Television & radio – Page 34 – ComedyNews.Org :: Comedy News Organization

Tears of clowns: who are the saddest of TV’s sad comedians?

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Television shows built around standup comics have taken a turn for the despairing. Louis CK has a lot to answer for

“Are you havin’ a laugh?”

Not recently, no.

Sara Schaefer: the breakout comic on trashing Trump and bombing on stage

August 15, 2017TheGuardian

After writing gigs on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the American standup is heading for the big time via a show at the Edinburgh festival fringe

Losing control of your bladder in a grocery store. Being bullied at school for using men’s deodorant. Getting posture problems as a result of walking with a constant stoop to hide your flat chest. These and other harrowingly embarrassing tales are the stock-in-trade of Sara Schaefer, the latest potential US comedy superstar to head to the Edinburgh festival fringe. In recent years, Trevor Noah and Michael Che both played the fringe as near-unknowns before getting their current jobs at The Daily Show and SNL respectively. Schaefer could well be set for similarly great things.

From Del Boy’s cap to Steve Martin’s arrow – what happened to the comedy trademark?

August 7, 2017TheGuardian

Comedians once embraced a signature quip or look, so why have such tropes fallen out of favour?

Imagine a museum devoted to the iconography of comedy. There would be glass cases containing Del Boy’s flat cap, Father Ted’s dog collar and a perfectly preserved set of fork handles. There’d be an animatronic mannequin of Basil Fawlty, performing his impression of the Führer on a permanent loop. And on the public address system, echoing around the exhibits, a collection of immortal catchphrases: “Suits you, sir … You stupid boy … I don’t BELIEVE it.”

Related: The IT Crowd – box set review

Can Daphne and The Pin save Radio 4 comedy?

July 14, 2017TheGuardian

One act offers Badults-style sketches, the other does mindbending meta-gags. Both bring new shows to a station that specialises in self-satisfied comedy

The Pin and Daphne were part of a wave of creative, self-reflexive new sketch comedy that peaked at the Edinburgh festival two or three years ago. Now, both acts have shows on BBC Radio 4. I was interested to hear how their respective shticks transferred to the airwaves, and whether they could resist the tone of self-satisfaction that often afflicts comedy on the nation’s most urbane station.

The Pin’s show is entering its third series, and claims fans ranging from Ben Stiller to David Walliams. Daphne Sounds Expensive – starring the trio George Fouracres, Phil Wang and Jason Forbes – is returning for its second run. I hadn’t listened to either outfit on the radio before, although I know both from the Edinburgh fringe. In neither case can Radio 4 be said to be striking out into bold new territory – both companies are graduates of UK comedy’s most privileged finishing school, the Cambridge Footlights.

Mrs Brown’s Boys live? They’ll need more than malaprops and mincing to thrill an entire arena

July 6, 2017TheGuardian

Good Mourning Mrs Brown, the cross-dressing hit’s live show, is so full of horseplay, guffaws and in-jokes, I started to feel like a gooseberry

One surefire way to elicit sympathy from your cultured friends: tell them you’re going to see Mrs Brown’s Boys at the O2 arena. Was there ever a more polarising show on British television than Brendan O’Carroll’s cross-dressing comedy? It has been the UK’s most popular sitcom by some considerable margin over the past five years, but it is despised by sophisticates, who see in it the revival of all the tired conventions and chauvinisms that alternative comedy, or modernity more generally, were thought to have seen off for good.

Ronny Chieng on International Student and testing the limits of The Daily Show

June 18, 2017TheGuardian

Playing himself might be the ‘easiest job in the world’, but the boyish-looking, sick burn-delivering comic has been reliving some excruciating memories

On stage and screen, the comedian Ronny Chieng is famously irritable. A senior correspondent on America’s beloved news satire The Daily Show, and titular star of ABC’s Ronny Chieng: International Student, the short, boyish-looking, sick burn-delivering comic has the querulous demeanour of a man prone to outrage and allergic to pleasantries.

The 31-year-old Malaysian has been like that since his first public (non-university) gig, at a tiny, dingy, subterranean Melbourne comedy room in 2009, performing a slightly rinkydink set in front of a crowd of approximately eight people. I know, because I was one of them.

Tonight at 11/10c, correspondent Ronny Chieng reports on the Fox News/Jesse Watters racist Chinatown segment. pic.twitter.com/FTq8HyJ0KD

Half the country hate you immediately, no matter what you say. You kind of realise every day is transient

Jenny Slate: ‘Ivanka Trump is a fake feminist and should be ashamed’

June 18, 2017TheGuardian

The US actor, standup and author on her new film, Gifted, rescuing her career after being fired from Saturday Night Live, inspirational women and the terrifying situation in the White House

Jenny Slate, 35, is an American comedian, actor and author. The middle of three sisters, with a ceramicist mother and poet father, she was raised in Milton, Massachusetts. While at Columbia University, Slate performed standup and improv. Moving to Los Angeles with then-husband, director Dean Fleischer-Camp (they’ve since amicably divorced), Slate joined Saturday Night Live in 2009, but accidentally swore in her first episode and was fired after one season. A stop-motion short animation made with Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, became a viral hit, leading to New York Times bestseller children’s books and plans for a feature-length movie.

With her distinctive voice, Slate featured in Zootopia and The Secret Life of Pets. On television, she appeared in Parks and Recreation, Married and Girls. Her performance in Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, playing a comic navigating a pregnancy termination, won her awards including the Critics’ Choice award for best actress in a comedy. Slate stars in another Robespierre film, Landline, due out in the summer. In her latest film, Gifted, she plays a teacher who becomes involved with a man (Chris Evans) caring for his maths prodigy niece (Mckenna Grace).

Freak out! Reggie Watts on jamming with James Corden and tackling Trump with improv

June 7, 2017TheGuardian

The freestyle standup and bandleader on The Late Late Show is in London for a gig and has no idea what he’ll perform. Improv, he says, can free the mind – and maybe silliness can help save the world

Vocal artist, musician, beatboxer, actor, alt-comedian and now bandleader: it might be quicker to list the few things freaky American entertainer Reggie Watts doesn’t do. Best known now as the frontman of the house band on James Corden’s Late Late Show on CBS, Watts may be the best example of the theory (which I’ve just made up) that a person’s hair is the physical manifestation of their ideas escaping into the world. Watts twinkles at his audiences from behind a vast sashaying afro, and his imagination is just as unrestrained. “Creativity is such a natural part of who I am,” he tells me cheerfully, over salad in a London eatery. “I find it easy to tune into – as long as I’m listening and I can get out of my own way.”

Why I love… Dave Chappelle

April 15, 2017TheGuardian

I will never not laugh at his bit on chicken and racism

Back when easy streaming was a twinkle in some young executive’s eye, some TV was just… unavailable. If you were desperate to watch that US TV show, you could try the dodgy VHS guy down the market (ahem). So for a long time, I just heard about US comedian Dave Chappelle’s legendary show. When I finally got to watch, on a grainy DVD copy, I laughed so hard I cried.

Dave Chappelle, 43, moved to New York as a teen and was soon on stage at the world famous Apollo theatre. By 19, he was cast as Ahchoo in the spoof Robin Hood: Men In Tights. The 90s were good to him (more film and TV work, and his first standup special) but it was the 2000s that cemented his legacy: he co-created Chappelle’s Show in 2003, influencing a new generation of TV comedians in the process. The sketches and characters are iconic now (professional hater Silky Johnson and Chappelle as Prince are my favourites) and still relevant. His standup style is warmly sly and anecdotal: he’s your best friend but, like, 2,000 times funnier. I will never not laugh at his bit on chicken and racism, or applaud his incredibly nuanced “how old is 15, really?” bit on how black kids are perceived.

Help! We’re trapped in an American sitcom – exclusive Comic Relief video

March 16, 2017TheGuardian

In Flatshare, created by the comedy sketch trio Massive Dad for Comic Relief, two mates walk into the world of a US sitcom, complete with canned laughter. The sketch is part of the Comic Relief Originals series to mark Red Nose Day on 24 March. Flatsha…

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