To celebrate 25 years of Channel 4, the channel decided to start this new series showing off the talents of some of Britain's fine actors and their skills in a popular genre. This one-off comedy episode of the series sees Rob Black (Rory Kinnear), an ordinary love songs compilation album arranger, talking to the audience and narrating his story of his ex-girlfriend Linsey (Miranda Raison) getting married to pop-star Duncan James, from boy-band Blue, and he is obviously not very pleased. The only people that understand his feelings, but obviously don't like him as much as Duncan from Blue, are his brother Rich (EastEnders' Nigel Harman, who I never realised was gay), and his sister Rebecca (Ingrid Oliver), and his friends Paul (Steve John Shepherd) and Laura (Ruth Bradley). When he gets an invite to the wedding, saying Plus One, he wants to prove he is not a complete loser, and possibly outshine the bride and groom by getting a beautiful date, and luckily Laura has contact with a gorgeous model working for a call-and-buy channel, Nicki (Laura Haddock). Their first date goes well, and he impresses her with his knowledge and predictions of what a woman's favourite love song is, and she takes him back to her place. But while preparing dinner, red hot chili peppers (which is the band singing her favourite song he finds out) managed to go down his pants and his penis is burning, so he is flicking water onto himself to relieve the agony, but ruins his chance of any further dates with Nicki when caught with his penis in her toothbrush mug of water. In the end he never got to go to the wedding, because when Rich is caught in a gay club, he accidentally sends the text mentioning "bum-raping" to Nicki, and he is arrested. This is a very good modern day comedy with a mix of the main character talking to the audience, misunderstandings and some good imaginations of the way things could be at the wedding in Rob's mind, with an appearances from Hollyoaks' Gemma Atkinson. A very good first one-off episode for a good comedy series for a good terrestrial television channel. Very good!
2 Reviews
Not as imaginative, clever or sharp as I had hoped but still funny and enjoyable
bob the moo28 November 2007
It has been some time since Rob Black was dumped by his girlfriend in favour of her new boyfriend, Duncan from Blue. He is now sleeping on his sisters sofa with all his possessions smelling of sewage (due to a pipe explosion) while she is endlessly happy and in love. When Rob gets an invitation to their wedding, he knows that he is only going to look like a failure compared to Duncan from Blue particularly when he is unable to fill the "plus one" part of the invitation he has received. Rob decides to find someone so stunning that everyone will be focused on him and his date.
The Comedy Showcase season on Channel 4 continued with this film which offered a nice concept at its core in combination with imaginative humour that would play on its unlikeliness to good effect. It does this from the start with some nice asides and imaginative moments involving the main character and Duncan (formerly of the pop group Blue). The start is strong and engaged me easily enough but it is as the short film tries to have a clear direction where it actually gets a bit weaker. As it heads down the direction involving the model (sorry, forget her name) then the film becomes much more about the comedy of errors that is there brief relationship and offers less room for clever asides.
What it turns into then is a sort of sketch whereby "simple" misunderstandings occur. These are funny enough but they are not quite as inspired as the film seems to hope and indeed the punch-line is far too obvious but yet is played out over more than a minute on screen. Duncan from Blue (as he is constantly referred to) was a clever bit of writing but could have been used a lot more and indeed could have been more central to the film. Kinnear is a fine lead and he plays the comedy really well alongside solid turns from Haddock, Bradley, Raison and others FHM regular Gemma Atkinson makes an appearance that is amusing and uses her for her "talents".
The material is not as sharp or as imaginative as I had hoped but it did produce a couple of laughs as well as general amusement throughout. It gets weaker as it goes on but, as it is only 25 minutes long, it doesn't have time to collapse even if the climax is the weakest part of it. A solid enough one-off comedy.
The Comedy Showcase season on Channel 4 continued with this film which offered a nice concept at its core in combination with imaginative humour that would play on its unlikeliness to good effect. It does this from the start with some nice asides and imaginative moments involving the main character and Duncan (formerly of the pop group Blue). The start is strong and engaged me easily enough but it is as the short film tries to have a clear direction where it actually gets a bit weaker. As it heads down the direction involving the model (sorry, forget her name) then the film becomes much more about the comedy of errors that is there brief relationship and offers less room for clever asides.
What it turns into then is a sort of sketch whereby "simple" misunderstandings occur. These are funny enough but they are not quite as inspired as the film seems to hope and indeed the punch-line is far too obvious but yet is played out over more than a minute on screen. Duncan from Blue (as he is constantly referred to) was a clever bit of writing but could have been used a lot more and indeed could have been more central to the film. Kinnear is a fine lead and he plays the comedy really well alongside solid turns from Haddock, Bradley, Raison and others FHM regular Gemma Atkinson makes an appearance that is amusing and uses her for her "talents".
The material is not as sharp or as imaginative as I had hoped but it did produce a couple of laughs as well as general amusement throughout. It gets weaker as it goes on but, as it is only 25 minutes long, it doesn't have time to collapse even if the climax is the weakest part of it. A solid enough one-off comedy.
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