Casting a British Version of Community

Community is the best sitcom on television at the moment. At the very least, it's the best English-language sitcom. The story centres around a group of people who go to a second-chance college. Their lives have not really worked out, so they've gone back to college to either get a new degree, meet some new people, or get away from their previous lives. The show stars Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, and Chevy Chase. Given American TV's insistence on recasting and remaking British shows instead of airing the original series, what would it be like if we recast Community for a British audience, using actors who are in a similar position to the actors on the American version? Well, it'd be a lot whiter, for a start. Here's where we think it'd go.


Jeff - played by Joel McHale
British counterpart – Harry Hill

Joel McHale's 'main' role is as the commentator on The Soup, a TV show which makes fun of other TV shows. In Britain we have a slightly better version of the same show, and in Britain it's run by Harry Hill. A bald, bespectacled former doctor with a wacky sense of humour and a fondness for puppets and animation, Harry Hill is by no means leading man material. However, he is Britain's version of Joel McHale. Or rather, Joel is America's version of Harry Hill.


Britta - played by Gillian Jacobs
British counterpart – Tamsin Grieg

We needed to pick an actress who is known for comedy, but comedy which is kinda dramatic. A proper actress who can do comedy at the same time, in other words. With Episodes, Love Soup, and a variety of other roles under her belt, Tamsin Grieg fits this role perfectly.


Abed - played by Danny Pudi
British counterpart – Sandi Toksvig

We picked another Nordic comedian. Sandi Toksvig should be in everything.


Shirley - played by Yvette Nicole Brown
British counterpart – Dawn French

They have the same voice! Listen to them both and see if you disagree. We looked for female comediennes who looked like they'd give you a good, strong hug. And Dawn french sprung to mind almost instantly.


Annie - played by Alison Brie
British counterpart – Sharon Horgan

Sharon Horgan stars in a series of TV shows, including The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and Pulling. She can do proper roles. She can do humour. She is good at acting. She is AMAZING at comedy. Plus she has brown hair. How perfect!

Troy - played by Donald Glover
British counterpart – Noel Fielding

A very popular comedian who sings, does sketch comedy and writes extensively for other shows, Donald Glover only has one contemporary who comes to mind. Noel Fielding. The energetic half of The Mighty Boosh is massively popular right now, especially on the internet. He has more female fans than male fans, just like Glover, and has a surprisingly wide range of voices and characters.


Chang - played by Ken Jeong
British counterpart – Omid Djalili

Think of a smart comedian who can look completely crazy on a whim. You're thinking of Omid Djalili. The role of Chang requires a witty, intelligent, charming comedian to act like a total mental jerk every week. Omid has shown with some of his film work that he is not only absolutely mad at times, but he can be mad, a jerk, and kinda likeable.


Pierce - played by Chevy Chase
British counterpart – Michael Barrymore

Michael Barrymore is somewhat disgraced from the British comedy scene, despite being a brilliant personality and great comedian. Chevy Chase was in the same role before Community, and is now starting to recover his career. What do you think, guys?

Podcast à la mode #3

The Adam and Joe Podcast
By Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish

By the time you read this, it should be April where you live! If it isn't April where you live, then we strongly suggest you stop living near The Large Hadron Collider! But for the majority of you all, and us also for we are part of the greater we, it is now April. And this is glorious news, because that means it's time for Adam and Joe to return to broadcast! A pair of radio-presenters with a difference (the difference being talent and creativity), Adam and Joe are now available to you on a weekly basis, and hilarity can once more reign down upon your houses! As a note, you do not need a skylight in order for hilarity to reign down into your house, as hilarity operates in a manner similar to - but not akin to - radiation poisioning. It can penetrate your roof, unless you live in a house of lead.

Do you live in a house of lead? If so, then we'd love to hear from you! There are experiments that we've always wanted to try, but have never had the facilities to enable.


What Happens In This Podcast?

Adam and Joe used to present on telly back in the nineties, doing their own show for years as part of Channel 4's dedication to reaching a youthful audience. Their unique type of silly childish humour proved to be a big hit, as they were intelligent and witty without isolating dumb people, and they could perform pranks without being mean-spirited of nasty. They were nice chums that liked computer games and comics, and they were on telly! What an inspiration for a whole generation of bloggers they must've become, surely, perhaps. Well once they stopped doing their telly show they moved to radio, and started to do much the same as they did before, only this time on the radio. Um, obviously.

So you can hear their first radio shows via the XFM Adam and Joe podcast, which is still available on the ol' iTunes. But more importantly, you can hear highlights from their current radio show on BBC 6music even as we speak! Can you imagine listening to Adam and Joe and reading Wilftonville at the same time, chums? The sheer possibilities such an event could bring! Their regular features include Text The Nation, where they read out readers' suggestions about things like "what should the next crime show be about" and get answers like "Sgt Wiggle The Worm. He later gets cut in half and the short end becomes his sidekick". There's also the ever-popular SONG WARS in which the two literally WAR against each other via the use of SONGS, and many other bits of silly banter and giggling.

We Recommend This Podcast!

If you enjoy the podcast, you should also watch Hot Fuzz! Both Adam and Joe are in it, as they are good friends with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. They may also have appeared in Spaced, but we can't remember. And also! Joe's directed a film and written a film this year - Attack The Block, and it's going to be brilliant! You can find Adam on his youtube channel, also Joe co-wrote the new Tintin movie with Steven Moffat. Amazing!

Podcast à la mode #2

The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Run By Ben Acker and Ben Blacker

Are you a fan of *listening* to things? Have you ever considered the fun that could come from listening to something which is in turn trying to be *appealing* to you? Then in that case we'll have to suggest that The Thrilling Adventure Hour is the kind of thing which is going to both appeal to you and listen to you. Although it won't listen to you, and you may find it unappealing. Based on a performance show created by the duo of Bens Acker & Blacker (and they say God isn't looking down on all of us, grouping us as he deems entertaining?), this is a new podcast which is still finding feet and legs but, in fact, does not need a new voice. For it already has one.

The central conceit is that of a radio play, the sort of play which people listened to in the 1950s, the sort of play that features fantastical adventures, the sort of fantastical adventures which have pirates and aliens and robots, the sorts of robots that are made of metal. A group of actors are given the script for the play and read it out, making fun of the stereotypes of old-timey music hall. The show is notable for featuring several prominent Californian comedians such as Chris Hardwick and Paul F. Tompkins. Also appearing are many former Buffy The Vampire Slayer cast-members, brought in by recurring players Tom Lenk and Danny Strong. Amber Benson, Nathan Fillion, and Adam Busch have all appeared as performers on the show.


What Happens in This Podcast?

Is this making much sense so far? We expect so! There's only one person here, typing into his computer while eating fish fingers and sobbing. The Thrilling Adventure Hour Podcast has only been going proper since January 1st, although there are also several small bitlets which suggest they've spent a fair bit of time working out the kinks of podcasting. Three episodes have been posted so far, all of which focusing on about twenty-minute long comedic stories set in the 1950s style. The podcasters have started with their most well-known stories, which means Paul F Tompkins and... is it Autumn Reeser? Appear in the first episode, in which they play drunk ghost-hunters. The second episode features the legendary Sparks Nevada, a cowboy who lives on Mars. And most recently, episode 3 features a guest appearance from Nathan Fillion.

Each episode fades in and out of the live performance, giving one twenty-minute long skit without any edits in the middle. The podcast is FAMILY FRIENDLY! If you are a family, the podcast will act towards you in a friendly and courteous manner. Everyone else can piss off and eat crap. Only joking! The podcast will not forcibly make you digest your own digested excrement. Oh dear, we've gone onto a difficult tangent here and got lost.


We Recommend This Podcast!

If you listen to this podcast, expect fun songs and silly banter, as well as some great improvisation. This podcast may only be twenty minutes scant, but those twenty minutes are as entertaining as watching Diana Vickers eat a hot sausage.

Podcast à la mode #1

Hello and greetings. And indeed, goodbye, although that's a statement best left for another time. Welcome to a new segment in the orange of Wilftonville, no wait that's a terrible metaphor. Let's refer to it as new billiard room in the mansion of Wilftonville, instead. Looking back on several popular features from my previous run writing this HILARIOUS cultural icon, I realised that they were outdated and dated out. It's time to revamp and move away from the old, shambling recurring features of the past, and cuddle up to a new, youthful, bubbly feature. So here we are! Podcast à la mode, which each month will investigate a different podcast what you can download and listen to through headphones, speakers, or indeed your own imagination. Your imagination will have to be sturdy! If you want to accurately reflect everything that is spoken by people you don't know in the podcasts that I recomment.

Let's just get to the first one before things are too late.

The Pod F. Tompkast.
Run by Paul F. Tompkins (and Eban Schletter)

The best comedian ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET! is currently Paul F. Tompkins. Does he really exist on a face which protrudes from the Earth's solid crust of rock and soil? Only astronauts know! And as a budding astronomist, I can tell you that I am bound to silence over the possible existence of a facial visage bursting through Pakistan. Did I say Pakistan? I meant to say REDACTED.

Paul F. Tompkins is a slightly moustached comedian who works mainly in California. His previous credits include Mr Show, and he was in that one episode of Community recently, and... well, he's mostly famous cos he's Paul F. Tompkins, y'dig? His specialism is in telling stories which are mostly true and sometimes imagined. He is on a quest to appear in every podcast ever made, from Doug Loves Movies to (spoiler!) Comedy Death-Ray. But you're asking,

What Happens in This Podcast?

Or should it be Podkast. The highlight of each episode of The Pod F. Tompkast, released once a month if you don't count the various 'Extrasodes' which are released seemingly at random, is the introduction. In which! Tompkins starts off by saying what will be in the episode, before getting caught in a tangent and attempting to unravel his train of thought for a good ten minutes before he realises he was right all along, and continues on this new path. He can chat about more or less anything, and his serene tones bring to mind a zen master trying to inform you about the presence of Uatu The Watcher, who lives on the dark side of the moon.

The features in each episode remain the same. He will have a ten-twenty minute conversation with fellow comedian Jen Kirkman, and play back a recording from one of his live shows. There will typically be a celebrity guest in each of the recordings, such as Maya Rudolph or Neil Flynn. Tompkins also writes and performs a short skit called 'The Project', in which various celebrities call each other to organise the creation of a 'project' they will all work on together. This more or less gives Paul (we've grown familiar at this point in the article: we'll call him Paul) the chance to muck around with his impressions. Which are FUNNY!


We Recommend The Pod F. Tompkast!

We commend the Pod F. Tompkast for being a very funny way to spend time. We also wish to commend it a second time, meaning it can officially be re-commended by us! Did you see what we did there? It was a play on the way words work. We do that a lot, and the results tend to vary. Unlike The Pod F. Tompkast, which is always funny! We switched it around on you there.

Download it for FREE on iTunes, y'all!

Failure Films: Hot Rod

American comedy is single-handedly defined by the strength of the lead actor.

It doesn’t matter much about the plot or the jokes, because everything has become a cult of personality. If you go to see a Steve Carell movie, for example, you can expect to enjoy lots of straight-faced nonsense. There is no actor better at holding a stony exterior than Carell, and his line-readings barely ever relate to the relative funniness of the lines themselves. He makes the exposition lines funny, and he can on occasion botch the punch lines in the process. But that’s how he is; his personality is what audiences go in for. The same is true, perhaps more than with any other comedic actor, for Will Ferrell. He has a very specific character he plays in his movies, dictated by the way he reads his lines, and this is perhaps the reason why Hot Rod feels as unfinished as it does. Originally a vehicle for Ferrell to be crazy in, the project instead passed on to The Lonely Island – a trio of web-comedians who had recently made it on the American comedy-factory also known as Saturday Night Live. Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samburg and Jorma Taccone make up the three, and they first made videos online before Andy was picked up to be one of the main castmembers on SNL, a show which has previously featured people like Bill Murray, Chris Rock, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell. The other two came along as writers, and together they created the “digital shorts” section, a series of viral videos which were the best thing to happen to the sketch show in a long time.

Samburg also managed to pick up the traditional throng of female admirers, due to his being on TV, and it was with these that the Lonely Island group managed to lock themselves into this movie. The central conceit is simple enough: a young man who wants to be a stunt motorcyclist decides to take on the biggest jump of his life in order to raise money for his dying father (played by the grizzled Ian McShane). In taking the reins of the film, they decided to add their own touches to the script, to reinvent many of the scenes to be more in tune with their sense of humour. The result is an odd film which doesn’t know what it wants to be, but with a series of superb comic moments. For every scene which falls apart, there is a moment of surreal, throwaway brilliance. For a film which was meant to be ruled over by Will Ferrell, the trio manage to work quite a lot of decent jokes into the mix. On top of this, most of the jokes happen to be purely visual.

As Samburg’s character Rod wants to be a stuntman, obviously the film has to show several of his failed attempts. However the expected results don’t occur at any point. If this had been a Ferrell film, the scenes of Rod crashing repeatedly would have been grandly over the top, and followed by drawn-out moments of anguish from Ferrell (who does unstoppable crying better than anyone). With Schaffer as director, we instead get these scenes played out with stark realism. When Rod attempts to jump his bike over a swimming pool, we don’t see any big crash. Instead he goes up into the air, and then straight back down. It’s naturalistic, and it feels just like a viral video. The whole film does, and this gives it a great disjointed feeling. If each and every one of the scenes were taken away and uploaded separately onto Youtube, they’d be great. Together they are unnervingly bizarre. And self-conscious.

Every line in the film sees to exist as if the characters are aware that they are in a cheaply-budgeted film. When a love interest is introduced, in the form of endless perky and adorable Isla Fisher, the movie handles her with callous disregard for personality. That she has an obnoxious boyfriend (Will Arnett!) is taken for granted, and played around with as much as possible. “I’m going to grab a vitamin water. Shall I make that dos?” he leers at her, at one point. It is definitely unlikely that she would pick the obnoxious Arnett – whose every word is delightfully obnoxious, even to her – over the puppydog nonsense of Samburg, and the film realises this. Thus, the characters mope around to overdone 80’s powerpop. When we have a scene such as the one where Rod and… Isla Fisher pretend to fight each other for fun, we know that she will hit him too hard and he’ll be overly upset. The film hangs upon this for its own amusement, which satisfies the meta-humourist but will irritate the majority of the audience. There is a whole new level of humour buried under the surface – humour which is barely funny at all, unless you have a silly mind. Being drunk would definitely enhance the movie.

These jokes are rough, and so subtle as to not exist. It takes a mind of steel to dare laugh at these awful jokes. There is a trend with comedians who make a move to the big screen from somewhere else, in that they have far-out sense of humour. They don’t care if you get the joke, because they get the joke and thus everything is okay – Hot Rod is a firm example of this kind of comedy movie. It was probably far more fun to write and make up than it was to perform. Amongst the silly slight-jokes like Rod and his brother repeating the phrase ‘cool beans’ to each other over and over for a full minute or so, or a montage of friend-to-the-troupe Chester Tam throwing paper in the air before thrusting his crotch at the camera; there are some proper ideas hurtling around aimlessly. The reason why Rod wants his dad to get the surgery that will save his life is because dad will not accept him until Rod beats the guy in combat. It’s unfair to beat an ill man, so Rod needs to have his dad cured so the fight will be fair and square. Thusly, the poignant moments of father-son bonding often end with Rod shouting “you won’t be so happy with your surgery once I murder you!” It is a mad piece of film.

The cast are incredibly uneven. Bill Hader appears as one of Rod’s friends, but doesn’t get anything to do – and nor does he make much of his role. Isla Fisher and Will Arnett, also, are not as interesting as they have been in the past. They’re both brilliant at comic timing and can make something of almost any line, but feel like their performances are being toned down by outside influences. Certainly, the two actors of The Lonely Island trio (Jorma playing Rod’s younger brother) are probably the two who stand out the most of all. Samburg has the most to do in his role as Rod, and given that this is his first leading performance in a movie he manages to just about hold up under the strain. His character is amorphous to fit into whichever joke they want him to take part in – flipping from clueless berk to remotely sensible human being depending on which other character he’s taking to – and Samburg handles this well, almost making Rod feel like an actual character. Jorma Taccone is better, though, as Rod’s geeky brother, and it’s almost a shame the two roles weren’t switched around, as Taccone seems to have a much stronger presence onscreen than Samburg. Really, though, the only good performance comes from ever-reliable Chris Parnell, playing an overenthusiastic DJ who provides the commentary for Rod as he undergoes his final moment-of-truth jump.

The best thing about the movie turns out to be Schaffer’s direction, which creates a much-needed tone for the film, and is reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite at times due to the ruthless editing. Each joke is played out perfectly, and the only shame is that the jokes aren’t strong enough to deserve this. There are only a few moments where the script shines enough to show the direction the film could’ve taken, and many of them come towards the end. The best scene of the film, where Rod and his team march to the site of his big jump, is executed wonderfully.



That the film was made at all was a hugely impressive leap for The Lonely Island team, but the result is too nonsensical to work. Disassembled into different scenes, you can see bits and pieces which are ingenious, but overall there is no coherence to anything, and the script gives a number of very talented actors nothing to work with. Perhaps the biggest flaw of the movie is that it does not have a single personality running the show here, but at the same time this manages to work in favour of Hot Rod. By far and away it is the sum of its parts, but it’s consistently entertaining, and will almost certainly pick up a huge cult following as time goes on. And it’ll deserve it.

The Celebrity Pages: "The Sound Of Laughter" by Peter Kay

The Celebrity Pages: Reviewing Celebrity Autobiographies Since 2009!

The Sound Of Laughter

by Peter Kay

Peter Kay is a stand-up comedian from Bolton, whose main appeal is his use of northern charm to bluff his way through any situation. His comedy revolves around his own experiences in life, mostly as a child, which means that writing an autobiography that doesn’t simply recycle all of his material must’ve been a nightmare for him. To his credit, he manages to find a series of entirely new anecdotes to reveal to the reader, one after another, over the course of a light but entertaining book. At the same time, he never gives us any glimpse of the man behind the jokes, and is careful not to say anything which will lose any members of his passionate fanbase. If someone is a fan of Peter Kay and they pick up this book, they will be happy with it.

If you are not a particularly big fan of the Bolton lad already, then you’re going to have some issues with the story. My personal belief is that he recycles nostalgia as a way of fooling his audience into thinking that he’s revealing anything when he does stand-up. You may think that you are getting a full package from Kay, but there is a far more ambitious man at work than you he wants to let on. In the book, he pulls this trick all the time. Whenever he gets the chance to drop in a reference to an old TV show or comedian, he does it, and at the same time almost completely avoids making any reference to his personal life. We get instead a series of anecdotes which follow one another in roughly chronological fashion, fitted inside a framing sequence where he attempts to pass his driving test. These sections, which bookend the story, don’t really give us any insight into Kay at all, and focus instead on the failings of his various instructors. Here, as will happen often throughout the book, Kay makes himself the straight man to someone else, and therefore pushes the reader away.

The book reads as you’d expect from Kay, but his life turns out to have been frustratingly normal. The best chapter in the book by far is the penultimate one, where the twenty-something Kay finally tries his hand at stand-up comedy. The rest of the book chronicles his varying dead-end jobs as a teenager, as he moves from being a shop assistant to a cleaner in a bingo-hall and later a cinema usher. It’s during these chapters that Kay starts to finally warm up to his subject, and gives us a more detailed look at his surroundings. Again, we are given nothing of himself apart from the occasional glimpse, but Kay’s keen eye for details – so essential in his stand-up – keeps things ticking over. The various characters who walk into his life are vividly described, from the camp bingo-caller who tries to persuade his co-workers to “climb the rungs of the career ladder” until they can become bingo-callers themselves, to the stern and malicious boss at a cash-and-carry he works for. Each of these people is instantly recognisable and has a distinct voice, and stand out far more than Kay himself.

The anecdotes which comprise almost the entire book range from the entertaining (the most entertaining of the book sees him walk into a robbery. When told to “get down” by the robbers; Kay replies “you want me to dance?”) to the everyday. More often than not, the stories revolve around other people, leaving Kay again as the straight-man. His style of writing means that this is not too painful to read, although his tone is filled with odd little tics which distract from the stories. More than once he stops to explain some of the simpler jokes, presumably to justify the fact that he’s a comedian, and on a few annoying occasions he refers back to himself as he writes the book. These little habits aren’t too bad at first, but as he repeats them they begin to feel tired. His use of culture references certainly grates very quickly, with tangents and paragraphs about the most inane things taking up space. The most annoying thing is the glacial pace at which he moves.

It takes the entire book to reach the point where he finally decides to become a stand-up. Up until then we get to hear stories from his school (run by strict nuns whom he rebelled against – this would be one of the first signs of his future career, but he doesn’t go into any psychological depths as he tells it) through to teenage years spent in dead-end jobs. We get no further than this, and the only time he does anything different with the narrative is the one chapter he dedicates to University. Kay shows his ambition by stating that he knew he needed to go, but then shrugs off any insight and starts talking about scotch eggs instead. The chapter is revealing, but not in the way Kay intends it to be, painting him as a homesick flake who can’t decide on how to live his future. There is no talk of women, no hint of sex or drugs or scandal. It seems that he’s lived a very simple, happy childhood, which is good for him but dull for us. Scandal is what makes these sort of books work.

The penultimate chapter serves as a taster for the inevitable sequel, which will hopefully finally give us some sort of light on Peter Kay himself. The chapter, in which he takes part in a stand-up competition judged by his future co-writer on “Phoenix Nights” Dave Spikey, sees Kay speaking honestly about his performing fright backstage. The young comedian jettisons all his written jokes in favour of a more honest stand-up routine told simply and without any notes. It’s a risky, daring gambit which may or may not help him win (and given that he turns out to be up against a young Johnny Vegas, he needs all the help he can get), but it shows a true fighting spirit which is admirable and fascinating. If only this book had been so open and daring, it would’ve been a much more interesting read.

**/5.