Category: Comedy Is …

  • Comedy Is … Based On A Hit Movie
    Comedy Is … Based On A Hit Movie

    I didn’t watch everything the Paramount Comedy Channel offered up or course, most notably the early evening fare. So I never watched the sitcom Clueless. I’ve no idea what it was like. And I only recently watched the movie it was based on too. But it does give me the opportunity to note an interesting…

  • Comedy Is … Most Amusing, Sir
    Comedy Is … Most Amusing, Sir

    During the heyday of those VHS rental years, where we would save our pocket money, then rush to the rental shop and spend hours trying to pick movies, I remember almost every tape we rented having a trailer for another brilliant looking Eddie Murphy movie. I must have been 11 or 12 when I first…

  • Comedy Is … Must See TV
    Comedy Is … Must See TV

    Is it possible for a sitcom to have a personality? Newsradio wasn’t given the most auspicious of starts. Although it was commissioned on the spot, two scenes into the pilot recording, by network boss Warren Littlefield, it only had a seven episode first season commitment. And things went downhill from there. But when I first…

  • Comedy Is … A Miracle, Doctor
    Comedy Is … A Miracle, Doctor

    A treat afforded by the Paramount Comedy Channel, was the opportunity to watch some shows that weren’t otherwise on offer elsewhere. Some were curios, some were average, but occasionally some were absolutely fantastic. On this episode of Comedy Is … I take a look at The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), and the career of Shaun Micallef, along…

  • Comedy Is … All About Timing
    Comedy Is … All About Timing

    Here’s the third installment of Comedy Is … an audio essay that uses a show from the late 1990s line-up on the Paramount Comedy Channel as a springboard to talk about the history of television comedy, and explore the wider social context of these shows, and what they mean to me on a more personal level. This time round,…

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  • Proctology: A Bottom Examination
    Proctology: A Bottom Examination

    For a long time now I’ve been wanting to write an old-fashioned programme guide. One you can hold in your hand and thumb through, make notes on, spill coffee on. So I did. Proctology: A Bottom Examination is my deep dive into Bottom, the hit BBC Two sitcom starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. That’s…

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  • Re-Casting Keanu
    Re-Casting Keanu

    Keanu Reeves is 56. That makes him eight years older than Clive Dunn was when he was first cast in Dad’s Army. But don’t panic, Clive Dunn was always playing much older characters than his own age. Keanu Reeves is 56. That makes him seven years older than Stephanie Cole was when she was first…

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