Rush hour

Copied from my post at Phys. Rev. X:

Yesterday evening a new sketch show was shown on BBC3 - well according to the website it was first shown on 19^th March, but I first noticed it last night. BBC3 sketch shows can be a bit hit and miss (generally miss) as they'll put out almost anything until they hit upon a winning formula with something decent that they can then go and push big time onto BBC2 (or the golden realm of BBC1), a la Little Britain. This new show is called Rush Hour and it features a few of fairly recognisable comedians, e.g. Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe fame) and Frankie Boyle, plus many who I've never seen before. One of it's writers is Charlie Brooker, who's a regular Guardian columnist as has written on things like Brass Eye and Nathan Barley - a fairly good pedigree. As I said above, BBC3 (in fact pretty much any) sketch shows can be fairly dire for the most part, with the occasional one or two funny sketches per show. Rush Hour was a pleasant surprise. As the title may suggest the sketches focus around people driving to work, or on the school run, say, during rush hour. In the one show I've seen there was a good variation between the characters, and they were also fairly fresh i.e. they mainly weren't rehashes of characters from other TV sketch shows (with one major exception of the lecherous boss character, who just seemed very familiar). The comic acting was at a fairly high standard, with the one sketch including Frankie Boyle as a policeman driving his young daughter and a classmate to school, being particularly well done. But the most important thing was that it was funny. There was nothing side-splittingly hilarious, but it was all good quality comedy, with no moments when you had to cringe and wonder why someone though a particular sketch would be a good idea.

I'll watch next week to see if anything starts to really annoy me. If two episodes have been decent enough then it might be onto a winner - with me at least.