Best of 2011: Comedy

The best comedy shows of 2011, including Tim Key, Tommy Tiernan, Stephen Merchant, Luke Wright and Jerry Sadowitz.

Jerry Sadowitz: his dark materials

Think Ricky Gervais and Frankie Boyle are offensive? Then you won't have the stomach for standup Jerry Sadowitz. Their vitriol is fake, he says: his is the real deal.

This week saw the return of Stewart Lee's less-than-conventional stand-up show on BBC Two.

If you want to know who unconventional it is, let me put it this way - the show was meant to be about charity, but instead it consisted of Lee talking about crisps (he repeated the word "crisps" over 100 times during the show), and the programme had only four jokes which Lee deliberately deconstructed, giving advanced warning of when they were due to appear and explaining the jokes in detail.

This show is therefore not going to please everybody. Having said that I fail to understand why the BBC decided to broadcast the show at 23.20, where it would fail to get a larger audience. At least there is the iPlayer.

There were some changes to the format. Most of the sketches had gone. There was only one sketch at the end of the episode featuring Scottish comedian Arnold Brown. However, the original red button feature of the programme, in which Lee was "interviewed" by Armando Iannucci, now appears in the main show, breaking up the stand-up routines.

I am not sure whether this new format works. Maybe it is best to let it settle down for a little while, but I quite liked the original sketches, primarily because they featured comedians not usually seen on TV such as Simon Munnery and at one point Jerry Sadowitz as Jimmy Savile.

It is however a funny, interesting and above-all clever show. Lee makes you laugh and also think about the way comedy is presented. Just a shame it is on so late.

Jerry Sadowitz cancels show because 'stage too small'

Top comic Jerry Sadowitz cancelled a show as fans were taking their seats - because he thought the stage was too small.

Jerry Sadowitz lets loose on fame, fortune and failure

Comedian Jerry Sadowitz has predicted he will die penniless and lonely.

Profile: Jerry Sadowitz, comedian

Arguably Scotland's greatest comedian, and undoubtedly the most underrated, Jerry Sadowitz remains a cult, enigmatic figure. A misanthropic monster on stage, appalling, obscene, ferocious, he holds nothing back - not his ugliest thoughts, nor his oft-exposed penis - yet he reveals little of himself, the sleight-of-hand of an acclaimed magician who's been keeping audiences speculating about his mind's furious workings for a quarter of a century.

Tramadol Nights is like a really crap version of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, in that it's a mixture of stand-up and sketches. It's a shame to have to mention both them in the same sentence but it demonstrates that celebrity and not talent gets things commissioned, seeing as Lee waited a decade to get a series while Boyle does it without breaking a sweat. Still, the latter did have to lower himself to jokes about Jeremy Kyle, and sketches about hidden camera shows and The Green Mile. Yep, it's 2010 people in case you've forgotten.

As Mr Boyle spreads himself quite thinly, and was a regular on a panel show where the guests consistently use their stand-up routines under the guise of spontaneous improvisation, a lot of this material has been seen on telly before. Even the audience member putdowns is the same stuff he always does when faced with his usual aggressive interaction.

That's not to say that in the right circumstances he can't be funny but Frankie Boyle has to understand that he's not Jerry Sadowitz, and his fans (the idiots who are blind to see that Mock The Week has steadily improved since he left, now the other panelists can get a word in) need to realise that he's just not that good.

Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights is a mix of stand-up and sketches. The stand up was Boyle's usual stuff - literally, in fact, as most of the material was taken from his recent tour and DVD. That said, it was mostly good, if you enjoy his brand of controversial vitriol. Where the programme really fell apart was the sketches. What started as a nice idea for a quick sketch about Knight Rider's Michael Knight hearing KITTs voice in his head turned into an epic which went on and on long after the joke had worn thin. A sketch about decade-old film The Green Mile fell flat and another, about Brokeback Mountain veered dangerously close to entirely relying on homosexuality being a hilarious concept of itself, without any subtext or point.

And that's the main problem with Tramadol Nights, there doesn't appear to be any point to any of the sketches, save for one about the Iranian version of Loose Women, with the burka-wearing presenters being hanged, which was astonishingly jarring next to the puerile humour of the rest of the show. I'm all for more comedy on television that pushes the edges of taste and decency, but Boyle needs to be more careful with his targets. Controversy for the sake of controversy does not work but there seems very little more to Tramadol Nights than an attempt to shock. The best "shocking" comedy, whether it's South Park's biting satire or Jerry Sadowitz's challenging stand-up, has so much more depth than what was seen here. It is a disappointment, because Boyle at his best can be a whirlwind of energy and caustic wit. It seems this format isn't the right vehicle for him. Perhaps Mock the Week was.

Strangely, tvBite is forever sticking up for Patrick Kielty. Yes, he's not the greatest stand-up ever - but honestly, he's one of the nicest men in showbiz. He told us on the phone that this show will be genuinely edgy and great post-pub entertainment. Hmmm. Rich Hall is a regular, which is a good sign. But so is Jack Whitehall, which really, really isn't. He promised that "people like Jerry Sadowitz" would get guest spots too, though we'll believe that when we see it.

Though The News Quiz is one of Radio 4's most loved programmes, it's hard for me to write about. It goes out on a Friday night, after my column deadline, and - obviously - it's topical. I can only review the previous show, in this case the first in the new series, which discussed the Labour party conference, the EDF energy company and Sarah Palin. See: they're so last week! (Apart from Sarah Palin.)

The other block to me reviewing The News Quiz is, well, me. Though I am a Radio 4 devotee, its panel shows drive me mad. They're so cosy! The combination of laugh-at-anything audience and aren't-I-clever contestants creates a tittering dinner party atmosphere that makes me yearn for Jerry Sadowitz or Keith Allen or Joan Rivers. In short, I want anger.

Still, there's enough of that in today's Britain, eh? And anyway, The News Quiz has Jeremy Hardy, whose anger is there, just clothed in exquisite one-liners, and he usually keeps me listening. Hardy has a gentle bedside manner which hides his vicious shanking of the pompous establishment. Last Friday he managed to stick it to middle-class parents, banks, the government and Barack Obama within the first 10 minutes. 'Obama said that the collapse of the banks is no time for politics. No, Christmas dinner is no time for politics.' But the bit I really liked was when he had a pop at Sue Perkins over her appearance on Maestro. What that says about me, I hate to think.