Podlaughs: Comedy podcast roundup
If you fancy a laugh, try scrolling through the iTunes directory for a few minutes for a comedy podcast. Although five of the top 10 on the iTunes ‘Today’s Top Podcasts’ purport to represent the comedy genre, one of the very few genuinely funny shows on that chart is The Onion’s Radio News, the podcast of satirical website The Onion, ‘America’s Finest News Source’. You can pick up shows from the archives here, or download them through iTunes.
Not to be confused with The Onion Radio News, Nobody Likes Onions’ 70th podcast was entitled ‘The C*nt Show’. The DG thinks that’s funny. “If the show was about onions, it would be pretty stupid. Lucky for you, it isn't.” NLO is classified as a comedy podcast, but it’s so much less. And even though it isn’t about onions, it does succeed in being utterly stupid. “The show is not for the politically correct or the weak at heart,” listeners are warned, but this is because the makers mistake profanity for humour. “Be prepared to put your baggage aside and laugh at anything and everything when you listen.” The chance, as they say, would be a fine thing; this is anarchy rather than comedy.
The best of the Chris Moyles show from BBC Radio 1 provides weekly “highlights” from this radio DJ’s breakfast show. And that’s exactly what you get: a radio show. It’s like listening to a slightly more upmarket version of the Kim and Corbett show. Remember all those fake phone-ins people like Noel Edmonds and Kenny Everett used to broadcast in the 1970s? They were vaguely funny then but they aren’t any more — unless one of the involved parties doesn’t actually realise it’s a fake. All of which rather makes me wonder what Princess Bunny was on about here:
Chris Burke’s ‘A Silly Sodcast’ is simply puerile and any potential for comedy is destroyed by annoying canned laughter. The show l listened to, ‘A turd in the hand’ (a “sketch about an interview. This man has a very special talent!”), belonged so firmly to the genre of schoolboy humour that I thought it best to try it out on 11-year-old Joe. Being as it partially involved farting it did raise sporadic laughs, but Joe’s final verdict was a bored “Kind of dumb”. It was the toilet humour equivalent of Crackerjack.
Britpod, which bills itself as providing “a unique look at the world through the eyes of some Brits, a Texan and a Canuck”, is curiously dominated by American accents. Five minutes in, there was still no prospect of a laugh. Indeed, this one hour, 34-minute show ground its way into me like Chinese water torture without raising so much as a cheery grimace. The biggest problem seems to be that these people vainly believe they’re funny and are trying very hard to prove it. The Gervais podcast is unscripted, makes no pretence of even being comedy, and yet by the end of it your face is hurting. Britpod merely gave me a headache. “There's an awful lot of shit out there people...” You said it, guys.
Hamish & Andy are consistently in the top five of the iTunes podcast charts, which seems odd, since it’s an Australian show (perhaps iTunes is smart enough to regionalise its chart listings as well as its music stores), and H&A certainly don’t deserve it on the strength of their content, which failed in its attempt at the difficult-to-carry-off musical parody. The theme of the show I listened to was the national anthems played at the Commonwealth Games (which shows how long it’s taken me to compile this roundup). Hamish & Andy’s humour is apparently contingent upon being an Australian and seems to be caught in a time warp; fans of Benny Hill might once have found it amusing.
Drink ’til We’re Funny is a funny name, but the humour, shall we say, seems designed for those who “shop around the corner”. The collaborative effort of Justin, Jon and Deena, it weekly pokes fun at everyday life without, they claim, “getting preachy or political”. Two gay men and one straight woman who aim to specialise in making the workday pass faster might have the right idea, but it only passes faster because you’ve fallen asleep while listening to it.
Tim Henson’s Distorted View Daily is an American show that’s uncompromisingly self-referencing. It purports to be about bizarre stories, erotica, definitions of twisted sex acts and “other audiophonic oddities”. Well again, laughing at yourself is fine, as long as what you’re laughing at is actually funny. In this case, it isn’t. It’s a nice looking website, but the implicit message of the podcast’s disclaimer, “Consider yourself warned. If you don't have a dark sense of humour or [you’re] unwilling to check your political correctness at the door, leave now!”, takes liberties. If you don’t wet your pants listening to this stuff, they’re clearly saying, it’s because you don’t have a sense of humour or you’re uptight. The fact is, Tim Henson is scatological rather than funny.
In these strange days in which we live, an unemployed former radio producer with a comprehensive school education is a star and a best-selling author: Karl Pilkington is writing a book for a respectable imprint (it’s already 739 in Amazon UK’s sales rank and it hasn’t even been published yet). Karl’s sidekick is the Big Daddy of podcast comedy, and Ricky Gervais now has six new episodes out as an Audible podcast for US$6.95. He’s selling the complete season one (which was free when first released, in case you’ve just returned from Mars), for US$4.95. But if you still can’t stomach forking out cash for something that should be paid for by corporate sponsorship, good luck finding another podcast that’s as amusing.
Here’s my advice to the podmedians: burn the script and stop pretending you’re funny. If you can raise a laugh and you’re serious about improvising, just do it. And if you’re going to rely on sketches, canned laughter and faked phone-ins, they’d better be good. Laughs are easy, some naïve types have been heard to say, but there’s still little to support that hypothesis in the potty world of the podcast.
Today’s Top Podcasts (Source: iTunes, 18/04/06)
1. The Ricky Gervais Podcast (video)
2. Hamish and Andy
3. triple j Raw Comedy
4. Tony Martin Get This
5. Tiki Bar TV (video)
6. The Cage
7. Ask A Ninja
8. Strong Bad Emails & More
9. The Matt And Jo Show
10. Joe Cartoon
Not to be confused with The Onion Radio News, Nobody Likes Onions’ 70th podcast was entitled ‘The C*nt Show’. The DG thinks that’s funny. “If the show was about onions, it would be pretty stupid. Lucky for you, it isn't.” NLO is classified as a comedy podcast, but it’s so much less. And even though it isn’t about onions, it does succeed in being utterly stupid. “The show is not for the politically correct or the weak at heart,” listeners are warned, but this is because the makers mistake profanity for humour. “Be prepared to put your baggage aside and laugh at anything and everything when you listen.” The chance, as they say, would be a fine thing; this is anarchy rather than comedy.
The best of the Chris Moyles show from BBC Radio 1 provides weekly “highlights” from this radio DJ’s breakfast show. And that’s exactly what you get: a radio show. It’s like listening to a slightly more upmarket version of the Kim and Corbett show. Remember all those fake phone-ins people like Noel Edmonds and Kenny Everett used to broadcast in the 1970s? They were vaguely funny then but they aren’t any more — unless one of the involved parties doesn’t actually realise it’s a fake. All of which rather makes me wonder what Princess Bunny was on about here:
“So I know this is like heresy, but I just don't think the Ricky Gervais podcast is all that funny. There's amusing bits here and there, but overall, it's just like some regular guys sitting around talking to each other being stupid. It's basically like the Chris Moyles show without music or celebrity guests. And to be honest, I think Chris Moyles’ show is funnier. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, Ricky Gervais is a funnier man than Moyles. The Office > Tedious Link, not even a contest. But as far as who I'd rather listen to sitting in a studio BSing with production assistants? Chris, all the way.”Heresy, no. Nonsense, yes. Gervais and Merchant might spend a lot of time bullshitting with Mr Pilkington, but at least it’s something new; not a trip down Memory Lane to a Saturday morning in 1974. What laughter there is in Moyles’ shows is forced through a filter of self-obsessed, Brit-celebrity-centric imperatives, so forget Moyles unless you’re a Brit TV couch potato and you read piles of Brit gossip mags. It’s all so calculatingly old-fashioned; precisely not what Gervais has shown the podcast to be about: utterly pointless and yet funny.
Chris Burke’s ‘A Silly Sodcast’ is simply puerile and any potential for comedy is destroyed by annoying canned laughter. The show l listened to, ‘A turd in the hand’ (a “sketch about an interview. This man has a very special talent!”), belonged so firmly to the genre of schoolboy humour that I thought it best to try it out on 11-year-old Joe. Being as it partially involved farting it did raise sporadic laughs, but Joe’s final verdict was a bored “Kind of dumb”. It was the toilet humour equivalent of Crackerjack.
Britpod, which bills itself as providing “a unique look at the world through the eyes of some Brits, a Texan and a Canuck”, is curiously dominated by American accents. Five minutes in, there was still no prospect of a laugh. Indeed, this one hour, 34-minute show ground its way into me like Chinese water torture without raising so much as a cheery grimace. The biggest problem seems to be that these people vainly believe they’re funny and are trying very hard to prove it. The Gervais podcast is unscripted, makes no pretence of even being comedy, and yet by the end of it your face is hurting. Britpod merely gave me a headache. “There's an awful lot of shit out there people...” You said it, guys.
Hamish & Andy are consistently in the top five of the iTunes podcast charts, which seems odd, since it’s an Australian show (perhaps iTunes is smart enough to regionalise its chart listings as well as its music stores), and H&A certainly don’t deserve it on the strength of their content, which failed in its attempt at the difficult-to-carry-off musical parody. The theme of the show I listened to was the national anthems played at the Commonwealth Games (which shows how long it’s taken me to compile this roundup). Hamish & Andy’s humour is apparently contingent upon being an Australian and seems to be caught in a time warp; fans of Benny Hill might once have found it amusing.
Drink ’til We’re Funny is a funny name, but the humour, shall we say, seems designed for those who “shop around the corner”. The collaborative effort of Justin, Jon and Deena, it weekly pokes fun at everyday life without, they claim, “getting preachy or political”. Two gay men and one straight woman who aim to specialise in making the workday pass faster might have the right idea, but it only passes faster because you’ve fallen asleep while listening to it.
Tim Henson’s Distorted View Daily is an American show that’s uncompromisingly self-referencing. It purports to be about bizarre stories, erotica, definitions of twisted sex acts and “other audiophonic oddities”. Well again, laughing at yourself is fine, as long as what you’re laughing at is actually funny. In this case, it isn’t. It’s a nice looking website, but the implicit message of the podcast’s disclaimer, “Consider yourself warned. If you don't have a dark sense of humour or [you’re] unwilling to check your political correctness at the door, leave now!”, takes liberties. If you don’t wet your pants listening to this stuff, they’re clearly saying, it’s because you don’t have a sense of humour or you’re uptight. The fact is, Tim Henson is scatological rather than funny.
In these strange days in which we live, an unemployed former radio producer with a comprehensive school education is a star and a best-selling author: Karl Pilkington is writing a book for a respectable imprint (it’s already 739 in Amazon UK’s sales rank and it hasn’t even been published yet). Karl’s sidekick is the Big Daddy of podcast comedy, and Ricky Gervais now has six new episodes out as an Audible podcast for US$6.95. He’s selling the complete season one (which was free when first released, in case you’ve just returned from Mars), for US$4.95. But if you still can’t stomach forking out cash for something that should be paid for by corporate sponsorship, good luck finding another podcast that’s as amusing.
Here’s my advice to the podmedians: burn the script and stop pretending you’re funny. If you can raise a laugh and you’re serious about improvising, just do it. And if you’re going to rely on sketches, canned laughter and faked phone-ins, they’d better be good. Laughs are easy, some naïve types have been heard to say, but there’s still little to support that hypothesis in the potty world of the podcast.
Today’s Top Podcasts (Source: iTunes, 18/04/06)
1. The Ricky Gervais Podcast (video)
2. Hamish and Andy
3. triple j Raw Comedy
4. Tony Martin Get This
5. Tiki Bar TV (video)
6. The Cage
7. Ask A Ninja
8. Strong Bad Emails & More
9. The Matt And Jo Show
10. Joe Cartoon
2 Comments:
Sort of like finding a decent Kiwi-written sitcom or even a comedy sketch show on telly these days—possible, but it will require patience. Well, when Eating Media Lunch is not in season, anyway.
Quite right, Jack. I thought I might provide a NetGuide-style service where I review podcasts on different subjects each month. The drawback, of course, is that I have to wade through all the dross to find the diamonds. I'm not saying there are no good comedy casts out there, just that, apart from Gervais, I haven't found them yet. Anyone see RG on Jon Stewart's 'The Daily Show' on C4 last night? The man's a natural.
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