Comedy news: The Fast Show Faster. Faster! FASTER!

The Fast Show is back from next Thursday, so get ready to type in your age to watch it on the Foster's site/go to YouTube and watch it there instead (delete as age appropriate). We watched the first three episodes the other night and made some notes, in between looking at the Fast Show stars and doing a compare and contrast on the wonders of the ageing process. Here they are: 

SOME INTERESTING POINTS

• Rather crucially, the titles on the show call it the Fast Show, and not the Fast Show Faster as you might think it is called if you've been following this for a while on Twitter. 
• How kindly sketches are remembered and how funny they are don't seem to match up very well. The series opens with a mere smudge of a Ted and Ralph that doesn't really work, before giving way to great spots by Rowley Birkin QC, Dave Angel and Monkfish.
• The sketches are also being rolled out slowly, rather than all at once, so hold your horses if you're waiting for something in particular.
• Paul Whitehouse is really very funny, which is something easily forgotten after the Aviva ads.
• The 'updating' process is largely successful. Aside from one slipshod Lady Gaga joke, everything else worked and didn't ring as shoehorned in. In particular, jokes about how rubbish fish is these days. 
• It would certainly be nice if Mark Williams was in it – Suits You Sir suffers a little bit, but not as much as you would imagine – but there's enough to get on with without him.
• Caroline Aherne isn't really in it much, but thinking back, she wasn't in the original series much more than here. 
• Charlie Higson may be ageing very well but hot pants may be a look too far.
• Does My Bum Look Big In This was QUITE funny but fell absolutely flat. Women + beer brands = not an enormously compatible mix.
• Sketch return of the night: Swiss Toni. We didn't think we could ever laugh at that again after the horror of sitting through a recording of a whole episode of it back when it was a sitcom but this is awesome.
• I didn't want to laugh at the Camila Batmanghelidjh sketch but the Fast Show won.
• Scorchio! Yup, that's still funny.
• There's obviously been some money thrown at this, and being catchphrase comedy, it would have been all too easy for the people involved to have turned in some lazy cack and just run off with the money. But you know what? Just like Alan Partridge before it, some hard work has gone into this and it shows. Even without the nostalgia factor, this is worth a look.
• HURRY UP AND BRING BACK JOHNNY NICE PAINTER.