Saturday 27 June 2009

On hitting and missing.

Well, I'm on a train with magical free wifi, so I might as well use it. It's rather unreliable though, so don't be surprised if I suddenly

Heh, did you see what I did there? I done a joke. And of course some other jokes that I done are being broadcast on tv at the moment, to what is a so far a satisfyingly positive response. Of course I hold in my mind the excellent advice my late father gave me- 'never take any notice of the bastards, even if they praise you'- but for this particular series I was interested in what the critical response might be, since David and I had written a sketch about it (from a table idea from, I think, Toby- but I may be wrong about this). Anyway, most previewers and reviewers neatly avoided the trap-for-heffalumps which was 'Behind the scenes- Hit and Miss' (the only one who fell squarely in was of course the doltish Sam Wollaston of the Guardian, who is beginning to approach pathological hatred for R and D. Did one of them push him off his bike or something?).

It was fun to write and the boys clearly had fun performing it, but on reflection we missed one trick. It strikes me that the response to any sketch show from Python to Horne and Corden is so subjective that it's kind of pointless to opine that one liked or disliked any particular sketch. Take Sir Digby- there are as many people who can't stand those sketches as there are people clamouring for one every week. If one hadn't seen the show, to read all the reviews, not to mention the internet scuttlebutt, would leave one unbelievably confused about what was and wasn't funny.

So, yeah, reviewing sketch comedy is so very subjective as to be a waste of time. Got that, critics? Off you pop, then.

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