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44 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

I love Ted, and not even the association with fucking Glinner can ruin it. The same applies to Black Books, but thankfully he wasn't really involved during series two and three (which is where the show really found it's identity and flow, weirdly enough).

he was barely involved with series one, either, if I remember correctly. Was basically brought in because Dylan Moran had no experience of writing sitcoms, so they wanted Linehan to help shape it for TV, but he turned out to be largely unnecessary. 

I sometimes wonder what his contributions to anything were - Arthur Mathews definitely seems to have the better hit rate in terms of stuff he verifiably actually wrote.

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2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I sometimes wonder what his contributions to anything were - Arthur Mathews definitely seems to have the better hit rate in terms of stuff he verifiably actually wrote.

Him being a prick doesn't change that he had a large part in why Father Ted was great. Both have credited each other for what they brought to it. The IT Crowd was also a big hit for Ch4 (it was hit and miss but there were some very funny episodes). I think not liking him as a person is enough rather than going back and trying to then claim he wasn't talented. A lot of awful people are very talented.

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Black Books series 1 is better than the other 2 series, and I reckon that's probably down to Linehan's involvement in that series.

The IT Crowd is shit though, and Count Arthur Strong is abysmal.  

 

Edited by gmoney
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35 minutes ago, gmoney said:

Count Arthur Strong is abysmal.  

I was going to mention this as the main part of my reasoning for assuming Mathews is much funnier and more creative than Linehan - Count Arthur Strong, thematically, deals with the same sort of world as Toast of London, but is utter dogshit. It's the closest to a side-by-side comparison we've got.

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15 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

I don't like it so I wouldn't know, but is there really other than the infamous storyline that kicked that whole business off? More than the casual transphobia that's prevalent in the other comedies of its time? 

There is an episode that involves some gay storyline that I recall plays on stereotypes and the general "I'm not gay!!" shock. But haven't seen it in years so could be over-inflating it.

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16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I was going to mention this as the main part of my reasoning for assuming Mathews is much funnier and more creative than Linehan - Count Arthur Strong, thematically, deals with the same sort of world as Toast of London, but is utter dogshit. It's the closest to a side-by-side comparison we've got.

 If you listen to the Father Ted commentaries, which I did many years ago, you get the sense that Linehan doesn't really like Ted any more and would do it differently if he had the chance (i.e ruin it). He's got an obsession with Seinfeld and how the episodes are structured. Which is fine, it's great, but it's not the only way to do a comedy. It's clearly had a detrimental effect on his writing as he becomes more obsessed with the form over funny jokes. I remember he hates A Christmassy Ted because it's too long, with disparate strands. But that's bollocks. It's well funny. It doesn't need to be tight like a Lumet film. 

Edited by gmoney
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28 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I was going to mention this as the main part of my reasoning for assuming Mathews is much funnier and more creative than Linehan - Count Arthur Strong, thematically, deals with the same sort of world as Toast of London, but is utter dogshit. It's the closest to a side-by-side comparison we've got.

I think his involvement with Count Arthur Strong was more just adapting it from radio to TV. The bits of the radio show I've heard have a lot of the gags from the TV show there. 

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