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Radio review - Light programme

Published Monday 21 May 2007 at 11:55 by Moira Petty

It was no laughing matter at the Baftas last weekend when those sages of the light entertainment industry, Ant and Dec, declared that sitcom is the hardest thing to do on TV and is rarely done well. The certainty with which they made their pronouncement indicated that they have spent part of their career reading duff comedy scripts sent to them. The situation is little better on radio.

The comedy witching hour on Radio 4 seems to come round at 11 o’clock - am or pm, take your pick, while Radio 2 prefers to beat audiences into submission with lots of derivative situation and little comedy at lunchtime on a Saturday. Even with Jonathan Ross as a three hour warm-up man, Buy Me Up TV failed to coax the glimmer of a smile on to my face.

The talents of Doon Mackichan couldn’t rescue Justin Edwards’ and James Eldred’s account of life behind the scenes at a 24-hour shopping channel. Perhaps, judging that this setting has been the subject of numerous satires, the authors settled for a frenzied facsimile of life at the consumerist cutting edge. Everyone sounded barking, indeed on the verge of a nervous breakdown, perhaps because they had to cope with dialogue that could apparently only be delivered at ear-shattering volume. The audience laughter was strangely disturbing, as if they had been force fed E numbers before being manacled to their seats.

Life was conducted at a similarly high voltage in Lucy Clark’s Fabulous. In fact, Daisy Haggard’s Faye sounded as if she was in the throes of some kind of electric shock therapy, as she went into convulsions at the prospect of going to work, speaking to her mother or having sex with her boyfriend. She was clearly meant to be a loveable, dippy character with her Bridget Jones ability to air her big knickers at the most inopportune moment. As this was in the 11pm slot, and the only meal that would be spoilt was that assembled by late night fridge raiders, we were treated to a scatological account of her toilet troubles, complete with sound effects. The voluble Faye - like other characters much given to an irritating deadpan drawl - was suffering from constipation, but not, alas, of the mouth.

The most promising new sitcom came from Suk Pannu with The Spiritual Centre because it had a genuine quirkiness, allied with performances which didn’t make me grit my teeth, which is always a good start. Most of the best sitcoms of the seventies, the undisputed golden age of the genre, exploited genuine personality flaws in their characters, rather than hyping everything up to fairground level. Here, Pannu has given us Bharat, a self-declared guru of the western suburbs of London, who is expansive on the failings of others while blind to his own faults. Played by the very likeable Vincent Ebrahim, he carelessly exploits the servant classes (his disciple played by Tim Key) and becomes very tetchy if interrupted during the afternoon repeats of old American detective shows. Bharat could well be some kind of an Everyman.

Nick McCarty’s A Confidential Agent (Retired) featured a one time Brummie PI (Jillie Meers) and a former Parisian vice-squad man (Robin Ellis). The case under investigation was of no interest, but I was intrigued by this pair, whose inspirations clearly ranged from Inspector Clouseau to Ironside via Boon.

There weren’t many laughs in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck after Michael Maloney’s moralist exposed truths in the household, headed by Paterson Joseph. Powerful and provocative, it depicted more than two hours of torment, not exclusively suffered by the cast.

DETAILS

Buy Me Up TV - R2, from Saturday, May 19

Fabulous - R4, from Wednesday, May 16

The Spiritual Centre - R4, from Wednesday, May 23

A Confidential Agent (Retired) - R4, from Monday, May 14

The Wild Duck - R3, Sunday, May 20

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