Posts Tagged ‘slapstick’

The same procedure…?

I was chatting with a German friend over lunch, and the subject of the Germans’ love of English comedy came up. This in turn led to a discussion of the phenomenon that is Dinner for One. It’s essentially a recording of an 18-minute music hall sketch, performed in English by an English actor and actress. Never heard of it? If you’re a Brit, I’m not surprised – to the best of my knowledge it has never been shown on UK television. The odd thing about it is that it is amazingly popular in countries such as Germany, Denmark, Austria and Sweden. It is always shown in the original English, and rarely (if ever) dubbed or subtitled. Every New Year’s Eve in these countries and others, the sketch is broadcast – often several times over the evening so everyone gets a chance to see it. It is as much a part of the German New Year as vomiting in a shop doorway is to the English.

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A policeman’s lot is quite a gruesome one

Another slab of in-your-face comic genius from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and many of the usual suspects from Spaced.

The story – somewhat light though it may be in parts – is simple. A big-city cop gets injured and is shipped off to some backwater town to play out his days until retirement. Nick Angel (Pegg) has an impressive arrest record and a keen eye for laws being broken. It is only fitting, therefore, that his partner should be a bumbling country copper with a distinct preference for Cornetto ice cream over any actual police work.

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Copper-bottomed comedy

Messrs Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are fast becoming the benchmark for what it means to be funny – comic actor and writer Pegg first paired up with writer/director Wright for the sensational Spaced sit-com, and they have subsequently worked together on the marvellous ‘not with a bang but a belly-laugh’ zombie pastiche, Shaun of the Dead (2004).

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