A Quick Review of Christmas TV Part Four

Over the last few days I’ve managed to catch up with several more programmes, some of which have been the highlight of the festive period, others been very much low-lights.

BBC3 has a two part countdown of Most Annoying People: 2011 which was your typical b-list celebrity filled look at the fifty most annoying people of the year. Most of the choices were accurate, much of the chat funny. There have been worse ways of wasting three hours. I would like to say I’d never heard of some of the people but it was nice to finally find out who Kim Kardashian is.

The festive special of QI XL was as good as ever. How could it not with Brian “best episode of HIGNFY” Blessed on it? Sure he took over the show, even if Ross Noble was doing his best to combat his verbose opponent, so it was a little bit more of a chaotic show than usual but the interesting facts and humour were still there.

By far the highlight of the Christmas period for me was The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, an hour long surreal exploration of Charles Dickens adaptations featuring loads of stars from David Mitchell to Dave Lamb, from Celia Imrie to the headmaster from the Demon Headmaster. The story revolved around the owner of a shop finding his grandfather owes a great debt and he loses his house and his family are put in jail until he can pay the debt.

Let’s just say the story is surreal but hilarious. With some fantastic sets and some absolutely brilliant performances from Robert Webb and Stephen Fry, this was a laugh a minute adaptation that was funny in its own right thanks to a witty script, surreal plotting and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them visual jokes, but made all the more hilarious by obliterating the plotting and styles of every Dickens adaptation ever. Well worth picking up if they release it on DVD. I can’t emphasise how funny this show was.

Which is more than can be said for my biggest disappointment of the period. I love Armstrong and Miller in their solo work – Ben Miller in Johnny English, Primeval etc is fantastic; Armstrong is brilliant as a presenter and panel show guest – but I was severely disappointed by the compilation show of their fourth sketch series on channel four, just before they moved to the BBC which, aside from the funny concept of Nude Practice, was devoid of any good humour.

Though it was funnier than Felix and Murdo, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye had it all on paper: the two leads, the writer, Katy Wix, a thumbs up review in the Radio Times. Sadly the pilot turned out to be terrible. Featuring jokes that were either unfunny or rude without any redeeming punch lines, I gave up after fifteen minutes as I’d not laughed once and frankly found the whole thing to be badly written and tedious. Perhaps I was missing something but it was a definite disappointment and I was expecting much more from such a combination of talent.

Otherwise I’ve been watching some of the Little Crackers from Sky Plus Anytime which, of the ones I’ve seen, were all brilliant. Harry Hill’s surreal 15-minute play was full of TV Burp-esque jokes and well worth seeing, and Sheridan Smith’s and Jane Horrack’s were well acted and very touching, with a really good cameo from Alan Davies in the first which was worth watching for that alone.