Author: Me
Date: Sunday May 04th, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday May 10th, 2025
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Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday May 11th, 2025
Dick Turpin and His Essex Gang
Over the last ten years or so, sit-coms seem to have gradually shifted in tone. Less snark, less sarcasm, less satire. More inclusive, more diverse, more hopeful. It's not just that the news is so relentlessly grim that people want something to take their minds off it. It's also the fact that the news is so utterly stupid that it's impossible to satirise, so completely shameless in its stupidity that even if you did there would be no point.
And whilst I loved the snark, sarcasm and satire of the comedies of my youth. A combination of wearied age and experience means that I'm very much enjoying this new inclusivity, diversity and hope.
The latest sit-com to push those qualities to the fore is Noel Fielding's Dick Turpin, which is amiable and good natured to a fault. It's border-line 18th Century Ted Lasso.
Dick wants to be a famous highway man but also wants to be good and kind. Much of the comedy comes from this incongruity. His crew want to be a team of tough criminals, but they also want to be *themselves*. Even more comedy from this. It's often delightful, occasionally laugh out loud funny.
There's a couple of stand out performances: Hugh Bonneville is in cracking form, and Kiri Flaherty is a delight as Little Karen.
Only Connor Swindells disappoints as Tommy Silversides and that's only because his character is so clearly inspired by Lord Flashheart that it's impossible to avoid the comparison. And comparison to Rick Mayall is never going to end well.
So it's not Blackadder. It is however, very much Maid Marion and Her Merry Men. Which either means my initial observation about the changing tone of sit-coms was wildly incorrect. Or Maid Marion... was massively ahead of its time.
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday May 04th, 2025
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Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday May 11th, 2025
Turns out that "Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s" is great, actually
Lisa Frankenstein
Lisa is a misunderstood, lonely teenager. Her dad doesn't understand her, her cheerleading step-sister doesn't understand her and mental health nurse step mum positively hates her. She spends her free time in a decrepit grave yard talking to the gravestone of a dead poet, whose zombified body she inadvertently resurrects.
Cue journey of self discovery as she tries to hide, fix and date her hot zombie poet boyfriend. The problem being that what Lisa discovers about herself is that she's an absolute dick.
And this is what makes this film an absolute riot. Whilst Lisa is always entirely relatable (all of us were a this self obsessed at one point in our teenage years), watching her gradually embrace her new found self confidence to the point of serial murderer is glorious.
A Diablo Cody script being sharp, warm, funny and insightful is hardly a surprise. But Zelda Williams 80's-to-the-Max aesthetic really is. It's not nostalgic as she doesn't remember the eighties. Instead, she leans into the idea that this is an eighties teen comedy made by someone who's never experienced the actual eighties and instead has pieced together what it was like from pop-culture. It's familiar but new and I loved it.
One of the films of the year for me, an absolute belter.
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 15th, 2024
Peak Minty
Whisper it: I think this is the funniest thing on iPlayer.
Diane Morgan has taken the essence of the 80's British sitcom, it's idiotic main characters, it's absurdly contrived plots, it's mixture of utter banality and occasional surrealism. She's jettisoned all of the set-up, all of the fluff and filler, anything that isn't generating a laugh every few seconds. And she's ended up with a fifteen minute show that's a rocket fuelled gem.
She's improved upon her influences in just about every way. Let's start with the main character, Mandy.
Each episode see's Mandy Carter trying her hand at a new job, usually at the behest of her exasperated Job Seeker's officer. And each episode it goes disastrously wrong. But not because Mandy's stupid or clumsy. It's usually because she's just bored (something we can all relate to at work) or distracted. Sometimes it's because she's actually hyper-competent and ends up taking things too far.
Because Morgan clearly loves Mandy. Mandy isn't an object of scorn or ridicule. We laugh at her, yes, but it's always with affection. Mandy is, in a very bizarre way, somebody to be admired.
Then there's the celebrity cameos. A combination of Morgan's eye for casting and the fact that each episode is so brief means that there's an avalanche of celebrities of all stripes prepared to give up a day (probably significantly less) for filming, all looking like they're having the time of their lives.
And each one is a surprise. Either because the cameo is deliciously played against type (Sonia-from-Eastenders channeling her inner Don Logan from Sexy Beast is an absolute treat) or because the setup is so misdirected and obfuscated that the punchline is glorious.
And finally there's the surrealism. The sheer pace of the jokes and inventiveness leaves no place for something as boring as reality. If it's funny: it's in. So even though the form of the jokes feel familiar, the way each joke jackknifes the plot further away from mundanity makes everything a surprise.
Just glorious, an absolute gem.
Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking...