were elements of carelessness in the episode. The words of contempt; knobtree, cockwitch etc, was weak Morris, and echoed the equally passive wordplay in the BES when we were gifted an a array of MorrisSpeak paedophile slang. It smacks a little of laziness and panders to the 15 yr old late night audience. But these are not so much faults as they are glitches; lapses we must be confident are remedied in later episodes - it is the only the first show, after all.

Personally, I found many a laugh. The steak pies, the "please help me, help, please" to the mechanic. The ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome joke was particularly excellent. Moreover, I think the concept of the show, its structure, timing and tone were all well judged. There was a strong sense of character and continuity running through what is essentially a sketch show. I'd heartily disagree should the Corpses embark on a grisly dissection of the show a la IAP - there was no conflict between the style and the content.

Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Paul McGann and Woody Allen on magic mushrooms.

someone already mentioned the lee and herring bit about this in another thread, so i'll just smile knowingly.

I thought this was a lovely show. As I was watching, I thought 'This reminds me of 70s Woody Allen and late 80s Alexei Sayle. I'll go onto the SOTCAA forum and I'll be the only one who says this, won't I be clever'.

Only to find everyone has already said this. It's a conspriacy...hang on...there are wires connected to everyone's heads...

>Personally, I found many a laugh. The steak pies, the "please help me, help, please" to the mechanic. The ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome joke was particularly excellent.

The ME joke seemed pretty lame to me. Nothing that hasn't been done before.

I liked the use of the words "fanny" and "jobbie" in the same sketch. Ace.

Add this to his cv along with friday night,
IM ALAN PARTRIDGE and tdtd and old armandos done rather well.
Aprt from that overated russell harty pisstake he did for tv/radio

I have to praise the use of 'jobbie', too. Severely neglected, are jobbies. 'Wazzock', in its early-eighties heyday, was also a cuss to hold its own. I must confess that I wasn't paying full attention as I found myself examining all the locations to see if I recognised any of them - a pox on those location managers who always use the western fringes of London to test my powers of observation. Bring back Screen Test!

>Add this to his cv along with friday night,
>IM ALAN PARTRIDGE and tdtd and old armandos done rather well.
>Aprt from that overated russell harty pisstake he did for tv/radio

I really liked what I saw of it (my sodding girlfriend rang half way thru, even tho I told her I was going to watch it). I'll mention it again, but AI's own stuff is like this Facts & Fancies is noodley stuff, he's talking then you realise he's gone off on one.
His argument that we are better than animals "I don't see foxes writing operas, salmon you maybe able to swim back to the same pool, but you can't build anything like the Taj Mahal"

I find his stuff entertaining all the way thru, with a few outloud laughs, as opposed to Chris "Sacred Cow" Morris, which is weird all the way thru with a few outloud laughs

I look forward to the next episode, and I'm not answering the fucking phone next time!

Also I liked five penny twanger.
Just thought I'd add that, I also related on the kicking the ball thing, I'm so shit at that I avoid parks and most common ground where kids maybe.

>His argument that we are better than animals "I don't see foxes writing operas, salmon you maybe able to swim back to the same pool, but you can't build anything like the Taj Mahal"

this sounds familiar, lee and herring specifically, or indeed derek and clive.

>>His argument that we are better than animals "I don't see foxes writing operas, salmon you maybe able to swim back to the same pool, but you can't build anything like the Taj Mahal"
>
>this sounds familiar, lee and herring specifically, or indeed derek and clive.

Yes Yes.
And lee and herring also said "funny things"
about "stuff" as well.
God what a rip off twat eh?

>And lee and herring also said "funny things"
>about "stuff" as well.

there was a time when lots of british comedians said funny things about stuff. unfortunatly that time was long ago, 200*
has apparently been declared the decade of no laughs.

>wasn't paying full attention as I found myself examining all the locations to see if I recognised any of them - a pox on those location managers who always use the western fringes of London to test my powers of observation. Bring back Screen Test!
>

Lots of Ealing, particularly South Ealing Road, to be spotted, including the Sitar, my curry house of choice when I'm in that neck of the woods.

I thought it was a delightful little programme. A more verbal cousin of the Strange World of Gurney Slade. However, the suggestion that there are elements of an Alexei Sayle/Woody Allen nexus isn't something I'll argue with. If we're trading favourite moments, then I have to nominate the "too gay" clothing that AI is wearing when he runs out of the twat garage. Derby County came a close second, though.

The 'kicking the ball in' and 'car mechanic' bits were excellent, if based on rather easy observations. A bit hit and miss but certainly no disaster. I reckon it may improve as the series develops and the format becomes more familiar.

I'm at an advantage because I've seen the entire series already and I'm glad it hasn't been slaughtered.
I thought it was great. I loved the 'watching football in the pub' bit.
Are you watching Chris Morris? It is possible to be funny and original without being blatantly shocking for the sake of it (the special only)

I liked it. I felt it was refreshingly different to the current 'trends' dominating comedy-by-numbers over in certain channels' 'Comedy Zones', and very much in the 'wordy' style that I feel few people are bothering with any more (and indeed, the exact sort of thing that I felt Chris Morris should have done post-"jam" instead of that hideous unamusing mess of a 'special').

The football bit in particular was well planned, well constructed and well performed, and the dinner party sequence was a strong affirmation that it *is* still possible to do slow-building jokes that work towards being funny rather than being pointlessly immediate and 'in yer face' when there's no actual need to be doing so.

Overall, it reminded me in a favourable sense of his ancient Radio 4 series "In Excess", which can't be a bad thing...

I was glad not to be disappointed, but I'm not aching to tell everyone to watch it next week.

Stylistically, I think Armando has come up trumps. He's taken the better elements of 'dark' and 'comedy realism' but (get this) put in some jokes! A nice marriage of the old and the new - and a vindication of his skills as a producer.

Great to see a show with some structure, as well. He tied all the sketches together in the last minute or two - something that I think Chris Morris has never mastered. It gave the programme the air of being a complete product, and not just an aimless grab bag of millennium angst, zeitgeist-surfing sketches.

On the negative side, some of the scenes were stretched beyond their comedic potential. In particular I felt the football conversation dragged. And the final punchine (on the bus) was a bit weak.

One question. How tall is Iannuci? He seemed to be of average height in Armistice, but most of the actors last night towered over him. It couldn't have been a device to make the rest of the world seem intimidating, could it?

And the final shot looked like Ealing Broadway before the bomb.

> How tall is Iannuci? He seemed to be of average height in Armistice

This was an illusion created by the fact that his co-presenters were tiny as well.

>there was a time when lots of british comedians said funny things about stuff. unfortunatly that time was long ago, 200*
>has apparently been declared the decade of no laughs.


Nice quote from Billy Connolly the other day: A lot of comedians these days seem to think that being funny is beneath them."

Th Armando show rocked, specifically because it wasn't ashamed to go for the laugh.

I read that Iannucci deliberately didn't use his regular collaborators in acting roles as he didn't want the audience to be distracted by their presence.

Didn't stop me and my girlfriend spending the whole programme arguing over whether that woman was Hudson or Pepperdine though did it? Or me shouting out: "It's that gangster-type bloke from KMKY" and "There he is again".

Overall it was an accomplished show but perhaps Iannucci should remember that there's a reason he collaborated with these people in the past - they are talented comedy actors who know how to perform this sort of stuff.

>I read that Iannucci deliberately didn't use his regular collaborators in acting roles as he didn't want the audience to be distracted by their presence.

Yeah, the choice of collaborators interested me. The guy who played the adult Adrian Mole was really good as the pie-reader, and the band member/Nina Vanier from KMKY gave a typically solid performance. Nothing special, mind.

>Yeah, the choice of collaborators interested me. The guy who played the adult Adrian Mole was really good as the pie-reader, and the band member/Nina Vanier from KMKY gave a typically solid performance. Nothing special, mind.


I thought he looked a bit like Sacha Baron-Cohen.

Hey....wait a minute.....this whole thread....its made of PAPER!

HDespite the fact that he gives the impression of being a strikingly tall man, he's tiny. When he did that tour a few years ago he used to pre-empt what everyone in the audience was thinking by drawing attention to the fact that he is surprisingly short, and making a inviting the audience to gauge his actual height by claiming that the barstool, the only onstage prop, was in fact only one foot tall.

Did anyone else see him on that live tour? I enjoyed it very much.

>> How tall is Iannuci? He seemed to be of average height in Armistice
>
>This was an illusion created by the fact that his co-presenters were tiny as well.

>
>Did anyone else see him on that live tour? I enjoyed it very much.
>
>>> How tall is Iannuci? He seemed to be of average height in Armistice
>>
>>This was an illusion created by the fact that his co-presenters were tiny as well.
>
I didn't see him, but he played my home town, and was booed off stage cos he wanted to talk about dull things like politics & people, & not "Hilarious" stuff like Spangles etc. Fuckin Plebs

Was it just me, or did Jesus' voice sound uncannily like that of Stewart Lee?

I saw Armando live at, of all places, the Norwich Puppet Theatre. He did the 'stool' gag there as well, and also a splendid impression of Queen's Park FC (he seems to have a love/hate thing with football).

Interestingly, he refused to answer any questions about Chris Morris.

There was one point where I thought Jesus was Simon Pegg. But not vice versa. Or I bloody hope not anyway.

>There was one point where I thought Jesus was Simon Pegg. But not vice versa. Or I bloody hope not anyway.

I'd make Simon Pegg bleed, ho, yes.

This is odd, because I thought the voice of Jesus was Peter Baynham.

And SL, SP, and PB sound nothing like each other.

It says so in my Fray Bentos.

Peter Baynham and Simon Pegg have almost identical voices. FACT.

This is true. I spent literally minutes trying to ascertain if it was Pegg or Baynham doing the voice-over for that tomato sauce advert.

For those of you playing at home: It was Pegg.

Glad to see that the new Armando show was good, as the trailer (the Elvis/Britney impersonator) gave the impression is was going to be a great big messy plop of pop culture referencing. Any idea why that bit was used for the trailer, as it was one of the weaker segments by far? Was it purely there to coax the mythical 'plebs' into watching it? Or what?

What got me was how instantly recognizable that trailer was as something from Armando Ianucci...

>Peter Baynham and Simon Pegg have almost identical voices. FACT.<

When did Simon Pegg become welsh? has he always been welsh and I'm crap with accents?

>Peter Baynham and Simon Pegg have almost identical voices. FACT.

Peter Baynam? _Nick Frost_ and Simon Pegg, maybe...

Who does the voice over for Coogan's 'Man Who Thinks He's It' tour then? It sounds just like Baynham, but since Pegg actually stars in the video I would assume it was him, but it sounds very much like Baynham so it's confusing.

TMWTHT voiceover is Pegg.

I thought it was ace.

The dear old Guardian guide described the show as "Second-rate Alexei Sayle" on Saturday, you know.
Hey, dyou remember when Armie used to do a column for The Guardian, and they used to print an accompanying photograph, in which he looked more handsome than he actually was? Maybe Chris Morris could have interviewed him about it....

CM (SLIGHTLY PLUMMY VOICE): ....so, the remarkable thing about this photograph is that you look much more handsome than you actually are. Was this deliberate?

AI : Well, actually, er...um...Here, hold on, why am I acting all bemused? I mean,I actually know you, dont I?

CM: oH, Shit, thats right.

AI: Should we just go to the pub, then?

CM: Yeah, alright.

(THEY BOTH GO TO THE PUB)