TV Review

Published Monday 30 June 2008 at 14:10 by Harry Venning

Happy 90th Birthday Nelson Mandela was an intimate gathering in Hyde Park for fifty thousand of the celebrated nonagenarian’s closest friends.

Amy Winehouse interrupted her convalescence to perform, Hollywood’s very own Will Smith MC’d with the help of cue cards and Gordon Brown gave an interview backstage to Paxman-In-Waiting, Ferne Cotton. Brown, oblivious to the man wandering around in the background with a carrier bag of shopping, was intent on discussing Mandela’s achievements and qualities but Cotton was not about to be fobbed off with such irrelevances, and cut to the chase. “Prime Minister, will you be getting down and rocking to Queen later’” demanded Cotton. Brown was visibly shaken by this line of questioning, confessed to an admiration of Queen, and returned immediately to the subject of Mandela.

Meanwhile, over on BBC3 the American singer Estelle was delivering an environmental message to her Glastonbury audience, with particular reference to the destruction of the ozone layer and its effect on the weather. “I mean, its June and its raining!” she observed incredulously. Estelle has clearly never experienced an English summer before, nor been to the Glastonbury festival where any precipitation less than a biblical tempest is nowadays regarded as a veritable heatwave.

Speaking on behalf of millions of my fellow armchair enthusiasts, the enjoyment of BBC’s Glastonbury coverage is enhanced tenfold by shots of festival goers drenched to the bone, mired in mud and drowning in craters of fetid brown slurry, so this year has been something of a disappointment. To placate the television audience, which outnumbers those actually present, I suggest the organisers of next years festival artificially recreate the Somme like conditions we’ve grown to know and love.

When it comes to sketch shows BBC3 certainly knows how to churn them out, and there is rarely much to choose between their various offerings. They are usually well acted, energetic and achieve a reasonably efficient comedy strike rate of around 55%. Which makes them OK to watch, but murder to review.

So a great big cheer for MeeBOX, which left me with both a happy glow and a idiotic grin. Adam Buxton, one half of much loved comedy duo Adam and Joe, borrows from YouTube’s eclectic format and delivers a diverse selection of parodies and pastiches that are consistently funny and frequently hilarious.

These range from the conventional, such as the egomaniac American film star promoting his latest product, to the surreal, in which cleverly doctored archive film of The Trooping Of The Colour becomes a news story from an alien planet. My own favourite has to be either the absurdist commentary accompanying some TV sign language, or the middle aged man’s cliched punk reminiscences.

The humour is gentle and well observed, the performances endearing and the use of animation refreshingly restrained. I would estimate MeeBox’s comedy strike rate at around 90%, although having said that I can’t actually recall any dud or misfiring sketches.

It remains to be seen if Buxton follows the accepted sketch show convention of recycling the same ideas to create a series, but episode one was certainly as original as it was funny.

DETAILS

Happy 90th birthday, Nelson Mandela - ITV, 8pm, Friday 27 June

Glastonbury - BBC3, 9pm, Friday 27 June

MeeBOX - BBC3, 10pm, Sunday 22 June