Special Comic Strip screening and talk to be held

Peter Richardson, Jennifer Saunders and Stephen Mangan are set to appear at a special screening of two Comic Strip films in March.

Changes to Slapstick Festival

In a late change to the advertised programme for the 19th annual edition of Slapstick in Bristol, the event now taking place on Saturday 18 February at St George's, Brandon Hill (5.30pm) will be "Comic Strip Stories" - a 40th anniversary look back at The Comic Strip Presents.

Remembering 'Eat The Rich', a comedy music movie like no other

Through its obnoxiousness and scathing attack on British moral values, Eat The Rich set forth the manifesto for alternative comedy that would come to the fore throughout the remainder of the second millennium.

Red Top, the latest outing for the once splendid Comic Strip team, and we won't begrudge them a certain resting on ancient laurels, was an altogether mixed bag, as Peter Richardson and co gleefully ran rings round lawyers to bring us the purported tale of phone hacking and the Met, Rupert M and Tony B and Rebekah Brooks (played with peppy malevolence by Maxine Peake), set with a certain bizarreness in the 70s. Much was shambolic, missing easy marks. Wendi Deng as pastiche of Chinese sex ninja? But Johnny Vegas was great as the tabloid sleazehound turned Deep Throat, and there was great guilty joy at seeing Lewis Macleod as The Guardian's ex-editor Alan Rusbridger, played as a lisping, patronising Chris Biggins in a yachting cap and mincing below a banner reading "Never knowingly enjoy yourself". And the gang still managed, rather subtly, to skewer Brooks's implausible juxtapositioning of a reputation for micromanagement with that breezy verdict that said she knew nothing of phone taps.

The Comic Strip Presents... Red Top, saw some of the brand's original cast members including Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson appear beside some new recruits. These new recruits included Maxine Peake who took the lead as disgraced News International boss Rebekah Brooks in this retelling of the phone-hacking scandal that was written like it was set in the 1970s despite its many modern references. Peake provided the narration from Rebekah's own point-of-view painting herself as a naive Northern girl even though all of her co-workers thought differently. The action played out over 75 minutes and shot at many targets including The Guardian, David Cameron's attempts to become prime minister as well as the whole phone hacking scandal itself. But despite its satirical edge, I found that Red Top was quite scattershot in its approach and the script never really hung together that well. There were some elements of the programme I liked namely Russell Tovey's turn as Andy Coulson and his relationship with a stereotypical Sun journalist played by Johnny Vegas. Vegas' kind hearted reporter was eventually revealed to be the man who exposed the whole hacking scandal and the references to the Watergate Scandal were actually quite amusing. Even though it didn't really fit into anything else in the piece, I also quite liked the fact Red Top's portrayal of Tony Blair as a new-wave hippy who'd reinvented himself as a musical God. In a lovely bit of continuity Blair was played by Stephen Mangan who'd previously portrayed the former PM in The Comic Strip's last outing. However I do feel that the negatives outweighed the positives as I found a lot of the gags a bit obvious for example Wendi Deng's drugging of Rupert Murdoch in order for her to have control of his empire. Additionally I didn't feel some of the famous faces necessarily needed to be part of the story and this was particularly true in regards to Harry Enfield's Ross Kemp whose participation in the piece was minimal at best. But my main issue with Red Top was that the central joke about Rebekah Brooks' innocent outlook on events wore thin by about the halfway point. This is a shame as I believe that Peake did a good job with what she was given but I do feel that the material let her down to an extent. Overall I think that Red Top had some interesting elements but will ultimately go down as a rather forgettable entry into The Comic Strip collection.

Review: Comic Strip Presents... Red Top

Collusions between the top echelons of media and politics exposed by the phone-hacking scandal prove a treasure trove of inspiration for Comic Strip guru Peter Richardson.

The Red Top preview

It's 75-minutes of pure entertainment and pure escape, and if nothing else, watching Maxine Peake, Russell Tovey, Eleanor Matsuura, Johnny Vegas, Alexei Sayle, Harry Enfield, James Buckley, John Sessions, Stephen Mangan and Peter Richardson share the screen is a real joy.