A Quick Review of Christmas TV Part Two

OK, having been busy with other things including some comedy DVDs and, you know, spending time with the family, I haven’t actually watched much extra television. The Borrowers is still sat on the PVR so I’ll be coming to that soon, but otherwise it’s because there wasn’t much exciting on on Boxing Day frankly, and the rest of the TV landscape still looks a bit tedious until Sherlock comes on in the new year.

I did, however, watch Toys That Made Christmas, fronted by the presenter par excellence Robert Webb who, though not on top form as he was on the pre-Christmas third movie mistakes programme when he was hilarious, made the show. Though, having watched a repeat of Jonathan Ross’ Top 100 Toys ever, it was very much déjà vu as practically all of the toys were repeated along with the same talking heads, stock images and video clips. In fact, if I was being cynical, would have suggested they were made by the same company but not sure about that. Besides, they didn’t mention Pogs, Boglins or Tracy Island, three of the best toys ever created!

The other programme I’ve managed to see, thanks to the power of iPlayer and on a friend’s recommendation, was Michael McIntyre’s Christmas Comedy Roadshow. Now I’ve not seen the standard show for a long time, especially weird considering my love of stand-up comedy, and this special was a weird beast.

The show is unsurprisingly fronted by comedian Michael McIntyre who, no matter how many other comedians seem quite snobby about his observational humour, I really like due to his Peter Kay-style jokes out of the everyday, which he demonstrated well as part of this hour-long show. I don’t think it was the usual thing for this show which usually sticks with one or two comedians but it was a shotgun visit through as many acts as they could seemingly fit into a show, with a guest lucky if they were on for more than four minutes which made it feel like a taster and a waste of talent, and more of a variety show, than necessarily a comedy event, but I suppose the selection and diverse showing of talent fits in with the Christmas theme.

As usual with the show the acts were interspersed with the cameraman playing celebrity Where’s Wally with the camera landing on famous people as they laugh, plus ordinary punters. Well I’m assuming they’re ordinary; if not they’re just not famous enough for me to recognise. Even Lulu managed to make it to the audience which was more than she could manage for the festive Strictly Come Dancing.

The set opened with the longest stint of the evening with twelve minutes of McIntyre doing some great sketches on Christmas and kids and childless couples at this time of year, and was very good at it, even if I still can’t get the image of Jon Culshaw impersonating him out of my head, as well as his apparent unhappiness at the spot-on version.

Jack Dee was the first guest on, bringing his usual brand of downbeat humour to the event, his jokes about cats and shredders (not connected I might add) were great but at just four minutes on-screen I was disappointed and could have watched more.

After an inspired sequence about pop records, in particular on Chris Rea, with a very well done duet between McIntyre and songstress Pixie Lott on the Pogues festive hit complete with interpretations of Sean McGowan’s incomprehensible vocals – surely a contender for next year’s Christmas number one, if Lott could ensure her singing was a little stronger, it was onto Rhod Gilbert, a comedian I’m not that familiar with aside from appearances on panel shows, but his five-minute surreal rant on an electric toothbrush was great and my favourite of the show.

After a quick skit from McIntyre on clocks it was the turn of David Mitchell from the Royal Box, delivering a speech from Autocue that was like Ronnie Corbett if he’d grown a beard and a sad resentment of life. In fact, I’m convinced that Mitchell is turning into Charlie Brooker in both delivery and facial look. His speech on Christmas-land and all the absurdities of the period was sharp and biting and fresh out of Brooker’s style of piece.

Heston Blumenthal, another member of the audience, was the cue for McIntyre to joke about glasses up to the two-third point, allowing Rob Brydon dressed as Santa to come on for five minutes, using the celebrities in the audience – which seemed to be mainly consisting of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing contestants – as targets for jokes at their expense which were, mostly, OK and the closing joke aimed at Holly Valance was funny, adult but a little bit mis-judged compared to the rest of the acts. He was good but not as good as Brydon can be, which was a shame.

It was more mick-taking of celebrities with some ok humour from McIntyre as he spoke to Gino D’Acampo before Sean Lock came to the stage to bring the level of humour back up with some dry humour. One of the best acts of the evening, which was good as next up were Miranda Hart and James Cordon, two comedians who I love in ‘Not Going Out’ and ‘Doctor Who’ respectively but don’t think much of as stand-up comedians. The set-up for their spoof of ‘Time of Your Life’ took a while to set-up and the pay back wasn’t that fantastic. I would have rather had that six minutes bolted onto Dee, Gilbert or Lock thanks!

At least the ending was nicely rounded up with Kylie Minogue appearing on stage to perform a truncated version of ‘Walking In A Winter Wonderland’ (sadly not the sexy ‘Santa Baby’).

Overall a cracking hour of comedy. I would rather have seen Hart and Corden dropped and maybe splitting the programme into two one-hours to give all the comedians more screentime, but as a sixty-minute festive selection box of comedians there was some great humour in there and well worth watching.