The Fast Show

I can understand why people can see the Fast Show as being simpleminded, or plain not funny and repetitive.

But that's just the point.

It's sketches, it's fast paced wit, it's not deeply intelligent humour. It's in your face comedy.

I especially like Bob Flemming and Clive Tucker. Bob:"I've got a tickle in my..." Clive:"ARSE!"

Also notable is Rowley Birkin who wilst only muttering and mumbling can actually tell you a whole story with a few audible sentences.

Ted and Ralph, as said before, do not rank as being humourous, but more as being lovable characters, although you can chuckle at Ralphs ineptitude in finding the words to say what's on his mind.

One that will also always stay in my memories is one with Jesse: He steps out of his door, looks quite bewildered and says with loud voice:"This week, I have been mostly eating..." slight pause..."PROZAC!"

It's a pitty that they stopped with this show, as for the fans, the highpoint has not yet been reached.

Any repeats are more than welcome!

It is more than ten years since the debut of The Fast Show, and attention spans are greatly reduced. So it is hard to believe that the show was born of what at the time was a rather unique concept - keep the laughs coming by keeping comedy sketches as short as possible, firing them out one after another, and being as precise as possible with barbs and gags.

If you are familiar with the British alternative comedy crowd - French and Saunder, Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Rick Mayall - you understand why the notion of brevity and precision was somewhat revolutionary. The alt-com crowd had a tendency to squeeze every possible laugh or chuckle out of an idea, to - in short - end up flogging a dead horse. Arguably, the reason for such a habit was that making your point was more important than getting easy laughs. The Fast Show turned this around, asking, what was the point of comedy if you were not getting a stream of laughs that never let up?

The Fast Show featured a collection of talented comedians - all relatively young, with their own appeal, but who were also great character actors and impressionists - twisting the mundane into the absurd. Family dinners, foreign news programs, the country-house set, all became fodder for laughs. And, over the half hour of the show, sketches flew by.

Over the course of The Fast Show's run, certain characters became extremely popular, and there were numerous concepts that could have been rolled into sitcoms or movies. However, the greatest success of The Fast Show is that it reintroduced a certain slickness to sketch comedy, something that had existed with shows like Not the Nine O'clock News, and previously had been toyed with by Monty Python's Flying Circus, but had been largely banished by the alt-com crowd.

The Fast Show bears, in an interesting way, a resemblance to Laugh In, the American variety show from the 60s/70s. Both shows were frivolous, sharp, often silly, and zippy. The difference is this: The Fast Show, relying more on character comedy, and drawing it characters from the stable of English and European "types", will never seem as dated as Laugh In.

The Fast Show is a sketch show, and as most such animals it doesn't always work. Some jokes are brilliant, some a bit thin.

The most characteristic ingredient of the Fast Show are its repeated characters and their catch phrases, like the car salesman who compares everything to "making love to a beautiful woman", or the guy whose "...which was nice" is the pinnacle of his emotional reactions. This device is perhaps a little overplayed at times (and the English soccer international Chris Waddle will curse them for that, since he will be remembered for the rest of his life as the catch phrase of Channel 9) but when it works it is extremely effective. My personal favourites are Jazz Club, a terrific satire on late night toffee-nosed music programmes; and also the bloke (played by Paul Whitehouse) who has no opinion of his own and agrees to every argument put to him.

Although this review may look rather mixed, the shows are generally unmissable because the good stuff easily outweighs the weaker moments.

The Fast show is one of the funniest programs to come out of the home of sketch England. It is full of one liners, running gags and send ups that leave you laughing hours after the show is finished. Characters such as Arthur Atkinson and the news team from channel nine will become timeless classics of British comedy. Also check out previous works by some of the team especially the "Harry Enfield and chums" television program.

I pity any American reading this, I truly do. Over here we get the absolute cream of the sketch show crop. An absolute masterpiece of comedy writing and acting. In America, the cream of the comedy crop is "Everybody Loves Raymond". Hah!

Some of the catchphrases in the Fast Show are so ingrained into the British national concsience that they are regularly used in just about every type of media outlet. "Football isn't it?" "You aint seen me, right?" "This week I have been mostly..." "Suit you sir!" "Schorchio!" the list goes on. What Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson have created here is legend. If there was a book on how to do great sketch shows, this would be the foundation.

The reason the Fast Show works so well is that it has found the balance. It's funny on the most basic level of physichal comedy and repeated simplicity for those who wish to switch there brains off for half an hour, whilst simaltaneously being sharply satirical and brilliantly observed enough to engage the more cynicaly minded viewer. The fact that Ron Manager, the football analyst now has his own column in a Saturday Sport pullout in the Guardian is a measure of what huge cult figures the characters have become.

So in conclusion I would just like to say:

Son terrenos el kleftikos den teflon do Fast Show est ter keles butros butros Gahli. Faliahala falihala faliahalay faliahala Chris Waddle. Ten deros muchos bonkos hinky sminky pinky meth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth Nelson Mandela win on penalties. Hava vin doros fendevicos Sheffield Uwednesdaye e hemeriodos ton fig leaf e six gerbils.

In other words

Brillllliaaaaaannnnnnntttttttttt!!!!!!!