Your Bad Self : RTÉ Two, Monday 11 January, 9.55pm

JonathanAnon

http://www.rte.ie/tv/programmes/your_bad_self.html

What you all make of it? I dont know what the inverse of forté is, but this type of comedy is RTE's inverse of forté. Why are they trying it again? Even the formatted comedy by dots shows, like Republic Of Telly and the Panel, arent great.

why have RTE commissioned so many "comedies" this season? There is a plethora of them and to be honest, well.. they are not very good. Why dont they stick to drama, at least they can give that a fair crack

Utopia Parkway

Surely on the law of averages one day RTE are actually going to stumble on a decent comedy show.

I wouldn't be holding my breath right enough but you never know.

Hank_Jones

They did have a good show.

It was called The Panel.

It was hosted by Dara O'Briain.

That finished 3 years ago, so it should be about time for another good show.

The Prophet

I never saw YBS's pilot, so I can't judge just yet.

However, I do read that a fair number of the comedian actors are doing double duty on the sketch writing front for this too.

Black Magic

Watch Pilot - http://www.rte.ie/tv/christmas/yourbadself_av.html

JP Liz

I saw a promo for this on RTE looks bad as does all RTE comedy/sketch shows lately

el diablo

Ok, I'll give this a go but I'm not expecting much.. Wasn't this on before (last year I think?)

JonathanAnon

I've a trhead about this already. somebody put a link to the pilot episode which I watched and didnt think it was very good. Lot of very awkward unfunny sketches.

amacachi

Not ssure how much of this I can watch, canned laughter is horrific.

Bondvillain

Canned laughter.

I'm off.

The Prophet

First two sketches (i.e. important ones to get right) were crap.

ContyHooks

Such tripe, only watched the 1st few mins and know it's gonna be useless.

Why can't RTE do comedy right?

Radiotower

thought the first sketh was good but the canned laughter put me right off, is it the same tracke they use on shows like "You've been framed" / "World Funniest Pets"

I'll give it a go till the ad break

backspacer

Ok crapping in a bottle gag,thats a new low for RTE

el diablo

JonathanAnon wrote: »

I've a trhead about this already. somebody put a link to the pilot episode which I watched and didnt think it was very good. Lot of very awkward unfunny sketches.

I did a search for a thread before posting but nothing showed up...

SprostonGreen

I dont like the laugh track but apart from that, its good.

amacachi

Awful accent. The ****ting in the car one could've possibly been good, hard to judge anything with the canned laughter.

lisnsooz

3 minutes in and was instantly turned off. CANNED LAUGHTER! Why oh why do they do this?!?!?!!? Aural assault!

**just seen something on RTE website - there may have been a studio audience going by an email address they gave out for people who wanted to attend recordings. Therefore the 2nd most annoying thing to canned laughter: studio audience laughter at something that is not a live The Panel-esque style show.

Utopia Parkway

Must admit the bottle in the car made me laugh.

The canned laughter is annoying though.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

The Prophet

A weak way to start a new sketch show. Another 12 minutes to go after the break.

amacachi

**** this, back to the Xbox.

Reginald P. DuM

Uh-oh, they have gone and done it again.

SoupyNorman

It's NOT dismal???

The canned laughter is terrible obviously but there are glimmers of hope. I laughed my proverbial ass off the the store assistant doing X-men.

Radiotower

Better than some of the stuff I've seen on RTE, not compulsive viewing - if they'd just lose the laughter track it'd help. I dont need to be told when to laugh

SprostonGreen

That was good, enjoyed that.

Aidric

Ranged from total shite to mildly shite. The sketch featuring the South African woman was particularly dire.

The Prophet

Not atrocious.

Some poor writing though, and either obvious punchlines or tiny gags that hardly deserved their own sketch setup in the first place.

A laughtrack can sometimes fit, and sometimes not. I don't think it helped in this case, but even without it I wouldn't call the first episode anything other than forgettable sub-averageness.

JonathanAnon

well done to the continuity guy who said to email yourbadself@gmail.com when the email displayed is actually yourbadselftv@gmail.com... They didnt even bother to register a domain name for the show. I respect their realism.

The scripts were well acted, and professionally produced, but it was not very funny. Probably one of the better comedy contributions from RTE, but this is more so because of the fact that the rest of the programs were soooo dire, not because it was brilliant in itself.

johnnyrotten

Lighten up ye miserable lot.
I will be watching next week, thought it was good

Eglinton

Are there any comedians in it? I didn't spot any I knew. I've heard they were touting a stellar line up of actors. Actors aren't necessarily comedians!

I couldn't see the point of Amy Huberman other than to have a reasonably well known name on the credits.

I'll give it 4/10 for a few of the sketches. The rest were terrible and the canned laughter was appalling.

Why don't RTE commision Dead Cat Bounce ? They're fantastic and proved it with their one off episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tRUZ9Y4Tuk

magma69

I have seen worse tbh. It is way better than the repulsive Savage Eye. To sum the show up in one word I would say "tolerable". It is by no means genius sketch comedy but for Irish standards it's good, by regular standards it is slightly less than average. In fairness, it looks like Monthy Python next to the likes of The Katherine Lynch show and Maeve Higgins.

IrishKev

Thought it was pretty good tbh. Canned laughter is used in every show really, Little Britain, Friends just to name two, I don't even take any notice of it! Thought the radio show sketch with the economists were funny and the X Men thing aswell, a lot better than Thats All We've Got Time For by a country mile

JonathanAnon

Eglinton wrote: »

I couldn't see the point of Amy Huberman other than to have a reasonably well known name on the credits.

Michael McElhatton is a well known comedian and actor as well.

The Prophet

IrishKev wrote: »

Thought it was pretty good tbh. Canned laughter is used in every show really

Claptrap.

Utopia Parkway

I know there is a tendency to immediately write off anything RTE produce comedy wide as being utterly terrible but Your Bad Self definitely wasn't terrible. Some sketches went nowhere but some were actually pretty funny and the acting was at least of a professional standard. The weakest part was probably the canned laughter. They may as well have flashed up a sign saying "Please laugh now". It just seemed very old fashioned and wasn't needed. If the sketches are good enough people will know when to laugh without being told.

IrishKev

johnnyrotten wrote: »

Lighten up ye miserable lot.
I will be watching next week, thought it was good

Same here, thought it was very laughable at the best of times

thesandeman

Not bad at all except for the canned laughter. Irish version of Fast Show/Catherine Tate. The fact they are asking people to come to previews might mean they might use real laughter next time hopefully.

Wyndman

I couldn't be arsed watching (the pilot was boring enough) but good to hear it's not offensively dismal this time just mediocre and unfunny. Way to aim high, RTE.

Seriously though, everyone says RTE should work on scripts and scriptwriters and what's their solution?

"Just get the actors to 'write' it. That way we'll have fifteen writing credits so no one can accuse us of not developing writers. After all, who could be funnier than a clique of young Dublin actors?"

(I'm not talking about having mediocre stand-up comedians write shows but comedy scriptwriters, it's a very different discipline, not that I'd expect anyone in RTE to ever figure that out.)

thepilgrim

Not terrible which was a big surprise!

In the first half I found myself unexpectedly laughing out loud at the flu/euthenasia sketch.

Also, the final sketch of the show "You can ride a horse?" was a good gag too.

Pretty sure there is a pattern here - last sketch in either half is the stong one...

Overall 2 out of 12/14 sketches is not a great hit rate though. Again I will hazard a guess that the entire series will produce just about enough quality material to fill ONE episode!

Lemondrop kid

Strange one this - very good production values and direction but strangely restrained. Could have potential - but so far hasn't made me LOL as Savage Eye did. Yet this is more sophisticated than Savage Eye. I'll employ a Wait n See policy:rolleyes:

Agricola

Yep, this wasnt too bad i thought. There were moments when you'd think it wasnt actually made by RTE, which is probably the biggest complement you can pay to RTE!

humanji

I thought it was fairly brutal. They kept having the punchline of a sketch in the first few seconds then dragging it out for the rest of it. Why bother when you're not building to anything?

And the canned laughter just takes away from it, in my opinion. It just makes it feel like they know it's not funny so they put in laughter to make the cast feel better.

It's not as shockingly bad as most of RTE's other offerings, but it's doesn nothign for me.

cherryred

the X-men obssessed shop assistant actually made me laugh quite a bit, they should have just shown that for half an hour.

There were some which just weren't funny and I can't imagine anyone enjoying, the prisoners who were chained to the wall? that was tedious.There was also a least two sketches that were blantent rip offs, the two ronnies and smack the pony.

They should probably get rid of half of the cast.

Batesy

I was pleasantly surprised by it. Laughed at quite a lot of the sketches. Will watch again next week for sure.

AnonoBoy

I wasn't that gone on the first of the pilot episodes I saw (there were two weren't there?)

But I laughed at some stuff in this. A lot was weak and flabby but there were some decent ideas.

I will give it a second look.

Wossack

think I caught a bit of this - actor saying he could do stuff when he couldnt etc (scuba dive, sword fight, ride a horse (:()). Thought those were a funny series - but why run them back to back? spread though the episode would have been better imo

also the horse sketch was so attrocious, I just changed channel after it

Black Magic

The farmer buying the glasses was quite good. He's up there with Mick "The Bull" Daly for character of the year!

pauric_g

I could only stand one sketch, something based on a radio show with an alcoholic presenter, dross. Laughter tracks are never a good idea. Lazy producers covering up poor writing.

mike65

Liveline listeners are appalled, tune in at 1.45

JP Liz

crap but then again what was i expecting :rolleyes: