Post An Unpopular Opinion

[gmoney]

1 minute ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Greg hasn't been in anything where he isn't basically playing himself has he? Inbetweeners, Cuckoo, Man Down, The Cleaner, Taskmaster. All essentially Greg Davies playing a version of Greg Davies. An actor is not something Greg is. 

Comic actor. There's plenty of people who've had fine acting careers never straying from the one thing they do well. That said, his particular performance isn't really for me. I hate him in Inbetweeners, but it's not a great character. 

I do like him on Taskmaster though, and as others have said I've enjoyed people on there I wouldn't normally. 

[CTXRussomark]

10 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Greg hasn't been in anything where he isn't basically playing himself has he? Inbetweeners, Cuckoo, Man Down, The Cleaner, Taskmaster. All essentially Greg Davies playing a version of Greg Davies. An actor is not something Greg is. 

Yeah that's true.  I guess what I mean is I don't really mind him when he's playing a character that has essentially the same character traits as he does, but yet I find his actual character to somehow feel more forced than the ficticious versions he plays.  Hard to explain. 

*EDIT*

Just to clarify further, by actual character I mean the version of himself that appears on talk shows, hosts quiz shows etc.  I fully accept that's just yet another ficticious version of himself to a degree, but portrayed as the real person.  I'm sure he's a lovely bloke in real life.

Edited March 20, 2025 by CTXRussomark
Edit

[Chest Rockwell]

34 minutes ago, CTXRussomark said:

Sorry to find amusement in your suffering, but I found this absolutely hilarious for some reason.  Like something straight out of a sitcom - just picturing you receiving course after course of dill-themed dishes and getting more and more irate. I mean I detest coriander so I can't imagine ever going to a restaurant called Coriander without thinking "hang on..." ?

Dinner and movie.. perhaps the Invisible Man. 

[TibBo]

I haven’t watched many episodes of Taskmaster, but it always feels like there is a lot of filler in the shows to me. In my eyes it would be much better if they did more tasks per episode and less talking, but the format works for a lot of people so it doesn’t bother me too much.

My unpopular opinion is that Prince/TAFKA is shite.

[Joe Blog]

On 7/27/2018 at 5:31 PM, Accident Prone said:

Swine, the lot of them.

I have been reading through this thread and this wonderful sentence properly tickled me. 

[Lorne Malvo]

10 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

I have no problem with you not liking it but I don't understand the criticism 'smug middle class comedy'. Maybe because I am smug and middle class and just don't get it. Can you explain what that means? 

 

Maybe middle-class is the wrong word. There's just a strong self-congratulatory backslapping 'hahaha, arn't we terribly funny?' vibe which rubs me up the wrong way. I know it's something of a bizarre criticism considering the whole point of the show is 'comedians being funny', but I just can't stand it.

Plus I find Greg Davies and Alex Horne really unfunny in general.

I did watch a fair bit of the Fern Brady series, for obvious reasons.

[LaGoosh]

23 hours ago, air_raid said:

In a similar vein, Stephen Fry is not a national treasure, he's a tosser.

Yeah I hate him. Somehow managed to convince everyone he's a genius and enlightened man of the people. He's not either of those things. He's an establishment twat who writes crap books and spouts obvious shite as if it's incredible wisdom. A ridiculous man.

[Scratch]

For what it’s worth, it’s failed at every attempt to get Taskmaster and so have decided it’s not for me. Every time I’ve tried to watch it, it’s felt like a bunch of kids being told they have loads to play with, despite having next to nothing at hand yet somehow finding limited value in a made up game using some ridiculous rules and a few household or garden items. Each new task feels even more stretched than the last.

I’m sure I remember an early episode that saw Frank Skinner trying to find 3 people in a shopping centre who’s ages added up to a given number, which oddly, I found quite entertaining.

On Stephen Fry, I’d always enjoy landing on an episode of QI while channel hopping but he was always the thing that put me off. Now it’s different of course, with the utterly wonderful Sandi Toksvig actively making me tune in ❤️

Edited March 22, 2025 by Scratch

[davertfnewman]

With Fry and the like and their obsequiousness, isn't it a case that a lot of the "appearances" of them in commercials and voice-over is actually soundalikes? No less annoying, but as much down to producers who want to get the same(ish) and pay less.

[BomberPat]

I used to watch a lot of QI as just comfort viewing, something to stick on in the background or when I don't want to think about much. But now that I'm used to the Toksvig-hosted series, I find almost everything about Stephen Fry as a host completely unbearable - he never shuts up, he talks over other guests (especially women), and half of what he comes out with would, without the posh accent, come across like the kind of lazy, uninformed pub reckons they are; "someone told be about a new genre of music that's a cross between Techno and Disco, they're calling it Tes-co". Fuck off, they didn't, that's barely a Penguin wrapper joke.

That he ever convinced people he was a genius or some kind of polymath is genuinely mental. And that's before you factor in a lot of his genuinely unpleasant views.

There's still some of Fry & Laurie that I find funny, but a lot of it reminds me of a comment Simon Pegg made on a documentary about The Young Ones - that he'd never really laughed at comedy before The Young Ones, he'd just sort of smiled appreciatively at how smartly written they were, and there's a lot of that kind of smug Footlights writing to it. 
 

Honestly, the funniest thing I've got out of Stephen Fry in the last few years is that every few months my brother will text me, "remember when Stephen Fry married that boy?"

[LaGoosh]

I'm not a religious person at all but there's a Stephen Fry clip that did the rounds a lot on Facebook a few years back where he talks about what he'd say to God if he met him and Fry said (in his usual smug fashion) he'd say "how dare you?" and admonish him for being pointlessly cruel and filling the world with such horrors, pain and misery. This clip was shared thousands upon thousands of times over with endless comments about how Fry was right, how clever he was to have proved religion was fake and evil etc etc. You've probably seen it.

A prominent bishop was shown the clip and asked for his reaction and was just like "er, yeah. He's not saying anything new or clever at all. What he's saying is basically the entire point of The Book of Job".

[King Coconut]

4 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

the entire point of The Book of Job

Is to excuse the horrors to come? I don't buy it. Fry's a bell but so is god. 

[Lorne Malvo]

I never knew Stephen Fry was an atheist. Next you'll be telling me Ricky Gervais doesn't believe in a god either.

[Carbomb]

What put me off Fry was the same as what put me off Cleese: their glib, dishonest approach to offense and the nature of problematic speech. They're both intelligent enough that there's no way they don't understand the deeper impacts of offensive rhetoric and what it's intended to facilitate, yet they persist with this snide "you're offended - so what?" bullshit. 

[The Gaffer]

17 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I'm not a religious person at all but there's a Stephen Fry clip that did the rounds a lot on Facebook a few years back where he talks about what he'd say to God if he met him and Fry said (in his usual smug fashion) he'd say "how dare you?" and admonish him for being pointlessly cruel and filling the world with such horrors, pain and misery. This clip was shared thousands upon thousands of times over with endless comments about how Fry was right, how clever he was to have proved religion was fake and evil etc etc. You've probably seen it.

A prominent bishop was shown the clip and asked for his reaction and was just like "er, yeah. He's not saying anything new or clever at all. What he's saying is basically the entire point of The Book of Job".

Yeah, this was my exact Fry jumps the shark moment, and I'm not religious either. 

It was on an Irish TV show over here called The Meaning of Life and I recall in the immediate weeks that followed people sharing the clip as if it was some irrefutable mic drop. Citation needed but it's probably the same cross-section who shared Russell Brand going on about how he'd never votey-wotey again. 

"Let me guess, you believe in some magical sky god? Why not believe in Spiderman then, eh? HA!"