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I can see why Pin's pal felt we’re meant to be laughing at Marenghi – the show was meant never to have been shown in the 80s, and Dean and Garth’s constant claims about it being dangerous etc seem to suggest a level of delusion which it’s hard NOT to laugh at.
I know that it’s meant to have been shelved by C4 in the 80s, and I’ve come across a lot of people categorically stating it’s a spoof of 80s TV (not least at the Cook’d and Bomb’d ‘comedy chat’ forum , where about 12 pages of often inadvertently amusing posts have emerged in reaction to the show), but to my mind it’s more like a spoof of bad TV full stop – or, possibly, a joke in that Marenghi’s supposed to have genuinely believed that this show was acceptable (or better) TV when he made it in the 80s.
Which is, again, more of a laugh at his expense than at a specific decade’s TV output. But I suspect it’s a combination of mocking bad TV shows (of whatever vintage) and mocking the character. And of course aiming to mock bad TV shows makes for a crafty defence if people say it’s a bad show…
I enjoyed it quite a lot, some weeks more than others, but always made a point of watching it, and there was always something in there to amuse. The music was oddly good, I thought (particularly the song last night; I really liked the fact that the ‘transition’ line back to reality about opening the door was totally clumsy – the whole thing felt like a Baywatch sequence), and the little conceits - like the ad-break captions and the closing ‘… in association with Dean Learner’ line being hurried to fit in – were very well done.
Certainly better than a lot of the bilge that's to be found in the glass bucket most nights of the week. |
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