Mocking the Weak by shoutingatco.ws
Upsettingly trawling its way through yet another series, Mock the Week is the poor man’s Eight Out of Ten Cats, which in itself is the poor man’s Have I Got News For You. It’s political satire for Nuts readers. We’ve avoided MTW for some time, out of a vague sense of pride in how we spend our time, but took a tentative leap back in to find out whether or not they’ve bothered to improve it.
In traditional panel show format, two teams sit at desks while the host – in this case, the too-good-for-this-and-he-knows-it Dara Ó Briain – asks vague questions as a jumping off point for hilarity. Or, in this case, “hilarity”.
One of the worst rounds has the unwieldy title “If this is the answer, what is the question?”
For some reason, most of the answers are numbers, which the teams link to a topical story.
The number this week was 500 million.
How many times did Ryan Giggs claim to have “extra football training”? exclaimed Andy Parsons.
Doesn’t work, does it? 500 million days of training. That’s training every days for over a million years. It would have been exactly the same answer if the number had been 500, 5,000 or 50,000. It’s just a shit way for them to sneer and go “HAHAHA RYAN GIGGS”. If the number had been 7, they’d have found another way to have a dig at Giggs. Because he had an affair. HAHAHA.
Also the shoehorning, too. A question about moving the electoral boundaries came up, and Andy… pause… Parsons… did this little segue into talking about Cameron, then switches without a joke to Clegg, and then references the Royal Wedding and a weak joke about Clegg impressing people by getting his cock out.
If you can’t think of a joke, just shut the fuck up instead of trying to turn it into something you do know a joke about: David Cameron, god, he shares a name with James Cameron who directed the filme Titanic. Remember the theme from Titanic? It’s by Celine Dion. When she sings the chorus, it sounds like she sings “The hotdogs go on”. HAHAHAHAHA.
It’s a rush to make the most bland and obvious comment about a topical event, or Kerry Katona. Or even, if you’re lucky, a quip about Susan Boyle’s hairy face.
Then there’s a round where they literally race to a microphone to offer their mad interpretions of “Things you wouldn’t hear…”
“… at a school assembly” and “…on a TV talent show” were two on offer. The round itself is called “Scenes we’d like to see”
The suggestions were so weak, that they might as well have gone up and said “Would you like fries with that?” because that’s something you wouldn’t hear on a TV talent show. Greg Davies from the Inbetweeners came out with: “Oh. I can’t sing? Oh. Thanks for letting me know.” which is funny, because it’s the opposite of what you’d actually hear. Satirising it. Not just “You hit the high notes well, now find out how you do without me clamping your balls”, which Hugh Dennis thought was acceptable for the telly. It’s just nothing. It’s garbage.
Hugh Dennis is particularly irritating, because he’s his own biggest fan and pulls this bloody face after every line. “Look at you all. Laughing. Laughing at my genius” he says, in one huge, smug, undeserving grin.
During the rounds that they perform “off the cuff” stand-up, they’re obviously working with pre-prepared material, and that’s fine – we assume that all panel shows do this to a degree, but you’re never more than 30 seconds away from a well-worn Sickipediaesque pun, and really, we’d expect better.
The regular guests include cock-eyed Bristolian shit-heel Russell Howard, fat Nigerian (has she ever mentioned that?) Gina Yashere, and professional noticer Michael McIntyre to name just three; names that’ll bother audiences on Live At the Apollo, but just… well, you wouldn’t cross a road to point at them, would you?
The Chortle review of Frankie Boyle‘s (gone from the show, but not forgotten) live show says:
Whenever anyone is asked what they were doing the moment they learned Michael Jackson died, the answer will always be ‘texting a joke about Michael Jackson dying’.
And that’s part of the problem. Mock the Week has a stream of jokes that are doing the rounds on Twitter, by text message, and down the pub minutes after any event anyway. Compare that with the competition: HIGNFY’s Hislop and Merton offer abrasive insight and crazy flights of fancy. QI has the odd “bloody hell, that can’t be true” moment. Eight Out of Ten Cats has an advert break.
It’s a pointless show for grinning simpletons to chuckle at the outrageous nature of it all. We fear that they’re on an inescapable route towards just shouting the word “RAPE” at the camera for half an hour. And then Dara gives out some points.
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Yes, you are right. It’s rubbish.
The thing that annoys me the most is that Andy … pause … Parsons continues to use his comedy persona, even when he is “chatting” on the show.
I hear him talk on the radio and he doesn’t speak anything like that.
Holy shit! Derren Brown reads Sho….Oh… Darren.
Never mind.
The Now Show is only good because its on the radio. If I had to see Hugh Dennis’s face, I’d probably switch off.