BCG Daily Friday 26th February 2016

Review: Grimsby

Sometimes a scene leaves your critical faculties floundering, and so it was in Grimsby as Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong retreated into an elephant's vagina to escape machine-gunning assassins.

Grimsby: most hideous, hilarious movie this year

Sacha Baron Cohen pushes the comedy envelope as far as he can with his latest creation in this rude, crude and utterly outrageous comedy.

Romesh Ranganathan review

On his third solo tour, the standup retains his cynicism but there's now light amid the shade and warmth underlying the weariness.

Interview: cast of Stag

TV's latest genre-busting series sees a Highlands bachelor weekend become a bloody quest for survival. We brave the mud and drizzle to meet its cast.

Steve Coogan banned for speeding in Brighton

Actor and comedian Steve Coogan has been banned from driving after he was clocked doing 54mph in a 30mph zone.

Will Self meets Stewart Lee

As his TV series returns to our screens, comedian Stewart Lee talks to Will Self about his prickly stage persona, how social media is changing comedy and why you won't see him on Mock the Week.

This week's best new comedy

Previews of Dane Baptiste, Russell Howard and Omid Djalili.

Hosptial People review

Hospital People has plenty of nice lines, although it falls between a sketch show and a sitcom, not quite having enough plot to justify the latter, beyond the general threat of creeping commercial interests. That's a timely theme, but having a more specific plot would certainly benefit Hospital People were it picked up for a series. Here's hoping, for the deadpanned innuendos could fill a big slot.

Grimsby movie review

A grim encounter with a former comedy prince.

TV review: Hospital People, BBC1

A new series of pilots kicks off with a medical comedy as sharp as a scalpel, brutally putting Jeremy Hunt and the NHS under the microscope. Actually no. Hospital People is more Carry On Nurse without the nurses and slightly misses a trick by not being particularly political. It is set in a fictional hospital and does at least touch on creeping NHS privatisation, but the main laughs are broad. And there are plenty of them.

Five things you might not know about . . . Seymour Mace

Geordie comic takes his semi-surrealist schtick across the country.

Stag: We wanted to skewer masculinity

Think of the worst stag do imaginable. Well, it would pale in comparison to the weekend timid teacher Ian Telford has to endure in upcoming dark comedy Stag. Taken deer-stalking with his future brother-in-law Johnners and his obnoxious pals, Ian already wants to go home. But when they start being killed off one by one, will he even make it through to Monday? Writer and creator Jim Field Smith tells us why this age old ritual was the perfect environment for a dark comedy thriller.

Stag review

Whatever your plans are for the next three Saturday evenings, cancel them, because you're going to want to stay in and watch BBC Two's unmissable new dark comic thriller Stag.

Interview: Catherine Tate's on song for West End role

A new musical is opening celebrating one of the more bizarre American tourist attractions of the 1950s.

Thousands of people would flock to Las Vegas to watch atomic bomb testing in the nearby desert, and themed beauty pageants soon followed.

Baron Cohen has gone step too far with Grimsby

Cohen's previous work, however brash, had something of a satirical edge, making a point about people's preconceived notions and fears about how others should live their lives. But sadly that witty backbone has been lost in Cohen's foray into silly, vulgar blockbuster territory which takes fat-shaming, xenophobia and class ridicule to new levels. Lewdness is a valid form of comedy but, however bold in may be in its attempt to shock you into laughing, this is a bad taste that's hard to wash out.

Most original sitcoms are still the best

Brian George from Hempshill Vale looks at whether we should ever go back to old sitcoms and comedy films