I wrote six months ago about those happy moments when an exciting live comic transfers to TV or radio with the idiosyncrasy of their stage act intact. But there are other (perhaps more?) examples of successful flits to the broadcast media, when what made the act special in the live arena is abandoned, or changed almost beyond recognition. When that happens, it’s a jolt, although not necessarily an unpleasant one. Two current examples – Jonny Sweet’s BBC3 sitcom Together and the Rubberbandits’ Almost Impossible Gameshow on ITV2 – are (to varying degrees) enjoyable, whether or not they’re what I’d expect from two intriguing, exciting live acts.
When Sweet appeared on the live scene in the late noughties, his strange, fey persona – boyish excitability plus Enid Blyton diction, with minutely creepy undertones – made an instant impact. He won the best newcomer award in 2009, the annus mirabilis for production house the Invisible Dot, for whom Tim Key bagged the top prize in the same year. He stole the show in Tom Basden’s play Party, and produced two solo sets that were strong on character – Sweet’s personality was entirely and unmistakably his own – but less so on substance. I waited eagerly for this beguilingly odd act to reach its apotheosis. But while I did so, it now transpires, Sweet was looking elsewhere: at sitcoms (he also co-wrote and starred in Sky 1’s Chickens) and romcoms, at warming cockles rather than weirding audiences out.
His new sitcom Together (he writes and stars) is adapted from his radio comedy Hard to Tell. It’s a classic romantic comedy distinguished – but only slightly – by its simple, shrewd concept. Which is that “when you start dating someone,” Sweet has explained, “a lot of the difficulties are when you’re not with them.” The title is ironic; it’s a sitcom about two new sweethearts not when they’re together, but when they’re apart. That of course ratchets up our eagerness for them to become an item, in a sitcom that channels the softheartedness of Gavin and Stacey, Tim and Dawn from The Office, Car Share’s John and Kayleigh and all those other couples who made you laugh and made you soppy at the same time.
I watched episode two the other night, and was easily seduced. The cast is a hip comedy dream team: Nick Mohammed, Liam Williams, Katy Wix, Sarah (Toby) Daykin, and Key himself in the improbable role of a high-ranking copper. There’s classic farce/sitcom plotting, and yet – set in a London of pretentious fusion restaurants and housing anxiety – it feels effortlessly 2015. There’s a well-worked Elephant Man motif that yields a fine visual punchline. And Sweet – alongside Cara Theobold as Ellen – carries the whole thing with aplomb. I would add only as an observation, not a criticism, that it’s not a role, or a show, that trades on the type of comedy Sweet used to perform live. He’s toned down the campness, the slyness and oddity of his stage persona. This is a trad romcom that requires him to be (more or less) normal, an everyday feckless man-child, baby-stepping towards love and adulthood.
But Together seems like a logical career progression when compared with The Almost Impossible Gameshow, which (after a few stabs – some Blaps, a pilot – with Channel 4) brings Irish hip-hop comedy pair the Rubberbandits to our screens. The charge was palpable when the duo (officially, Blindboy Boatclub and Mr Chrome) performed their early live work. Watching these whippet-wiry Limerick lads, faces balaclava’d in plastic bags, rousing their rabble with songs about glue-sniffing, race and the IRA, it was bracingly unclear whether you were at a gig, a piss-take, or an insurrection. The games they played with tabloid nightmares of a feral underclass; their refusal to break character, offstage as well as on; their Malcolm Hardee award for comic originality – none of these led one to expect that the Bandits would soon be narrating a sub-It’s a Knockout gameshow on ITV2.
I’m not knocking The Almost Impossible Gameshow, which is entertaining in a just-home-from-the-pub kind of way. It feels cheap – the lack of an audience is conspicuous; the competition is staged in empty fields and hangars. The Shooting Stars-style stunts include limbo dancing while blindfolded and shaking croissants from a Velcro bodysuit. It’s both a contest, and a mickey-take of a contest, with a lippy, cheeky sensibility even before you overlay the Rubberbandits’ commentary. That commentary is the stand-out feature – burbling and back-chatty, cheerfully rude and hip to the flippancy of the whole enterprise. It’s a legitimate use of the duo’s talents, even if it dials their danger right down, and reduces them to their voices alone – which is curious, because the masks aren’t exactly incidental to their effect.
Both of these shows are fine and funny; with Together, Sweet surely has a hit on his hands. Neither represents a sell-out; you might argue that both demonstrate impressive range and flexibility. It’s just interesting to watch unique live acts adjust to fit conventional TV formats, and to reflect that – back when I first encountered the Rubberbandits and Jonny Sweet half a decade ago – I never foresaw that they’d soon be, respectively, a delinquent Statler and Waldorf and the new Hugh Grant.
Three to see
Nish Kumar
There was much chat at Edinburgh this year about whether right-wing comedy is possible (alas yes), and whether comedy is a lefty cartel (nope). Much of the most intelligent comment came in this breakthrough: Foster’s award-nominated set from Nish Kumar, which now heads off on a UK tour.
- Wednesday, Colston Hall, Bristol. Box office: 0844-887 1500. Thursday, Norwich Arts centre. Box office: 01603 660352; then touring.
Rob Newman
Speaking of lefty standup, they don’t come leftier – and seldom better – than “comedy is the new rock’n’roll” refugee Newman, now touring a new set, The Brain Show, exploring neuroscience and asking “can brain scans read our minds? Are we our brains? How can you map the mind?”
- Monday, Pillar Room, Cheltenham; Friday, Greenham Arts, Newbury; then touring.
Sofie Hagen
The Brighton Comedy festival continues, and this week offers the chance to see one of this year’s best loved Edinburgh hits, London-based Danish comic Hagen’s best newcomer award-winning Bubblewrap: a show about mental health, learning to love yourself, and an all-consuming teenage obsession with Westlife.
- Wednesday, Brighton Dome. Box office: 01273 709709.
.jpg?w=600)
