Val Falvey TD

There's a reason Matthews isn't writing with Graham Linehan anymore folks..

As one of my close friends said tonight 'it's easy to see who was the Art Garfunkel of that particular relationship..

You're all a bit too cynical. I laughed at "Ah feck Bowdenstown, Linda Martin actually beat the British."

I only saw the final few moments and I wasn't too impressed. Sorry Val but you haven't got my vote.

i

JonathanAnon wrote: »

And as usual, cast includes half of Fair City and half of the voiceover artists that you normally hear advertising health insurance on the radio.

That's a fair point, and it leads to a point that I've seldom seen tackled: that Ireland's national self-image as a land rich in talent is just delusional.

The reason we see the same actors everywhere is that there are so few actors in the country who are even minimally competent. If you can learn lines, more or less, and turn up mostly sober, you have a good chance of getting the job.

The same is true of writing. Shows aren't cast badly and stupidly written because good actors and writers are being ignored. It's because they are not there, or they are not interested in the medium.

In this case, RTE have put together a team with a high pedigree in comedy. This is not a bad procedure.

It's possible that the first drafts and early rehearsals were belly-laugh dynamite, which the dead hand of management crushed into mediocrity. It's also possible that a shallow talent pool didn't miraculously throw up a genius, but instead a project worth supporting got nurtured a few steps along the journey from ok to quite good.

In any case, it had no fewer laughs than the first episode of Porridge, and several more than any series of My Family. I wouldn't write it off yet.

Watched this with a none too critical eye hoping for a modicum of entertainment but it really was an appalling half hour of television.

Everything about it seemed one dimensional. I didn't think much of the script but what got me in particular was the execution. The shot selection, editing and performances were so stilted as to be unbelievable. There was no coherent flow whatsoever. Production standards were rock bottom, exemplified by the obviously accidental camera shake left in about 1/3 way through as characters exit the caravan as well as the awful shakey tilt up to the photo at the end.

And this is something that seems to be common across many comedy productions. Production techniques that work (a relative term) in SoapLand are transferred across to projects like this where they are wholly inappropriate.

Making a programme like this function smoothly and with a degree of professionalism would go a long way towards allowing the viewer focus on the script - instead you are constantly jolted back to reality with a poor performance here, a bad edit there, tacky location, poor set dressing, poor camera angle etc. When those gaffs come along at a faster rate than the jokes, what hope has it?

And why should I give it another chance? I'm not going to watch this again in the vain hope that it gets better. Producers should be aiming for the best possible in the first episode - this is the chance to set the standard and encourage the viewer back for more.

There's just a comedy by numbers feel to this and a lot of other local output that leaves a bad taste.

No I couldn't do better but that's not the point. The point is why produce anything at all if the results are this medicore. Someone should have known better.

Not funny. Not even entertaining.

Peter

Utter rubbish. The Nuremberg trials were funnier.

Remember the basic equation of modern Irish comedy ;

RTE + COMEDY = ZERO.:(