Live from Studio One
So… Look 4 or Look D if you want to be all lettery instead of numbery. D is good for me. The year where the BBC Tickets Randomizer broke but everything turned out alright for some people in the end and the year where we were incredibly grateful that writing an internet based fan thing has meant we can get on the production guest list and not have to miss out on writing about seeing funny television being made in front of our eyes. Last Friday was recording one of two at Studio One and it featured all the usual elements you would come to expect by now: Mitchell, Webb, James Bachman and Sarah Hadland as the main actors, a fun lively warm up comedian interacting with the crowd (Adrian Poynton who did last year’s sessions), a smidgen of material from the previous radio series (more on that later), some good bits from the try-out night and a few nice “fuck-ups” (to quote Mitchell & Webb themselves).
We knew that The Quiz Programme was returning as we’d had chats about what was going on with that and thankfully the new instalments are very funny with additional poignancy and sad moments building on what was done last year. A lesser sketch show could have milked the idea and just repeated what worked before but all six sketches had variety and the essential laughs. Good stuff! The other ‘live’ sketches done that night were an adaptation of the Business Drinking Game from S4E5 of the radio show (with Abi Burdess and Mark Evans and lots of props) and one from the Drill Hall tryout on 26th November involving the concept of being a “people person.” Both good.
I won’t list all the VT sketches as that’s a bit too spoilery and it’s nice to have some surprises when it’s transmitted but I can tell you that Hail Caesar! from the last radio series has been filmed, the funniest new series of sketches was set in an office (not the same office as the one filmed live) with interesting dimensions that was so much funnier than words could describe, and there is one other returning sketch from Look 3 which is not ruined by its reappearance. They also filmed a little sketch at the end of the night which features the audience so I may see my sleepy Friday Evening face on the telly.
We discovered what happens when the studio staff tell production guests to wait in their seats while everyone else goes home (it involves wine and Twiglets), got rather lost in the infinite loop layout of the basement of TV Centre and bumped into David’s parents again (previously sat next to them at one of the radio recordings) and they were as lovely as usual. All in all a great time was had but then that is rather obvious for this sort of thing. More at the same time next week which is now technically this week…
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March 3rd, 2010 at 11:14 PM
SOOooOO jEaLoUs (!) you got to see the recording – and basically that I did not.
But – I’m very glad of, and enjoyed, your account of the above here.
Still, though – very jealous! Thanks for posting the details