Dee sinks like a lead balloon
KELSEY Grammer on Porters. Hate-sex on Doctor Foster. Incredible images of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft. Famalam. World War II’s Great Escapes. Robert Bathurst. The Wilmott-Brown reveal on EastEnders. Alaska – A Year in the Wild. STACEY said of her spun tower on Bake Off: S.Meredith of Liverpool wins £35 for that howler. Keep ’em coming to the address at the top of the page. PROF Green asked if weed should be legalised. There are valid reasons against, not least the proven link between skunk and psychosis.
On the other hand, puff is the only thing scientifically proven to make Cheap Cheap Cheap give you the giggles. ADALAIDE Byrd’s scoring of the Golovkin/Canolo fight. Question Time – as evenly balanced as a one-legged tightrope walker in a force nine gale. Waste-of-space Celebrity Islander Mark Watson imaging anyone would think him “fun at first”.
BAD Move? You said Jack. it,
Jack Dee’s useless new sitcom has the unwelcome side effect of making viewers as grumpy as he is.
Dee plays web designer Steve, who moves to the country with his gormless gardener missus Nicky.
He’s so dumb he didn’t realise the house they bought has no broadband connection. She’s so dim she mows a huge lawn for a cake. Laugh? You’ll never start.
Steve is all hangdog looks and no bite. Bizarrely, the writers have watered down Dee’s curmudgeonly stage character when they should have cranked it up.
With a bit of imagination they could have made him a modern-day Hancock, fuelled by grand delusion and petty rage. Not that Jack can complain – he’s one of them. Maybe he should call his own Helpdesk.
Where Lead Balloon played to his strengths, Bad Move tries to ape the conventions of old-fashioned sitcoms.
In common with most modern attempts at mainstream comedy, it’s crammed with one-dimensional characters but devoid of laughs.
Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow is another throwback. It’s Blackadder by another Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday,
10 Lower Thames Street, London
EC3R 6EN name – Cackadder, perhaps. David “One-Note” Mitchell plays Shakespeare as a perpetually exasperated bore who nicks other people’s ideas.
Lisa Tarbuck and Harry Enfield outshine him in every scene.
The cast aren’t helped by the laboured dialogue and creaking scripts which rely heavily on the kind of wordmangling older viewers will associate with Kenneth Williams’ Rambling Sid Rumpo from Round The Horne.
“Turdington”, “nincombunion”, “chumble-trousers”…it’s a proper load of old bollardingers.
The lingo on W1A is smarter, mocking middle-management jargon.
The BBC show sends up its own executives with their pretentious waffle and tedious obsession with inclusivity, diversity and box-ticking.
The trouble is it rings so true the cumulative effect is frustration rather than laughter.
They really are like this!
That’s why there’s no decent comedy in prime time, why Sara Pascoe, who sparkles on panel shows like a year-old glass of Cava, gets repeat bookings and why Nadiya is on TV every other week.
MARK Heap seems to be channelling Stephen Fry in the role of Will’s enemy Robert Greene on Upstart Crow – which is how Greene saw the Bard. In real life, his lover’s brother was a London hood known as Cutting Ball who was hanged at Tyburn, a fate some might think too good for that perpetual Mockney irritant Elton. HOLLIDAY Grainger, right, Electric Dreams... Jerry Before Seinfeld (Netflix)... Porters (Dave)... Rock & Roll (SkyArts). DOC Martin, left – give it the boot... Bad Move – yep... Eamonn & Ruth’s 7 Year Itch – scratch it...Safe House – sh*te house.
REASONS to be cheerful: Peaky Blinders returns in November, Blue Planet II and new Curb Your Enthusiasm start next month. ONE a warm, endearing fatty who always raises a smile, the other a ticked box who can’t dance on Strictly.
‘Not as much of an erection as I’d have wanted’