The Armstrong and Miller Show: Samuel Beckett as sketch comedy. Photograph: Channel 4
With the possible exception of Chris Morris's unsettling Jam, I can't think of a comedy show that I watched so avidly, yet laughed at so little, as Channel 4's late-90s sketch series The Armstrong and Miller Show, which after a six-year hiatus has been resurrected in the BBC's autumn schedule. This may not sound like much of a recommendation, but bear with me.
The Fast Show's popularity had brought about a glut of character sketch comedy that lasts, often wearingly, to this day. But for "character", one could (and can) usually read "catchphrase". Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller were never that facile, which may explain why their viewing figures generated not a blip upon the ratings radar. It's hard to re-enact with your pals a running gag in which two men sit bound back-to-back in chairs in an office basement, for minutes of screen-time, doomed never to escape from their unexplained predicament. This was Samuel Beckett as sketch comedy, and few viewers could be bovvered.
The Armstrong And Miller Show was observational humour in an unexpected sense. You didn't laugh, not because it wasn't funny, but because it had such impeccable pitch, with an eye and an ear for both time and type that brought it too close to reality to generate guffaws. I remember only one joke at which I cackled in happy surprise. A man walks down a set of law court steps and is surrounded by reporters. "Is it true," they call out, "that you are the gay serial killer?" He scowls at them, piqued. "No," he emphasises, indignantly. "I'm the serial killer who happens to be gay."
The only thing atypical about that wisecrack was its brevity. Its accuracy was entirely representative. The jokes generally played out over time, to be savoured for their cumulative effect. The butch-as-anything gay couple, each of whom thought the other was the effeminate one. The inspirational schoolteacher whose avid interest in his pupils turned to surly and total indifference the instant the bell rang and he went off the clock. The young Japanese expatriates so painstakingly modish they were gauche. Strijka, a Scandinavian hair-metal act of such painful verisimilitude that I became convinced I'd actually been obliged to interview them. Craig Children and Martin Bain-Jones, a pair of deliciously ghastly, preening broadsheet pop-culture hacks, proto-Nathan Barleys who, in my individual case, served as a cautionary tale regarding how not to conduct yourself - succeeding as a warning because, or so I sincerely hope, they failed as a prophecy.
Reunions, and returning to old ground, are often seen as a tacit admission of having fallen short since. Armstrong's frequent and well-received turns as guest host on Have I Got News For You should alone give that notion the lie, and Miller has hardly been idle either. I'd rather think of this as a startling outbreak of quixotic discernment at BBC One, where somebody has seen fit to commission the show because they remembered it - rightly - as being deftly written, expertly performed, different, original and, well, good. That last one used to be sufficient reason on its own for things to get made.
