BCG Daily Sunday 2nd December 2012

Hugh Laurie's American odyssey continues

His role as Dr House made the British actor a US star. Next up, the most famous pirate of them all - with an English accent.

IoS TV review: Kookyville, Peep Show, Fresh Meat

Kookyville is 'constructed reality comedy' - and yes, it is as terrible as it sounds.

Steffen Peddie was lard of the ring

Steffen Peddie has revealed he was a professional wrestler before finding fame on hit sitcom Hebburn.

Review: Steve Hughes: Big Issues - Newcastle Stand

But for me, social commentary is best served in short spurts, and once Hughes passes the hour mark the laughs seem to become more sporadic. At the close of the show he admits, "I never know how to end these things", but Hughes had already missed at least three decent opportunities to close the show.

Lost comedy work among rare radio scripts published

A script for the fourth episode of the 1955 Hancock's Half Hour show catalogued along with those for and by the likes of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. The scripts are being released by comic actor and rare bookseller Neil Pearson (Drop the Dead Donkey, Brian Gulliver's Travels).

Radio Times review

Social networks always angrily announce that each new TV comedy is a hateful waste of airtime whose creators' cameras should be confiscated. Eventually, they were right. The justly derided Kookyville (Sunday C4) used the constructed reality format of The Only Way Is Essex - real people having real conversations, but clearly prompted, marshalled and heavily edited by the producers - and found a way to make it twenty times more grubby.

TOWIE, Made in Chelsea, Geordie Shore and the rest might have plenty of comic moments, but the audience normally like and take an interest in the participants, even if the programme-makers view them as tacky/posh/lairy scum.

Kookyville lost any pretence of following people's lives and presented the most ignorant and uncouth volunteers it could find around the country, carefully showing them in snippets at their worst, for smug laughs. It was presented as a comedy but relied on its stars not thinking they were in one, so the exploitation was obvious and painful.

This goading was depressingly cynical, but what made Kookyville a stinker for the ages was the frequency of ickily insensitive comments about minorities. Isn't it funny when people think it's OK to, for instance, tell an anecdote about a Thalidomide victim falling and not being able to right himself? As we already told Ricky Gervais: actually, no it isn't, and your decision to focus on this stuff is unfortunate at best. From the lazily awful title down, Kookyville felt like it had been designed to make the world just a little bit worse. Culturally, we were another inch towards armageddon.

Misfits: Series 4 Episode 6 review

That the entrance of new gang member Abbey (Natasha O'Keefe) gets a little lost in proceedings isn't surprising, but her introduction doesn't feel contrived.

Peep Show series 8 episode 2 review

The roles are reversed in this week's middling but enjoyable episode of Peep Show...