British Comedy Guide
Support British comedy by donating today. Find out more

Clive Morgan

  • Journalist

Press clippings Page 2

A special edition of the macabre comedy thriller from The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. It centres on a television location manager, Shearsmith, who has taken his camera with him to the abandoned ruins of the fictional Ravenhill Psychiatric Hospital. He is investigating stories about the ghost of its evil former governess, Edwina Kenchington (Eileen Atkins), for a Most Haunted style programme. In true Psychoville style, the episode is both hilarious and unsettling. Four eccentric tales of terror unfold, each featuring one of the regular characters from the series - the bitter, one-handed children's entertainer Mr Jelly (Shearsmith), the deranged midwife Joy (Dawn French) and her baby, the blind millionaire Mr Lomax (Pemberton), and the serial-killer enthusiast David Sowerbutts (Pemberton again) and his mother. The Mr Jelly one - which sees him opening the door to two mysterious trick-or-treaters - is the strangest, and the funniest. Artfully written and well acted, like the previous award-winning series, this may at times be too odd and too disturbing for some viewers to stomach.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 29th October 2010

Absurdity continues to reign unfettered in this fourth run of David Mitchell and Robert Webb's Bafta-winning sketch show, as characters new and old romp on to the screen to ever greater comic effect. The duo have the happy knack of finding hidden laughs in unlikely places and then working them up into infectious flights of fancy. Tonight's highlights include the conspiracy behind the conspiracy behind the fake fake Moon landings; how to get cash for any unused plutonium you may have around the house; plus "Late Night Dog Poker".

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 20th July 2010

Forty years ago this week, Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Je T'Aime topped the charts and Concorde broke the sound barrier. And then for something completely different: the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One. We never looked at comedy - let alone Spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This new film celebrates the anarchic troupe's Ruby Jubilee and marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life. It's archly subtitled The Lawyer's Cut and those Beeb briefs have been busy because it's slimmed down from a six-hour series screened in the US (as Terry Jones says, "a record so complete and faithful to the truth that I don't need to watch it") to just 60 minutes. Directed by Alan Parker, it features new interviews with Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from the late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trailblazing television, made the transition into films and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 3rd October 2009

This popular, tasteless and occasionally funny drama following British people in a holiday resort returns. Tonight, Mel (Geoffrey Hutchings) enlists the help of Mick (Steve Pemberton) to open his new mobility shop, with disastrous results. Meanwhile Martin (Nicholas Burns) has a new girlfriend, Brandy (Sheridan Smith). The comedy is hit and miss, but the performances are good, and so Benidorm wins points for trying.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 2nd October 2009

The once-disgraced television and radio broadcaster presents a show devoted to an interview with one of the world's best-loved stars, Barbra Streisand. Ross's at times brash interviewing style is not everyone's cup of tea, so it's a wonder that a star of Streisand's status would choose him for an exclusive chat. In her first UK studio interview since the Eighties, the A Star Is Born actress discusses her five-decade-long stage, television and film career and performs some of her classic hits as well as songs from her new album, Love Is the Answer.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 2nd October 2009

Episode three of this sixth series of the black comedy starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb shows why this is still the funniest British sitcom on TV at the moment. Self-serving Jeremy (Webb) realises that he's in love with Elena (Vera Filatova) and decides to be less selfish to win her affection.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 2nd October 2009

Alfred Hitchcock appears to be one of the influences on this weirdly compelling comedy-thriller series. Here The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton pay homage to his oft-overlooked film Rope, which in turn was inspired by the real-life murder of a young boy in 1924 by two college students. Tonight David (Steve Pemberton) and his mother Maureen (Reece Shearsmith) are mid-murder at their home when an unexpected visitor knocks on the door and throws them into a panic.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 9th July 2009

Paul Kaye gives an appropriately over-the-top performance as fictional superstar DJ Frankie Wilde in this Spinal Tap-style mockumentary. It charts Wilde's life as he prepares for a summer club residency on Ibiza. Wilde's problems - drug addiction and a failing marriage - are intensified when deafness threatens his livelihood.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 3rd July 2009

With Graham Norton set to join BBC One's chat-show line-up, toothy comedian Alan Carr attempts to fill the hole that Norton left on his defection in 2004 with this new show. Sadly, it just appears to be a rehash of Norton's So formula - sketches with celebrity cameos, an irreverent take on showbiz news and the internet. On the plus side, Carr's guests are presenter Bruce Forsyth, actress Heather Graham and actor-cum-journalist Ross Kemp. Pet Shop Boys provide the music.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 13th June 2009

Impressionist Rory Bremner and his regular collaborators John Bird and John Fortune have, arguably, become the kings of biting topical satirical comedy. And in this new three-part series, everything is fair game. MPs and their expenses, the current financial disaster and Gordon Brown's much-derided grin in the video he recently released on YouTube get the skewering they so richly deserve.

Clive Morgan, The Telegraph, 13th June 2009

Share this page