Return of the Mack

My last blog post was about a "comedy" series with which I was less than impressed. This one is about one which I find really funny.

"Not going out" is now in its fourth series and it is an oddity in that after series three it was cancelled, only for it to be re-commissioned a while later.

The show stars two stand up comedians, Lee Mack & Tim Vine (brother of Radio 2 DJ, Jeremy Vine), they play best mates, who first met at a party in the 80's. In the first series Lee Mack shared a flat with Tim Vine's ex girlfriend, played by the American actress Megan Dodds (who had previously starred in Spooks).She's very attractive and Lee Mack tries to juggle, fancying her, not wishing to annoy her (she owns the flat) and taking every opportunity to wind up Tim Vine that he is sharing a flat with someone who dumped him. As in all good comedies most of the action either takes place in the flat or their local pub/wine bar. Clever plots and excellent scripts made a good first 6 episodes.

At the end of series one, Megan Dodds left the show which gave the writers and producers a challenge as the "will they/won't they" tension between her and Lee Mack had been the cornerstone of the first series. Their solution was to say that she had gone back to the USA &  introduce Tim Vine's younger, equally attractive sister Lucy to the story and make her Lee's new flat mate. To play Lucy they chose Sally Bretton who had some comedy interspersed with more serious parts and she quickly restored the underlying sexual tension with Lee Mack only this time Tim is trying to defend his sisters honour. Just to screw with Lee's mind a bit more Lucy finds a boyfriend who is older then Lee (who is already 10 years or so older then Lucy) with Lucy announcing that she likes "older men". Series 2 found plenty in the various relationships to keep us laughing and entertained. Along the way series 2 also introduced Barbara the clumsy cleaner, played wonderfully by Miranda Hart.

Series 3 continued the Lee/Lucy story to no great conclusion, although by then she had dumped the older boyfriend, with the main development being Tim getting a "nice but dim"girlfriend, Daisy. played by Katy Wix, to add to the ensemble. Barbara, the cleaner, had a bigger  role and her clumsiness became an art form and one of the features of series 3.  The scripts remained well written and it was with some disappointment that I learned shortly after series 3 finished that that  it had been cancelled. when one of the writers, Andrew Collins tweeted to that effect.

That was reversed however and series 4 is now with us. Sadly Miranda Hart has left as she now has her own self named "sit com" (and very good it is too) so Daisy now has a bigger role. Lee Mack continues to play his "lovable Northerner"( who still fancies Lucy) to great effect and Tim remains the repressed accountant.

I will continue to look forward to 9.30 pm on a Thursday for at least four more weeks.

I'm Mandy fly me

I never found "Little Britain" hilariously funny, so I guess that I shouldn't me surprised that David Walliams & Matt Lucas' new show "come fly with me" leaves me cold.

The concept is good, a "mockumentory" about the airline industry, based on the various programmes made about airports, airlines and the various other industries that depend on flight. Lucas & Walliams play various "colour full characters" both male and female, old and young and of various ethnic backgrounds. Some are funny, like the really thick teenager (Lucas) who dreams of being a pilot but can't understand how to serve on the counter in a fast food restaurant. Some make you smile, like the 1st class flight attendant who doesn't think that a couple are "worthy" to be in 1st class. The majority however range from not funny to insensitive. I don't see that making fun of a boy in a wheelchair or excessive drug taking by customs officers is "funny". That was the two worst examples and there were plenty more.  Some sketches clearly tried to shock but that is a poor substitute for a joke that makes you laugh.

As the journalist David Hepworth wrote on Twitter "Re: Come Fly With Me: at what point did they convince themselves it was going to be funny? When they banked the cheque?"


Fortunately the BBC scheduled "Not going out" straight afterwards and that was funny with jokes and everything.

New Years Day

So what do I hope for in 2011, besides the obvious stuff of health, happiness and wealth?

1) Saints to end the year top of the Championship.
2) the "classic" line up of Yes to get together and play while they are all still alive.
3) England to win the Cricket world cup.
4) Arsenal to win the Premier League and Blackpool get into Europe.
5) new series of Sherlock, Dr Who, Not Going Out, Modern Family and Downton Abbey.
6) Prog to continue it's resurgence.
7) play lots more golf!

Happy New Year!


-- Post From My iPhone

Russians

It is hard not to look like the loser in a beauty contest crying "it's not fair, I'm the prettiest" but the outcome of the draw for the country to host 2018 World Cup has been fairly hard to take.

The contest looks at a number of areas (security, infrastructure, stadia, hotel accommodation, training facilities etc) and then reports are produced by FIFA. By all accounts our reports were very good with the FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, allegedly saying that we were ready to host the tournament "tomorrow".

Yesterday each bidding nation had to make a presentation to the jury and again ours was seen as the best.

As we all now know the 2018 World Cup was awarded to the Russians and the main reason appears to be that their hosting it will leave the biggest legacy, which is one of FIFA's stated aims in awarding tournament. Does that mean that as we invented the game and have most of the country playing the game and have the best league in the world (?) that actually we couldn't leave a legacy? Our presentation in fact addressed that issue by talking about how we would use the competition to work alongside unemployed and disadvantaged people and use football to help them, but that was obviously not what FIFA see as a legacy.

We needed 12 votes to win from 22 delegates, we got 2. Frankly that feels like Eurovision does!

While the Sunday Times article and BBC Panorama programme (who both alleged bribery or corruption amongst the FIFA board)  may have annoyed or offended some of the delegates, 2 votes show that it appears we were never ever a serious candidate as we were never going to leave a legacy similar to that that Russia and Qatar (who were awarded the  2022 competition|) could easily demonstrate.

The depressing truth is that I can't ever seeing us hosting the World Cup again in my life time and it could be 100 years after the last time that  we did do it, before we might get the chance again if this experience is anything to go by.

The Sound of silence

The release by Somali pirates of Paul & Rachel Chandler is very good news and it was Sky news who told me the breaking story this morning when I tuned in at about 7.30 am.

As is my way in the mornings I was flicking between Sky News and BBC News and was surprised, if not slightly annoyed, that the BBC had not one word of this happy ending to an horrible ordeal. In fact I thought "well done" Sky for being agile enough to change it's schedule of stories to give this the prominence that it deserved.

I now find that according to the BBC, a quite different  story was playing behind the scenes this morning. This is best explained here.

The BBC blog is a bit pompous, but my overall feeling is that they were spot on in obeying the law (to the letter), while others, decided to follow ratings rather than the wishes of the Chandler family via the injunction.

What happens next? Will the court hold Sky (and others?) in contempt of court, if they have ignored the injunction and who will report on this story? This is why the BBC is so important and the ownership of press and other media by one overall owner is a very bad idea.

Magical mistakes

I'm reading the first volume of Michael Palin's diaries at the moment.

I have just got to the bit where the Pythons are filming the second series and they go off to Devon to film some scenes in and around Torquay.

Palin describes how, in May 1970, they check in to the Gleneagles Hotel just outside Torquay. While at first the hotel seems a bit more colourful and clean than others, it is the treatment given to their group by the proprietor, a Mr Sinclair, that appals them so much that they decide to leave the next day and move to a different hotel.

This is, of course, the incident that also prompted John Cleese the write Fawlty Towers and I expect that as soon as you read the words "Torquay" & "Hotel" in the same sentence, you were way ahead of me, so well known is the story.

What made me think however, reading that encounter from Michael Palin's perspective, is how fragile some of life's success can be? Who, for example, chose that hotel in first place and what if it had been full? What if they had decided to film in Norfolk not Devon? What if it had rained and they couldn't film? One of the finest (if not the finest) comedy series may never had been written.

All irrelevant in the end as they did go there etc but life throws opportunities at you all the time, the trick is, as John Cleese did, to see the chances that it gives you .

Brain damage

If you’ve watched or listened to any football programme or podcast since Saturday, you will have seen or heard various pundits discussing Man Utd’s second goal against Spurs. You can watch the incident here.

Most people seem to blame Gomes, the Spurs keeper, for the resultant goal and as he committed the school boy error of not "playing to the whistle" that's too where I place the blame for Utd ending up with two goals. The referee doesn't stop play, clearly trying to allow Spurs an advantage as the ball is in the hands of their goal keeper. Gomes tries to clear the ball down field, but only when he can't find an unmarked Spurs player does he then put the ball down to take the free kick, that the referee hasn't awarded, 10 yards further forward from where it should have been taken, had it been awarded (which again it hadn't).

The referee, Mark Clattenburg, has come in for some abuse over allowing the goal, much of which has been unjust and in some cases no more than "all referees are rubbish, therefore this was a rubbish decision"!. In my view he did nothing wrong, indeed with less than 10 minutes to play by not stopping the game for an unnecessary free kick he was ironically  helping Spurs make a quick counter attack.

Harry Redknapp, the Spurs manager, has been the most outspoken of his teams staff over the goal, claiming that "it was a farce" and basically genuinely believing that the referee should have given a free kick for the handball (and maybe as some have argued booking Nani for deliberate handball).

To my mind the acid test is this. If Clattenburg had blown for the hand ball and stopped Gomes while he was trying to clear the ball, to bring the play back to the correct place for the "free kick" to have been taken from, would Harry and others have said "good decision ref" or would they, as I suspect, have shouted abuse at the ref "for stopping the game when we're trying to counter attack". Because if they would have then Clattenburg did the right thing and what followed was both legal and Gomes fault.