Opinion: mainstream v alternative - is the gap closing?

We live in interesting times for comedy. I never thought I'd see Sara Pascoe on The Graham Norton Show. Maybe the gap is closing between what we describe as alternative and what we describe as mainstream. Maybe one of the legacies of Comedy Vehicle is that it did attract comedy fans to more cerebral notions of the nature of comedy. Sadly not enough for BBC2's beancounters.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehice, series 4 review

With every new series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, I find myself not wanting to watch for fear of those who may judge but then almost immediately concluding that I do not care. Yes, Lee is a spiteful comic, but he is also incredibly astute. One can't help but admire his craft, even if you don't agree with his viewpoints, which are of course satirically exaggerated anyway, suggesting that those who feel alienated by his comedy may actually be misinterpreting his message. And with his frequent cuts to camera, a television audience cannot help but be drawn in, without suffering the inevitable heart palpitations that would surely follow with such a predicament.

Stewart Lee winds up the fourth series of his Comedy Vehicle. Recent weeks have taken in thorny subjects such as patriotism, wealth, Islamophobia and death with - and it's acknowledged with a heavy heart - varying degrees of success, when stood up against his previous, near-perfect series. Bringing things to a close this week in front of his audience of Guardian readers at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington, he delves into his own childhood for quarry, with Chris Morris berating him throughout.

TV: Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, BBC2 - Childhood

There was a point during Stewart Lee's final Comedy Vehicle when I thought I could see the cogs moving. I thought I'd cracked it and knew what he was doing. And then he went and pulled the rug and dismantled the comedy process further, going out in excellent style. I'm not sure if we should be analysing this show though. As he persists in saying to speccy interrogator Chris Morris, De-Niro-in-Deer-Hunter style, "this is this".

Eddie Izzard may run marathons, but Lee remains the king of endurance comedy, a standup with the wit and grit to rolling-pin a single observation into a half-hour routine. Tonight's episode is nominally about dunderheaded reactions to the so-called migrant crisis but, like a glitch in the Matrix, Lee gets locked into a repetitive but endlessly rewarding riff about Rod Liddle and random foodstuffs. It trundles and builds to his most demanding, and impressively heroic, checkout of the series so far.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, BBC2, episode 4.5 preview

One thing in particular intrigues me about Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. It felt as if he was doing warm-ups and works-in-progress for this series for at least a year in advance around the UK. I assumed that this was to get every phrase, every comma, every pause in the right place. And then along comes episode 5 and, unless he is pulling the wool over the liberal intelligentsia's eyes and engages plants and stooges like a hack magician, he frequently seems to be winging it here.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, TV review

Lee is the only comedian who thoroughly critiques his act as he is doing it, and then critiques the critique.

Preview: Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, episode 4.4

Conspiracy theorists can have a field day with the fact that in some places episode four was billed as The Migrant Crisis. In fact our stand-up sage-cum-holy-fool is here to guide us through his thoughts on death this time. Did it change or did someone get it wrong? More pertinently, however, the show is a return to top form after a spot of water-treading last week.

Stewart Lee said in an earlier broadcast that "no one is equipped to review me". That's me told, bless him. The alleged theme of last week's Comedy Vehicle was patriotism. He could so easily have been lazy. Stew is many bastarding things, but lazy isn't one.

Somehow, he managed - mouth-farting into a mic - to turn a full three minutes of the sounds of a cat's diarrhoea into the most plosive and gorgeous argument against deference. It was wonderful, and I still stand and applaud its sculpted perfection. A man mouth-farting into a microphone, while mumbling the national anthem badly and talking about cat shit shouldn't have been subtle, but somehow it and its wider points were, and clog-brained oversentimental deference might want to pipe down for a bit.