Modern Life Is Goodish

Image c Dave
Dave Gorman's Modern Life Is Goodish
5 / 5

Series: Two
Aired: 2013 - 2014

First of all, a little fact: Dave Gorman was in Absolutely Fabulous. He played a photographer, I think, possibly a gay one. Anyway. When I found that out I was kind of excited. Seeing comedians in comedies or even trying to do serious acting always tickles me.

Dave Gorman is a sort of comedian. He isn't an actor, not really, but then again I wouldn't really classify him as an average, every-day kind of comedian, either. His stand-up routines are very different to your conventional routines in that he usually uses a projector and a laptop and sits you through a PowerPoint Presentation full of excellent crafted points on, well, everything. He has done "normal" stand-up in the past, but I can't say anything about it since I've never seen it.

Modern Life Is Goodish (a take on the Blur album 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' if you're interested) is... difficult to describe. Fundamentally, Dave takes you on a journey through all aspects of modern life from Twitter to Celebrities to Royal Correspondence to Television using a projected Presentation he's put together on his laptop. This is one of the most unique ideas I've come across in comedy and I really like it. It's funny, it makes you think and it's really, really clever.

I had thought to give this only 3 stars because, whilst I've enjoyed the first series and the few aired second series episodes, I haven't been wholly consumed by it. That is... until... This trailer. I sadly can't embed the whole thing so I've just added the shortened version at the bottom of this post, but you need to watch the whole thing because that long-haired gentleman is AMAZING. I mean. Who is he? I need to stalk him immediately.

The other reason is episode three. Entitled 'Just Chips That Haven't Been Made Yet', which is intriguing in itself. Episode three featured things you'd expect from Modern Life Is Goodish: the Found Poem he does where he creates poetry from people's comments left on websites (most probably the Daily Fail), general musings on "Modern Life" and altogether comments on aspects that are fairly mundane and unnecessary though ones we seem to deem as the necessities of such life as the now.

But then he brought out the big guns. One of Dave's hobbies, aside from trawling through comments pages and twitter feeds, is sending things he's made to the Royal Family. And I do not mean good things. He uses his friends names and address and he sends the Queen some rubber-mat insoles. He sends Prince Charles some "gardening gloves" that are actually rubber washing-up gloves with googly eyes stuck to them. He sent Prince Edward and Sofia felt-tip penned personalised Pillow Cases. He sent Prince Charles a 1000 piece jigsaw made up of some black pen drawings and 700 pieces of white space. He is a genius. I was in utter stitches, completely bereft of all air and every single problem I had or felt had left me completely. I nearly wet myself. Even my mother thought it was funny. Two stars purely for that. I nearly fucking died.