Number one has to be 'Didnt you Kill my Brother' - bloody awful. Mr Sayle, you owe me an hour of my life back.
Other crap ones:
Slags
Summer Camp
War
Other than that, they're often brilliant. Watched The Yob the other night - genius. 'Be lucky be first - ooo wants it? five on the two-dog - ooo wants it?'
I quite liked "Slags"
"How's your mum doing?"
"I'm working on her!"
I wouldn't say "Didn't You Kill My Brother" was the worst, but it was disappointing to me.
For my opinion of the worst, it'd have to be both "Susie" and "Sex: Actually" definitely. I guess I really hate the shallow sex-themed ones. I also thought "Dirty Movie" and "Consuela" were rather below par.
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Hmm, I love all of the ones mentioned, with the possible exception of Slags - which was a noble failure in my eyes. As for Didn't You Kill My Brother? I think it's one of the best. Sayle's 'I have a dream' speech, Beryl Reid's badger on the head antics - hilarious!
You always was and you always was be
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.share
Trust me Comic strip has a fair amount of Really boring episodes that are a chore to watch
I think Slags was painful, susie wasnt good at all, and eddie monsoon a life? was like a joke that i wasnt alowed to get, so boring and wasteful, funseekers was another chore, wild turkey was terrible... to be honest id say there are more bad episodes than good, but the good episodes are SO good that it makes up for it
I'd have to disagree with you on that one, I thought Consuela was brilliant! Have you not seen the film "Rebecca"? It's a brilliant parody of that, and Rik's expression at the end was classic... Also moments like:
"Do you know what this is?....It's my shoulder" are classic!
I really liked Slags i thought it was awesome!
I didnt like the bullpoo-ers
The *beep* Roll out the Gunbarrel
Spaghetti Hoops
Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
Queen of the Wild Frontier - Worst Episode Ever.
Strangely enough i quite liked 'Spaghetti Hoops', even though it wasnt that funny. Nigel Planer's background story on the extras disc (regarding the making of that episode) is really fascinating and shows how commited they were to getting it made.
I thought all of the episodes made after spaghetti hoops right up until Four Men in a car were terrible. Thats 11 episodes and 8 years worth. I also thought 'Oxford' was pretty bad too. I also thought The Bullsh*tters was just plain boring and too long (the joke wore thin about halfway through).
It seems to me that the bigger the budgets they had to play with, the less effort went into the scripts as they started to spend more time on the production values.
I know 'Dirty Movie' is not a popular episode (and it does come over like a student film) but it was actually filmed at my local cinema in the summer of 1983. The cinema (the ABC/Cannon in Ewell) was demolished in 1998 and replaced by luxury flats so watching that episode reminds me of my bygone school days back in the 80s. Therefore by default i cannot nominate it as worst episode. Sorry...i'm a sentimental bugger!
"I thought all of the episodes made after spaghetti hoops right up until Four Men in a car were terrible. Thats 11 episodes and 8 years worth. I also thought 'Oxford' was pretty bad too. I also thought The Bullsh*tters was just plain boring and too long (the joke wore thin about halfway through)."
I'm not sure I'd go that far, but now I've finished watching the DVD set I did think that group of episodes were the low point of the show. I'd agree that the BSers should have been half the length -- it was funny to begin with but way overplayed -- and 'Oxford' was pants.
I'm not sure what I'd nominate as the worst: while a number weren't very funny, none of them really stood out to me as being especially awful.
Detectives? Watch more bad detective shows and then come back...
You've obviously never seen spender before... ;)
Also Dirty Movie is one of the best.
'Wild Turkey'
"Everbody in the WORLD, is bent"
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i felt that the series was going downhill when it travelled to bbc. perhaps they were just losing the freshness that made it so brilliant to begin with and they just ended up going over old ground.
shareLuckily, I was 'allowed' to get the the joke of Eddie Monsoon: A Life?. And it was a very funny joke, at that.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.share
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Taste is taste, so I'll refrain from defending some of my VERY favorite episodes which are named above. I will say that it always shocks me when someone doesn't love "Dirty Movie", because it's so cute and creative and weird, and one of their very few non-parodies, but I can see how it might be a love-or-hate type of show.
Anyhow, these are the shows I HATE:
* "Wild Turkey". Nice to see it named here multiple times. Stupid on every level, poorly directed, and Ruby Wax gives me hives.
* "The Yob". I tend to "get" the Comic Strip most of the time, so I'm loathe to admit that I might be missing the point of this one...but if I'm not missing it, then this one just stinks. I really like Keth Allen and Danny Peacock so I was looking forward to their writing, but this totally annoys and bores me.
* "Oxford". Another one I want to like, because I like seeing Dawn and Lenny work together, and it seems like it SHOULD be funny...but it seems sort of simple and obvious somehow. It never makes me laugh.
*"Jealousy". Phil Cornwall, though funny on "I'm Alan Partridge", has been consistently rotten in Peter Richardson films. That "Stella Street" movie...brrr, what a disaster. His characterizations tend to be broad and inept, like his big-chin announcer in "Crying Game". In this case, he is also working with a rotten script.
*"Eat The Rich". No, not quite a Comic Strip I guess, but bad enough to warrant a mention since it does have everybody in it at least briefly. A catastrophic failure.
*"The Pope Must Die(t)". AKA: "How to take a powerfully charismatic comic actor and reduce him to insipid fat jokes." Costars other miscast and ignored talents, who spend the film milling around waiting for the dull Hollywood plot to happen.
There are some weak ones too, like "Space Virgins", "Detectives", and "GLC" - but they all have good points too.
*"Jealousy". Phil Cornwall, though funny on "I'm Alan Partridge", has been consistently rotten in Peter Richardson films. That "Stella Street" movie...brrr, what a disaster. His characterizations tend to be broad and inept, like his big-chin announcer in "Crying Game". In this case, he is also working with a rotten script.
""Slags" is so bad it's embarrassing. I watched it again last week just to see if it was as bad as I remembered and it was even worse. Jennifer Saunders quite possibly gives the most embarrassing and awful performance I've ever seen by a "comedic actor". Peter Richardson isn't much better. Just awful. "
Lots of people think that, and we're all entitled to our opinions, but I'd like to disagree.
"Slags" is a brilliant parody, marred only by the flamethrower guy who can't act. (My theory is that he is a friend that owns the flamethrower, and that's why they hired him.)
If you ever watched some of the cruddy 1980s post-apocalypse teen films like "Prayer Of The Rollerboys", you'd know that Jennifer actually got it spot-on. And Peter's performance is AMAZING! That guy is just on fire. And there's all that great material from Arden and Frost too...just watch them in the bar playing with their straws. Come on, a street gang called The Hawaiians? That's great stuff.
You just have to be looking at it the right way. It looks cheap because it is a parody of films that look cheap. The acting is over-the top and hammy because that is what you find in the films they're parodying. The costumes are pathetic because that is accurate for the parody.
I've found myself employing Jennifer/Little Sister's "I don't wish this to have happened WHY HAS IT" quote many times, complete with scrunched-up face. Never fails to make me smile.
*********************************************
* "We may be stupid, but we're not clever!" *
War
The Beat Generation
Summer School
Slags
The Yob
Funseekers
Oxford
Spaghetti Hoops
Wild Turkey
Queen of the Wild Frontier
Demonella
Jealousy
"The World is Your Lobster My Son!"-Arthur Daley, Minder.
The Comic Strip has always been hit-and-miss. When it hit, it got a bulls-eye, when it missed, it was usually, at worst, average.
However, for me, five episodes stand out as being particular stinkers:
Sex, Actually: Poorly-written, only adequately acted and a pretty unnecessary addition - proof that the Comic Strip doesn't really matter anymore. Not only that, but it means the bloody box-set is no longer complete!
Funseekers: There was great potential here - the opportunity to take the piss of Brits abroad - but it just didn't go anywhere. Maybe that was the point - Brits abroad doing the same crap they do at home, ie, drinking, shagging, fighting, puking, etc. It should have worked, but didn't.
Wild Turkey: A silly idea - not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but poorly executed and made worse by bad casting. Could perhaps have been salvaged by casting come CSP regulars in the lead roles. Or maybe The Goodies...
South Atlantic Raiders: The first episode was quite funny in places, if not exactly side-splitting, but in the second episode, things start falling away alarmingly. As I understand it, this one even makes Peter Richardson cringe. Still, for what it's worth, Lemmy was quite funny!
The Red Nose Of Courage: Although the central idea is a funny one - John Major being the only boy to run away from the circus to become a politician - it quickly loses momentum, and even the attempts at satire - and god knows John Major is an easy enough target - are well below par.
"I'd much rather be happy than right, any day."
Strangely enough, I quite liked 'Spaghetti Hoops'.
Ouch! Talk about being damned with faint praise! Spaghetti Hoops is a bona fide classic, and certainly one of the Stripper's most well-observed pastiches. Nigel Planer and Keith Allen have never been better.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.share
I loved Bad News tour and the reunion one aswell.
shareI don't know why Oxford isn't more popular, I thought it was great. And Wild Turkey was hilarious IMO.
As for these:
Didn't You Kill My Brother - very bad.
Funseekers - am I missing something here? I agree it didn't go anywhere.
Eddie Monsoon: A life - Found this rather painful. Maybe I didn't get it.
Wild Turkey
The Yob (I just hate football)
South Atlantic Raiders
Never too botherd with most of the BBC episodes. Found them not too funny.
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Whoops, sorry
share"Slags" is so bad it's embarrassing. I watched it again last week just to see if it was as bad as I remembered and it was even worse. Jennifer Saunders quite possibly gives the most embarrassing and awful performance I've ever seen by a "comedic actor". Peter Richardson isn't much better. Just awful.
"John 3:16"
The Yob (I just hate football)
I find this remark close to inexplicable. The Yob is plainly not about football, and the brief allusions to the game play a miniscule role in both the script and the narrative. Are you sure you didn't mean The Crying Game?
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.share
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