Finally, something worth laughing at

With the break in the Euros for a couple of days I was briefly able to dip back into reality outside of soccer. I’ve been waiting for an age for a good comedy to appear on the TV listings. Like buses, there wasn’t one to be seen in forever and then along comes three at once.

 

America tried its own version of The Thick of It a few years ago but things didn’t work out, mainly to do with studio heads’ inability to get their skulls around the idea of profanity–littered political satire.

The success of its big screen transatlantic brother In the Loop, however, got the American networks re-interested and so Veep was born, chronicling US Vice-President Selina Meyer’s (the excellent Julia Louis Dreyfus) attempts to reform the Senate. Happily for us, if Monday’s pilot episode on Sky Atlantic is anything to go by, events go about as well for her as they did for her British counterparts Hugh Abbott and Nicola Murray, although Meyer is a far wittier character.

The thing I loved the most about Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It was its proximity to political realities. Politicians can go into office with the most noble of causes and ideals, only to find themselves at the mercy of bureaucracy. Even funnier, the events that often cause the most hand-wringing are usually the more mundane and innocent ones. And so it went for poor VP Selina as she finds a comment she made about reducing the use of plastic cutlery in an effort to be more environmentally friendly to be more deadly than even Malcom Tucker could have imagined.

The plastics industry, which is linked to the oil industry, are not happy and in Washington, when the biggest lobbyist groups are not happy, somebody gets a smack in the backside.

Iannucci has co-written the series and his ability to turn a phrase is so evident. When loathsome White House liaison Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) redacts Meyer’s speech at a fundraiser over the oil industry wanting her head on a plate, she exclaims ‘This has been pencil-f**ked.’

‘Front and back, very little romance,’ agrees director of communications Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh). 
“What have I got here, I’ve got hello and prepositions,” she retorts.

The fallout is an excruciatingly funny ad-libbed horror show of a speech.

As her chief of staff Anna Chlumsky is excellent but it’s Arrested Development’s Tony Hale who almost steals the show as personal aide Gary. His insane knowledge of politicians’ personal partialities is hilarious but he manages to get his boss out of a number of tricky situations with it.

Nobody comes close to recreating Peter Capaldi’s memorable Malcom Tucker but this is not Britain, it’s most definitely America and worth tuning in for it.

Airing before Veep, also on Sky Atlantic, was Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life. The set-up is a parody of TV documentaries in which a D or Z-list celebrity takes off on a trip around places they liked in their youth, or somewhere they like to fish or whatever, trying to make out like it’s all very interesting stuff when it rarely is.

The thing I love about Steve Coogan’s creation is you think you can figure out where the sketch is going and then he says something completely left field and more often than not, totally inappropriate.

As the Norwich presenter took in the sights and sounds of his home city, he starts in City Hall with a moment of Great Britannia before veering off into a fantasy of Hitler making a victory speech from the balcony with the bronze lions under him raising their paws in Nazi salutes.

My personal favourite was the scene where he took over a fruit and veg market stall stating, “I had a go at doing the things it’s taken Mike 25 years to learn and it was a piece of piss. But I like Mike. He’s a sort of village idiot from years gone by”.

I wonder how many presenters have thought that in their time meandering through some forgotten village? Of course, they would never dream of saying it out loud.

Another crowd with no problems saying what is on their minds is the crew on Cougar Town. The unfortunately named series returned to RTÉ Two in a Monday night double bill.

There’s an unapologetic sweetness to this comedy but the ridiculous humour is all good clean fun. Co-creators Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence are very good at this sort of thing having honed their talents on Scrubs and they are well able to acknowledge that Cougar Town has evolved from a farce about a divorced 40-something mother aiming for toy boy action into an ensemble comedy about an extended family of wine-guzzlers. To emphasise this they take a pop at the title in the opening credits with Monday’s episodes declaring ‘Yeah. It’s still called Cougar Town, We’re not happy about it either’ and ‘Titles we liked better than Cougar Town: Sunshine State, The Drinking Age, Cougar City, Mid-Life’ and so on.

There are also many crossovers with numerous Scrubs alums popping up along the way, this week most noticeably Ken Jenkins (that’s Dr Bob Kelso to most of us) as Jules’ dad.

Unlike a lot of shows that draw out the ‘will they or won’t they’ aspect, Cougar Town is all about the loved-up couples and bromance themes. Central couple Jules and Grayson got together in season one and so Greyson did the honourable thing and got down on bended knee although it did take the whole 30 minute episode to do it, having goaded her in toilet papering a house, which apparently made a ‘romantic setting’ to produce a ring.

There are also subplots involving neighbours Ellie and Andy, who are terrified that their son Stan is becoming an Omen-style demon child and so decide to bring Laurie on board as a kind of exorcist babysitter, while Travis is back at college, where he and his nerdy housemates have installed a green screen that becomes a visual running gag.