What’s the point of TV comedies?
WE seem to have entered a new dark age with regard to British TV comedy. These last few weeks, ITV’s The Nightly Show has disastrously lumbered limply on. I don’t think I raised so much as a smile since it started.
Then Comic Relief, which once felt so edgy and relevant (not to mention funny) was a total damp squib. I only watched it for about half an hour, then gave up in despair. The only segment I did enjoy was the reincarnation of Love Actually, but that’s only because I’m a sentimental old fool who still adores the original.
I have to admit that I didn’t see the new chat show All Round to Mrs Brown’s, but I gather from friends and critics that it was deeply embarrassing – utterly crude, repetitive, and lame.
So what’s going on? I’m not blaming any of the presenters for the dismal failure that is The Nightly Show. In fact I know, admire and am friends with several of them. Besides, the conspicuous nightly horror would have fluctuated in quality depending on the host if the poor (OK, very well remunerated) saps landed with fronting it had been the problem. It hasn’t – it’s just uniformly horrible.
It’s simply that the show doesn’t know what it’s doing or what it’s for. Is it supposed to have a sharp, witty, news-related monologue at the start, like those wonderful American late-night joys (Letterman, Leno, and now Corden) which employ veritable armies of talented scriptwriters? You just can’t do this kind of show without a huge budget, and in the US they can spend the dough because they have massive syndication.
One of our most important considerations when Richard and I were doing daily TV was “what’s the point?” Every single item was scrutinised for its “peg”. In fact one of our producers became so obsessed with the idea that she would scream at her family during discussion over Sunday lunch: “What’s the PEG for this conversation?” If an item, an interview or any topic didn’t have this peg, or point, then it shouldn’t be there.
Obviously we didn’t always get it right. When you’re doing daily TV like ours you have a lot of airtime to fill. Some of the contents will, inevitably, be dross. But God, did we try. We had a vision, an aspiration if you like, of what we wanted to achieve. And The Nightly Show, too short for any meaningful interviews and too trivial for any real intelligence to emerge, lacks that vision to a dispiriting degree.
Oh, and plus the fact that the hosts are clearly encouraged to use four-letter words whenever they can. That doesn’t make it funny. It’s just desperate.
How sad – and what a wasted opportunity.