TV To Go

Thought Vomit #151: ft. TV To Go

If there were a new sketch show on tonight with Bill Bailey, Sean Lock, Hugh Dennis, Pauline McLynn, Mina Anwar, Martin Freeman and Russ Abbott, God only knows how the smug continuity announcer would introduce it.

Pete Clark on TV To Go

The problem is that the show is pretty much 100 per cent rubbish.

Takeaway comedy does not deliver

The problem may be the heavy shadow of the all-conquering Fast Show - which presents its successors with a tricky choice. Either you learn all its lessons, and run the risk of looking like an imitation; or you ignore them and risk looking off the pace. TV to Go opted for the second course. The result was that once we'd got the (often quite funny) point of a sketch, we had to wait while it meandered through some (often quite irrelevant) jokes to its (often quite forced) punchline.

There were some fine moments - two dreadful holiday-makers boring the pants off a bemused barman by talking about car insurance, for instance, and a good joke about smoking rooms - but in a show like this you need machine-gun laughs, not the occasional chuckle. With a bit of fine-tuning, TV To Go could take on The Fast Show or even Smack The Poney.

Victor Lewis-Smith on TV To Go

Like Radio 4's awesomely unfunny Week Ending, the show used a maximum number of writers (19) to minimum comedic effect (zero on my giggle-o-meter), probably because the chosen targets were so hackneyed and overdone.