I apologise, because you if you like to laugh, you should be watching it. You’ll need to be an American or able to convince the internet you are one to watch it, but it’s a great show that seems to find a happy medium between the three camera and single camera sitcoms.

Technically, it’s a single camera sitcom, but unlike most single camera shows of the last decade, it lacks decadence and is written with the economy of a three camera sitcom.

As great as Arrested Development was, the reason it failed was because it was too expensive per episode. The massive cast, the various locations and numerous outside shoots all added up. Same with My Name Is Earl. Better Off Ted feels like it’s learnt from those mistakes (and not just because Portia Rossi’s in the show too).

It’s a comedy about production development centred around a company called Veridian Dynamic who make anything and everything. Its level of absurdity calls to mind The I.T. Crowd and Dilbert somewhat, though the RPG nerds among you will probably see it as the rightful heir of the R&D gags from Paranoia.

The economy of the writing lies in that they tend to use only a few regular sets per episode (two offices, a meeting room and a lab), few-to-none outside scenes, and there are only 5-6 characters (the daughter doesn’t appear every episode).

Something else I’ve noted is that while they’ll use the 21st century’s favourite gag of “You remember the time…” they’ll tend to let the dialogue do the lifting on the gag, rather than cut away to flashback. And having seen cutaway gags far too often in the last 10-20 years, it’s refreshing to let the dialogue do the work.

Which is not to say it’s all dialogue heavy, there’s plenty of physical and prop gags, but they are in service of episode or character, rather than throwaway stuff put in to pad an unfunny story.

Merry Chimpy Week!

I’d missed this last year, so let’s open with the chimpiest song to haunt my days and nights over the last year.

Following the return of the show on the BBC last week, I went back and watched the first series again. The first thing that strikes you is how much more straight it’s played compared to what follows. Of course at the time it still seemed pretty out of the ordinary, but the questions are much more sensible than they ended up, and the sketch show element isn’t present yet.

The big changing point feels like the Christmas episode, with the incredibly over the top musical opening that felt like Big Night Out, but with a Two Ronnies budget, Vic and Bob’s bizarre variety dreams made flesh. Then we get the clip round, where we see a clip from the “Roswell Incident”, a skit acted by Vic and Bob, rather than the archive footage they’d been using for the round up to this point.

The change is reflected in the credits, up until the Xmas episode, the show had a question researcher. With the Xmas episode’s new direction of just utter nonsense, that’s no longer needed. Also missing in the credits is Simon Ross (Jonathan’s brother) as “Format Consultant”. It’s now the show everyone remembers, pure Vic and Bob, guided by the hand of the Fast Show’s Charlie Higson as script supervisor.

Having a day off post-Ayacon so naturally I’m watching kids comedy shows on BBC2. Particularly struck by the sketch comedy version the popular Horrible Histories books. The episode that just aired closed with this skit, in which George I, George II, George III and George IV are portrayed as a boy band.

Between this and “Sorry, I’ve Got No Head” that I caught some of over Xmas, kids sketch comedy is probably much better right now than what passes for adult sketch comedy (Mitchell & Webb excluded, and that shares writers/performers with both these kids shows anyway).

Harenchi Gakuen Movie titles (1970)

Pro-Wres no Hoshi Aztecaser titles (1976)

Harenchi Gakuen TV titles (1971)

Ever since parody subs emerged a few years back I’d been hoping that Marvel would get round to doing something with this property. While I’d been hoping for a dub, with Stan Lee as narrator, it’s great to see it subtitled, and available for streaming on Marvel.com starting this week. New episode every Thursday. Presumably if it’s popular enough we might get a DVD/downloadable release.

I liked this a lot.

For a start it’s a format I’ve not seen in ages, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a US version.

For all intents and purposes this is like the shows Jasper Carrot and Victoria Wood had on the BBC when I was growing up. It’s a mix of stand-up and sketch (with some song and drawing/animation for added fun).

OK, in writing that I now realise I have seen a US version. Dave Chappelle of course had some notable success with that very format. But that felt more like a sketch show bookended by stand-up. Martin’s success here is the ever shifting delivery of his gags. You sense he’s not doing a sketch to explore that situation, but rather there is a gag that works better in a sketch than stand-up. And vice versa.

Martin’s appeal lies not so much as innovation, most of his gimmicks have clear precedents from Steven Wright deadpan one liners to Dave Gorman’s powerpoint stand-up. It’s his mastery of so many aspects that is his appeal. I was chuckling all the way through, only the cop sketch seemed a little weak, and even that had a strong finish that subverted the whole point of the sketch.

And it’s all tied together with the whimsical visuals his spots on the Daily Show had. Some might find it border on cutey preciousness, but whimsy is A-OK in my book.

Very promising start.