BCG Daily Tuesday 13th October 2020

Comedy under attack

With performers facing pressure from all sides, and working against a backdrop darker than the darkest satire, how to rescue the art form?

Walters joins all-star cast to narrate Wood biography

Julie Walters will be featuring as part of an all-star cast for the audiobook of Jasper Rees' authorised biography of Victoria Wood, Let's Do It.

Trapeze has promised the audiobook will be "a rich, multi-voice recording narrated by an all-star cast of some of the legendary performers who worked with Victoria over her iconic career". Alongside Walters narrating will be Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, Susie Blake, Anne Reid, David Threlfall, Daniel Rigby, Jane Wymark, Richenda Carey and Kate Robbins. An introduction will be narrated by Rees himself.

Theatre safety in the spotlight at London Palladium

Audiences on Sunday and Monday were pictured wearing masks and separated by empty seats - but some felt the theatre was too crowded to be fully Covid-safe.

Meet Funny Women Comedy Shorts winner Nikola McMurtrie

Nikola McMurtrie and her film Karaoke: Behind the Lyrics won the award.

Michelle Keegan looks under the weather on Brassic set

Michelle Keegan looked like she was feeling the cold as she struggled to keep warm on the set of Brassic.

The 33-year-old actress was pictured on the set of the Sky comedy dressed as her character Erin in a leopard print bomber-style jacket and black trousers.

Davies & Horne: Vegas goes further than anyone else

The Taskmaster presenters reveal their highlights from the upcoming series.

Don't mock the pasties! Cornwall's stand-up scene

In the UK's most south-westerly county a burgeoning standup scene thrives everywhere from remote village halls and old bakeries to the cliffside Minack theatre.

The Scotsman Sessions: Ashley Storrie and Janey Godley

Welcome to The Scotsman Sessions. With performing arts activity curtailed for the foreseeable future, we are commissioning a series of short video performances from artists all around the country and releasing them on scotsman.com, with introductions from our critics. Here, mother-daughter comedy duo Janey Godley and Ashley Storrie discuss the magic of live stand-up, explore some of the stranger side-effects of lockdown and confirm the precise location of the mysterious Crow Tavern.

Craig and Danny: Funny, Black and on TV, ITV, review

This informative, ceremonious look at the history of black comedy on TV was necessary and overdue, but should have been punchier instead of congratulatory to ITV, the channel on which it was broadcast.

How Stath Lets Flats became TV's smartest stupid comedy

A lot of comedy is people acting stupidly. And, for years, this has caused a certain amount of internal conflict among critics. Because critics are in the business of being (or at least seeming) smart, they tend to have an inherent aversion to stupidity. The often low-brow nature of comedy has long cast the genre as a lesser art form. Usually, when critics do like a work of comedy, it is the kind of thing that can be coded as "smart," either because it is focused on a particular social issue or includes some sharp political satire. But this is slowly changing. And one hilarious example of that change is Stath Lets Flats, the British sitcom about a family-owned leasing agency filled with the dumbest people.

How the producers approached Discworld

The producers behind the upcoming BBC America series The Watch know just how hard a task they took on. "It's the mother of all challenges," executive producer Simon Allen told me during a recent phone interview -- because the Discworld novels written by Terry Pratchett, over 40 of which have been published, have a fiercely devoted fanbase, but aren't necessarily the easiest to adapt for the screen.

Boys From County Hell review

Boys From County Hell is more successful as a portrait of small-town life than a raucous horror-comedy, but the film springs to life when Baugh goes all-in on the horror elements. It may not hit all the notes intended, but the film does leave you thirsting for more vampiric slaughter.