Comedy news: Friends' blogs

Tim Clark, 26 April 2012

Oh Jo Brand, how could you? You’ve really put your foot in it now. You’ve joined the ranks of Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr in asking to be let in to the comedian hall of shame.

And your crime? You dared to cause the civic leaders of Streatham Council embarrassment by airing your views on the area they represent on a satirical comedy show.

For those of you who haven’t heard the story, here are the details. Streatham’s civic leaders have decided to hit back at Jo Brand after she called the town of Streatham - an area within the borough of Lambeth in South London - a s**thole, while on BBC One's Have I Got News For You.

Brand was speaking after a clip was played of soldiers marching in North Korea, after which she said: “They could do with that in Streatham. “Do you live in Streatham? Don’t even pass through there. It’s a shithole.”

Brand went on to point out that Streatham High Road was voted the worst street in Britain in a BBC poll in 2002.

The joke – which for some reason does not appear on the BBC iPlayer version of the show - has sparked a fierce rebuttal from Streatham Council, who accused the comedian of ‘serious damage’, ‘making their jobs ten times harder’, ‘letting herself down’, and even threatened her to ‘think twice about doing something like this again’.

In a 300-word complaint letter, councillor Angelina Purcell, the Streatham Town Centre Manager said: “You clearly do not understand the serious damage your flippant comment has had on our collective efforts to transform Streatham's image.

“Together with the committed people of this town we continue to make strides in reversing the town's economic decline.

“You've made my job ten times harder with the use of one word and I'm sure the 60,000 residents and 3,000 businesses feel just as angry as I do.

“For us, you've let yourself down badly Jo and I hope you'll think twice about doing something like this again.”

I happened to have watched the episode of Have I Got News For You the other night, had a small chuckle when the joke was said, and then thought nothing of it. There was much worse said on the show, and there usually is on many comedy shows and on TV in general.

Brand has performed a very well established and basic comedy quip, picking a place and make a disparaging remark about it. It is so common that it is barely worth explaining more. If you go to a comedy club – possibly one in Streatham – you’ll see this in action on a daily basis.

Taking for granted that Brand’s joke was a straight-forward quip which is used far and wide in comedy then it is fair to conclude that it wasn’t meant to be a political statement any more than say Nick Clegg should be found face down on Hackney Marsh (another joke which was mentioned on the show).

However, by drawing attention to the problem, making a public statement and having this issue picked up by the national press, the council has ignored the more pressing problems for Streatham Council to be handling than to go on a crusade against a comedian.

What Purcell is trying to do is hide behind a fig-leaf of political correctness. It seems that this leaf has been taken straight out of Iannucci’s book of how to be a politician.

Rather than make a sober assessment of the grain of truth in Brand’s joke, or even turning the other cheek and realise that what is said on a satirical panel show shouldn’t be considered as a serious statement, they decided to come out attacking, and make another assault on the right of free speech.

What annoys me in particular is that the civic leaders of the borough seem intent to spend their energy trying to hide behind the façade that Brand was ‘out of order’ in making comments which even the local residents of the area agree with.

Though Purcell claims that residents of Streatham are as angry as she is, currently 57% of people who have responded to a poll in The Streatham Guardian agree with Brand ‘that Streatham is a dump’.

Councillors also accuse Jo Brand of never having visited in Streatham, ignorant of the fact that the comedian lives in South London and not too far from the area.

The sheer gall of trying to turn attention away from their own failings by attacking a comedian whose remark was poignant – even if it was simply a throwaway joke – highlights inherent problems within Streatham Council.

However what worries me the most is that Jo Brand’s spokesperson was cajoled into an apology, and state that Brand ‘won't 'diss' Streatham again in this way’. Why not?

What gives the civic leaders of Streatham the right to gag a comedian, or anyone, from voicing their viewpoint it they don’t agree with it?

It is obviously the policy of a council would prefer to silence critics, and is endemic of a poorly led, unimaginative town leadership which cannot face up its own failures.

I myself have lived in Streatham for a year. The estate we lived on was so rough I was asked to be a police informant so that they could try and catch the youths which were trying to burn down the council block adjacent to where I lived.

So in conclusion to the public 'outrage' I would say this: next time you publicly accuse a comedian of being out of order for for making a joke think twice, and act with the authority which you have been bestowed with to make your area thrive rather than make cheap headlines and pointless crusades. If a comedian can damage the reputation of an area with a joke, then frankly the area’s reputation was already in need of repair.

You may have seen that ABC, the American network behind the Only Fools and Horses remake, had taken to Facebook to ask fans of its biggest comedy, Modern Family, what they should rename it. 

It stars John Leguizamo, so despite the inevitable flood of British people going 'how dare you remake our British shows, you might as well just put the Queen and Stephen Fry in an NHS hospital and BURN THE LOT DOWN' it might actually be quite good.

Which is more than can be said for the likelihood of the public coming up with a good name. On the one hand, it had previously been named And Only Fools and Horses, so they clearly needed some help. On the other hand, this is what The Public came up with. 

Bro-con Men

Not really sure how this is supposed to be a play of words, assuming it is. Bacon Men? Re-con Men? Americans: are these usual American expressions?

Just 4 You

If you Google this name, the first three things that come up are a sexual health advice site, a Towcester beauty clinic and a singles holiday site. Time to give it a new meaning!

Family 4 You

Maybe it's supposed to be like Cash 4 Gold, but you get to trade a family for...yourself? No, that doesn't work.

We Might Be Crazy But With Family

These last three all came from the same person, incidentally.

Did U Pay The Bills

And this one. Yes, he did send them all from a mobile.

Bros before Owls

Whenever I go on a night out I always make sure I put my male friends ahead of getting off with an owl.

kings of jack

Incredibly, this is the highlight from the entire list of 914 suggestions so far.

Scheming or Ideas' Man

Unexpected attention to grammar for Facebook. Unexpected and inaccurate, but attention nonetheless.

Bros of Ca$h

Eurgh. I mean...eurgh. Sounds more like an Entourage-style reality show from Spike.

Almost Famous

Definitely not already been used as a name for comedy purposes.

The OOPS Brothers 

Not happy with ripping off Almost Famous, now ABC's viewers want to nick Chucklevision. WHEN WILL IT END?

Call it.... Strike it rich 

STOP NICKING OUR BRITISH SHOWS.

Children & Fools

We'd also put good money on this having been a title touted for Rock and Chips at some point.

Luck Be a Brother

Isn't great, is it? But is it worse or better than...

Sibling Ribaldry

? 

Miner issues

Obviously the suggestee had in mind that episode of Only Fools where Delboy and Rodney ride around in a three-wheeled yellow mine cart.

Kinda reminds me of Ed, Edd, and Eddy. So maybe The Ed's

This person might be on to something. Dickinson's Real Deal reminds me of Bargain Hunt, so I refer to it as 'Bargain Hunt Hunt'.

Scheme Team 

It was an excellent episode of Pokemon, could it work as a prime time sitcom title?

Winklevoss

Did a little laugh at this, this probably gets our vote.

Fumbling Fools

Excellent, a gay remake of Only Fools and Horses. Arguably, Only Twinks and Stallions would be a better name.

need more information about this series.

Could do with some more work.

Tim Clark, 30 March 2012

Tim Minchin is one cocky fella – and he's happy to admit it.

The musical comedy maestro has just hurtled himself down a run at Mayrhofen's Ahorn piste at a speed which belies a beginner's first day on a board.

A few swift turns later and the Aussie comic is on his keens while I help him retrieve his sunglasses from further up the slope. Laughing while brushing the snow off he admits 'I might have got a little overconfident there', before racing off down the mountain, eager to master this sport as well as he has the comedy genre.

Another comedian snowboarding addict has been born, you can almost hear Andrew Maxwell cackle with delight. At times you could be forgiven for thinking that Maxwell is secretly trying to lure every comedian on the circuit into part of a secret snowboarding ninja clan - if he is then he's doing well at it.

It is the third day of Altitude Festival, which began in style on Monday night with an opening Gala that would be the envy of pretty much any other comedy festival on the planet.

The festival opened with three-hour long show curated by Andrew Maxwell which included sets from Ed Byrne, Brendan Burns, Michael Winslow, Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr.

That trend continued into Tuesday when Minchin was joined by Milton Jones, Kevin Bridges, Terry Alderton, Marcius Brigstocke and Rufus Hound.

Yes, with Altitude even the lists of comedy talent feel endless. While the shows themselves are going to be dealt with in a separate blog post tomorrow, so far Carr was the only comic who had to speed off back to the airport, with a car waiting for him straight after Monday night's gig.

Apart from him though almost all the other comics have stayed long enough in Mayrhofen to try their hand at winter sports.

I spent my first two days mostly in the company of the up-and-coming snowboarders Carl Donnelly, Ben Norris and James Hancox from Abandoman. In between runs and talks about wedding cakes, the sporty trio seemingly enjoyed playing up in the snow.

Ben Norris gets ready to take on the blue runs on Mayrhofen's Penken slopes

It is this relaxed atmosphere which the organisers seem intent on cultivating, and is akin to the Kilkenny Cat Laughs, which receives rave reviews from comedians who venture there.

Even the journalists took part in the festive nature of Altitude, with Chortle's Steve Bennet trying his and on the nursery ski slopes and the Sun's Tommy Holgate looking like he was practicing for the freestyle gymnastics while heading down the mountain on one ski.

Kenny Cavey and Tommy Holgate share a joke before we were chased by the ski police

Even those who don't enjoy partaking in a daily routine of throwing themselves down the mountain enjoy themselves, with Tiernan Douieb seemingly intent on catching up on his writing while he is here – and Frankie Boyle spotted on frequent rambling through the town.

Monday night's headliner Jimmy Carr looked stunned at what he had flown into and though he was only in Mayrhofen for a very short period of time, he vowed to try and return next year and spend more time at the festival to soak up the atmosphere. Kevin Bridges, who had also only flown out for a short period of time, seemed equally intrigued by the Alpine town, though he didn't head up to the mountain himself.

For some the heady mix of comedy and winters sports was simply too much

Speaking to SSP Maxwell described Altitude, which is now in it's fifth year, as a child which he is saving up to pay for rehab, yet though the festival has taken a while to get off the ground it looks like it is in rude health.

Tomorrow we'll mostly be trying to explain the concept of Terry Alderton's alternative comedy universe...

Just A Minute returned to our TV screens this evening for another attempt at taking radio gold and making it into TV coltan. We made some notes! Here they are!

0.00 “Welcome...to Just A Minute!” exclaims Nicholas Parsons, just like on the radio. The Minute Waltz is being played, just like on the radio. Maybe this is what the radio version is like, and we just can't normally see it? In that case, the inside of Radio 4 is made of a lot of glowing blue boxes. Unexpected.

0.08 Excellent title graphics.

0.41 Guests! Paul Merton and Sue Perkins look a bit arch. Graham Norton and Phill Jupitus look like they're ready to have a whale of a time. Come on, guests on the right!

1.06 AHAHAHAHA NICHOLAS PARSONS DID A JOKE AHAHAHAHA The audience is possibly worse than on 10 O'Clock Live.

2.00 You know that thing where this isn't the first time that Just A Minute has been attempted for TV and it's never quite worked? Well I know this is only two minutes in, but is it because on TV the guests have to perform for the audience, whilst on the radio the guests perform more to each other, and you just get invited in like a warm piece of eavesdropping? This is an early theory that I woul welcome you disregarding if I change my mind in five minutes time.

2.49 Oh shut up Sue Perkins.

3.58 While Sue Perkins seems determined to represent the worst beard-stroking excesses of Radio 4, Graham Norton seems determined to have fun. It is nice to see Graham Norton having fun and being funny. How bad do YOU think his BBC America show is going to be? Yes, you're probably right.

4.55 The set has turned purple! Goodness. Brave TV colour. Didn't pan out for Daybreak, after all.

5.33 Re: Nicholas Parsons undressing: there was a deeply disturbing episode of the National Lottery Show when I was a young'un where he appeared on the show wearing fishnet stockings. 

6.05 Paul Merton may be tedious on HIGNFY but bloody hell he really is good when he's still on form, isn't he? 

7.08 Oh lovely Phill Jupitus.

7.33 Sue Perkins aside, this is starting to work (please disregard the 2.00 theory). BUT (new theory) TV isn't really adding much. Maybe the set will go a really exciting new colour! Green? Cerise? Yelple?

9.00 I think we need the full story behind Paul Merton's injured finger.

9.53 'Deviation from sanity' is never funny Sue Perkins pipe down Sue Perkins

13.14 Graham Norton savaging Dragon's Den, awesome.

15.01 Set's been purple for quite a while. Was it purple the entire time? It might have been, actually, yes.

16.22 Nicholas Parsons is really basically my grandad. He's never appeared on the National Lottery in stockings, FYI.

17.07 Nicholas Parsons has been given a cheap plunger to use as the timer button #brokenbritain

18.32 This is Just A Minute, the Audience, no rogue clapping thank you.

18.40 They're clearly making a fuss of the Just A Minute 45th anniversary because they don't think Nicholas Parsons is going to make 50. Gosh, that's depressing. 

23.16 The set is definitely blue now, it's definitely changing a bit.

27.00 And nothing else particularly happened for the rest of the show. Filled half an hour (almost). B+.

Tim Clark, Monday 26 March, 2012

I've spent the weekend practicing my struts.

According to an app on my phone this is the best way to prepare for the bashing my knees are going to take while I attempt to keep pace with either Andrew Maxwell, Marcus Brigstocke or Craig Campbell early next week.

It's a tough challenge as Maxwell is so dedicated he has mentioned heading to Iran to snowboard, Campbell loves his snow possibly more than his comedy, and Brigstocke goes as far as calling himself a snow Nazi.

They may be able to make you laugh when they're on stage but on the mountains these comedians mean business  - and if I can't keep up then i'm considered worse than that persistent heckler at Up The Creek.

This year I am heading to Altitude Festival to once again witness what I personally think is one of the best attempts to nurture comedy in a new atmosphere I have seen.

Now in its fifth year, Altitude is a little like a comedian’s house party which has spun out of control. Set up by comedians Marcus Brigstocke and Andrew Maxwell in 2008, it started life as a way of getting their comedy friends out for a free ski holiday.

The two had performed in bars across the Alps for over a decade - after discovering a shared love of snowboarding on an Edinburgh dry ski slope - but after seeing the success of the Kilkenny Cat Laughs  festival in Ireland, thought it worth trying to organise their own winter sports version.

“Because Kilkenny is a tiny medieval city, we found ourselves kind of rammed in there, and there's a lot people mixing around in the streets... It has a real vibe to it,” Maxwell says. “It’s the same in a ski resort - which is essentially a village. You 've got that same vibe. You're meeting people, there's lots of hanging around and socialising.”

The festival has been a steep learning curve for Brigstocke and Maxwell. The first year Altitude operated, the duo hired a circus top which had to be rescued from collapsing in a snowstorm by the local fire brigade. After the last comedian had flown home, the two were left with a fist full of good memories and the whopping bill for their trouble.

Not to be put off, Altitude came back - and since 2011, has moved to its current home of Mayrhofen, Austria. Though the circus top may have gone and Brigstocke no longer helps organise the festival, it still has what can arguably be considered the best comedy lineup of any festival anywhere in Europe.

The names set to rub shoulders with the regular ski set this year include Jimmy Carr, Frankie Boyle, Kevin Bridges, Ed Byrne, Tim Minchin, Brendan Burns, Craig Campbell, Milton Jones, Rufus Hound, Terry Alderton, Abandoman, Phill Jupitus and many more.

But how do you get that many comedians to agree to spend a week together in a chalet?

Maxwell says it’s all down to the nature of comedy: “Comedians are, by their nature, extremely convivial people,” he says. “It's not how every dramatisation shows it, but comedians tend not to be misanthropes. But the bigger you get in comedy, the more time you spend going out and touring by yourself.

“It's a relatively isolated practice and it can be quite lonely, so that's why 'stadium names' like Frankie, Al, Jimmy and Tim are willing to do a friend a favour and play a smaller, more intimate, gig, as they get to hang out with their friends for the first time in a while.”

As with any festival, the normal rules of a comedy gig are bent and then broken. In the years I've been to Altitude, I’ve seen comedians attempt to perform in French and put on a gig on the top of a mountain.

“The first Altitude was the most stressful, busy, hectic two weeks of my life and it was the best time I have ever had in the Alps,” Brigstocke says. “People are seeing really great acts who can sell out 1,500 capacity theatres in the back of a bar.

“So tape a bit of wood to your feet and go for it. Simple as that.”

Altitude Comedy Festival runs from 26 to 31 March in Mayrhofen, Austria. For more information visit www.altitudefestival.com.

You might have seen the announcement today that Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the writers behind Outnumbered, are looking at writing a movie that sort of is going to be like Outnumbered, but isn't going to be like Outnumbered. It IS Outnumbered in the way that a family of two harrassed parents and their kids will take a road trip to Scotland for the grandfather's birthday. It will also be filmed using the same techniques and methods as the show. It ISN'T Outnumbered because it isn't going to actually be Outnumbered. 

Anyway, here are some thoughts on NotOutnumbered. Or Numbered, for short.

• With any luck, there won't be any cast cross-fertilisation between Outnumbered and NotOutnumbered. It was just a bit confusing with In The Loop and the Thick Of It, and there's no reason to think it would be different here. The obvious argument against this idea is that the great Outnumbered child actors are going to be hard to replace but we're just going to have a little faith in casting directors to find more children that can actually act (ie, don't get them at a Sylvia Young discount sale).
• Also if you get an entirely new family then that means there's room for a LOLtastic bumping in to the Brockmans in Knutsford Service Station.
• I saw Let Loose in Knutsford Service Station once. Which isn't really relevant here, but it's nice to make sure they don't go forgotten. 

• Anyway, casting: it needs parents who are good at playing endearingly baffled, while also being amiable enough that when they're being tediously indulgent of their children 'acting the goat' it's still watchable. (Again, no disrespect to Hugh Dennis and Clare Skinner who are great at it, but it's JUST EASIER FOR ALL CONCERNED.) 
• Suggestions: Olivia Coleman, Katherine Parkinson, Darren Boyd, Will Mellor. 
• Who we're probably going to get: Catherine Tate and Alexander Armstrong.
• Greg Davies would be good but it would be a nightmare trying to get him in shot in a car all the time.

• Confining it to a road trip to somewhere nice and domestic is wise, as 'taking British sitcom format and putting it in somewhere foreign' is a sorely-tested film format that doesn't always work out amazingly well. The Inbetweeners managed it with pizzazz but was very much the exception. In The Loop was great, but it did have to sacrifice the wonderful Thick of It eye for political dead-ends and Whitehall backstabbing when it was largely set in someone else's political culture. See also: all seventies sitcoms taken on holiday for films/specials. Or that time that EastEnders went to France. 

• It also limits the possible arrival of spoof arrogant Americans, which marked the real low in all the seasons of Outnumbered that have been broadcast so far.
• The film is being backed by BBC Films who seem to be on a run at the moment, apart from their absolute inability to make comedy. You have to start reaching back to In The Loop, Tamara Drewe and Made in Dagenham to find any hits. We're not really sure what this means but it seems significant 'somehow'.

We normally only write about British things because we're British and so it makes good British sense. But you know what? There's a lot of rather good-lookin' pilots that are coming up in America that are worth having on your radar. We've picked out the most interesting from a wide field here because hopefully it's only a matter of months before Channel 4 tries to pick them up to replace New Girl. And be sure to check out our lookover the casting of British remakes in America, because there's quite a few of them at the mo. 

• Matthew Perry will look old next to Kevin Sorbo, Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson in The Whole Banana, about a woman who prays to a Greek god for help with her love life, leading to him coming to Earth for a bit. It was a play, apparently, so should probably hang together a lot better than that one-line summary would suggest. We Are Movie Geeks
• Over at CBS there's a new Will & Grace from the makers of Will & Grace, except this time the premise is business partners where one's straight and one's gay. Working title: Such Small Portions (read: Partners). Michael Urie, the Gay from Ugly Betty, is in it. TV Line
• NBC is doing a pilot with Dane Cook called Next Caller Please. Great to see NBC have climbed out that creative hole they were in with exciting new talent, isn't it? Ology
• Lily Tomlin Lily Tomlin Lily Tomlin LILY TOMLIN is doing an ABC pilot, Malibu County, as a freshly-divorced Lily Tomlin tries to rebuild a life around a singing career in a new town. Her daughter is going to be played by Reba, which makes sense on precisely no counts. Advocate
• Martin Lawrence is doing a pilot for CBS, which like Bad Boys, is about cops. It's by the guys behind $*#! My Dad Says and Just Shoot Me, so expect lots of shooting from the middle here. EW

• Bill Pullman is going to play the president in NBC pilot 1600 Penn. That's right: the president in Independence Day is BACK (he's not playing the president from Independence Day). Reuters
• Lovely Bryan Greenberg is crawling from the wreckage of criminally underloved How To Make It In America to lead a CBS pilot about a man who has a health scare and realises the love of his life was a friend from 15 years ago. Doesn't sound great, does it? 'We'll see'. Deadline
• A couple of Oscar-nodded pilots: Missi Pyle, who played the biffy Constance in The Artist, is taking on Fox's Prodigy Bully; while Descendants' co-writer Nat Faxon (Faxon, Faxoff) is the lead in Fox's Ned Fox (Foxon, Foxoff) Is My Manny, about a layabout who moves home to help raise his sister. Lots of 'unemployed middlingly-young sorts have to move home and find a new way to get on with life in the absence of other life opportunities' comedies around these days aren't there? That's the recession for you. Reuters/Cinema Blend
• Sarah Chalke from Scrubs is in ABC's How To Live With Your Parents, as if to prove my point. On a loosely related note, isn't it lovely having so many pictures of Zach Braff around London at the moment? There is genuinely nothing that makes me laugh as whole heartedly as a picture of Zach Braff continuing to have a quarter-life crisis. Deadline
• Ellen is producing an ABC pilot starring her wife Portia de Rossi as one of a pair of warring sisters. Ellen was GREAT so hopefully this will be too. Perez

• Same principle with Sarah Silverman's new NBC comedy pilot, about her life experiences. Her last show was great, so fingers crossed. Hollywood Reporter
• Batten down the hatches and hide from Comedy Central UK's schedules in a matter of months: Brett Butler from Grace Under Fire and Charlie Sheen from Mental Instability are joining forces on FX's Anger Management. Digital Spy
• The guyz from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia have a new pilot called Living Loaded, and omgz Donald Sutherland is on board. It's basically about a partying blogger (not a real thing) who has to change his ways when he starts working at NPR. Still, it's the IASIP guyz! Gotta be good. AV Club
• Kari Lizer, who we should pay attention to because she did the New Adventures of Old Christine, is doing a new sitcom for ABC called The Unprofessional about a TV exec who's made unemployed. It is doubly exciting because it has Josh Hopkins, who was Raymond in Ally McBeal. (Anyone without a blank look on their face just because my Bestest Friend.) Deadline

And the inevitable raising of Ally McBeal marks a clear sign that it's time to stop this.

Read up on British pilots here. Actually we haven't updated that since the beginning of December but most of it is still relevant. 

There have been rather a lot of UK exports to America in comedy terms this year. Here's a round up of the casting decisions so far.

WHITE VAN MAN/WHITE TRUCK DUDE

Who starred in the UK

Will Mellor, Joel Fry, Clive Mantle, Georgina Moffat

Who's lined up for America

Kyle Bornheimer

We've not been particularly quiet about our deep love for White Van Man and Bornheimer is a fairly good fit, having already successfully led the cast of the US remake of The Worst Week Of My Life. Still, slightly odd to see the lead character so much older in this NBC version. And The Gays of America are going to be disappointed, given that he's not, well, Will Mellor. 

The well-written UK version was penned by Adrian Poynton, with the US pilot being penned by Bobby Bowman, a former My Name Is Earl staffer. Mellor claimed in a recent interview that the working title is White Truck Dude, which wouldn't exactly be a great sign for its prospects.

REMAKE IDEA: White Van Man means nothing in America and the show will need retitling. So why not go for White van Man, about a Dutch racialist? Just a thought. 

FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER

Who starred in the UK

Simon Bird, Tom Rosenthal, Paul Ritter, Tamsin Grieg

Who's lined up for America

Allison Janney, Tony Shalhoub, Aya Cash, Kevin Bigley, Gil Ozeri

Only two things to really know here: the mum is CJ out of the West Wing and the dad is Monk. If you've ever seen Juno or Drop Dead Gorgeous or Monk, you'll know how amazing set of comedy casting this is. The kids are fairly new on us, although this Ozeri character appears to be an 'internet sort'.

Wise words from Tom Rosenthal on the Twitters about the casting: "USA Jonny Goodman is absolutely stacked. Makes sense. #hench" 

Ken Kwapis and Greg Daniels, who are The American Office veterans, are putting this one together. Internet rumours say that HAPPARENTLY the US version is near enough a word-for-word remake of the British one, so make of that what you will.

(AND) ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES

Who starred in the UK

David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Roger Lloyd-Pack

Who's lined up for America

John Leguizamo

Leguizamo is one of those actors whose diverse career means different things to different people. I say ER's Dr Victor Clemente; you say Silly Mail Bird in Dora the Explorer. He has the comedy chops, having already toured his one-man show Ghetto Klown, but for UK audiences there's a lot at stake here. ABC are the most competent US network at comedy so that works in the show's favour.

SUBURBAN SHOOTOUT

Who starred in the UK

Anna Chancellor, Felicity Montagu, Amelia Bullmore

Who starred in America last time they tried a pilot (HBO)

Judy Greer

Who's starring in America this time round (ABC)

Unknown

No news on this yet. If it was Judy Greer again then that would really be quite good actually, she seems a good fit for the skittish steel that fits the concept.

RENTAGHOST

Who starred in the UK

Audrey out of Coronation Street, some other people

Who's starring in America

Ben Stiller in a film version

Poor Russell Brand had been attached to the Rentaghost remake but was reportedly dropped after the box office failure of films like Arthur. Now it's been handed to Ben Stiller, and given how he's turned Night at the Museum into a box office monster with a similar Array Of Wacky Supernatural Characters idea, we can probably expect more of the same here.

TIME TRUMPET

Who starred in the UK

Stewart Lee, Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, Adam Buxton

Who's starring in America

Unknown

We don't know yet – sorry about that – but it was a pretty stellar UK line-up that's going to be difficult to match. HAVING SAID THAT Time Trumpet was put together during that mid-noughties era when the BBC's CGI always looked a bit dusty and blurry, so that one might get blown out the water. What's Walmart declaring war on Venezuela going to be like?

Dear Those People Thinking About Putting Some Comedy On Radio 1,

We’ve been thinking rather a lot about that report a couple of months ago that said you might start airing some new comedy for the first time since 1846. This is partly because BBC Three’s efforts at renewing its comedy have so far been rather underwhelming, and someone at the Beeb should be doing some youth comedy in the post-Switch era. (Russell Kane is a great comedian, but he is not the FUTURE YOUTHFUL FACE of comedy.) It’s also partly because it’s February and we don’t have much else to think about.

ANYWAY, this must feel like a bit of a brave new world after this much time, but with the right format (ie, edit the zinging tits off it and make sure it’s available on podcast when it’s inevitably scheduled at 2am on a Wednesday night), there are many a potential winner on offer.

• New panel shows have broadly stagnated into two very by-the-numbers formats: Radio 4’s middle class lurlz, or Dave-style abrasive filler. But guess what? We saw a truly, truly tremendous game show last night on PUNS, called Punt. It was a one-off at the Vault Festival so you missed it, sorry about that, but it made WORD PLAY funny, thanks to its pacing, utter lack of Brandreth-esque pomposity, and willingness to remix Twitter-esque audience features without sounding like your dad using the word ‘LOL’ in a text. Plus, it was very young: Thom Tuck and Humphrey Ker were the elderly comedy statesmen, and added together they are still younger than Chris Moyles (probably). On paper, it was the most Radio 4 thing alive, but it had so much energy, excitement and quotable LOLZ that it could actually fit very well for Radio 1. Why bother reinventing the comedy wheel? The wheel is there. It just needs tarting up with tinsel and Christmas lights, and with a ban of anyone over 35 ever appearing on it. Seriously, this one is easy: just commission this.

• ALTERNATIVELY, we might have banged on 86 times about the dearth of decent satire in Britain – well, pretty much everywhere apart from sometimes in Australia, REALLY – but guess what? We’re going to bang on about it again. Please make some new satire. Now there’s a fundamental problem, in that we can’t think of any young comedians to competently get stuck in on this. Josie Long is the closest there is to a comedy rep for the angry youth and even before she joined the station, she was a tad too ‘6 Music’. Um…Joe Lycett, maybe, if you wanted to keep it light-hearted and just do a sort of Dirty Digest for the radio? Consider this idea a work in progress but we have mentioned it because like panel shows, it’s easy to write off satire as being suffocatingly smug and middle class, just because that’s what we’ve all got used to. It doesn’t have to be, it’s just going to take a bit of reinvention (aforementioned tinsel innit).

• Actually whichever of those last two you do, Matt Edmondson is very funny and already on your DJ roster to make sure the new show isn’t too horrifyingly new for the audience. Did you see the F Factor online in 2010? Zip, zing, etc. Perfect.

• Also on the satire one, NO PUBLIC INTERACTION please. It’s arguable whether we needed one Newsjack, let alone two.

• We brought up the flourishing of musical comedy in that thing we wrote about what’s going wrong with Buzzcocks, but why not beat TV to the punch and do something about it? Scott Mills very occasionally dips his toes in the musical comedy waters, which is great, but there’s so much more you could do. If there’s one thing musical comedy could use, it’s some sharp editing to keep things moving when it gets flabby (as it often seems to do), and Radio 1 are rather good at that. Throw in some nifty stings and aggressive sifting of content and there’s more than enough talent to do something.

• You might think the ideas so far are a bit ‘6 Music’, which won't fit with your current focus on getting a younger audience. There’s a strong temptation to put Daniel Sloss and Matt Richardson on air for the sole reason that they are too young to hire a rental car on the continent. They are fine young comedians, but if you put talented new, um, talent on air too soon, it can go horribly wrong. (We were going to put a YouTube clip of Jack Whitehall and Holly Walsh on the woeful TNT here to illustrate our point but it was so awful we can’t even find one.) No-one will be offended if you put a 30-year-old on air, really.

• We can’t write this article without mentioning former Radio 1 comedies Blue Jam and Fist of Fun. Now, we can’t think of any outright comic geniuses-in-waiting who could do full-blown series, but what both shows did well was cobble together lots of fractured bits and pieces for late-night radio. So why not raid the character and sketch comedy cupboard? There’s Kieran and the Joes and Idiots of Ants. There’s Cariad Lloyd. Late Night Gimp Fight and Pappy’s could bring the filth. If you have to play the youth card hard, there’s always Sheeps. Maybe even do a showcase (of the zippy sort, not the laconic, idling-on-a-microphone-stand BBC Three showcase sort) and throw in some of the aforementioned musical stars – it’s been so long since you’ve done something that it might help spread the burden of being the first new comedy on the station a bit.

• On a loosely related note, young Stewart Lee: totally would.

ANYWAY, Dear Person We’re Writing This Letter To, it’s a fairly safe bet that Radio 1 and comedy are so unlinked in people’s minds that not a single person mentioned here would have even considered it a possibility. But that can be a good thing. You’ve got a blank canvas and the market pretty much to yourself.

(Just for the love of all things good on the radio, please don’t do what we think you’re going to do: retooling the review show to be fronted with Greg James and some Young Comedian panelists and think you’ve done your job.)

Kind regards and inappropriate hugs, Such Small Portions

When 10 O'Clock limped to the end of its first run we wrote a piece on where it needed to sort itself out. Two episodes in to the second season seems a good time to perform a stock check on how things are going. (One episode would have been the obvious point but we were on holiday. SORRY.)

• The first obvious thing is how there really aren't many changes. Twenty minutes have been lopped off; Brooker is still slowly morphing into a crude charade of himself with only an occasional flash of his former brilliance; Mitchell is still talking rampant sense, albeit now with a cuddly beard; the fact that Carr is the most creative, funny and thought-provoking host remains utterly unexpected; Laverne seems simultaneously relaxed about the criticism of her largely lacklustre contribution, and uninterested in doing anything to remedy the situation. 

• First up, Brooker. This week saw his poem on the Sun quite rightly go viral, where he railed against the paper's claims it was undergoing a witch hunt by listing all the groups it has attacked over the years. That's one great piece, but compare it to his ramblings in the first week on what's wrong with the Queen. Indeed, it was quite specifically the Queen and not the monarchy he went for, failing to separate a hard-working 85-year-old woman from the institution that he apparently has a problem with (a mistake Carr and Mitchell seemed to rightly hold him to account for afterwards). It had all the hallmarks of a lazy Brooker rant: the term 'forelock tugging' was wheeled out for the 85th time in one his missives on royalty, even though no-one knows what it means; the Network-esque fake rage about how much a crown costs compared to a hospital was bordering on embarrassing; the frustration that there's clearly something to be said about the obsequious coverage by the BBC that is submerged under such evidence-free opprobrium that it's hard to dig it out. 

• Similarly, during a debate on banking bonuses, Brooker made a joke that he doesn't know what they do. He's paid enough money to broadcast his opinions to the country that the least he could do is some research on what that is. Just because it hasn't been covered on the front page of the Guardian website isn't an excuse for him not knowing the answer, and adds to the sense that they could rename the show Guardian Opinion & Debate Pages, LIVE!.

• It's interesting to compare and contrast Brooker with David Mitchell. Mitchell has written plenty about his dislike of football, but fair play to him, he got in Alistair Campbell and Clarke Carlisle to discuss what good it does in what was one of the best features so far this series. It originally seemed a strange decision to cut David Mitchell's monologue for this second season given its strengths, but what we got with this debate was challenged opinion rather than the rambling and seemingly undeveloping rage that Brooker is offering up.

• Does anyone ever wonder what it would be like if Brooker had been coupled off and was all happy and went running twenty years ago? Would the amazing attention to detail of TV Go Home, a site/book that provides the clear roots for a  decent portion of his better material, ever have materialised? Just me then? Fine, as you were.

• Jimmy Carr remains amazing. His opening joke cracks are like those on 8 Out of 10 Cats but even sharper. There's enough courage and invention in the scripts for shoddier ideas like a Putin press conference that he still pulls it off. And he is clearly competent enough to think his own thoughts, such as a reasoned and rational defence of the Sun after Brooker's (also reasonable) criticism. In short, why can't everyone just BE REASONABLE instead of SHOUTING ALL THE TIME so they sound like SOMEONE WRITING IN CAPS ON THE INTERNET.

• Laverne was the easy target for many people's ire in the first season, and the first episode of this second run seemed like something had changed. Her piece on Stephen Hester (arguing that he should have been allowed to keep his bonus) may have still been a bit sixth form debate society, but it was a counterpoint to the views of most of the audience. But by week two she's back to the easiest of easy targets: mocking the US Republicans. It was joke-free, full of cheap shots (calling Mormonism 'bizarre', for one) and told viewers literally nothing they wouldn't already know about a over-covered matter. 

• The audience are still whooping like its SM:TV Live.

• You know, it's actually getting quite scary how much sense Jimmy Carr talks. A show where him and David Mitchell just talk in a reasonable manner with interesting and evidenced points of view would be The Nuts. 

• Please someone do something about the godawful titles. This is supposed to be satire, not the cover of a 1999 Ibiza Chilled album.