Graham Linehan is really quite funny…

The IT Crowd winning the BAFTA for best Situation Comedy seems like as good an excuse as any to draw your attention to one of my all time comedy heroes.

Graham Linehan has been writing for some of the best comedy shows on TV for years. He started out with writing sketches for Alas Smith and Jones, The Fast Show and Harry Enfield and Chums, often with his writing partner Arthur Mathews, before moving on to creating on the of the absolute classic sitcoms of the 90’s.  Father Ted cemented his reputation as one of the best comedy writers at work and was a huge success before it was cut-short by the death of its star Dermot Morgan. It also set the tone for much of what has since come from Graham Linehan, Surreal Sit-coms in the classic tradition of being filmed before a live audience, often featuring characters that are slightly detached from society. Since then his writing credits include, Big Train, Brass Eye, Black Books, Jam, and his main recent project The IT Crowd. It’s a pretty impressive list and so when I found out a couple of years ago that one guy was involved with all of them (there are a few other common threads as well though) I was pretty impressed. 

He also runs a pretty good blog over at whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com and is a regular tweeter @Glinner

So yeah, basically, my hat off to Graham Linehan and well done for winning the BAFTA in what was a pretty tough category. ( Peep Show and The Inbetweeners were both also nominated and both also pretty awesome) Hopefully I haven’t seemed too sycophantic with this but as you could have guessed I am a fan and think that everyone needs to watch his sitcoms, because theyre hilarious.

Ideal to return to BBC3

Johnny Vegas’s Sitcom Ideal is back for its 5th series on BBC3. Of all the sitcoms BBC3 has been churning out recently, most of which are patronisingly aimed at the young adult audience (Pulling, Clone, Grown-ups and the return of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps), Ideal is definately the funniest. It follows Moz (played by Johnny Vegas) a small time dope dealer who rarely leaves his flat. It’s well worth watching although I’m surprised that it’s been commisioned for a 5th series due to the poor viewing figures, it’s been around for ages and yet hardly anyone’s heard of it. It does have the bonus of being cheap though, as it’s all set in Moz’s flat so maybe it’s not alltogether surprising that its still being produced.
As I said, it’s probably the best Sitcom on BBC3 now and stands head and shoulders above the mediocre and unfunny spate of young adult sit-coms the channel has been producing recently.

There’s a trailer for the new series here

John Cleese denies Fawlty Towers comeback

As part of UKTV’s (or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) push to create more original programming, they’ve begun advertising Fawlty Towers Re-Opened, which consists of interviews with the cast and crew. It might be worth a watch, mainly because it’s the first time the cast have been reunited in 30 years.

The result of this though is that there’s been a whole bunch of rumours about new episodes being produced. Rumours which now John Cleese has thankfully categorically put to rest.

I’m really glad that they won’t make any more Fawlty Towers, first of all because it would just be ridiculous, the cast are all far too old now, and secondly because it doesn’t need any more episodes, it already has 12 perfect ones. If UKTV were to make more episodes it would probably end up being just as poor as the recent Red Dwarf revival.

Also I always hoped Polly and Manuel would have left Fawlty Towers by now, and that maybe Basil might have finally found somewhere peaceful to retire to.