Stewart Lee

Episode 2 Review

It's abundantly clear why so many fellow comedians adore Stewart Lee. Everything about his work is acutely observed and taken to places that outreach your average comedian. Even when you don't necessarily agree with his targets, it's great to follow him down.

Stewart Lee takes a discursive romp through television, taking swipes at everything from BBC1's The One Show and its host Adrian Chiles ("like being trapped in the buffet car of a slow-moving express train with a Toby jug") to TV audiences ("What do you want?"). The latter is an extended rant against anyone who's ever taken part in a "top TV funny moment" poll and cast their vote for "Del Boy falling through the bar". Lee obviously isn't a fan and he's quietly furious. He goes on too long, but you can see his point. But Lee is at his best when he's firing pellets of wit at everything from BBC founder Lord Reith's supposed "jazz racism" to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Any Dream Will Do.

This week the subject of Lee's intelligently amusing invective is television. The message is pin sharp. Bewailing the decline of Channel 4 programmes he observes: "The head of Channel 4, when he looks at the old schedules, must feel like an elderly ladies' man leafing through a photograph album of all the society beauties he used to romance, all of them now dead."

A good pun is hard to find. So well done Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle for its opening credits, which feature the comic driving an enormous multicoloured clown car.

The show that follows is basically a half-hour stand-up routine on a given theme, punctuated by the occasional pertinent sketch.

Lee's comedy is something of an acquired taste ranging from the esoteric, through the inventive to the positively bizarre, but he is never less than original and frequently inspired.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is essentially one-man stand-up, televised from a comedy club setting. There are brief interludes for home viewers (a Kevin Eldon sketch, most notably), but most of the trimmings are only there to comically illustrate something Lee mentions. To be honest, these were distractions that didn't really add anything, beyond provide employment for the likes of Simon Munnery.

The joy of stand-up is having someone fill your head with mental imagery, so cutting to an illustrative sketch inspired by one of Lee's comments worked against that alchemy.

Lee has a tendency to stretch certain jokes past breaking point - best exemplified by his describing of "the rap singers" like a middle-aged fart, which overran by minutes. I'm also certain that Lee's brand of withering sarcasm will annoy plenty of people with a cheerier outlook on life, despite the fact it's very tongue-in-cheek.

The primary concept is one of baffling unreasonableness. Members of the public are encouraged to write in with their "wacky" suggestions for future inventions - basically rehashes of the "Letter Bocks" pages of Viz. If they are chosen, they then have to stand up and fill five minutes of prime-time television sparring with two professional comedians - who, additionally, have had time to prepare relevant material - in order to "win". As you would expect, it's a bloodbath - like a light entertainment Wounded Knee, but with a studio audience.

In the opening episode, Dave Gorman and Catherine Tate "challenged" four members of the public on their inventions, which included an anorak with an extra hood, for sharing with a friend, and some surrealist, sub-Vic Reeves nonsense about winning a race on stilts. As soon as Tate and Gorman started on them it was like watching two cats idly biting at frogs they'd found in the garden.

The BBC amazes me. It takes four years for Stewart Lee - a comedian with 17 years' experience - to get a six-part series; yet in Genius wholly inexperienced members of the public are expected to deliver five minutes of broadcast-quality improvised material at the drop of a hat. What, literally, is that all about?

The brilliance of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Anyway, is Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle very clever and funny, and full of things that you are still thinking about the next morning while you jog in the spring sunshine at 8am? Yes. Of course.

Review: The Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle 1x1

This was intelligent, funny stuff that actually makes you think and stays with you afterwards, which is more than can be said for Horne & Corden.

A welcome return to the small screen for Richard Herring's taller, (marginally) slimmer and deadpan former partner. Mixing standup comedy about a particular subject - in this case, the phenomenon of 'toilet books' - interspersed with relevant sketches, this showed Lee at his witty, caustic best. We'll definitely be tuning in again.

Chortle Review

Lee destroys his topics with the precision, relentlessness and brutality of a medieval torturer; repeatedly and meticulously attacking the same small point until it becomes weakened to the point of collapse.