Here’s a maths problem that’s been troubling me: Take Graham Lineham (writer of Father Ted, Black Books and others) add Ash Atalla (producer of The Office) and multiply by a Chris Morris bit-part.
In normal circumstances this ought to be the comedic equivalent of the Theory of Relativity or Pythagoras’s Theorum (yes, I don’t know any others). In reality though, Channel 4’s The IT Crowd is more like the Travelling Wilburys or Real Madrid circa 2004 – an underachieving production notably less than the sum of its vaunted parts.
Obviously the show has the team behind it; Lineham alone is partly responsible for two of the best sitcoms ever. The situation is there, anyone who’s ever worked in an office must wonder where the guys who come up from the IT helpdesk actually dwell. The audience ought to be there, you can see from the many billboards that Channel 4 have put their might behind the show and sticking it in a Friday night primetime slot doesn’t help either.
The problem, and remember that for a comedy this is a pretty fundamental problem, is that the show is painfully unfunny. I really, really wanted to love The IT Crowd. The news that Peep Show is not to be re-commissioned has left a hole in Channel 4’s record for brilliant sitcoms. Unfortunately, Polyfilla wit this isn’t.
The cast don’t help much either. Roy, played by Chris O’Dowd is an inverse Bernard Black (Dylan Moran in Lineham’s Black Books). What the writers have missed though is that Bernard’s misanthropy was what made him so appealing, Roy just comes across as a happy-go-lucky nerd. Moss (Richard Ayoade – whose credentials include the brilliant Mighty Boosh and Nathan Barley) is a revisionist geek – the kind of caricature of loserdom you’d expect from 1950s high-school movies, or at least Eugene in Grease. We didn’t see anything this lazy in either Lineham or Atalla’s pervious works, so why should we expect it now. Finally, manager Jen’s stock-in-trade seems to be screaming loudly. A comedy technique last practised by Janet Leigh in Psycho, and we all know how funny that was.
Victoria Wood recently claimed that the success of The Office and The Royal Family has made that the traditional sitcom has become and endangered species, with anything set in a studio with a laughter track appearing too contrived. Well, good. If the choice is between Dinnerladies and Friends or Arrested Development and The Thick of It then we can appreciate that audiences have moved on from generic rent-a-gag fare that dominated the best part of three decades.
Disturbingly though I think she’s wrong. The dogged treatment of the aforementioned Peep Show and Arrested Development hints that audiences have got sick of the post-sitcom. Channel’s 4 brilliant new More4 seems to have given them licence to push any quality programming onto the outer reams of Freeview whilst using their terrestrial arm to aim squarely for the lowest common denominator (witness the abysmal Friday Night Project). BBC2 haven’t produced a sitcom of note since The Office.
The IT Crowd may be a small nail in sitcom’s coffin. But at least it’s better than Dancing On Ice ad infinitum.
The outro to one of the shows with Roy sitting on the toilet talking to his mother outside whilst recording a dating video, “Stop doing this, you’re always doing this, you’re making it go back in!” was hilarious.
Comment by Jimbo — February 13, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
Perhaps, but the main gag that ran through that entire episode was ‘isn’t it funny when people have shit on their heads?’. Good grief.
Comment by TV Willy — February 13, 2006 @ 10:03 pm
Yeah but you would with the ginger one. (Maybe the guy with the specs could watch?)
Comment by Dave — February 21, 2006 @ 3:45 pm