Nick Frost in Hyperdrive, New BBC Comedy Options

[empathy-with-bea...]

I hadn't really got all excited about it previous to watching, but even coming to it cold I was a bit disappointed. Nothing in it made me laugh, and a lot of the comedyI felt like I'd encountered before somewhere. Also I don't really feel for any of the characters and t this stage they seem rather boldly and carelessly drawn. Nevertheless I'm going to give it a couple of weeks to see how it shapes up, but I'm no too hopeful.

As an aside the opening sequence where there's an English landscape and then you discover that its on a T.V screen on a space ship reminds me of an interview with the creators of Red Dwarf were talking about how T.V executives had wanted them to start the show with a shot of people sitting on a couch and then for the camera to pan back to reveal they were on a spaceship becuase they didn't feel that audiences would be able to "relate" to characters in a non-familiar environment, but the R.D people had said no because they thought the idea was sort of cowardly. It feels to me that the show is a little bit by the numbers and playing safe in the way the execs wanted Red Dwarf to be, without a really innovative drive or idea or any great subtlty behind its creation.

Anyway like I said I'll give a couple more weeks.

[Zoe]

What the world of sitcom needs is an injection of excitement from some fresh, young writers.

[Stella MM]

I know of some...

[ipse dixit]

What the world of sitcom needs is an injection of excitement from some fresh, young writers.

But where oh where will we find them? Fnar.


I Sky+'d Hyperdrive so not seen it tonight. There seems to be a level of 'meh' in what people have said in here so far, but I'll try to approach it with enthusiasm this evening all the same.

[Svein]

What the world of sitcom needs is an injection of excitement from some fresh, young writers.

Time for me to pitch the opening episode of The Vikings methinks!

[Baz]

Incidentally, can anyone inform me as to who the writers are and what they've done before

They are 2 of the writers behind Black Books. I think this will suffer from poor ratings as the Beebs scheduling is crap. It's was up against the last episode of Lost this week and now it's up against the new series of Desperate House wives. Bah.


It was all right the episode. It had a few laughs, liked the blood splat, but I really liked the ending of the episode. The last few scenes were great and I thought filmed quite nice. Does need a better theme tune though.

[whitey]

Repeated on Sunday at 10 for those of us who couldn't be arsed on Wednesday.

[fear_of_pop]

It's better than the scheduling they did with the Mighty Boosh.

[whitey]

It's better than the scheduling they did with the Mighty Boosh.

Which itself got better scheduling than 15 Storeys High. The BBC do love to ghettoise their new comedy don't they?

This post has been edited by whitey: Jan 12 2006, 06:37 PM

[frostitute]

So are Nick and Eldon going to fight ala Matrix?

I'm gettin that Neo / Smith vibe from them...especially Eldon and how his character is




"Misterrrr Henderrrsonnn..."

[whitey]

The good: The sets were nice. Frost's video message bit raised a mild snort from me. That's about it.

The bad: the biggest fuck-up was that aside from Eldon every character was basically the same, a bit nothingy (a very basic scriptwriting no-no. Amateurs!). Look! The future is full of boring normal people like you and me! Hilarious! Surely much funnier to set up a cliched Trek-style Universe and then just have one character who is normal and reacts like a regular person as your lead. Give him/her unreasonable people to bounce off rather than having everybody sort of bumbling through and not saying or doing anything much at all. They did it totally backwards, one mentalist surrounded by loads of non-entities. And he's not even the lead.

The actors all seemed to be giving it that same mumbly, stuttery, highly mannered and unnatural naturalism. Lines were lost and any sense of timing was completely absent as a result.

The gags (I counted about six) were obvious and you could see them coming a mile off. Somebody made it seem like they were going to say one thing and then they went the other way and said completely the opposite. Is that funny? Only if it's ultra fast and unexpected. Not if it takes ages and is the only joke you've seen for five minutes.

I had loads of other nitpicks (boring ship design, Office style shaky-cam, the idea that Peterborough is somehow funny, etc.) but I really can't be arsed going into them.

Verdict: cack. I'll watch one more (for Geoffrey McGivern) but that'll probably be it.

This post has been edited by whitey: Jan 13 2006, 06:02 AM

[Henry Krinkle]

It was okay. I didn't laugh at all, but I smiled a couple of times. I still maintain that Nick Frost is incredibly funny and can raise the status of a dud line with his delivery alone. Unfortunately, there's not a lot else. Eldon, as always, is good. It was a pleasant, safe, half hour. Nothing ground breaking, but certainly not the dire mess some are claiming it to be (not in my opinion anyway).
The Peterborough humour works on me because it's my home town. I have to resist giving a half arsed cheer whenever they mention it's name. Maybe if we all came from Peterborough we'd feel differently.

Surely much funnier to set up a cliched Trek-style Universe and then just have one character who is normal and reacts like a regular person as your lead. Give him/her unreasonable people to bounce off

You're joking, right?

[Clart]

then just have one character who is normal and reacts like a regular person as your lead. Give him/her unreasonable people to bounce off

You're joking, right?

Sounds like 'Red Dwarf', when Mr Whitey puts it like that.

[Oisi-wan Kemanse...]

Aaaah Red Dwarf the great hammer on which sci-fi-com is judged.

[WiseJoeyD]

Maybe if we all came from Peterborough we'd feel differently.

You're joking, right?

You're travelling down the road to meglomania and renaming Earth "Petersborough-Sphere"


And yes, surely that's just a live action version of Futurama then?