The Fast Show

As we reach the end of Just One More Episode (and, in fact, there are just four more episodes to go of this nonsense) I wanted to dedicate some time to rambling about a very influential show that people don’t seem to talk about anymore.  I’ve mentioned before my passion for sketch shows, both the terrifying highs of jokes that come off well and the dizzying lows set ups that never really pay off (see post on Little Britain), so it’s only right that I touch on The Fast Show before bowing out.  I was recently assailed by an irresistible urge to revisit some of my beloved sketches and managed to track down a handful of episodes downloadable from Sky Comedy.  Sadly, given that series one appeared in 1994, some of the footage looks like it was filmed on Vaseline (but don’t worry, guys, as the adverts that are inserted everywhere are crystal clear HD) but the humour still shines through and I found myself laughing my head off all over again, despite having seen all of it many times before.

These days, my attention span is so much shorter than it used to be, ruined by years of little whatsapps and incoming office work on multiple fronts (emails, calls, instant messages, someone standing next to your desk coughing lightly back in the days of actually working from anywhere but home), so it stands to reason that The Fast Show’s delivery of its very name’s promise (it’s quite fast) has helped to ensure that I’ve only grown fonder of it with age.  Most sketches are fairly rapid, some are even a few seconds and a single sentence.  Perfect if you’re itching to get the next one without delay.  This results in a vast population of characters and scenarios that I could never do justice to here, but my recent viewing has yielded two conclusions.  Firstly, the writers and actors love silliness as much as I do, as each sketch plays out in a parallel universe of messing about.  Secondly, their target is always anything that takes itself too seriously.  Sign me up.

Let’s take, for example, Jazz Club.  I remember only ever waiting patiently for this one to end when I was a child.  The punchlines were buried and subtle and, probably, it was too similar to real programmes at the time.  But it’s proven a revelation this time around.  John Thomson’s compere is unflinchingly earnest in his curation of various jazz musicians’ backstories, delighting in their hilarious-yet-subtle made-up names (hello, Toast Of London), before throwing with real enthusiasm to the stage where something terrible always unfolds, yet with every artist believing they are a heaven-sent gift to the music scene and the world in general, all conveyed through the medium of the rest of the cast messing about.  There’s an interpretative dance where you can just see Caroline Aherne (princess of The Royle Family) having the time of her life, channelling every pretentious performer she’s probably had the displeasure of coming across.  It’s at this point there’s a great moment of self-reference when the amazing Tom Bola and Jack Pot waddle into shot with their creepy dance.  I think about them all the time and have recently taken to whatsapping friends a video of me laughing along to this without any preceding explanation.

The two first appear in a sketch from Chanel 9, the brightly coloured pastiche of foreign telly, set in the scorching hot Republicca Democratia Militaria.  While it feels a bit Brexit-y and jingoistic these days, the sleaze of the presenters, the chaotic unfathomable action of the shows and the superbly coined and indecipherable language are all so well observed that you really do have the impression of having switched on the TV in a Spanish hotel room.  The linguist in me immediately starts decoding to find units of meaning, relishing in each Chris Waddle as much as every sminky pinky.  The awards show must have busted the budget, but it’s the lottery numbers that take me to my favourite farcical territory, with the multisyllabic word for five pushing the very boundaries of credibility, yet still erring on the side of plausibility.

Call me simple, but sometimes the repeatability is exactly what the fragile mind needs in comedy.  I’m going to channel my inner Simon Day with a “someone’s sitting there, mate” at the next opportunity.  I still maintain that every one of Jessie’s Diets and Fashion Tips is superbly written, and brought to life as an individual and unique performance by Mark Williams.  I didn’t even realise my habit of saying “no offence” in a South African accent after something offensive is generated by an Arabella Weir character.  Inevitably, I do need to question how well everything has aged, as it mostly, and shoot me if I am wrong, seems ok.  Upper class superciliousness and affectation seem to be The Fast Show’s target for its most extensive ruthlessness.  A few other lines have become a bit dud as our attitudes have improved, but I think the things we now deem sexist were in fact highlighting our imbalanced expectations from women, from “does my bum look big in this?” to the competent female employees who turn into simpering idiots at the first sight of a man.

I have to mention Paul Whitehouse, even if just to make it clear that my sister and I still whisper to each other “you ain’t seen me, right?” and Charlie Higson as Johnny Nice Painter, because we two siblings still re-enact the moments he finally utters the word black and asks mother why we must stick pins in our eyes.  Even all those years ago, some of the humour is eerily prescient, with Sir Geoffrey Norman MP a spot-on rendering of today’s chinless Tory, refusing to accept any assessment of reality by simply shouting nooooo.  I’d like to end outrageously by claiming The Fast Show invented humour as I now know and love it.  From the crude, such as the couple who have to pause briefly to explain that they’ve “just come” in inopportune circumstances, to the uncanny depiction of my childhood, as shown in the sketch which I now know is called The Hurried Poor, where a family constantly run about with too much luggage while the dad shouts “come on!”, the breadth of The Fast Show is as much a part of its charm as each sketch’s brevity.  I laughed then, and I laugh now.  Which was nice.

Call My Agent! (Dix Pour Cent)

There’s nothing smugger than asking friends what foreign language programme they’re enjoying currently, only for them to stare back blankly, forced to reveal they don’t like things with subtitles.  I’ve been banging on about Call My Agent! to anyone who’ll listen for the last few weeks, acting like some sort of unappointed Walter Presents in my attempts to make everyone watch it.  Sure, the smugness has been advantageous bycatch (a phrase borrowed from the harrowing Netflix documentary Seaspiracy), but I’ve genuinely enjoyed my hour an evening with Paris’s craziest talent agency, so there’s been a touch of altruism in my evangelising.  I’ve already bored everyone here with my inconsistent keepings-up with the French language, covered in my post on Lupin, but Call My Agent! actually came into my life following a flurry of articles on the Guardian extolling the show’s virtues.  Suddenly, I was the recipient of smugness, unable to nod knowingly as I read the journalists’ words celebrating a secret club of enlightened British folk who enjoyed comedy dramas that were almost too French to function.  I didn’t want the Guardian thinking I can’t keep up, so off I went.

Let’s start with the premise: bienvenue chez ASK.  Agence Samuel Kerr is a top-flight acting agency in Paris, representing all the biggest names in the French film industry.  I’ll stop you there if you can’t actually name any French actors or if you didn’t know there was a French film industry.  There are a lot of the former and plenty of the latter – don’t give me an excuse to be even smugger!  Our pilot episode introduces us to the four key agents that run the show, cruelling letting their boss and the agency’s namesake expire during a rare stretch of annual leave, meaning that four egotistical workaholics are about to find out it’s not so easy keeping France’s flightiest thespians on their books when to do so involves sacrificing their own happiness to see to their every whim.  Enabling and hindering them in equal measure is a team of assistants, papering over cracks, often of their own making, in order to solve that episode’s désastre.

You’ll come to adore the characters pretty quickly.  From Andréa’s extreme sarcasm to Arlette’s extreme honesty, via the relief that Gabriel does sometimes get a haircut and Mathias nearly always, eventually, somehow, sort of does the right thing.  Agents aside, though, I’m here for the assistants.  We’ve given all the best lines to Hervé, our sympathies lie with Camille as Mathias’s illegitimate daughter, Sofia injects a sense of fun and Noémie steals every scene with her madcap and manic antics.  All of them, in true French style, fly off the handle and deliver expletive-laden abuse at the slightest inconvenience.  This doesn’t seem to be a sackable offence in the workplace.  Rampant door-slamming is also positively encouraged, so sign me up.

With such a rich cast, you almost don’t need the show’s other main feature: A-list guest stars.  Just as Extras built each instalment around sending up the public persona of a household name, Call My Agent! does exactly the same thing.  I’ll admit to not recognising every big name to cross the threshold of ASK with unreasonable demands, but you can tell they’re really enjoying entering into the sense of fun, and who am I to deny them a nice day out?  But, dare I say it, I almost don’t need them…  It must be the uncultured Brit in me, so if you’ve recognised each one of them, caught all the references to classic French films (Amélie doesn’t count) then feel free to smug it all over muggins here.  My other slight adjustment at first was the episode length – clocking in nearer an hour, I always felt I was done ten minutes prior.  But by the time I was fully invested in seasons two, three and four, I ended up feeling wishes that it would never end.

Fans of silliness will fare well here, but given our Gallic cultural influence, it’s more of a sexy silliness.  There’s surprise nudity, as our neighbours across the Channel take a far less prudish approach to the female nipple, but snogging seems to be banned.  Any kissing is reduced to lengthy pecking which rings ever so slightly false when there’s so much passion elsewhere.  This is the joy of watching something from another culture: it’s not for you.  Much discussion takes place about fathers officially recognising their progeny, not just Camille, but also Andréa and Colette’s new-born.  I assume this is a piece of very efficient legislation we don’t have here, no different to having to cope with people paying for medical treatment in US dramas when we’ve got the trusty old NHS here funded by weekly clapping.

On that note, as we slide out of lockdown, you could do worse for escapism with Call My Agent!  Paris looks its best, but even in the drizzle, you’ll be itching to catch the train there, just so a waiter can be rude at your attempts to speak the language or you can be run down by Gabriel on his moped.  Most enduring of all, though, is the signature theme tune, oscillating through storylines with all the power of the music in Succession, elevating our sexy silliness to something a bit more artistic.

So, read along with Paris’s best agents, or, find your GCSE, A-Level and actual degree in French returning episode by episode so that, by the end, you’re suddenly able to meet a friend and spend the whole afternoon talking French after a gap of a decade.  Educational, and fun!  On that note, do be warned of the classic gopping translation of tu and vous.  English doesn’t distinguish by politeness between forms of the pronoun, you (and we only have one if you discount the archaic thou).  But in every French adult relationship, parties must elect to switch from the formal vous to the more LOL tu.  This is artfully done by using the verbs tutoyer and vouvoyer, but in the subtitles you simply have cast members saying “Hey, shall we be familiar with each other now?”  Call My Agent!, with a fifth series now promised after claiming the fourth would be the last, you can be familiar with me all you want.

The Simpsons (Seasons Six To Ten)

Since my last post on The Simpsons, in which I covered my stupid opinions on the first five series, as well as how the show came into my life in the first place, my loyal readers have been crying out for me to continue my ramblings and share opinions on subsequent instalments of the yellow family’s adventures.  So here we are, doing The Simpsons again, but make it seasons six to ten.  You might be asking yourself how I got through five sequences of around 25 episodes in under four weeks, but that’s one of the good things about lockdown.  There’s nothing else to do.  I let an episode roll while I lounge on the sofa with a morning coffee before I log on to the laptop for a bit of working from home.  A couple more play over lunchtime when I briefly step away from the laptop to eat some food that I have to make at home in my own kitchen, and then tidy up afterwards as well.  And finally, once I am finished with the laptop for the day, I step away to eat dinner, in the same room I have been in the whole time, only this time I play some more Simpsons episodes, eyes on the animation while I shovel in another home-prepped meal.  Don’t worry, my actual evenings, spent watching more telly (in the same room, guys), are filled with more adult and aspirational boxsets, like Fargo or Lupin.  I’m not a savage that simply canes hundreds of instalments of the same thing.

Airing between 1994 and 1999, this is what I shall deem The Simpsons’ sophomore years.  Let’s be honest, I only watched these many years later, although I do recall we did actually as a family finally get Sky at one point and for a few expensive years we did watch premier episodes in real time.  I remember the Mayored To The Mob episode being trailed so endlessly that watching it live became an involuntary inevitability.  Worldwide, The Simpsons’ incomparable cultural influence was well established and undeniable.  They had the near perfect storytelling of the vintage seasons to build upon, heritage with the perfect balance of humour and heart and, goodwill surrounding their beloved characters.  Everyone wanted to know what was happening in Springfield.  Indeed, these are some of the absolute classic episodes, but their density among lesser instalments decreases with each progression from one series to the next.  From Lemon Of Troy and Homer The Great’s terrific heights, we slide down a slippery slope of relying on tropes that extinguish the original charm with repetition and unsatisfactory plotting.

Let’s just remind ourselves that I have no legitimate position from which to criticise any of this.  These series are still some of the best TV committed to my eyeballs.  Some sequences I have seen countless times yet they still bring irresistible amusement (such as all of Das Bus).  It’s only as a fan and through this slightly academic process of re-watching that I have been able to pinpoint where things began to lose their shine for me.  We shall go through each one in turn, exceeding only Comic Book Guy for geeky irrelevance.

Firstly, Homer has now become nothing but stupid.  Not just a bit silly, but utterly and unforgivably reckless.  When he is slightly childlike, yet ultimately sacrifices to put his family first, as in You Only Move Twice, he is at his best.  Or in The Joy Of Sect, where his impenetrability offsets cultish earnestness, playing him for laughs is an utter joy.  But when he’s repeatedly ruining Bart and Lisa’s lives, it starts to grate.  Often, he’s a foil to both sides of an argument, as in The Cartridge Family, but his actions veer into unpardonable territory.  He was always preferable as an everyman family man that at least had some, if only modest, aspirations.  This is why he’s always my least favourite character.

Compounding this is an increase in far-fetchedness.  The Simpsons are at their best dealing with the banal – literally managing the household budget or coping with the education system.  But to eke out plot, they have to go to new places or become new things.  Marge and Homer embark on CV-busting dalliances with any and every career:  Homer becomes a carny, Marge becomes a policewoman, Homer becomes a bodyguard, Marge becomes an estate agent, repeat to fade.  Even Bart and Lisa dabble in broadcasting, military academies and ice hockey.  As a cartoon, we have to return everything to how it was at the start, but, as we move on from season six, our routes to getting there become increasingly extreme.  By series seven, we’re having to take an epic approach, and this just isn’t the Evergreen Terrace I want to hang out on.

What makes this more curious is that The Simpsons have always had an outlet to exercise and exorcise nonsense: the Treehouse Of Horrors specials.  In fact, my favourite ever Simpsons story is The Genesis Tub, found in series eight’s anthology (actually instalment number VII), where Lisa accidentally creates life for a science fair.  The very meaning of our existence is lampooned, all while taking aim at Lutherans and teacher assessment.  With the rules out the window for these seasonal specials, couldn’t the standard episodes have retained more realism?  My preference for nuclear family humdrum is probably just a personal matter, but the more celeb cameos (playing themselves), the more destination episodes (New York, Australia, Japan) and the more Homer embraces and then abandons a different lifestyle, the less original charm remains, even though each episode still offers many moments of brilliance.

I don’t think I’m even whingeing about inconsistency.  I’m just a viewer, setting up a mythology in my mind about what rules a show should play by, applying those rules to the world without telling anyone, and then expecting something else to what I’m being offered.  Let’s end on a moment I had clean forgotten but which surprised me with its poignancy and hope to such an extent that my spine tingled.  In ’Round Springfield, Lisa says goodbye to Bleeding Gums Murphy.  He was never a popular character, but he represents to her a certain metropolitan quality that’s lacking in Springfield.  The show deals with loneliness, being remembered, and family.  Lisa only comes across her hero because of her brother absorbing her parents’ attention.  Appearing to her after his death, Bleeding Gums reprises the song Jazzman with Lisa, and I’ll have to admit here that it brought a tear to my eye.  I don’t even know why.  So, despite some imperfections, The Simpsons can still touch me all these years later.