BBC Comedy RIP

By Mike Buchanan: I’ve long been a comedy buff, and I’m perfectly happy to concede the BBC has been the source of some priceless comedy series over my lifetime – Fawlty Towers being a particular favourite.
The quality of BBC comedy series has long been in decline, possibly because material has to gain the approval of the BBC’s political correctness brigade, a reliable way to strangle genuinely funny comedy ideas at birth. Hope springs eternal, however, and I’ve just watched People Time on BBC3. In my TV guide, the programme was described thus:

Lively comedy show pilot starring seven comedy rising stars (including Claudia O’Doherty and Ellie White). The skits cover a range of modern issues, big and small, from online dating and workplace sexism to mobile phones and junk mail – the shouty man in the street manages to be both silly and subversive.

Sounds like a riot, right? Er, no. I didn’t laugh once, and came close to smiling on only one occasion. The lowest point in this dismal waste of licence payers’ money was the aforementioned ‘shouty man in the street’ encountering three ‘No More Page 3’ campaigners on the street, 11:49 – 12:47.
The comedic premise of the sketch was that if men oppose feminists their male friends will desert them, and they will then have to grovel to feminists for acceptance.
If there has ever been a less funny ‘comedy’ sketch broadcast on television or radio anywhere in the world, I invite you to send it to me. For obvious reasons, I exclude anything written by, or including, Kate Smurthwaite. Thank you.
The programme is available on iPlayer for the next 29 days, and we could save it for prosperity on our YouTube channel. But why would we want to? We get comfort from the knowledge that in a month’s time the programme won’t be available on iPlayer ever again.
Have a good weekend.

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