What's Wrong With "Bang Bang, It's Reeves And Mortimer"

[shark_hat]

Nothing's wrong with it.

No, wait, that isn't the end of the post... the problem is, viewers of the show have expectations based on Big Night Out, Smell Of, and Shooting Stars, and they aren't met. This series is the point where the change to the Catterick style came in.

Downbeat (aka depressing) comedy can work, and a trickster/dupe double act can work- it's just that we want the ridiculous surrealism and gleeful co-conspirators we're used to. [1] If the earlier stuff hadn't existed, how would we have received this? I've been trying to watch Bang Bang as a separate thing and without thinking of it as a disappointment, and, yeah, actually, it's got some interesting things of its own that it does. (I still *prefer* the earlier shows. But don't worry, I correctly despise myself for not being deep enough to follow their evolution into more gloomy complex characters who really like fart gags and cartoon violence.)

(Actually, one thing that I think is a problem is the Stotts- they're the old-style rubbish improvised costumes and attacks of giggling, and much more *fun* than anything else in the shows, and the join creaks. Yes! Take 'em out! More filmed inserts of dysfunctional relationships and less laughter, that's what would improve this! But you know, coherency of tone, sort of thing.)


[1] Why *did* they change Bob's persona? One of the things I really liked about the original double-act sections was that it wasn't straight man-funny man, loser-winner interactions, but fluid... but again, it's fairly clearly a deliberate change they made that I don't like, rather than a falling-off of quality as such.