Comedy schmomedy

So this weekend I had a quiet time and watched the telly a lot. Had a busy week and just fancied chilling out.

So, in no order apart from how it plops into my brain:-

DAYTIME DIGITAL DOOLALLY
Why do they show two eps of Top Gear at 9am ... then the SAME two eps at 2pm? Why not four different ones? What with Dave ja vu I seemed to be getting Anne Robinson driving the Reasonably Priced Car all Sunday. (PS: they all looked fifteen years' younger in those eps, even though it was only five years ago. Hammond looked like his kid son or something)

Living has a +2 channel now, so I could watch the same (not that good) Xmas Will and Grace three times in three hours. Parapa-pa-pom.

Oh, and it was v rainy and the dish was giving up, with picture pixellising, sound going and things freezing. All this is par for the course - apart from the fact ladies in bikinis were sort-of visible as the picture froze and broke up, as if a naughty porno show was breaking in, pirate TV stylee. Very odd. By the nighttime I'd lost 50% of the channels - and all the major/good ones - so I think our block dish is boogered.
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BOXSET-TASTIC
On Sky+ I watched 6 eps of 30 Rock and loved every minute of it. Made me think again about how dense a US sitcom is compared to a UK one. Well, it didn't, I was too busy laughing, I thought about it after trying to describe what happened in the ep to someone else and it taking around a third of the actual running time of the show. Try it with a British sitcom and it normally can be efficiently done in 2 mins.

Anyway, each ep had some priceless moments. In one we saw the world as Tracey, Jack and Kenneth see it. Tracey saw everyone as him. Jack saw pricetags on everything (including $7 on Kenneth). And Kenneth say everyone else as a proper actual muppet, mainly singing songs. Bestest visual gag ever.

Liz realised her gorgeous doctor BF (the one off of Mad Men) was "living in a bubble" as he was so gorgeous he never had to try to do anything properly. Just perfect all the way through.

Jack and Liz saying it was the fiftieth episode, what a great time they'd had over the past three years, all the funny things that happened... then pausing... still waiting... thinking... and then the scene continued. Not funny written down but it was so obviously a lead-in for a montage of clips ... and then they didn't show any clips.

This exchange from Liz and Jack, after Jack throws everyone out from his 50th birthday party as he realises he'll never be happy enough to vomit again (not explaining that, see the ep)

LIZ
(awkwardly, approaching Jack)
Oh, sorry Jack, do you want... er.. to hug or something?

JACK
(draining whiskey)
God no Lemon, this isn't the Italian Parliament.

Liz acting in a 1980s ad for a chatline, all shoulderpads, too much lipstick (on her teeth too) and making 'sexy' faces. So funny it makes Jack vomit a bit...

Comedy. GENIUS. Gold.
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DAVID DIMBLEBY ON A ROPE
I channel-hopped and there was the esteemed QT presenter hanging on a rope in front of an old picture. Surely there's no need for that? Isn't he 85 or something?
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HARRY HILL'S 'THE K FACTOR'
Surreal, wonderful, warm and stupid all at once, perfect British telly. As Paul Daniels - who came out of a plastic sheep's stomach of course - said incredulously, "You ARE watching ITV1"... no-one would've guessed from this show, I guarantee it.

Toodlepip