Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

We’ve just got around to watching the first episode of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. I’ve been an off and on fan of Stewart Lee for a long time now — that is, “on” for Fist of Fun and Jerry Springer – The Opera, and “off” for pretty much everything else. It’s been 13 years (eep!) since FoF though, so I was interested to see what he was like now.

I felt like it didn’t start well when he used two of Simon Munnery’s jokes. To be fair, in the end credits it did say


Two Book Jokes
Simon Munnery

but the fact that he blatantly used them at all didn’t really sit right, and then the way that he didn’t deliver them anywhere near as good as Munnery made it worse.

There were also several long sequences which just weren’t that funny but were laboriously spun out. It felt like he was filling time. In the half hour episode I felt like there was at best 15 minutes of material.

But.

Of the material that was good, I really enjoyed it. It was classic Stewart Lee. In the likely mistaken belief that anyone reading this cares about my opinion, I will give the first episode 5/10 and will watch some more in the hope that he hits the mark a bit more often.

Update 2009-04-24: Having watched more episodes, he does still miss the mark quite a lot, and I do still find the repetitive thing a bit annoying, but there have been some real moments of genius and I’m glad I stuck with it. Hope you did too!

3 thoughts on “Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

  1. Incidentally which were the two Munnery jokes precisely? He was in the Radio 4 Satire Department sketch too.

    I understand what you mean regarding the “long sequences…laboriously spun out”, such as the, “You’ve probably seen them. The Rappers. On the Top of the Pops”, it did approach stretching point but I liked it all the same just for the sheer bloody mindedness. Heh.

    I’d give it 8/10 I think.

    I’ve written a mini review here, explaining why I’m just glad to have him back.

    1. One of them was “If you only ever read one book in your life.. I strongly recommend that you keep your mouth shut”. I don’t recall the other one now but it was right near the start.

  2. Thanks Andy. I can hear him saying that now you’ve mentioned it.

    I used to have the tv series he did years ago on the back of a truck, I think that was “Attention Scum”.

    Back to Lee, I thought yesterday’s episode was more of a 5/10. Saved only by the “Del Day” pastiche.

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