Comedy Slab

This week we review - Gameface (Series 1, Episode 1)

Comedy series following Marcella as she spiritedly crashes her way through life, assisted by her dubious life-coach, best friends and ever-patient driving instructor.

Bouncing back from a seismic break-up, clinging on to her dreams of becoming an actress, and - when she remembers her lessons - finally learning to drive, Marcella is on a mission to change her future for the better.

Starring Roisin Conaty as Marcella and packed with wry and idiosyncratic observations, GameFace is a witty, tender and resonant comedy about navigating your thirties when you're under-prepared - but somehow always staying afloat.

Written by Roisin Conaty

Producer by Charlotte Lewis and Izzy Mant

An Objective Fiction production for Channel 4

Gameface is available here: https://bit.ly/2yUlZQI

And is available to buy at: https://amzn.to/305dmPa

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - The Pin (Series 4, Episode 4)

Award-winning comedy duo The Pin present their own sketch show.

Strap in and delve in to a world of oddness, performed in front of a live studio audience.

The Pin radio show sees double-act Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden revise, tweak and comment on their sketches as they go, deconstructing the boundary between them and the listener, revealing the twisted logic behind their skewed approach to comedy and life.

After a sold-out run in Edinburgh and a string of performances across BBC Radio 4 Extra, BBC Three, Channel 4 and Comedy Central,
The Pin made their BBC Radio 4 debut in this show.

Fans of the show range from David Walliams to Ben Stiller.

Written by Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen

Producer by Sam Bryant and Sam Michell

A BBC Studios Production

The Pin is available here: https://bbc.in/2GENoKL

The Pin website is at: https://www.thepincomedy.com

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - Archer (Series 1, Episode 1)

Archer is an American adult animated sitcom created by Adam Reed for the basic cable network FX.

It follows the exploits of the title character (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin), a dysfunctional, irreverent secret agent and seven of his colleagues. Domineering boss (and Archer's mother) Malory Archer (Jessica Walter), professional Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler), mild-mannered Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell), delusional, psychotic Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer), gossipy Pam Poovey (Amber Nash), openly gay Ray Gillette (Adam Reed) and bizarre, mysterious Dr. Algernop Krieger (Lucky Yates).

The premise of Archer evolves in subsequent seasons as the show experiments with the standard setup of an anthology, each with self-contained arcs, new settings, a disparate set of personae for each character, even distinct humor.

Archer was conceived by Reed shortly after the cancellation of his Adult Swim comedy Frisky Dingo and draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the James Bond franchise.

The show's hallmarks include reference-heavy humour, rapid-fire dialogue, and meta-comedy. 

Archer is produced using limited animation and takes its visual style from mid-century comic art.

The cast members record their lines individually, and the show regularly employs guest actors and actresses for supporting characters.

Created by Adam Reed

Executive Producers Adam Reed / Matt Thompson / Casey Willis

A Floyd County Production for FX

Archer is available here: https://bit.ly/2GnFgyf

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - East Coast Listening Post (Series 2, Tattoo & Laugh)

The East Coast Listening Post was created by Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated duo Lazy Susan and is part spoof, part homage to popular US podcasts.

Across the series, Jenna and Dana (journalists, sisters, idiots) tour the UK and interview its inhabitants in their quest to reveal something meaningful - inadvertently revealing themselves in the process.

Freya Parker is an actor and comedian and one half of Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated Lazy Susan.

As an independent performer she has appeared in Josh and The Mash Report on TV and The Now Show, Newsjack and Homefront on radio. 

Celeste Dring is a comedy writer, performer and the other half of Lazy Susan.

Celeste has also appeared in Sketchorama, Newsjack and My Fancy Dressed Life on radio and Wanderlust, This Country and The Windsors on TV.

David Elms is an actor, improviser, writer and stand-up comedian who has performed his solo shows Nurture Boy, Mister Boy and, Goody Boy at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Written by Celeste Dring and Freya Parker

Produced by Suzy Grant

The East Coast Listening Post is available here https://bbc.in/2SeRkqa

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - Cabin Pressure (Series 3 Episode 2)

Set in a small airline business, Cabin Pressure is a comedy about the wing and a prayer world of a tiny, one-plane charter airline staffed by two pilots - one on his way down, and one who was never up to start with.

Whether they're flying squaddies to Hamburg, metal sheets to Mozambique, transporting lads on a stag night or shifting a panther for the odd oil sheik, no job is too small - but many jobs prove to be too difficult - for MJN Air!

The airline is run by forbidding divorcee Carolyn Knapp-Shappey who, at last, in her mid-60s, is free of her awful husband, but pleasingly not free of his private jet.

Her two pilots are the smooth, experienced and almost certainly fired-by-a-big-airline-for-all-round-naughtiness Douglas, and the struggling, almost competent sweaty young captain Martin.

General help is provided by Carolyn's dim-witted son Arthur.

Written by John Finnemore

Produced by David Tyler

A Pozzitive Production for The BBC

Cabin Pressure is available here https://bbc.in/2L4V5Ok

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - Year Of The Rabbit (Series 1 Episode 51)

London, 1887. A lawless city. Jewel thieves and body snatchers stalk the streets and the police do their best to contain them - but it isn't easy.

At the forefront of that fight is Detective Inspector Rabbit.
Rabbit's been chasing bad guys for as long as he can remember, but now he's not as young as he was and his heart keeps stopping at inopportune moments.

So Rabbit's boss, Chief Inspector Wisbech forces him to get a partner - young, fresh-faced and clueless Sergeant Strauss, just down from Cambridge.

He isn't cut out for this sort of work. He's only ever read about the East End in pamphlets. But he's really, really keen.

In the East End, crime is relentless so when they're tasked with solving the murder of another young women, it doesn't seem that unusual.

Until they notice a second bullet hole, and a mysterious symbol on her make up compact, which leads them into a labyrinthine quest for a killer, while rubbing shoulders with crooked politicians.

Along the way, they team up with Mabel, the daughter of the Chief of Police, who has ambitions to become the first female police officer, or 'Fopper'.

Written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley

Directed by Ben Taylor

Produced by Hannah Mackay

An Objective Media production.

Year Of The Rabbit is available here https://bit.ly/2XQ7OdB

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - Don't Forget The Driver (Series 1 Episode 5)

A dark comedy set in sunny seaside Bognor Regis. It explores what it means to live, work and parent at a point when the entire UK population is having to come to terms with the changing colour of their passports.

Coach driver and single dad Peter Green leads a life of ordinary routine; clip on ties, limp packed lunches, vehicle checks, round-trip coach journeys ferrying church groups to donkey sanctuaries and Japanese tourists to Canterbury Cathedral.

Green is at full stretch just about coping with his disaffected daughter Kayla (bored to a state of almost total inertia in a place that has nothing for her) and Audrey, his mum, whose life is rapidly descending into confusion and fear.

The discovery of a dead body on the docile Bognor shoreline and an unsettling meeting with a new arrival in town throws Green's life into chaos - a lost soul in need of assistance, who he could help. But will he? Can he?

Don't Forget The Driver follows a group of people struggling with their place in the world, their own sense of identity, and reveals how, in one single moment, even in the most ordinary of lives, an accidental encounter can change the course of everything.

Written by Toby Jones and Tim Crouch

Produced by Holly Pullinger

Directed by Tim Kirkby

Sister Pictures / Hootenanny production for BBC.

Don't Forget The Driver is available here https://amzn.to/2N1TSsI

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - The Wrong Mans (Series 1 Episode 1)

From actor/writer duo James Corden and Mathew Baynton, The Wrong Mans series centres on Sam Pinkett and Phil Bourne, office workers for Berkshire County Council, who have their menial existence turned upside-down by a chance phone call and a case of mistaken identity.

After being sole witness to a car crash on a desolate country road, Sam answers an abandoned mobile telephone and hears a message that was clearly not meant for him: "If you are not here by 5 o'clock, we will kill your wife".

Encouraged by office mailroom delivery boy Phil that they can be the heroes of the hour, the duo soon find themselves plunged into a deadly kidnap situation.

Written by James Corden & Mathew Baynton.

Produced by Jim Field Smith and Charlie Leech

The Wrong Mans is available here https://bbc.in/2KsDEac

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - Good Omens (Series 1 Episode 1)

According to The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon - both of whom have lived among Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle - are not actually looking forward to the coming war.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist...

Written by Terry Pratchett (adapted by Neil Gaiman)

Directed by Douglas Mackinnon

Good Omens is available here https://amzn.to/31w0lPY

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.

This week we review - Benny Hill Time (From March 1964)

Despite re-running this radio series, all the BBC can find to say about this show is "The master of double entendre presents sketches including Fred Scuttle. With Peter Vernon and Jan Waters. From March 1964." Perhaps they were still smarting from his choice to work with Thames Television for 20 years.

However, we do know that Alfred Hawthorne Hill was born on 21 January 1924 in Southampton.

After the Second World War, Hill worked as a performer on radio and his first appearance on television was in 1950.

In addition, he attempted a sitcom anthology, Benny Hill, which ran from 1962 to 1963, in which he played a different character in each episode and in 1964, he played Nick Bottom in an all-star TV film production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

He also had a radio programme lasting for three series called Benny Hill Time on BBC Radio's Light Programme, from 1964 to 1966. It was a topical show with episodes from March 1964 featured James Pond 0017 in "From Moscow with Love" and his version of "The Beatles".

He played a number of characters in the series, such as Harry Hill and Fred Scuttle.

Written by Benny Hill

Produced by John Brown

Benny Hill Time is available here https://bbc.in/2MifIYP

The Comedy Slab Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify and Youtube.

Subscribe for a new episode each Monday.

Get in touch - we're @ComedySlab on Twitter and ComedySlab on Facebook.