Earworm of the month...

[avevale_intelligencer]

...which no amount of loud, bombastic music can expunge, is a UKTV Gold jingle advertising the "Twenty Golden Rules" of somebody called Carmody. This turns out to be yet another way of repackaging the usual run of sitcoms, most of which are too recent to be worth watching anyway (though they are showing the excellent "Waiting For God" at the moment, and several other things which keep Jan on that channel).

Infuriating thing of the month is a trailer for one of these things, which they show every day as many times as they can out of pure sadism, as far as I can see. The scene is a restaurant kitchen. A hygiene inspector instructs the chef to stir the soup with the inspector's pencil, which has been in his mouth since the alleged sketch began. The chef, at the inspector's insistence, then does so, whereupon the inspector closes down the kitchen, shuts off the power and leaves.

There is not a particle of humour in this that I can extract. It's just nasty. The currently trendy attempt to sound unscripted (mumbling, umming and ahhing, trailing off at the ends of sentences) overlooks the fact that unscripted dialogue is not usually repeated word for word every hour on the frelling hour. The total effect is to put me off completely.

Now I must go and collect my Zimmer frame...

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Nearly all the modern comedy things are highly crap, in my view... but you can blame the people in charge of commissioning and buying these things, cos my dad is a highly talented writer and they keep rejecting his stuff (um, ok, I might be biased but his stuff is laugh out loud funny rather than "quick, turn the telly off!")

[hrrunka]

It's just nasty

There does seem to be a trend in that direction. I find myself turning so-called comedy shows off quite often because they've crossed my line into not-funny territory.

to sound unscripted

Radio 4's 6:30pm comedy slot has tended to do that too. When will they realise that a line that's supposed to sound un-scripted is likely to be funny no more than once. If you've heard it in the programme trailer then there's a good chance it won't be funny when you hear it in the programme itself, and it certainly won't bear repetition.