W1A

[Richard Tarleton]

Louis Wise in yesterday's Sunday Times:

It is sometimes hard to tell whether this is the BBC’s mea culpa for its media-speak tendencies or just a smug pat on the back: oh, we know we get it wrong sometimes, but look how right we are for seeing it!

[french frank]

look how right we are for seeing it!

I like that, yes. Or, on the other hand, 'We do recognise our shortcomings and we, er, laugh at them.'

Cali, yes - catchphrases. I've always thought it very odd that these cause so much hilarity each time they're uttered. No matter how many times they're heard.

[Padraig]

I saw only the latest episode. It reminded me strangely of the Reginald Perrin series of a few years ago.

PS Why, when you accidentally type 't' for 'y', e g in 'Years', is the mistake often the better version?

[eighthobstruction]

....yes, exactly....I turned off 10.32 seconds after it started....well I did let it start at least....but didn't know where Salford was so like ok ya pointless....I mean, do we recognise our shortcomings....do we see them coming towards us and salute them....

[DracoM]

Because the very fast jump-cutting, there is no chance to develop either humour or anything.

Concept good, execution has drowned the idea in meaninglessness. And YES, I know that insubstantiality / cliche avalanching are the core of the satire, but it just needs to let us in more for us to enjoy it. Caricatures can work, IF they are allowed to do their thing. The first series was far, far funnier than this. Now, it feels panic driven and sense has been lost in clever technical tricks - and YES I know that method is as much part of the satire as the 'discussions'.

It's lost its way.

[gurnemanz]

Agree with draco. Some nice touches but it is now more like a parody of a parody.

[seabright]

I watched it for the first time tonight, principally because the Radio Times blurb said it was "painfully funny." Well, I must have lost my sense of humour as I found it painfully dire and quite the least funny programme I've seen in a very long while. I think I'll stick to Family Guy on ITV2 in future.

[DracoM]

If you saw the Olympics series, that established most of the main characters in a genuinely hilarious and brave interplay. It WAS funny, truly and refreshing and I/m not sure any major broadcasting company had ever had the courage to allow a team to send it up so totally and detailedly. A real success.

All you have now is cutting room floor bits swept together into a dustpan based on what we had already learnt of these same characters through the much slower, more surgically exposing style of the previous series. The writers / producers knew that they needed painful exposure to let these characters reveal their incompetence, deadly self-belief, and above all the fact that inexplicably the BBC seemed to trust them to run a crucial area - for that we had to see them in situations, not in flickering micro-doses. Huge pity. David Tennant and Hugh Bonneville are the ones coming out of this best.

[Lat-Literal]

The Olympics series was called 2012 and it was one of the best moments of British comedy in this millennium, not that it has much competition. The new series is fine but a bit overdone on cliche. I'd like the introduction of some of the characters I actually knew. The woman in the 1990s who wore the Radio Jackie t-shirt which drew so much attention from her colleagues and built on what is so clearly an Oddfellows roll your trouser leg up secret among those who pat each other's personas. Now riding very high in governance - could easily become a Permanent Secretary - anything she disagreed with was met with a finger down the throat gagging action that suggested an emotional intelligence of around nine.

And the man in the massive cowboy hat who was brought in as joint director in the early 2000s to introduce private sector realism. Modern as in the sense of one of the more dubious characters in "Minder", the expensive away day he arranged for us all involved him bringing in a mate from his teeny years and them re-enacting their early lives, eg obtaining their pilots' licences and travelling the breadth of America drinking, picking up women and getting into trouble with the law. "The problem with you lot is that you have always instinctively been too cautious - learn", all provided with a malevolent tone of voice. The leaving do of the fly-by-night came quickly and it enabled me to see the inside of the National Liberal Club of which he was an apolitical status member before the financial crash. It had all gone crackers. Labour but it could have been anyone. And the writing was already on the walls.

This is mild but it absolutely sums it up - did they get irritable when the older plebs had the gall to point it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sMhAMcCoRI

[LMcD]

Just watched the first 10 minutes, at which point I gave up. I think it's time that this particular one-trick pony was put out to pasture.
It's not as funny (or as clever) as 'Upstart Crow'.

[Lat-Literal]

Just watched the first 10 minutes, at which point I gave up. I think it's time that this particular one-trick pony was put out to pasture.
It's not as funny (or as clever) as 'Upstart Crow'.

Maybe I should try to stick with it more but it looks initially like Blackadder Division 2. I'm keen on the history of sitcom. I have the American "The Big Bang Theory" as my No 1 since 2000 but I was touched by the BBC's gentle "Detectorists" although I'm anti swearing and the f words spoil it a little in my opinion. For all of its flaws - and there are also accusations against it based on pc - I love "Count Arthur Strong" as I see it as the modern, if inferior, heroic Hancock. And as with Hancock, it's slightly better and different on radio than on TV.

Recommendation - the gliding school or whatever name they called it. We could do with more comedy from Iran, North Korea etc. I see that as very important. When I did the pub quiz the Sunday last, I had to find on my own the link between the surname of Saint in "Saint and Greavsie". the village between Epsom and Sutton, the first name of Parker, the chauffeur of Lady Penelope and the Patron Saint of Lost and Found Items. I only got St John and Cheam but was delighted to find my choice of Hancock was the right connection.

(@ hashtag - bloody-difficult-man - incorrigible)

[Lat-Literal]

I'm not good at leaving people to wonder: It was Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock.....of East Cheam. And when I said to the man that I was the first person on my own there and would have the worst ever score, he said no, he doubted it. It was a no - 25 - but my suggestion that when I alone got Hancock it was brilliant was also met by a no and a grunt.

(tbh I identified with Hancock until my 40s - it was a delight to discover that living in South Sutton was a metaphor for living in East Cheam, which of itself was always a metaphor because it is suburbia, and at one point I would deliberately go one step further on from seeing the Stone Roses or whoever in London to take in a take away curry just before it closed outside Cheam station; I'd walk three times the distance so as to be sort of him in my mind - the only sadness was that Sidney James and Kenny Williams weren't with me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWNm2eyoPU

(but context is all)

[johncorrigan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWNm2eyoPU

(but context is all)

Never watched Count Arthur on the box, Lat; only heard it on the radio. That was quite funny.

Mrs C doesn't let me watch W1A...she can't stand it. She creates an atmosphere when it comes on, and she's good at that.

[underthecountertenor]

Just watched the first 10 minutes, at which point I gave up. I think it's time that this particular one-trick pony was put out to pasture.
It's not as funny (or as clever) as 'Upstart Crow'.

No accounting for tastes. I find 'Upstart Crow' a crashingly unfunny one-trick pony, the trick consisting of Ben Elton trying to be clever and essentially reviving Blackadder under a slightly different guise; and not helped by an intensely irritating cast led by the wildly overrated David Mitchell, all of whom seem intent on flagging up their 'funny' lines as if the audience consisted entirely of infants. The one exception is the ever-reliable Mark Heap, who is for me the only reason to watch the thing (given that he is so unjustly neglected generally).

[Nick Armstrong]

No accounting for tastes. I find 'Upstart Crow' a crashingly unfunny one-trick pony..... The one exception is the ever-reliable Mark Heap, who is for me the only reason to watch the thing (given that he is so unjustly neglected generally).

I could not agree more (although even Mark Heap isn't enough to get me to wade through the remaining heap... Happy to wait for his sublime cameos with dog in Friday Night Dinner... )

For me, the funniest thing on at the moment (though extremely rude - Lat-Lit would hate it) is Back - also with David Mitchell - on C4. (Slight dip in form in Ep 3, but the first two were brilliant I thought)

OT: W1A improved slightly in Ep 2 imo.