The Catherine Tate Show and Nan

image c Tiger Aspect / BBC

The Catherine Tate Show
2 / 5
Nan
3 / 5

Series: Three (plus specials and charity specials)
Aired: 2004 - 2007 (- 2015 spin-offs: Nan)
Channel: BBC One, BBC Two
Writers: Catherine Tate, Derren Litten, Mathew Horne et al
Cast: Catherine Tate, Mathew Horne, Niky Wardley, Angela McHale, James Holmes et al

The Catherine Tate Show is a comedy sketch show, written and starring Catherine Tate. It features many recurring characters, some of whom are now well-loved staples of British Comedy, including a lazy school girl and a foul-mouthed geriatric, and has offered many special episodes and charity sketches, plus a spin-off dedicated solely to Nan.

If you'd have asked me before I re-watched this sketch show how many stars I'd give it, I would have gone with four, maybe even five stars. It seems trivial to explain my enjoyment of anything in stars, but it tends to work with things like this. This sketch show was the one that we would say over and over again in the playground at school. Every generation has one: a comedy that is repeated by school kids all over the country, and for my school it was this. Mostly it consisted of continuously asking people if we were "bovvered", but quotes were often thrown about on MSN (anyone remember that?) and my memory of The Catherine Tate Show was completely mixed up with these halcyon days.

However, since re-watching the whole series, I must confess I find it slightly lacklustre. From the off the best-loved characters are there: Lauren is there asking anyone if she's bothered and Nan is there distrusting absolutely everyone and whinging about the smallest of matters. But watching it made me realise that really these two characters are the only things that are above average about the sketches.

Part of the problem was that we revisited a lot of the characters far too much. It felt like a weird mix of sketch and sitcom, with some sketches lasting up to five minutes. Sketch shows are not the pinnacle of comedy, but for light relief they're perfectly fine and welcome in small portions-but those portions must be small. The sketches featured here felt overdone because the same characters would come back and do the same joke over and over, just with different words. We'd have the office woman trying to make her colleague guess at something, with the colleague getting it terribly wrong. The first time, this is very funny: it's real and you can relate to it. But after the seventh or eighth time it's simply just a bore.

Recurring characters are all very well, but with sketches, development of their personalities is virtually impossible and so we only need the funny situation and then we're gone. But of course, that creates the problem of us having to laugh at the same joke multiple times, often in the same episode.

It felt like a bit of a let down because my memory was so high up on the comedy scale of enjoyment. Nan, on the other hand, was something quite different.

Following a successful one-off in 2014, Catherine Tate's Nan returned for two more episodes over the Christmas period in 2015. These are more in the sitcom genre than sketch, but they still retain some of the sketch elements that Catherine Tate is best known for. The thing that Catherine Tate does so well with Nan is make her so utterly believable. We all have an older relative who is, how shall I put this?-casually racist and just a bit fed up, and Nan is exactly that plus quite a bit of exaggeration. This is comedy in its element.

Nan is a fun character who makes us cringe because she tells a truth of what our older relations are like. A different generation trying to cope in a modern, changing world. It's not about right or wrong with Nan, it's about how to cope with that kind of person and their views. In most cases, it's pure laziness to remain ignorant, but there are often wonderful moments in the development of Nan where she is taking out of her ignorance. Having said that, there's no doubt that Nan was created just to be something funny.

Jam & Jerusalem

image c BBC

Jam & Jerusalem
5 / 5

Series: 3
Aired: 2006-2009
Channel: BBC One
Writer: Jennifer Saunders and Abigail Wilson
Cast: Sue Johnston, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Joanna Lumley, Pauline McLynn, Maggie Steed, Sally Phillips, David Mitchell et al

I'd forgotten how much I utterly, absolutely adored Jam & Jerusalem. Created by one of the most amazing British comedy actors and writers of all time (Jennifer Saunders), J&J centres on a rural English village called Clatterford St. Mary (fictional) and its WI Guild (very non-fictional).

It's basically a work of genius, in my not particularly humble opinion. First of all we need to commend the sheer quality of female comedians and actors at work here. You'd be forgiven for wondering when Joanna Lumley will pop up because her character is so unlike her and Dawn French is a wonderful breath of fresh air regarding the portrayal of mentally ill characters in comedy.

The story begins with Sue Johnston's character, Sal, a part-time nurse practitioner whose husband unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, bringing her son (James, played by David Mitchell) in to run the village's practice along with his wife. And then we get to the Women's Institute Guild, run by the absolutely brilliantly played-by-Maggie-Steed Eileen. She is a force to be reckoned with, let me tell you. Her character and her obsession with Charles Dance feature in my Top Ten Comedy Moments That Never Fail To Make Me Laugh When I Think About Them.

The relationships between all the characters is astounding. They are all driven together by the WI, the jam and the Jerusalem, despite most of them not particularly even wanting to be there in the first place, or perhaps not having any kind of real reason for being there. Sal is reluctant to join in at first, but alongside Tip, (Pauline McLynn, who played Mrs Doyle in Father Ted if you need any more encouragement to watch it), who plays the little red devil upon Sal's shoulder quite marvellously, they both join up as a "what the hell, it might be fun" initiative.

Countrylife frolics ensue. We have your average farm escapades and horse-riding shenanigans that you'd expect to find in any English rural town, alongside vicarage tales of the quite-ordinary-actually and a varied plethora of family sub-plots that all, somehow, lead back to the WI and its members. We have the obvious and perhaps clichéd run-ins with cake competitions and village fétes, each one with more clichés thrown on top of them. But don't get me wrong: it's not a clever ploy to disregard the pastoral life as something utterly banal and worthless. It is an endearing celebration of it with a comedic twist.

As French and Saunders say: "only take the piss out of the things that you love".

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown

image c Channel 4

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
3 / 5

Series: 8
Aired: 2012 - present
Channel: Channel 4
Writer: N/A
Cast: Jimmy Carr, Sean Lock, Jon Richardson, Joe Wilkinson, Susie Dent, Rachel Rielly et al

Originally part of the celebration of Channel 4's 30th birthday during their mash-up night, wherein certain Channel 4 favourites were squished together to create new formats. Whilst originally it was intended as a one-off special, the show was commissioned as a full series due to its popularity and has been running since then, though it feels like a "I can't believe this happened" kind of thing with the sheer success it has, almost out-stripping the original show(s).

If you've never seen either Countdown or 8 Out of 10 Cats, then there's really nothing I can do for you. It's a bona fide mash-up wherein the comedians who frequent the panel show play the game of Countdown. The captains are the same and the guests are your standard Cats guests and we have the standard Top Banter that the modern Channel 4 is built upon.

Personally, I much much prefer this version. The main reason being is that it is so much funnier. We don't have any non-comedian guests (with a few exceptions) which means there's no Channel 4 news reader trying so hard to be funny it hurts to watch and we don't get comedians tearing apart other people's lives just for a quick laugh like we do on normal Cats when they're talking about news items and celebrity stories.

Of course, there are running gags that are getting old. The not-stolen-from-Qi gag of Sean Lock being "the stupid one" and rarely ever winning hasn't actually gotten old per sé, unless you get Jon Richardson obviously and purposefully losing. These instances are easily brushed aside because I'm not sure that anyone is watching it for the outcome of the actual game. The mascots gag (wherein each contestant brings in a mascot for good luck, ranging from photos of their relatives or their children's teddies to absurd oddities) is old and tired but still endearing to an extent but easily ignored.

And yeah, I do play along. I'm terrible at maths so when I do it (the easy ones with 100) I get a bit giddy, and that time I got a nine-letter word that wasn't the conundrum is right up there with scoring 15 points all by myself on University Challenge. It has its utterly trite moments, with certain types of jokes and naff guests (I'm looking at you Joey Essex), but all-in-all its what I look for in a panel show, though it is getting a little old now.

Gimme Gimme Gimme

image c BBC

Gimme Gimme Gimme
3 / 5

Series: Three
Aired: 1999 - 2001
Channel: BBC One and BBC Two
Writer: Jonathan Harvey
Cast: Kathy Burke, James Dreyfus, Brian Bovell, Beth Goddard and Rosalind Knight et al

My prevailing memory of this late-90s comedy is that I used to absolutely love it. I don't recall whether that pertains to any kind of genuine love for the humour or just my childish infatuation with the obscenely ginger hair of Kathy Burke's character, Linda.

Gimme Gimme Gimme is a flat share comedy, focusing on two people who are polar opposites but compliment each other perfectly, living together for what can only be described as "the company". Tom is a struggling gay and a struggling actor and Linda is who-knows-what, both of whom are fairly vile, surrounded by other vile people: their landlady, ex-prostitute Beryl and their nice-on-the-surface-but-just-as-vile-underneath neighbours Suze and Jez, one of whom Linda severely tries to mount in every episode.

Innuendos, double entendres, insults and venom are pretty much standard, but the basis of the comedy is the reliance that Linda has on Tom and that Tom has on Linda. Most flat-share comedy or odd-couple comedy relies heavily on this format and Gimme Gimme Gimme is no different, but it still seems like sometimes they'd be exactly the same to whoever it was they lived with.

On Twitter, Kathy Burke (Linda) made the rather obvious yet sneakily obscure comment that "Kids love shouty fat twats shouting at shouty skinny twats who shout back." I couldn't agree more: I was trying to wrack my brains, working out why I loved this show so much when I was younger and I really don't think there's anything to it more than it was just fun. It's lost its appeal slightly, mostly because the references are very out-dated and the arguments get repetitive and the acting by support cast was at best dire most of the time, but I will say that the ending to the series as a whole is one of the greatest endings I think I've ever seen in a comedy, or any television programme for that matter. There's no huge happy ending like most comedies get away with, and there's not much closure: it feels like a end-of-series closing instead of The End but it was supremely perfect.

There are cameos galore (hello Mel and Sue) and Kathy Burke's brand of acting is second-to-none, but it seemed to lack a depth that goes beyond simply shouting at each other. There was little visual comedy in truth, though a particular walking scene does stick in mind quite vividly, and I think more visual comedy was needed for this comedy that often had a weak or recurring plot. Having said that, I cannot deny the joy it gave me in my youth and it was in fact pleasant to re-watch.

Taskmaster

image c Dave

Taskmaster
5 / 5

Series: Two
Aired: 2015 - Present
Channel: Dave
Writer: Alex Horne
Cast: Alex Horne, Greg Davies et al

Dave have completely fucked up how I review comedy. Completely.

Taskmaster is not clever, it is not witty (there are moments), it has not changed my overall outlook on life like my other favourite comedies but it has made me laugh so much I genuinely thought I was going to die. I really wanted to mark it down: a 3 at the most, just because I want to be strict with my ratings and judge it accordingly, but my gosh it's been three episodes and I've not laughed this much since I last watched The Rik Mayall fall down the stairs dressed as Kilroy Silk in Bottom.

Taskmaster is the brainchild of Alex Horne, a wonderful comedian I have loved for a long while now, who had an Edinburgh Fringe show of the same ilk: making other comedians do funny stuff for laughs. It's the most basic principle of any comedy I've come across: five comedians do silly tasks and Greg Davies rates them. The tasks range from eating as much watermelon as you can in a designated amount of time, or creating art using a GPS tracking system (spoiler alert: nobody made a penis.) It's simple, it's quite panel-game-show-esque, but it really, really works.

I'm going to say now that even though I also love The Rik Mayall-lookie-likie Greg Davies (he also looks like the contenstant Paul off of GBBO by the by), reducing Alex Horne (whose idea the show was in the first place) to a basic servants role (doing the points, holding a tablet with a stop clock on it, standing about in general pulling amusing faces) has annoyed me, but he's obviously not a big enough name to be anywhere near hosting it. That's fine, at least he's in there somewhere, but it's a huge shame and I think it would have been an incredible platform for him to showcase his skills without his usual Horne Section.

Dave is a very blokey channel. They claim to be the home of Witty Banter (whatever that is) and their one and only self-created Sitcom was a flop (in my not-very-humble-extremely-non-professional eyes), and their repeats of Scrapheap Challenge are even starting to get on my nerves, but I cannot deny my enjoyment of Taskmaster. When Romesh destroys that watermelon some weird voodoo chemical reaction happens and I am happy. Yes I am. When Roisin takes 55 seconds to find a knife I am in the state of nirvana. Ecstasy is never far away. It has it's dodgy moments: I think the scripted "banter" is probably the biggest let down and at first I was unsure about whether the same five comedians could take it throughout the entire series (though now I love it since it's clear Roisin isn't actually as useless as she first appeared to be).

But dear Belzebub I nearly died laughing and even though I preach about wanting clever, intellectual and above all meaningful comedy, sometimes you just gotta laugh until you wet yourself and then give it 5 stars.

Undercover

image c Dave

Undercover
1 / 5

Series: One
Aired: 2015
Channel: Dave
Writers: Sacha Alexander, Andy Milligan and Mark Staheli
Cast: Daniel Rigby, Sarah Alexander, Sacha Alexander, Yasmine Akram, Brett Goldstein et al

"Family. It can be the most important thing in the world. And it can also be a massive pain in the arse."

This is Dave's first proper sitcom kind of comedy, as opposed to their non-plot driven comedy for comedy's sake like Ross Noble Freewheeling and Taskmaster (not counting Red Dwarf, which was taken from the BBC, or any of the others they've brought over) and it is, in short, pretty terrible, actually.

I had quite medium-height expectations for this one. As per usual, they added in the funniest moments to the preview ads and Dave actually have quite good taste when it comes to the other comedies they show, and their other non-sitcom or non-plot driven comedies have been extremely funny, so it was a plunge I was happy to take. Sadly, nothing ever really got off the ground. There was some good acting, from Sarah Alexander in particular, but the scripts and the severe lack of humour catapulted it in to the realms of the exceedingly dull. You could fast-forward almost five minutes of the programme beyond the adverts and you wouldn't really have missed much.

I'm also not hugely convinced that this Armenian family are actually even Armenian, but instead a facsimile of all the stereotypes and, yes, racial notions of an Eastern European country's immigrants. Whilst, obviously, factuality isn't a big turn on in comedy (or any kind of visual media these days) a sense of realism is what makes a comedy great and there was none of that here. I'm also convinced that nobody involved really knows what happens in an organised crime family, which I suppose is a good thing, but it was startling obvious and thus the humour was exaggerated to make up for it.

It just seemed like a comedy where some blokes got together in a pub and "had an idea for a comedy", which will probably sit well with their idea of what a Dave viewer is like: Top Gear obsessed reader of The Sun with a hankering for some "light-hearted" banter. There was also some small attempts at feminism, or at least not treating women like they did in the 16th Century, but that was basically just treating them like the did in the 70s. Five hundred years better, but still not quite cutting it.

I was, however, super happy to see Mark Heap again. He can do no wrong. Probably should've given this one a miss, though.

Absolutely Fabulous

image c BBC

Absolutely Fabulous

5 / 5

Series: 5 (plus specials)

Aired: 1992 - 2012

Channel: BBC One

Writer: Jennifer Saunders

Cast: Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, June Whitfield, Jane Horrocks et al

I was very late to Absolutely Fabulous. Very late. I think I was probably binge-watching The Vicar of Dibley and hadn't given Ab Fab the time of day, though thinking back I don't think I would have really gotten it back then, either. Whilst I'm loath to use the term, it is, on the surface, a Girly-Girl comedy which would have repulsed me back then. And it, again on the surface, is fashion-orientated which would have made me run a mile. But way deep down, oh my it is, well, absolutely fabulous.

I think we should give props to the BBC and Jennifer Saunders for, first and foremost, writing a female comedy, starring female characters and talking about female things in the nineties. Feminism was dead in the nineties, pretty much. Yet here were some female characters who were all damaged and strong at the same time. I'm going to keep this post short and sweet, even though I could wax lyrical about how much I think these characters are the most developed, underrated comedy characters I've ever seen. Here's what you need to know...

Edina Monsoon lives with her daughter Saffron in a very well-to-do area of London. You'd think their life, with Eddie being a successful business woman and Saffron a school pupil, would be fairly monotonous and run-of-the-mill. Well, that would be the case if Eddie was not the most self-centered woman trying absolutely everything unfabulous to claw back her fleeting youth, whilst Saffy has become a bitter and cynical person as she deals with her mother's constant tantrums and drug-fuelled lifestyle. Add in to the mix Patsy, who is dependent on Eddie so much, the most idiotic person ever born in Bubble, Edina's PA, and Edina's mother and the whole thing becomes a huge, vicious cycle of unspoken hatred.

Deep down, they all love each other in their very odd and dysfunctional way. I'd like to think Patsy does actually like Saffy and vice versa, though their detestation for each is the catalyst for much of the comedy throughout the series. The fact that none of them talk about their feelings means that anything Eddie thinks is "important" has all of her feelings and emotions superimposed on to it, therefore a magazine shoot becomes much more important than her own daughters birthday.

The first series was not wholly humorous. I've always found that to be the case with some comedies, as if this first series is solely for introductions and the comedy kind of gets left at the wayside a little. It gets sharper, smarter and wittier after the initial couple of episodes, however, and as the series go by it gets darker as the relationships heat up and boil over, mostly surrounding Saffie's increasing intolerance of her mother's behaviour and the enabling of Patsy toward her lifestyle. There have been many specials concerning various events, such as the Olympics, and the fire of the series has never died down and the true heart of it hasn't ever been lost, so I'm very much looking forward to the film.