Comedy news: SSP TV Blog's blog

Andrew Mickel August 2, 2010

While he's currently focusing on taking his stand-up show about cricket to the Edinburgh fringe, we grabbed the chance to pick Miles Jupp's mind on Rev, Newsjack, and putting lines into Malcolm Tucker's mouth...

Let's start with Rev – have you heard if there'll be a second series yet?

No. But I have heard a time by which we'll have heard if there is one. It seems to have been quite well received. I don't read the reviews, although a bit of one was read to me by wife. Then again, it was written by someone I knew, so I don't think it counts. And I didn't physically read it myself.

Still, we haven't seen much of your character in it...will we see more in the last one?

Well, I'm not the main dude, it's about Tom Hollander's character. I'm just one of the characters in the church. So I might be in it more, I might be in less.

The character is almost like going back to the obnoxious, posh English character you used to do in stand up. It's like that's stayed alive with Nigel.

Yes, I suppose in a way, but Nigel's very sad and lonely as a character. When I read the script I really liked the part, but I didn't actually like him. You know sometimes you read reviews and it says 'so and so gives a wonderfully sympathetic portrayal of someone', and you think, well that's because he wants people to like him, isn't it? But if you're busy playing Adolf Hitler, I don't know, why don't you make him a little bit evil, as opposed to making him a bit likeable? Nigel isn't as bad as Hitler, obviously, but I didn't want people to like him, I wanted him to be the arse he is.

You can't out-likeable Tom Hollander anyway.

No, no, exactly. Nigel's just a supporting character, and that's what I am.

And in The Thick Of It you played a similar sort of character [party press officer John Duggan]...

...do you think?

Well, socially backwards, distant, obnoxious, not being aware of what's going on around them...anyway, The Thick of It is famous for having some element of improve, did you get any of your own stuff to make the cut?

My most pleasing thing on that was a scene where Malcolm Tucker rants at me a bit and then heads off. Armando says, there's the beach out there, we need a line about an ice cream or something. And I said 'what about I'm off for a game of Crazy Golf, I love those fucking windmills'. And it went in. That was the very pleasing bit of it, coming up with a line to use for Tucker.

Is it something where Duggan could come back?

I'd imagine it's a one-off. I don't know what they're doing but I can't see a way back for him. I'm just very pleased to have done that one episode, to have a nice episode in a good thing.

Sticking with current affairs, Newsjack, have you heard what's happening now that BBC7 is transmogrifying? Will Newsjack survive?

What's happening to Radio 7?

It's turning into 4 Extra and changing a bit. You obviously hadn't heard about then...

Oh, I have heard that thing. We've got a new series though. It's a very different kind of current affairs thing to do, and it's good to way to keep up with the news. I'd turn up at meetings on a Wednesday and I did get told, you need to read the newspaper. I just read the script and do some of the sketches, and sometimes I'd be like, why's Chris Huhne in the news? It's very easy not to keep up when you've got a baby and your busy.

It's good that it's different from the rest of the satire output of the BBC. Much of the rest of it is the same attitude across the panel shows so it's good to be doing that slightly different thing.

It does feel a bit different to those things. The thing about it – I don't notice these things, but someone said – it has a strong format now. I hadn't really noticed, I guess because I'm part of it. They described the format but I can't really remember...

It is you that does the show, isn't it?

Yes, I'm definitely there, but what's good about it is you rehearse the scripts, you go out and record it, and it's done. With stand up you do the same thing over and over again. I would love to get to the point in comedy where you write jokes for one thing and then say, that's done. Doing the News Quiz, I love doing that. There's a few jokes and that's it, it's gone, and it's just out there. That's a really great show.

The other thing about Newsjack is it's got an open submission policy. Lots of programmes quietly have an open submissions policy, but Newsjack really is wide open. And we get some phenomenal stuff that comes in. Apparently there's a team reading 1000 scripts for a week or something, although there is some stuff that's apparently just too extreme to use. I think they had to send something out saying stop sending Derrick Bird sketches...

Do you ever get to read the stuff that doesn't get read out on air?

No, I don't think it's good to dwell on other people's misfortune or failure. But last week we had something that had been on [Radio 4's] Pick of the Week. It was an open submission and it's great that someone can write something and it gets on that.

Lastly, I'd be remiss coming here and not asking about Balamory....you've got a kid, are they old enough to understand that's Dad dancing around?

No, he's not old enough, and we don't have a telly.

Do you still get spotted on the bus for it?

No, not anymore. Not for anything any more. When I was still in Scotland, and was still that size, and still had that hair, then yeah. But it just stopped. When me and my girlfriend were in Edinburgh, we would want to go to a cafe and it would be full of children, and we'd just think, let's go somewhere else...then one day I remember going to a cafe and there was nothing. It was like the end of the war.

I was on a tube once where there was a little boy talking with his mum about the nature of reality, and TV, and he was asking 'is Emmerdale real?' She said no. He asked, is the news is real, and she said yes. Then he asked: 'Is Balamory real?' And she goes no. So he says, 'is Archie not real?' She goes, no, he's not real. And I'm sitting right next to her.

That's heartbreaking...

No, no, not at all...

No, I mean for the child.

Oh, to him. Well, he needs to know. I did think of outing myself as a grey area and being, like, 'No, I'm not real'. That would have given him something to think about.

Lastly, without meaning to get all Jonathan Ross on you, I've got a theory: you've done Balamory which is for one age group, then the Harry Potter film, then Sherlock Holmes...is this just to impress your child as he grows up?

Well, uh, it would be good if he was impressed. That wasn't the thinking behind it. But I've missed the Skins demographic. I need to do that, or something really shit on BBC Three. Although I'm doing something else on Monday, Campus on Channel 4...

That was a Comedy Lab one, it was pretty good...you've got it covered then.

I get wedgied on that.

You look genuinely sad about that.

Yeah. I've faced enough in my career.

While the last episode of the current run of You Have Been Watching is sat in unbroadcastable purgatory following the Cumbria shootings (it was a crime special), it seems a good time to take stock of the better than average, but not really AS much better than average as it should be, panel show.

Most episodes stand or fall on the quality of the guests, normally comprising of two fantastic guests of the Radio 4 6.30 comedy slot variety, and some upstart seatwarmer who is clearly outclassed by the whole shebang going on around them.

To make that easier to imagine, here's all the guests from over the first two series broken down into easy-to-imagine categories:

Good

Richard Herring, Grace Dent, Frank Skinner, Josie Long, Sarah Millican, Liza Tarbuck, David Mitchell, Victoria Coren, Phill Jupitus, Sharon Horgan, Robert Webb, Lauren Laverne, Chris Addison, Peter Serafinowicz, Mark Watson

Not really as good, or 'evil' for short

Rufus Hound, Frankie Boyle, Holly Walsh, Jack Whitehall, David Baddiel, Jason Manford

Not much to go on so far, is it? Well don't worry, my mother was a maths teacher: I've got GRAPHS and ANALYSIS!

QUESTION ONE: ARE YOU A WOMAN?

To make life even easier for the panel show booker, they can also simply avoid anyone who has a chart hit (Baddiel and Jamelia). 

QUESTION FOUR: DO YOU KNOW HOW TO WORK A RADIO?

Another easy rule to follow: if you've been on the radio, then you're probably pretty darned awesome. Again, only Baddiel is against my correlation for the shoddier guests, making me really want to bump him up a category. But science won't get anywhere if we just change the data to suit our hypothesis, so here we are. 

QUESTION FIVE: DID YOU RUIN TOP OF THE POPS?

Simon Amstell once made a joke about how Fearne Cotton was solely responsible (or 'solely responsibly', as I carefully mislabelled this graph before accidentally deleting the picture file) for running TOTP into the ground. But where's the blame for Rufus Hound? She's got enough car wrecks on her CV, let's give this one to him.

According to the Guardian, Channel 4's Alternative Election Night may be revisited in some form of late night satire show. Praise be! Finally some fresh lifeblood in the greying veins of television satire. 

This doesn't happen too often, so let's all hope they get it right. Channel 4 are talking to the Alternative Election Night makers, Zeppotron, to make it – they have solid gold pedigree, from The 11 O'Clock Show (come on, that started funny), to, um, CelebAir. But let's not take any chances...

Go and recruit Jon Holmes to write the whole thing right now

The Now Show, Armando Ianucci's Charm Offensive, Listen Against...this man has experience. More importantly, he's got edge and energy, having been fired from XFM and Virgin Radio, which should help dissipate the risk of the whole programme teetering into Arched Eyebrow Valley. Even more importantlier, if 6 Music is shutting down, he needs a new home.

Provide an interactive service to choose what view of Charlie Brooker's hair you would like to receive

When the current series of it's-alright-but-it's-not-Screenwipe-if-we're-honest show You Have Been Watching started, Twitter almost collapsed under the weight of people bemoaning Charlie Brooker's hair. I personally like it, and I think public opinion is starting to turn in its favour (I'm waiting to hear back from Ipsos MORI on that point), but people like interactivity, and having an option to wear his hair up or down could be endless fun.

More wimmins please

Look at the picture above. This is sub-Photoshop Disaster stuff for poor Lauren Laverne: they may as well have airbrushed off one of her arms. This presumably happened because Channel 4 realised they'd constructed a massive sausagefest as all the original ads for the alternative election night just showed the three blokes, so on the eve of broadcast, print ads suddenly had Lauren Laverne parachuted VERY CONVINCINGLY into the line-up. As I apparently go on about quite a bit, there are plenty of wimmins out there to pick up the slack. The show should choose one to stop poor Lauren Laverne looking like she's stuck in some kind of previously unknown 'nerdy thirty' dimension.

Keep a straight anchorman. Just not Jimmy Carr

I know it's not right to like Jimmy Carr, but he makes me laugh about 40% of the time. It might as well be called the 'Frankie Boyle ratio' – most of the stuff they say is either kicking easy targets when they're down, or out-of-order jokes masquerading as thumbing their noses to some unknown authority. But the rest of the time, he's quite funny, and above else, that man has mastered the underrated skill of reading an autocue. Still, he's got 8 Out Of 10 Cats, so find someone else. 

At all costs, don't try and be The Daily Show

The Daily Show is great, we all know that, but we also don't need a British version. The Late Edition on BBC Four, Marcus Brigstocke's weekly attempt to channel Jon Stewart, was awful, but it's easy to imagine that it won't dissuade people from trying to do a British version again. One of the best bits of the Alternative Election Night was watching Jimmy Carr try to guess what party three people belonged to, while audience members heckled him: being live, cheap and tatty, it really felt like a reverb from the dim, distant past of Channel 4 when their programmes were doing something different to what was elsewhere, even if it was of deeply questionable quality. It would be great to see more thought like this than a rehash of what we can get elsewhere.

Don't bleat on about Westminster politics every episode

Because that's also been done to death and there's rarely anything new to say, it's a fairly guaranteed route to the programme being boring. Pick some new targets, show us something we don't already know. Just don't make jokes about how when David Cameron and Nick Clegg stand next to each other it's like when two gay men stand next to each other.

David Mitchell

That one was right on the money, really. Just keep him as he is, possibly in a glass box, so he doesn't get damaged at all.

Ever tried sorting through online TV service See Saw? It's a strange mix of completely unnecessary offerings from Channel 4 (go and watch them on YouTube, the streaming is far less grumpy) and completely awesome offerings from the BBC (Big Train, Brass Eye and Saxondale FTW).

So far, so to be expected...until you stumble across We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year. Two years ago, its successor Summer Heights High became a sleeper hit on BBC Three, following three characters, all played by Chris Lilley: spoilt Sydneysider Ja'mie, drama teacher/queen Mr G, and tearaway Jonah. This may sound more than a little bit Eddie Murphy, but it worked fabulously well because Lilley vanished into each character, found something dark, self-centred and off-kilter, and then clambered back out again to use it to bash back all boundaries of taste. Watching a 32-year-old man in drag flirting in a playground with a 12-year-old boy is funny, wrong and puts British efforts to (cliché alert) push the boundaries to shame.

That actually sells the show a bit short: it also worked because each character had more dramatic highs and lows picked out over the course of the series than your average X Factor contestant, particularly as Jonah spiralled into more and more trouble. And it all came from one person – which, considering it came from Australia and not from our usual comedic watering holes from the UK or America, helped to add to the sense that this was something exciting and new.

After garnering good ratings and reviews, there were some vague rumblings about the BBC picking up the rights to We Can Be Heroes, Lilley's previous project, but they came to naught. Which is where See Saw comes in: for just the cost to your time of watching a couple of ads, you can watch the whole series here, following Ja'mie and four other competitors for the title of Australian of the Year.

This is really more of the same, but it still works great – there are laughs with Ja'mie's visit to an immigration centre, shudders at former firefighter Phil's efforts to make his heroic reputation pay cash, and burning hot-tears-down-the-face sadness with what happens to suburban housewife Pat.

Lilley is now working on a new show, made with ABC (the Australian one), HBO, and with the BBC co-producing, so hopefully their continued involvement means that We Can Be Heroes might finally make it to TV screens here when the new project is closer to fruition. In the meantime, get a headstart on everyone else with episode one...

30 Rock. Odds are you know it as that sitcom starring the woman who did Sarah Palin impressions just before the election. You've probably read a couple of articles in the Guardian declaring it the best thing ever. But the odds are you've never actually seen it. It's like The Wire before it got shown on BBC Two. 

But while the Palin impressions and word of mouth has helped it to shimmy up the ratings in America, in the UK it remains a truly hidden pleasure (ie no-one's watching it).  

How did this happen? Crazy scheduling, for one. It started on late-night Five in 2007, slotted in after the one-note Mulder vehicle Californication. After the ABSOLUTE SHOCK that that didn't give the show good ratings, it was ditched on Fiver – the only channel named after its budget – before being picked up by Comedy Central, who while treating it well enough, aren't exactly a high enough profile home for a show this good. 

That leaves the question of what it would take to make anyone watch it. The simple answer seems to be to just force people to see an episode – do that, and it's such an easy watch that they sit up and pay attention immediately. (As I've already said, this would be an easy ratings win for prime time terrestrial.) 

While I wait to hear back from the Department of Transport about my plan to replace the Sky News video screens in the nation's rail termini with 30 Rock marathons, here's some clips to make my point better than my fawning words will. 

Point One

If you're a woman, it's hard not to relate to central character Liz. She's vulnerable, funny and perpetually under assault from the world around her. (However, she still gets to go out with Don from Mad Men for a while, so don't feel too bad.) Here she does the vulnerable 'thing'. 

Watch the YouTube clip: 30 Rock, Wear a bra, here

Point Two

If you're a man, it's hard not to want to be Jack Donaghy. He looks like Alec Baldwin, he goes out with Salma Hayek for a bit, and he sounds like God. On the other hand, as shown here, he's a massive misogynist. That being said, try watching this, and not loving him. 

See the YouTube clip: Jack Donaghy Is TV's most loveable misogynist here

Point Three

The 30 Rock cast is sprawling for what is a 20 minute show that's only had *checks Wikipedia* 74 episodes so far. That means that you don't see a lot of them very often – but that just makes their rare appearances all the more special. Here's the best of the guest spots from resident hokey doctor, Leo Spaceman. 

See the 30 Rock special moments here

One last thought on series four for the eight people who actually watched the show

Series four can seem somewhat overwritten compared to previous offerings and a bit LINE LINE LINE but that also means that the programme holds up to repeat viewings even better than it usual does. Also, Alan Alda has vanished without mention. That is all.