Stuff I Watched: Show Me The Funny – Week 3

Having not been in when this screened on Monday night, it might have been the perfect excuse to give it a miss, but thanks to Sky Plus and a misguided sense of completing what I started, it’s time for this week’s recap of Show Me The Funny.

This episode’s gimmick audience were school kids and the task involved the comics being split into teams to give lessons to  the kids.  It was probably the strongest challenge to date: performing to kids would really force them to tailor their material and not fall back on old stuff, and preparing the lessons at least required some creativity.

Since I was semi-interested in this week’s task, I guess I paid more attention and this highlighted one of the main flaws in the format: the one hour running time just isn’t long enough.  There’s too much to cram in, so it has to rattle along at such a rate of knots that you don’t actually get to focus on anything and so it all becomes a bit meaningless.  Anyway, just so I don’t sound completely negative, the task part was at least mildly entertaining this week.  It still didn’t seem to relate too much to comedy, but you can’t have everything.

“It’s writing day,” announced Jason Manford.  As an aspiring comic, my ears pricked up as this could be the most interesting and useful section.  It’s lasted exactly a minute.  I know this because I timed it.  What are you going to learn in a minute? (Answer: not a lot)

Ross Noble was the guest judge. He had some interesting points to make in the 15 second talking head that he was allotted.

The performance section was really interesting, in that pretty much all the acts struggled.  The only one that seemed to win the crowd over was Patrick Monaghan, who essentially just spat water over the kids.  It made them laugh, but really?  Rudi was the act who struggled most, which was strange given that he was the most experienced.  He started by just listing TV shows (“Hey, who likes X Factor?”), then seemed to recover before completely imploding – he visibly talked himself into dying.  It was quite an eye opener given how experienced he is.

Tiff and Pat were called back to the judges for feedback.  It’s didn’t come across as the “best two” this week as it wasn’t all positive, but it was at least constructive.  Interestingly, Pat was praised for getting through his material, instead of the larking around that he has done in previous weeks.  This was strange given that we basically just saw him spitting water pretending to be a whale.  I guess it just highlights how stuff can be edited together to give the impression that the producers want to give.  We’re still only seeing 60-90 seconds of each 5 minute set, so it would be easy to pick and choose from these to tell whichever story they want to.

The “bottom two” were Rudi and Cole.  Ross Noble gave Rudi what seemed like heartfelt advice, basically saying that he’s really got to push himself if he’s going to get out of the rut he’s in.  It’s moments like this that give a glimmer of what the show could be.  Kate Copstick said that Cole was shit.  She literally said he was shit.  Under those circumstances it was no surprise that he was the one that went.

Strangely, by the end of the episode, I found myself drawn into it much more than I thought I would.  I certainly didn’t see that happening.