With BBC3 due to become an online channel in 2015 I guess the BBC needs to get viewers used to going to iPlayer to watch original content online and not just last night’s episode of EastEnders. To nudge comedy fans in the right direction the Beeb invited a group of famous comedians to make a programme that they had always dreamt about making. The resulting six comedy shorts are pretty mixed, but the one thing one can definitely say about them is that they are very varied in tone. Some are surreal, some are discreetly political. If you don’t like anything at all here you may as well stop watching comedy now. Nothing is going to make you laugh.
Micky Flanagan’s Foxageddon finds our hero Micky driven to distraction by noisy foxes outside his window. In a fit of rage he bludgeons one with a tin can but unfortunately the footage is caught on CCTV and goes viral. In an interesting echo of Jon Ronson’s recent Dog Thrower we see how the web can make you a zero one minute and a hero the next. Suddenly even Cameron and Putin are condemning Flanagan. Until he puts a new clip out and turns the tide in his favour. Flanagan wrote this and it is interesting to see him moving away from stand-up, even if he isn’t stretching his slobby, blokey persona that far. It’s also interesting to see Kerry Godliman as his loving wife – particularly as last time I reviewed her I called her a female Micky Flanagan…
Channel M covers familiar territory – it’s a collection of spoof trailers for fictional TV programmes. And it would be pretty tedious if it didn’t star Morgana Robinson who, after shaky beginnings won me over in House of Fools. Aided by Rufus Jones she rattles through a succession of eye-poppingly odd characters from the Lauren/Vicky Pollardish schoolgirl in Educating Morgana to Amy Childs getting confused in Celebrity Forward Roll. Definitely worth five minutes of your life just to see Robinson as the posh Pinot-guzzling woman in Gogglebox.
Playback is arguably the least funny short but definitely the most powerful. Meera Syal explains at the start that it is inspired by both the movie All About Eve and Bollywood backing singers, who tend to get shunted out of the picture despite their fantastic voices. Here a backing singer finds herself in the limelight when the Bollywood star is late for a joint chat show appearance. A very unusual film, played straight rather than for laughs, otherwise it could have been in the recent reboot of Goodness Gracious Me.
Master of the memorable voiceover Matt Berry actually tones it down a bit for The Lone Wolf, in which he narrates a cod-nature documentary about wolves. The premise here seems to be that why should TV chefs be the only ones who can swear on the box. Reciting Bob Mortimer’s script Berry becomes a foulmouthed Attenborough: “Big-horned sheep are weird fuckers but tasty.” A little phoned-in at times, but Berry's instinctive timing and tone still raises a smile.
And talking of outrageous TV chefs and Vic Reeves’s partner, Mortimer crops up alongside Frankie Boyle in Frankie Boyle and Bob Mortimer's Cookery Show. Boyle plays it surprisingly straight here - the main gag is the satire of TV focus groups and broadcasting's obsession with market research. Different coloured lights, such as the “presenter chemistry monitor”, flash on the kitchen counter charting the duo’s performance as it happens. Good in parts, but I’d have liked to have seen Vic Reeves do this with Bob, then there would have been considerably more presenter chemistry.
Finally The Case of the High Foot, again written by Bob Mortimer. Shot in black and white and with a crackly soundtrack, this feels like a proper short film, as Sally Phillips plays a patient who goes to see a doctor (Reece Shearsmith) about her titular “high foot”. It’s all very daft, from Phillips’ posh accent to Shearsmith’s exploding hairstyle. Certainly the most classy of the six shorts, in terms of style. I could easily watch Phillips and Shearsmith larking about all day.
Watch all the Comedy Shorts here.
