The It crowd

Tusky

Just saw an add for this. Its written by Graham Linehan, the co-creator/writer on father Ted, Black Books, Jam & the day today. It stars Chris Morris of Brass Eye/day today fame, Richard Ayoade who played Dean Leaner in Darkplace (one of the best comedy shows ever made, horribly under-rated) AND Adam Buxton from Adam and Joe.

Time to get excited ? Its starts Feb 3rd on C4.

http://www.theitcrowd.co.uk/

BuffyBot

There was a clip just on, and I heard the dreaded canned laughter...

Terry

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/I/itcrowd/
enjoy

pork99

“Imagine the most beautiful offices in the world, then imagine that is not where you work. Actually, you work in a horrible, dark basement underneath all of this, as you are in the I.T. department.”

http://www.theitcrowd.co.uk/

I used to work for a company that kept it's IT dept in the basement but those guys actually had the best craic. I had to sit upstairs a few desks away from the CEO. Not as much fun.

alleepally

pork99 wrote:

http://www.theitcrowd.co.uk/

I used to work for a company that kept it's IT dept in the basement but those guys actually had the best craic. I had to sit upstairs a few desks away from the CEO. Not as much fun.

Yah, but if you sit so close to the CEO you no doubt were in accounting or something and accountants don't do fun or craic.

Basq

Looking forward to it... but can't muster up much hope for it either!

Atrocity

Chris Morris will not let us down

Tusky

Atrocity wrote:

Chris Morris will not let us down

He only has a small acting part in it...didnt write it or anything.

Atrocity

ah ****e! i thought it was his baby... could go either way..

Tusky

Bump

flogen

According to the C4 microsite Chris Morris makes a special guest appearance. Not really a starring role, now is it?

Tusky

flogen wrote:

According to the C4 microsite Chris Morris makes a special guest appearance. Not really a starring role, now is it?

Hmm...in the ad it makes it seem like hes the main character.

loyatemu

Morris was also responsible for "Nathan Barley" which was mostly muck.

Linehans non-Father Ted shows have generally been amusing enough without being hilarious (Big Train, Hippies, Paris)

Ruskie4Rent

"Nathan Barley" was good, not as good as other chreis morris classics but i enjoyed it. He is meant to be the main boss type character from my understanding, so i only expect him to just drop by every so often and upstage everyone.

Tusky

loyatemu wrote:

Linehans non-Father Ted shows have generally been amusing enough without being hilarious (Big Train, Hippies, Paris)

He was a writer on Jam, The day today & black books. All excellent.

flogen

Didn't like Hippies, never saw Paris, but liked his other stuff.
He co-wrote with Mathews on the first series of Big Train, TDT, Jam and Black Books, Brass Eye and Hippies. Linehan only worked on some of Black Books too, and I think they both did some stuff on The Fast Show, Saturday Night Armistice and Coogans Run too.
Will be interesting to see how he does on his own from the start

weemcd

the teaser for it is quite good, i like the bit when the guy from garth marenghi's dark place says "lets get out of here."

But the actual trailer for the show showing their actual office looked like a poor man's black books. They have got a lot of talent working on the show tho, so ill give it a chance.

Ruskie4Rent

First ep. is available on ch.4 website. Don't get your hopes up.

Basq

Dear God... that was feckin' horrible! :eek:

Lex_Diamonds

Yeah wasnt great, the nerd guy with glasses was a little tired. Chris Morris was good though. I'm hopeful the show will get better.

Goolay

The second episode is up now on the ch4 site and is better than the first. I think it's hilarious so far, definitely reminds me a bit of Black Books, brings back bad memories of working tech support though.

regeneration

It's better than the first episode, but Chris Morris & the Uber-Nerd guy really annoy me. Morris is just playing the same ball-breaker roll he plays in Brass Eye/Day Today. UberNerd one minute is being the awkward anal-techy, the next he's behaving like Father Dougal.
I think I enjoy it though overall - it's hard to say though - sitcoms like this are so rare these days it's hard to appreciate something that isn't of the Office/Curb Your Hype mould (ie, awkward cringe comedy filmed with shakey-cam)

Tusky

Im enjoying it

Dr. Dre

Tripe.
Eh, that's all I can say

Lex_Diamonds

Ambulance advert

humanji

I thought it was ok. There were bits I laughed out loud and other bits that I fast forwarded because the jokes were painfully unfunny. It's like the adopted child of Father Ted and Black Books, there are uncanny similarities between the shows, but the creators swear that it's all original stuff. I'll watch a few more episodes just to pass time and to see if I change my mind.

Ruskie4Rent

much improved second episode, but still not great.

mike65

I like. Chris Morris is clearly reviving the spiri of CJ (I did'nt get where I am today without reliving stress etc) from Reggie Perrin. Moss is Dougal with a worse haircut.

With a ramshackle charm its a grower like Black Books and Ted.

Someone should have a rethink about the sitcom laughtrack/audience though. They suck.

Mike.

Rabies

The 1st episode was terrible. Couldn't force myself to watch the next one.
The characters were too loud in my opinion.

seabee

The first episode was o.k. - used mainly to introduce us to the characters and the "set up".Thought the second episode was really good, looking forward to the next one.

flogen

mike65 wrote:

I like. Chris Morris is clearly reviving the spiri of CJ (I did'nt get where I am today without reliving stress etc) from Reggie Perrin.

Bang! On the nose! The minute I read that I just thought "ahh!!!". I think he's the best thing in it so far, still to watch ep. 2 though, but the first was very poor (asiding Morris and his love of the A-Team)

Someone should have a rethink about the sitcom laughtrack/audience though. They suck.

Mike.

Apparently Linehan was on some show on BBC about Sitcoms just this week where he was talking about audiences; he says he prefers to film in front of a live audience as it puts more pressure on him to increase the joke ratio and the actors to play the part well. Dunno about that tbh, good writers write well, and that's all there is to it.
Interestingly, from looking at reports from posters on Cook'd and Bomb'd who were in the audience for some of the episodes it seems Morris' stuff is all pre-recorded; that makes partial sense because the other floors don't seem to be shítty sets like the basement but actual buildings but I wonder if Morris refused to do audience stuff...

Pigman II

First off unlike posters here I had no hopes for this show and didn't even intend on tuning in to see it. I just tuned in by accident and I didn't even catch the whole of both eps due to various distractions. However unlike most people here it seems I actually liked what I saw.

For one thing I'm already rapidly getting sick of the whole 'dramedy' style (ie Scrubs et al) so the canned laughter was actually a welcome break from all these 'clever' :rolleyes: new comedies that are beginning to become the norm (MyNameIsEarl, ArrestedDevelopment etc etc). Basically canned laughter doesn't bother me when I'm finding the jokes funny (which I did for IT crowd). "I don't want to go to prison. They'll rape the flip out of me" Sorry but that had me laughing

Anyway I'll probably watch the next few and try catch 1+2 if they're repeated anytime soon.

==

As for Morris being pre-recorded it was mentioned on the I'mAlanPartridge Series1 DVD that he was acting really awkward in front of the audience for his scenes in the ep "Watership Alan" and whilst Coogan and the rest would be doing meet and greets with the crowd Morris seemed shy and just wanted to get backstage as soon as his takes were done.

JBoyle4eva

It was good, there where a few laugh out loud moments in the 1st ep but the 2nd one was probably a worse storyline. will try to see next time but I have vauge hopes of it picking up!

Rb

I saw this recently, thought it was absolutely brutal. Not even comparible with Black Books or Ted.

flogen

Pigman II wrote:

As for Morris being pre-recorded it was mentioned on the I'mAlanPartridge Series1 DVD that he was acting really awkward in front of the audience for his scenes in the ep "Watership Alan" and whilst Coogan and the rest would be doing meet and greets with the crowd Morris seemed shy and just wanted to get backstage as soon as his takes were done.

Was actually thinking about that episode of Partridge after I posted and that seemed to be infront of an audience; I've always heard that he was a big recluse, not just because he has been controversial or because he hates having to explain his motives but because he just hates publicity in general.

mickymg2003

WTF!!!Is Crap. I'd expect more from channel four. Watched it last night(Saturday) dont know which episode it was but it was disappointing. Seemed very stupid and slapstick.

Tusky

Pigman II wrote:

Anyway I'll probably watch the next few and try catch 1+2 if they're repeated anytime soon.

you can watch the episodes on channel fours website.

loyatemu

thought episode 2 had its moments. Its fairly unpolished, but so was father ted - the humour is in the ridiculousness of the situations. I enjoyed Moss emailing the Fire Brigade ("Nah, too formal"), other jokes fell flat and there was a lot of annoying overacting from Morris and the main actress.

SprostonGreen

The second episdoe was better than the first. I think its got potential, I'll give it a few more watches and decide then, but all in all, not so bad.

LoGiE

I downloaded the first two episodes and thought it was funny:) I'm Looking forward to the next few as hopefully it will get even better!

cosgrove80

Episode 3 is available on the Channel 4 website now. When you click to watch it, it says it's only available to people in the UK.

Is there anyway around this? Apart from waiting until friday of course.

youcancallmeal

Canned laughter makes baby jesus cry

So to recap, utter poo

flogen

cosgrove80 wrote:

Episode 3 is available on the Channel 4 website now. When you click to watch it, it says it's only available to people in the UK.

Is there anyway around this? Apart from waiting until friday of course.

At last! A benefit of living in bloody Wolverhampton
Ok, so it's a pretty crappy benefit, but it's one all the same!

I can't get ep 1 and 2 to work though; I missed the second one and want to catch it...

mike65

Eay chuck! Yow want to count yourself loooouky, yow could be in Walsall!

Mike.

flogen

youcancallme>al wrote:

Canned laughter makes baby jesus cry

So to recap, utter poo

I don't think it's canned, Cook'd and Bomb'd has posts up from people who were in the audience, giving info about the show months back; so it's either that the audience didn't laugh when they were supposed to or they edited it wierd..

As for Walsall.... you mean there's places worse than this?!

Goodshape

Just watched the first episode on Google Video. I won't be going out of my way to watch anymore of them.

Pity.. some great talent involved.

Tusky

Goodshape wrote:

Just watched the first episode on Google Video. I won't be going out of my way to watch anymore of them.

Pity.. some great talent involved.

gets better after the first...

flogen

second was certainly better than the first, but still a long way to go.

I did spot the formula though; what I dub the "Mathan Formula for comedy"
You have 3 main characters;

The naiive and childish male who knows very little about the real world and/or is a bit odd
Father Dougal - Father Ted
Manny - Black Books
Moss - The IT Crowd

Then you have the alpha male type who is somewhat cynical, has a somewhat high regard for himself but is infact just as incompetent as everyone else
Father Ted - Father Ted
Bernard - Black Books
Roy - IT Crowd

Finally you have the female; she's a bit odd, quite unhinged and has underlying psychopatic tendencies
Mrs. Doyle - Father Ted
Fran - Black Books
Jen - IT Crowd

The only anomoly is Father Jack, and perhaps Denem from IT Crowd... I didn't watch BB enough to see if there was another common character in that.. but taking the above two, perhaps a deluded and overly aggressive male who should be the alpha male (and thinks he is) but is so caught up in his own world that he is infact useless...

Now, everyone, you too can write half rate sitcoms like The IT Crowd!!!!

Lux23

I quite liked it. It was as funny as Father Ted or Black Books but I got a few chuckles from it. There does seem to be a bit of a formula to Graham Linehan's sitcoms but it seems to work most of time. Icidentally I thought Paris was hilarious but then I was only 12 at the time.

I quite fancy Chris O Dowd aswell.

delly

I was so looking forward to the first episode, but switched off before the end.

'nuff said

Kolodny

Thought the first episode was a bit lame and the second one was funnier. Not sure that was enough to persuade me to watch it again on Friday though.

flogen wrote:

I did spot the formula though; what I dub the "Mathan Formula for comedy"

Yeah, that sounds about right.