TV on Friday

Since moving to halls, I have hardly watched any TV at all - probably not the best idea when studying Digital Film and Televsision. However when I came home on Friday night I did watch a fair bit of telly to compensate. With Andy's homework from during the week lingering in mind, I duly made a quick note of the programmes I watched that night so I could later blog.

Normally I don't actually watch a great amount of TV even when I am home, it's normally on but a lot of the time it's not under my control. However on Friday, after The One Show finished, I caught a glimpse of the schedule for the rest of the night on BBC One and identified two back to back programmes that I wanted to watch: Have I got news for you and The Armstrong and Miller Show.

So I successfully booked my slot right away with the higher authorities and at 9 o'clock, made sure that the TV was switched to BBC One so we could watch the satirical panel show. The presenter that night was Miranda Hart with special guests Andrew Neil and Mark Steel. The show basically followed the same formula as it has for years but of course still made me laugh because it has the ability to be original and funny every week due to ever changing current affairs. I watched the show because it is usually dependable for a good laugh and it fulfilled that role for me on Friday night. Witty humour from the likes of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton who are pretty amusing yet very clever characters, neither afraid to rip the mince out of any political situation is always guaranteed to make a laugh.

After Have I Got News For You the new series of the sketch show, The Armstrong and Miller Show came on. For some reason, I always like to watch sketch shows like this. The Mitchell and Webb shows, for example, I often find myself watching. A lot of the time they aren't even particularly funny in my opinion and although you often get some laughs from their shows, some sketches leave you wondering how they were allowed to even broadcast it. Even the likes of Chewin' the fat and The Karen Dunbar Show had a certain appeal when they were out. I enjoyed Chewin' the fat because it seemed funnier because of its originality and Scottishness. Fair enough, I may be stretching it to say that The Karen Dunbar Show was quality television but you get the idea.

However, back to The Armstrong and Miller Show: I found that this followed much the same formula as the other sketch shows. They had some really funny clips, some the sort of "fan favourites" that they kind of know will get the audience laughing. At the same time other clips seemed to go on for a while and were just plainly not very funny. There is something about a sketch show however, that makes you not want to stop watching. I think it is the knowledge that if you changed the channel there could be a really funny clip about to come on so you hold on right till the end of the show in anticipation for this sketch which often never even comes. I still enjoy sketch shows, though, and feel many of them do have great comedy value and potential and are often very well written, so long as they are not totally off the wall.

The final programme I watched on Friday night was a chance encounter on Channel 4 of Bill Bailey's standup comedy act, Tinseltown. I had previously seen brief clips of Bailey doing standup on YouTube but never actually taken time to watch a whole show so thought I would give it a try and just go to bed if it wasn't up to much. His Wembley performance turned out to be very funny and original, I thought. He didn't simply tell jokes or stories but made music a large part of his act. I found the way he incorporated playing songs on the keyboard and guitar whilst also making it funny for the audience to be very original. His whole act was very unique and clever and I ended up watching the whole thing and enjoying it all.

Overall, it turned out to be a pretty good night of television which is often quite unusual for me to find. Usually, I drift in and out of programmes but found myself pretty much rooted to the TV for much of Friday night.