I think it's excellent, I really do. Some bits have cracked me up, like the germs coming from Germany or what MATHS stands for. Shame it's only ten minutes though.
I liked it too. Religiously taping it as I did with 'Attention Scum'. The line "Bless you ants. 'Blants'." makes me smile and helps me get through a working day. Well that and 'Mental Jim's Fishtanks' adverts from the Father Ted book. As for the length I heard from someone that it was longer by ten or twenty minutes and had more subtlety. Perhaps it had to be ten minutes in order to fit into BBC2's market strategy blah blah blah. Speaking of BBC has anyone read the Private Eye review of the Great Britons strand?
I like it a lot, but sometimes I can't help feeling that the pacing is a bit off. You get loads of great quickfire jokes ('Millsy', 'thants' etc) grouped together in short burst, and then long stretches of lesser material...
Well, last week's edition ('Music') was something of a let-down, especially considering the disproportionate pre-transmission hype over the song that featured in it. The song didn't fit with the rhythm of the piece, and thre something of a spanner into the works of the much-fanfared 'faithfulness' and stylistic realism of the series. Let's hope it picks up again this week.
Actually, I think titles like "Music" and "Ghosts" are really annoying; the first one, "Maths", was still the best, and one of the things which the show supposedly prided itself on was the fact that it was so close to life. The song wasn't great, and there's a tendency sometimes in comedy to just put in fake songs because somehow they do become very funny even if they aren't. I think you've got to know when to use them and when to not (Brasseye special, anyone?).
Still though, it's much funnier than most things on at the moment, and there's not too much to criticise about it.
The brain feeding on the Brain Flakes reminded me of the talking asshole typewriter in the David Cronenberg's version of Naked Lunch. I felt the same way about the Music episode to the point where I was wondering if the series should have been left to a few episodes. Possibly three. Indeed the plummy tone of " Expewiment One. An expewwwyment was curried out..." became more and more of a catchphrase. However the series did end on a good episode and yes I am glad I taped them all. Even if the Music episode was dire.
Yeah, the music one was dire. The best ones have been where they've been tackling actual school subjects; MATHS and THE BRAIN have certainly been my favourites.
I certainly think that it could have done with being a couple of episodes shorter. Towards the end of the run, it felt as though they were running seriously short of inspiration and were scrabbling around for ideas.