Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Series 4 (March 3rd. 2016)

Welsh Megaman

Starts this Thursday, BBC2 at 10pm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0112b65

TheAlbert

Fantastic, the best comedian bar none!

Harry Palmr

Bump! tonight if you really want to be annoyed by an annoying funny man

Welsh Megaman

Stewart on Radcliffe and Maconie's 6music show this afternoon, just after 2.30pm.

Welsh Megaman

Orienteering with Napalm Death

Harry Palmr

The thing is a bit of you actually thinks he did go orienteering with Napalm Death! The layers of artifice are nicely balanced.

/off to google Stewart Lee and Graham Norton at the Fringe in 1992 (or was it 1994?)

Akrasia

I'm stupid and petty enough to like Stewart Lee. His brilliant new material, not that artistic rubbish from the 90s

xper

Kids say the funniest things.

Austria!

I think that one might have been much funnier live than on TV, where it I think it looked weird. Possibly the poorest episode he's done though, and reusing material from CRW.

Welsh Megaman

Good old Kevin Eldon

take everything

Was Chris Morris on this.
Because if he was that would be like 2 comedic supernovae colliding... Or something.

Rjd2

take everything wrote: »

Was Chris Morris on this.
Because if he was that would be like 2 comedic supernovae colliding... Or something.

Yes, he replaced Armando doing the quick chats with Stew in between the live stuff.

stimpson

TheAlbert wrote: »

Fantastic, the best comedian bar none!

Actually he's only the 41st best.

Welsh Megaman

Hamster vouchers

Austria!

I wasn't happy with the series so far, but that episode was excellent. I wonder how far away the improv after the glass smashing was from what he was planning to do

Welsh Megaman

Love the Chris Morris sections, you can tell Lee is trying not to burst out laughing at the interrogating

Penn

Have to say I wasn't a huge fan of that episode. Had its moments, but most of it fell a bit flat for me.

take everything

Anyone thinking Stew looks like a crumpled Albert Finney?

RayM

take everything wrote: »

Anyone thinking Stew looks like a crumpled Albert Finney?

A few days ago, I was watching Channel 4 News and I saw what I thought was old footage of Dermot Morgan and Stewart Lee. Turned out it was Radovan Karadicz and Ratko Mladić.

I loved last night's episode. The material itself wasn't very funny (I was looking at my watch long before he called out that guy in the audience), but the sheer audacity of spending a quarter of a televised stand-up show just making chomping sounds is hilarious. I suspect the ad-libbing around the glass-smashing incident made the routine a lot funnier than he intended it to be, which was a shame. After the show, I spent half an hour laughing at the angry response on Twitter ('not funny' and 'he's lost it' basically). It's almost like he's deliberately trying to get it cancelled. It would be funny if it got axed, but I hope there'll be at least one more series, and that the BBC moves it to a later slot - preferably on BBC4 at around 1am, and it becomes even more subversively jarring.

It's hard not to sound like a pretentious twat when you actually want your favourite comedian to perform deliberately unfunny material, because you find the whole idea of someone doing that on television funny.

take everything

RayM wrote: »

A few days ago, I was watching Channel 4 News and I saw what I thought was old footage of Dermot Morgan and Stewart Lee. Turned out it was Radovan Karadicz and Ratko Mladić.

I loved last night's episode. The material itself wasn't very funny (I was looking at my watch long before he called out that guy in the audience), but the sheer audacity of spending a quarter of a televised stand-up show just making chomping sounds is hilarious. I suspect the ad-libbing around the glass-smashing incident made the routine a lot funnier than he intended it to be, which was a shame. After the show, I spent half an hour laughing at the angry response on Twitter ('not funny' and 'he's lost it' basically). It's almost like he's deliberately trying to get it cancelled. It would be funny if it got axed, but I hope there'll be at least one more series, and that the BBC moves it to a later slot - preferably on BBC4 at around 1am, and it becomes even more subversively jarring.

It's hard not to sound like a pretentious twat when you actually want your favourite comedian to perform deliberately unfunny material, because you find the whole idea of someone doing that on television funny.

Check out his bits about Ted Chippington (and his bizarre standup routines) on YouTube.

briany

I'm a big fan of Lee's comedy going back to the TMWRNJ days, but I haven't laughed at much of what I've seen of the latest Comedy Vehicle series so far. Is it him or is it me, I wonder? I don't know but it's just not tickling me the same so far.

Welsh Megaman

RayM wrote: »

It's hard not to sound like a pretentious twat when you actually want your favourite comedian to perform deliberately unfunny material, because you find the whole idea of someone doing that on television funny.

You just know all those stand-ups that appear on 'Mock The Week' week in-week out would kill for their own series on BBC2

darlett

Welsh Megaman wrote: »

You just know all those stand-ups that appear on 'Mock The Week' week in-week out would kill for their own series on BBC2

I dont know if he does it often, but I was checking out some of his youtube vids and there was one of his taking off so called observational comics like Micheal McIntyre. Don't remember if he spoke, but he spent about 5 minutes running loops on the stage, shifting and dragging and correcting the microphone utterly pointlessly, clearing his throat, running more loops. I was pure breathless.

darlett

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOb2KQHr7V0

Was this skit.

Only actually 2 minutes of that stuff, its the impact it left I guess. The 'anti'-Islam stuff proper good too! 8 minutes of quality. If you really like your Stewart Lee not funny, this might annoy you a bit RayM

Austria!

The last episode was utterly brilliant.

Penn

Not being renewed for a fifth season. From Stewart's email mailing list:

I am explaining this here as people have been asking me about the future at gigs and in kids’ playgrounds and I don’t want to see the news mangled into sensationalist click-bait by Bruce Dessau or Jay Richardson.

On May 5th BBC Comedy told me they won’t be making a series 5 of SLCV, and I am grateful for a quick answer. Viewing figures remained just under 1m, including i-player, which is good apparently as most are falling, reviews were mainly very good, and personal feedback from viewers was great. But BBC2 has a substantial funding cut to deal with and I’m told the comedy dept is going to concentrate on scripted comedy. All the other stand-up on TV is made by the Entertainment dept which, I am sure you will agree, isn’t me.

I am really glad to have produced 12 hours of stand-up with an old school 20th century BBC logo on it. The team I got to work with were all superb, including Richard Webb, Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Tim Kirkby and regular cast members Kevin Eldon, Paul Putner and Tara Flynn. And the last episode of SLCV4 was my favourite of the 24 we made over the ten years. Looking around The Machynlleth Comedy Festival last weekend I realised how lucky I had been to be the comedian that got to do four series like this.

I set no store by awards, but for the record SLCV got BAFTA nominations for every series, and won one for series two, though 3 and 4 were better. We also won two British Comedy Awards, and loads of Chortles. The DVD of series 4 is out Monday Oct 10th, with loads of extras and a Luke Drozd slipcase. There will be a book of the annotated texts of all four series further down the line.

I had hoped to get two years’ grace to write and tour a proper 2 hr show like Carpet Remnant World, and then write another SLCV, but perhaps film it in 1000 seater + rooms and embrace the tragedy of acclaim. Recording stuff to an intimidated 120 people that’s been honed in rooms of 1000s now feels weird, but the next tour, CONTENT PROVIDER, will now become a proper big-ideas piece of work.
Thanks for watching!

Harry Palmr

Someone will pick him up....