Posting footnote

Apologies to anyone who finds the format of these postings a bit weird - I certainly do, paragraphs all over the place and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. Remind me to find a decent blogging tool at the first available opportunity...

The Monday Show

The Monday Show (with Alexander Armstrong) was a pilot made by Hat Trick Productions (Have I Got News For You, Armstrong And Miller, Father Ted, Drop the Dead Donkey). I went with five friends to see the recording at the London Studios. A busy weekend has meant that it is only now, 3 days later, that I sit down to pen this review...


First Impressions

    

An intriguing set. A cross between an office and a studio flat, not really giving away what the format of the show is going to be. In the first picture is Alexander's desk and chair ("Xander" to his friends). In the second shot can be seen the desk for his two comedian sidekicks (behind the desk in the foregound which is just for show). The final picture shows a lounge-like area with a sofa and coffee table. Oh yes and there's the autocue with Xander's opening words (let's call him AA from now - less pretentious).

What's it all about then?

This is what Hat Trick has to say about the show:

"A new comedy pilot for BBC1 starring Alexander Armstrong! He will be joined by three celebrity guests to look ahead at the events of the coming week in an upbeat entertaining mix of studio chat and location reports."

The show consisted a number of different elements. The theme is events about to occur in the week following the show. A number of features had been prepared in advance, including pre-taped segments, and AA navigated (or 'piloted' - geddit?)  his way through the material assisted by two comedians, in this case the ubiquitous Ed Byrne and slightly less well-known Jon Richardson.

Each week there is a special guest who is chatted to by AA, with contributions from the comedians. On this occasion the guest was Janet Street-Porter.

So, how did it go?

AA kicked off with some scripted material to camera. As is often the case with this kind of scripted material, it was a little hit-and-miss at times. This kind of delivery is something that I think AA does particularly well, although he did seem a little stiff to begin with. He soon settled in though, and for the most part these links worked well and were rather amusing. In fact, so smooth and natural was his delivery that during the guest chat section of the show it was a while before I realised that his questions to Ms S-P were also scripted.

Throughout the show the form is for the comedic talent to interject with wit, banter and general repartee. Ed Byrne seemed more than happy to chip in and was generally good value, although at times he dominated a little too much. Perhaps he was attempting to compensate for the initial quietness of his partner, Jon Richardson, who seemed a little shy at first. However, if he lacked Mr Byrne's verbosity, he certainly was not short of a keen wit and great timing. On several occasions he dissolved the audience with sharp, very funny remarks, and on the whole was the funnier of the two comics. Fewer words, but well-chosen.

The "chat" part of the show worked well, although Janet S-P is not everyone's cup of tea and lapsed pretty much entirely into her "Grumpy Old Women" routine. She was good in the sense that she could hold her own against the comics, though, and can take some stick (not enough was dished out in her direction, in my opinion!).

The pre-recorded segments were excellent. There were two main streams recurring at intervals throughout the show. The first was presented by the wonderful John Shuttleworth, supposedly on a grand tour of Britain. Classic stuff here, very good.

The second segment took the form of a vox pop, presented on the streets of London by Miranda Hart (Hyperdrive, Not Going Out). Entitled "Batman or Boris", the idea was to see if members of the public could tell which famous character had spoken certain quotes. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well actually it proved quite difficult - the quotes were well-chosen and Miranda was very witty throughout. I would have liked to have seen more of this, with a larger number and greater variety of members of the public.

Miranda also presented a feature on National Customer Service Week (yes, really. Visit http://www.nationalcustomerserviceweek.com if you don't believe me). The spokesman from NCSW was unbelievably dull (it amazes me that such organisations don't wise-up to this) but fortunately that just provided perfect material for the excellent Ms Hart. Her competition to make an outfit out of everyday office items, held in a Customer Services department, was fantastic.

  

Ah, did I say the pre-recorded items were excellent? I was forgetting one. Each of the comedians were given a segment of their own, and Jon Richardson presented a VT segment on putting on a firework display to music. I'm not quite sure where the subject came from, and sadly the execution was weak - a damp squib, you might say. The only thing remotely amusing about it was the choice of music for the display - Lionel Ritchie's "Hello". All very ironic.

Ed Byrne was given a live segment to run with. This featured the Shetland Food Festival, also taking place this week. This was a promising idea, but didn't really work in the end. The participants (AA with Janet, Jon on his own) were presented with some ingredients and asked to guess what Shetland delicacy they might be made into. Then the real dishes were revealed and the lucky crew got to taste them. Needless to say the ingredients and dishes were obscure and revolting, seeming to consist mostly of fish heads! Unsurprisingly no-one was very keen on the tasting part, and on the whole, this segment bombed.

One segment which did work rather better involved the team decanting over to the sofa area on the right of the studio, where they reviewed a couple of books due out this week. This was excellent as it gave the comics something to get their teeth into, and they were very good value - Jon R particularly so. This was another section that I felt more time could have been devoted to.

And finally...

To conclude, then, I can see how you might think that the show was a bit disjointed, that perhaps it doesn't really know what it is. To be honest, this occurred to me at the time too, but perhaps with the benefit of editing the finished product might seem less so. Let's not forget that this is a pilot show - the format could well receive some tweaks if it gets the green light. On the whole, the standard of the writing was high and there were plenty of laughs to be enjoyed. High-calibre presenting talent meant that most of the show worked well, with a few exceptions.

As a footnote, I have exchanged a few tweets with Jimmy Mulville, co-founder of Hat Trick. He suggests that this show could be "a perfect bookend to the week with HIGNFY". Certainly I would welcome some decent entertainment during the week, especially right after going back to work on Monday. Who wants to wait until the weekend for a good laugh?

VERY much looking forward to the recording of the Monday Show with Alexander Armstrong tomorrow night! Naturally I'll be posting a review on my blog, so you can all watch the show when it airs and see how it compares...