Quote: gb901 @ 10th April 2014, 12:15 AM BSTI fail to see how anyone finds Will the intern funny: he's a f**king retard!
He's my favourite character in it, actually. I guess I empathise with him. He doesn't have much self-confidence and fancies that secretary.
Whilst it was a nice, smooth ride, it just wasn't really that good. Thought ep 2 perked up, but then it drifted away again.
The supporting cast this time around is just not very well-written. They basically assigned each character a catchphrase and called it a day.
The nadir for me was the fairly funny skit on the new BBC logo, now a better show would have just segued out without a punchline.
But they had to have that weak and disconnected joke about the star of David.
Followed by I think 3 characters repeating it, just to ram it home.
Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 27th March 2014, 3:04 PM GMTNot top to bottom, Wout.
Management = top, intern = bottom...
Anyway, loved this series, loved the catchphrases, loved the satire, loved the performances, the stylistic touches - a winner for me. And so nice to see Hugh Bonneville actually coming out on top in several of the conflicts near the end. After they'd reduced his income to less than half what he signed up for, of course.
Quote: Wout Thielemans @ 6th May 2014, 4:09 PM BSTManagement = top, intern = bottom...
Just that there may be a few noticeable absences.
Wout-that seems to be a name for ISIHAC. The Geordie ball maybe? Mr and Mrs Clubbing and their Belgian son Wout...
Just saw that W1A has been given a new series. Saw an advert for it on the Beeb.
It moved me to stop lurking on this site and make a post.
I hate this show with a passion.
It should be towed out to sea and sunk.
Essentially it consists of one rather unfunny gag.
Namely, that people tend to talk a great deal of rubbish during meetings.
In this case, BBC meetings.
This is hardly a great new insight, nor a new perspective on the matter.
Therefore, we have one scene set in a conference room with people talking PR speak, followed immediately by yet another scene with several other BBC folk talking media garbage in another conference room. And so on ad infinitum.
Hilarious. Or not, as the case may be.
All the while you need to put up with Jessica Hynes, who's responsible for the dreadful 'Up the women' (for which she should never, ever be forgiven).
Her comedy alter ego, Siobhan Sharpe, is simply annoying.
Being annoying in comic terms is a tricky act. Your character needs to have some redeeming feature, else it simply annoys the audience.
Siobhan Sharpe annoys the audience.
So, just in case anyone misunderstands me.
I hate W1A.
It should never have been made.
Nobody I know has anything good to say about this show.
It is ghastly.
I find the Beeb's record on sitcom has been poor in recent years.
The prize for best recent sitcom output goes to ITV with 'Vicious' by some distance.
W1A, however, describes a new low, even for the BBC.
Not as though they haven't a lot of sitcom duds to choose from already.
Anyhow, enough of my rant.
I shall now sit back and watch the flak coming my way.
I agree. W1A is much-ado-about-nothing. Morton scaled great heights with People Like Us. Twenty Twelve was a huge slide down the ladder, a parade of one-joke characters and a lame copy of Australian ABC TV's The Games by John Clarke. And W1A is out of the same packet.
What's clear is that Morton's style works best in one-off eps like People Like Us where his characters don't have the chance to wear out their welcome.
Watched the hour long first episode of series 2 last night - I enjoyed series 1 but have to say that I think series 2 is far better. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea but it makes me laugh a lot.
The scene between the northern writer and the commissioning editor was toe-squirming.
I have literally had that meeting.
Still smug, self congratulatory BBC squit! No way biting enough, as per The Thick Of It.
It's a bit broad in its reach for me and is kind of like a shallower, "Nathan Barley 10 Years On" (Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker hit all the same targets in a much more vicious way a decade ago).
It's also a bit overwritten, especially the narration, which, whilst funny is often formulaic (repeat same phrase in a slightly different way, state the obvious in a slightly odd way, etc) and a lot of the characters are extremely one-dimensional.
But, having said that, several moments had me laughing-out-loud, which is quite rare in a comedy nowadays.
I'd never watched it before last night's episode, but on the strength of that I'd probably give it another go.
No doubt dozy intern Will will be kept on and given a well paid job solely due to who he knows: probably par for the course at the Beeb?!
I found Twenty Twelve perfexctly pleasant, but never got a lot out of W1A Series 1. Watched the hour-long episode earlier, and I'm afraid now I find it actively annoying. I can see why people might find it well written, well put together, and well performed, but to me it just proves that "well made" is not synonymous with "any good".
The only smile it got out of me was Siobhan saying "QVC" instead of "QED". Took a long while to get there.
The BBC seems rather proud of the job it is doing of remorselessly skewering itself here. I am not sure whether this, as a previous poster would have it, is self-congratulatory, but I can't help feeling that this and its predecessor Twenty Twelve are a more accurate picture of how modern Britain is actually run than the rather histrionic Thick Of It. The laughs are very much laughs of recognition, and there are plenty of them. Morton has always been an excellent observer.
