This week on his Comedy Vehicle, Stewart Lee talked about the Countryside and people who move from London to go to the country side. A natural choice of material for Stew, who talks about such things in his latest live show, "If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One." He managed to work in the bit about the visible otters and the phone conversation with the imaginary estate agent. There, he recited a false ad-libbed discussion that was played for laughs in its tedium and awkward pauses, giving the impression that he may be dying (in the stand-up sense of the word), only to win back the audience by cluing them in that the improvised joke isn't going very well and should have stopped. "I should have left it at 'visible otters.'" He saves the joke in a way that Eddie Izzard or one of those comics would've done. The gag was actually a segue-way into a 40-minute section dedicated to Top Gear and Richard 'The Hamster' Hammond (not a real hamster). Here, he expands on the conversation, expand meaning stretched out pauses and comments on the audience. And it was great. I believe the man could have stretched the routine out to twenty minutes and still keep the audience laughing if given the chance. I can't do the joke justice writing it down as I can't capture Stew's voice and desperation. Of course, there's pay off thanks to the man's brilliant comic timing, something that he has truly mastered since his last series.
The main "gag" of the episode surrounded the notion that country life is better than city life. After some musings about armed babies in Hackney and Stew offering his wife to the school board in order to get their child into a good school (It's for their future), Lee talks about the pleasures the countryside offers. Mainly a field, a horse in the field and comedy shows from that one in 'Max & Paddy' (not Peter Kay). This leads to a 'conversation' between Lee and his friend, who's moved to the country with his family, and is now inviting Stew down for the weekend. Needless to say, the character of the friend gets desperate in trying to convince him, lying about two horses in the field and Peter Kay performing. This builds up to the friend repeatedly and monotonously confessing that the horse killed himself, asking Lee to bring cocaine, before begging him to kill the family with a shotgun and burning the house down in typical Stewart Lee breakdown mode. As per tradition with Stewart Lee's shows, he created a divide between sectors of the audience into those who were with his jokes, and those who lagged behind. I like it when he chastises the audience for expecting a joke or a different joke when there isn't one. He also makes an extended reference to those at home in 'TV land' again, commenting bitterly on the graveyard time slot.
I prefer the new format this series has adopted of more stand up meaning more time for building up jokes rather than little throwaway jokes in between unfunny sketches. The discussions Lee has with Ianucci is inspired; probably inspired by real life critics complaining that he doesn't do enough jokes ("It was good but I found it awful!"). Indeed this kind of negative reviews and sound bites from comment sections of You Tube and various news sites have been included into Stew's act and have also found their way onto his website, as they are perfect fodder for his bitter middle-aged comedian routine. Even a quote from The Sun, ' Worst comedian in Britain, as Funny as the bubonic plague,' has made it onto the back cover of his memoir, 'How I escaped my certain fate.'
I can't really comment on Stewart Lee like I would other comedians because the less jokes the better. The callbacks and repetition make the whole routine, no matter how light on material and relevance to anything, worth it and funny. So, was it funny? Some of it is. To be honest the repetition is grating but only if the joke wasn't funny to begin with. That said, I was lost on the bit about the schools because, as Lee astutely pointed out, I can't relate to being a parent and what being a parent means. Other than that, genius. Oh, and the sketch at the end was very funny. The theme for this series seems to be the image Lee has moulded throughout the episode being brought to life; in this case, Lee riding through the countryside on a motorbike as the pearly king toting a shotgun, riding past a dead horse with its throat cut to a house before entering the house and killing those inside. Next week's episode focusses on charity. That was the subject last week, but he ended up talking about crisps, so he's doing it again. Maybe he'll talk about different flavours of crisps...plain...all the flavours.
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