Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy @10pm, Thursdays, E4- 5 out of 10

Finally, a show that has lived up to the promise of the Channel 4 comedy sponsors’ Fosters’; “original comedy”. Let’s face it, there are very few places where you might find a Miami-based drug dealer character with a sword and shield (and a bug face) and a man with a seashell as a head dancing to a radio broadcast of a Sherlock Holmes novel.

However, the apt catchline of the sponsor is one of the few positives to come out of Noel Fielding’s latest creation, a surrealist part live-action, part animation half hour romp that even seems to be seeping into the adverts on 4OD, if Gail Porter emerging from portable toilet in Cardiff that had been dropped in by a helicopter is anything to go by.

“Luxury Comedy” brings together the cast of BBC3’s The Mighty Boosh (let the inevitable comparisons begin early), minus Julian Barratt, for a sketch show with a  slight difference as characters from each sketch glide into one another’s segments, each battling for “look at me, aren’t I bizarrely unique and weird” screen time presumably.

The trademark left-Fielding (ha! Word play) ideas are in evidence from the start with outrageous concepts for sketches like a cookery show cum space mission starring Rennie and Gaviscon (who I cannot even begin to describe just exactly how they look) and Roy Circles, the teacher with a military history but happens to have the body of a chocolate finger. Clearly, no expense has been spared on the clothing and make-up departments of “Luxury Comedy”; it would appear blue or yellow are the standard colour faces for the occupants of the “Luxury Comedy” universe.

The seamless transition from live action shots to the oddly beautiful animation of Nigel Coan works a treat but, with this being surrealist comedy, inevitably, the sketches are particularly hit and miss. The Boosh worked, for me, because it had some semblance with reality (identifiable job locations of the main characters for example) and a linear structure. And having Barratt around to reign in Fielding’s wackiest ideas and to provide identifiable character traits for the audience; a middle-aged man not really going anywhere despite (and probably because of) his passions in life.

The best parts of Luxury Comedy are the pieces with the aforementioned semblance to reality. Dondylion, trapped in a zoo with nothing but a tyre on a rope, some Hula Hoops and a picture of David Lee Roth (“King of the lions”) jabbering to himself and slowly going mad is a lovely a oasis of satire about animals caged in zoos in a desert of surrealism.

Elsewhere, against the odds somewhat, Sergeant Raymond Boombox’s tales work as they also have this basis in reality (a cop doing a job) that can be subverted to add the bizarre dialogue of his talking knife wounds and the drug dealer mentioned way back in the intro (well done if you’ve stuck with me this far, incidentally).

However, elsewhere, one just got the sense that the show needed reigning in. It wasn’t a sense of surrealism for the sake of surrealism on the part of Fielding (an outstanding comedic writer and actor in the right dosage and setting) but a lack of input from the producers to keep the show just about enough on the straight and narrow.

Or my descent into premature aging has begun, coupled with not being a resident of or regular visitor to the independent Republic of Camden, and I just didn’t get “it”.

Glory Daze@ 9pm, Thursdays E4- 4 out of 10

The term 'hit and miss' was probably coined with the foresight that E4 was coming along. Every single sitcom/comedy show on E4 is hit or miss, often magically being both. For example, The Inbetweeners? Hit and then miss. Skins? Hit and then miss. Phoneshop? Tragic miss. Big Bang Theory? Hit. And so on.


The latest show to come along is centred on a group of young people (like Skins) that attend an educational establishment (like The Inbetweeners) and is an American export (like Big Bang Theory). Getting some kind of picture here about the conformity of E4's transmission?


Anywho, Glory Daze follows the exploits of a group of American guys as they head off to a college, loosely-based on every single US college show in every single American TV show or film, looking for a place in the college eco-system and documenting all the shenanigans they get up to.


You will never guess what these shenanigans involve. That's right, drinking, drugs and women. Originality is dead you say? Purlease! Though I suppose the diversity is something to applaud; Catholics, Republicans, Chinese, African Americans, Jews, women, all are represented in this equal opportunities 45 minutes of wonderment. Didn't see that in American Pie, did we?


Perhaps the one shred of originality is that the show is set in the 1980s, the pro being the viewer is treated to a killer 80s soundtrack, the con being the audience is subjected to terrible dialogue based on words that were not actually 'hip' or 'rad' back in the 80s and some horrible camerawork where it's meant to look like it was shot on 1980s recording technology but it just makes it look really bright and sunny all the time.


When a show is described in its marketing as a "hit US smash" it might as well say "endorsed by the Pope, Barack Obama and the Queen", for all the amount it's going to sway people. "Hit US smash" basically means very average show as the fact that Glory Daze was cancelled after one series kind of demonstrates. Being canned by the TBS network, that is a low.


All in all, watch Glory Daze if you were a big fan of the 80s and dated humour, avoid if you are a distinctly normal person.

This post also appeared on Pugwash News' wbesite at www.pugwashnews.com

The Cleveland Show @ 10pm, Tuesdays- E4- 4 out of 10

Spin off shows have a richly deserved reputation for not being particularly watchable or good or worth making and rightly so as they usually smack of trying to squeeze a few more pounds or dollars out of a franchise that's already been bled drier than a virgin at a vampire orgy. As you may have guessed from the rating, The Cleveland Show is another show to add to this list.

For those who are unaware, The Cleveland Show follows the adventures of Cleveland Brown, Peter Griffin's erstwhile neighbour from Family Guy and his new family in the town of Stoolbend, Virginia including his new wife Donna, his son from the first series, pudgy Cleveland Jnr, and his two step kids, an uber-intelligent infant and a forgettable teenage girl, which sounds vaguely familiar. This is now the second series of the show, the first series kind of passing me by after watching the first two episodes, that was that. But now, it's the second series and is it anymore rememberable? Well, no.

Back in the days of yore, moustachioed Cleveland with his laugh like Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday's stooge Paul Merson was a loveable enough character but it's been quite comprehensively now, not enough of a character to base a series around. All that he is left with now is an insanely catchy theme tune that you couldn't get out of your head with an ice cream scoop.

Largely, the storylines are strange and with no real overarching progression of the story or sufficient enough interaction between the two story arcs per episode whilst, as can be expected from a Family Guy type show, there are jokes that hit here and there with flyers such as the David Carradine funeral gag but largely there is a severe dearth of laugh out loud moments.

Every so often references are made to the show's stablemates (Family Guy and American Dad) merely serve to remind you of the golden days of the mid-2000s when Family Guy was the edgiest and funny show on TV. Not any longer. The Cleveland Show suffers from the same problem as the later series of Family Guy and American Dad, in that it just seems very strained and forced with only the occasional high watermarks such as the third episode of this season's 'Cleveland Live!' which is a wonderfully offbeat 20 minutes of television where the show is broadcast 'live'.

Perhaps if the show wasn't so associated with Family Guy (Seth MacFarlane is the executive producer and voice actor for both shows and the animation is the same) then it might be able to stand on it's own as a show but the impact Family Guy made on the animated adult cartoon was so huge that the goalposts have shifted hugely in this genre of television that everything else just isn't quite good enough anymore. Sadly, even this review has to be concluded with a reference to Family Guy such is the shadow it casts over The Cleveland Show.

All in all, much like the more recent series of Family Guy, watching The Cleveland Show has become something of a chore, just hoping that maybe the heights will be hit again but ultimately being disappointed and the urge to watch it the next week and the next week and the next week gets duller and duller.

Meet The Parents @9.30pm- E4- 2 out of 10

Bloody hell, where to start with this huge pile of steaming sub-par excuse for television entertaintment? Let's start with the premise I suppose.

The idea of the show is that a girl takes her boyfriend to go meet her parents for the first time, a terrifying experience anyway, but, hey, let's make it even worse for these poor saps. Let's replace the girlfriend's family with actors and put the lad in horrendously, cringey situations. If he can survive five hours in the family home, he wins a holiday to an unspecified destination, Butlins before it closes perhaps.

Standby for an incredibly long list of criticisms.

Firstly, if I had been going out with a girl for eight months and I had not met her family, that's not the best pretext

Secondly, if I had been going out with a girl for eight months, a fair amount of time, and it looked as if it was a long lasting relationship, I'd be pretty hacked off if she thought it would be a jolly jape to fuck around with the first meeting with the potential in-laws. I'd probably be within my rights to tell her to bugger off after the show has finished and go on that Butlins holiday on my own and get an STD while I'm there.

Thirdly, if you are going to create these awkward cringey situations, at least make them appear believable to anyone with more than three brain cells. The gardener getting off with the mum? The hippy sister? The uptight, headmaster of a father? These are characters and situations from a sub-MTV (whisper it, sub-4 Music?) sitcom, and even in that they wouldn't be at all believable.

Fourthly, giving a young woman, who may well be in love with their boyfriend, the incentive for a holiday at the expense of the humiliation of their other half smacks a bit of exploitation. Perhaps welcomed exploitation but it appears to be taking advantage of a young woman by bribing her without thinking of the potential damage it can do to her relationship

Right, what else can I pick holes in about this show? The acting is at about the level of Hollyoaks, the voiceover man builds everything up beyond belief. Even the bloody font of the little countdown clock gets on my nerves.

Overall, whilst not having the best ethical grounding, this show could have worked if done properly. Instead, it's been put together to be as over-the-top as possible and rather than the situations the boyfriends are in being cringey, the whole show is one great big toe-curler.