This clip from last night's episode of the UK sitcom Peep Show demands a wider audience. And it's music-related (after a fashion), thus qualifying for this blog. In later reviews of sitcoms over the decades the phrase "Danny Dyer's Chocolate Homunculus" will, I am sure, rank alongside Alan Partridge's "Monkey Tennis."
In both cases, it's not so much the absurdity of the phrase as what is thereby revealed about the characters who give them utterance.
In the case of Alan Partridge, an unsuccessful chat show host hoping for a second series, he is pitching ideas to a producer and "Monkey Tennis" - offered with a question mark at the end - is a last desperate throw of the dice in a game which actually ended some time ago:
In the case of Peep Show's Jez, he is unexpectedly given power over the bandmates who fired him when he lands a job in the music biz. He might sign them - or he might not. First he tells them "The look's not really working for me," and orders them to buy Zoot suits then suggests they change their name from Man Feelings to "something more distinctive."
Now, had Jezz's oppo, Mark, been in a similar position, you can bet his revenge would have been meticulously planned beforehand, every word agonised over. In Jez's case, the humiliating namechange has been plucked out of the air but is no less felicitous - and childishly spiteful - for that:
A youtube clip of the relevant moment used to be embedded at this point but it is no longer available. Go to Channel 4 On Demand on youtube, here, to see the show in its entirety - provided you can endure the preceding adverts. The scene starts around 8.00.
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Other comedy-related posts:
Phoneshop
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Tripper's Day (Leonard Rossiter sitcom)
Nightingales (lesser-known Robert Lindsay sitcom)
Freddie Parrotface Davies
Morecambe and Wise: biography of Ernie
Morecambe and Wise: biopic
Jake Thackray
50s radio comedy
ONe of the best Peep SHow comments ever. I think it has already reached, if not passed, the benchmark of hilarity that Steve Coogan laid down some years back.
ReplyDeleteI think the two shows inhabit different worlds, so not much point in comparisons. In a way Peep Show paints a more depressing picture of the world, because it seems to be saying that even when armed with self knowledge, you can still make a mess of your life.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, Partridge is a John Shuttleworth in the making: the episode where he had nothing to do I found moderately moving in the same way as The Shuttleworths - JS even sang a song once called Alone With the Day. Perhaps there will eventually be an episode where Alan is able to resign himself to losing everything with no prospect of a comeback, ever. And a great peace will descend. Possibly.