The years after Snow White left the forest to marry the Prince proved to be difficult for the seven dwarfs.
Speaking at their annual meeting, Doc identified two clear threats to the mine’s future. First was the obvious demographic time bomb: all of the dwarfs were ageing, male and childless. Secondly, production was suffering from the fact that only three of the seven dwarfs – Happy, Grumpy and Doc – were actively working regularly. Sleepy was often absent on account of his chronic lethargy, Sneezy was almost perpetually off sick. Dopey, meanwhile, frequently simply forgot to turn up for work. Bashful suffered such from such chronically low self-esteem that he could rarely be dragged out of his room.
In addition to a long-term suggestion that in future, dwarfs be given more promising names (Doc’s own name was conveniently vocational, but what chance had Dopey ever stood?), Doc proposed a recruitment…
Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) is a straight-laced sort of chap. “Socks before or after trousers, but never socks before pants, that’s the rule,” we hear him thinking in the first episode. “Makes a man look scary, like a chicken.” Later, he eats some toast: “Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown is savoury, white’s the treat. Of course, I’m the one who’s laughing because I actually love brown toast!”
For all this sweetness, Mark can be weird and quite history-obsessed, sometimes constructing strange analogies to explain his relationships with women.”Sophie is the one. Toni is Russia: Vast, mysterious, unconquerable.,” he reasons. “Sophie is Poland: Manageable… won’t put up too much of a fight.” He is a loans manager, boring, neurotic, anal, and as the above indicates, obsessed with his work colleague, Sophie (Olivia Colman).
His flatmate, old Uni friend, Jeremy (Robert Webb) is a very different character: jobless, vain…
If you studied English at secondary school during the 1990s, there is every possibility you will remember reading the book, Empty World, by John Christopher.
The book tells of a disease which originates in Asia before rapidly spreading across the world and devastating the global population. Although published in 1977, with the world currently seeking to combat the spread of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic, the book obviously has plenty of resonance to anyone reading it in 2020.
The novella focuses on a teenaged boy, Neil Miller. Neil is living with his elderly parents after having been orphaned in a road accident when he first begins to hear news reports of a new mysterious disease coming out of India. Initially, just a minor story chuntering away in the background, concern rises as the ‘Calcutta Plague’ spreads further and further across the world. Soon there are rumours it has arrived in Britain…
Just after he appeared in The IT Crowd but before he started appearing in TV’s What We Do In The Shadows, Matt Berry played jobbing actor Stephen Toast in this enjoyably zany Channel 4 sitcom written by Father Ted co-creator, Arthur Mathews and Berry himself. Although the third and most recent series ended in 2015, it is rumoured to be back soon.
Arrogant, humourless and vain, Stephen Toast is a man totally convinced of his own genius. Pompous, clearly lacking in any talent and totally out of touch (he has never heard of ten-pin-bowling or Benedict Cumberbatch), Toast is nevertheless unafraid to take any job going, a tendency which along with his perpetual womanising, often lands him in deep water.
The first series sees him constantly castigated for performing in the worst play in the world on a nightly basis. He also ends up working with a vicious director notorious…
Just after he appeared in The IT Crowd but before he started appearing in TV’s What We Do In The Shadows, Matt Berry played jobbing actor Stephen Toast in this enjoyably zany Channel 4 sitcom written by Father Ted co-creator, Arthur Mathews and Berry himself. Although the third and most recent series ended in 2015, it is rumoured to be back soon.
Arrogant, humourless and vain, Stephen Toast is a man totally convinced of his own genius. Pompous, clearly lacking in any talent and totally out of touch (he has never heard of ten-pin-bowling or Benedict Cumberbatch), Toast is nevertheless unafraid to take any job going, a tendency which along with his perpetual womanising, often lands him in deep water.
The first series sees him constantly castigated for performing in the worst play in the world on a nightly basis. He also ends up working with a vicious director notorious for murdering uncooperative actors on set, appearing in a dubious film funded by a wealthy Arab businessman intent on destroying the Duke of Edinburgh, briefly being buried alive and very nearly being assassinated by musical star, Michael Ball after refusing to pay a gambling debt owed to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
And then there are the voice overs. Like Berry himself, Toast is happy to lend his unique voice to all manner of commercial endeavours. These include, reading out the names of every place name in the UK for use on a sat-nav system, recording phrases to be used on a military submarine (including “fire the nuclear weapons!”), saying “YES!” over and over again with increased vigour for an unspecified reason and providing the dubbing for an all-male pornographic film. These sequences, always featuring the line, “Yes! I can hear you Clem Fandango!” usually occur at the start of each episode and are often the funniest bits in it.
Berry is great and is backed by a fine supporting cast. Doon Mackichan is excellent as Toast’s long suffering agent, Jane Plough (pronounced ‘pluff’) while Robert Bathhurst plays Ed, Toast’s amiable but perverted landlord, living off royalties and permanently wearing a dressing gown. That’s not to mention the impressive range of cameos (Brian Blessed, Jon Hamm, Amanda Donohoe), other rising comedy stars (Morgana Robinson, Tim Downie, Tracy-Ann Oberman) and Toast’s nemesis, Ray Purchase (Harry Peacock), whose wife Toast is openly shagging.
Toast of London is not a show afraid to deploy a silly name (Ken Suggestion, Jenny Spasm and Dinky Frinkbuster are just three) or to bend reality for it’s own purposes (does the Globe Theatre still exist? Is Toast old enough to have been an adult in 1969? Is Bob Monkhouse still alive and married to a zombie?). It is often very silly indeed, making Berry’s usually melancholy musical intervals somewhat out of place.
If you studied English at secondary school during the 1990s, there is every possibility you will remember reading the book, Empty World, by John Christopher.
The book tells of a disease which originates in Asia before rapidly spreading across the world and devastating the global population. Although published in 1977, the book obviously has plenty of resonance to anyone reading in 2020 as the world struggles to tackle the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
The novella focuses on a teenaged boy, Neil Miller. Neil is living with his elderly parents after having been orphaned in a road accident when he first begins to hear news reports of a new mysterious disease coming out of India. Initially, just a minor story chuntering away in the background, concern rises as the news coverage gradually reveals that the ‘Calcutta Plague’ spreads further and further across the world. Soon there are rumours it has arrived in Britain. Neil’s grandfather is old enough to remember the Second World War. He suggests spreading rumours should be made into a punishable offence again, as it was then.
Soon the Calcutta Plague’s presence in Britain is beyond doubt. One of Neil’s elderly teachers succumbs to it, as do both his grandparents. The disease takes the form of a fever, before generating symptoms which appear to emulate a very rapid version of the ageing process. This is not very similar to COVID-19 at all, although the fictional plague does attack older people first. Eventually, it becomes clear that it is infecting pretty much everyone including some children Neil knows of his own age (fifteen) and younger. This resembles the progress of COVID-19 in some respects. The elderly are undoubtedly being hit harder by the virus although contrary to early rumour, children can get it badly and die from it too.
The key difference, however, is that while the vast, overwhelming majority of people who get COVID-19 survive, with the exception of a few random people like Neil who get the initial fever but subsequently seem to be immune, the fictional Calcutta Plague kills anyone who gets it. As the title of the book suggests, the story is essentially apocalyptic. Neil finds himself roaming or driving down completely empty streets, looting empty shops and battling an inevitable brief explosion in the rat population, the disease having killed nearly every human on the Earth.
As terrible as the current COVID-19 pandemic is, we should be grateful it is not quite as bad as that.
Spaced is the story of Tim and Daisy, two young people in need of somewhere to live.
Daisy is a frustrated writer, keen to escape life in a squat. Tim is a small-time cartoonist who has been forced to move out after discovering his girlfriend has been having an affair with his best friend.
Together they hatch a plan. Despite not being a couple or even friends really (they have met by chance in a café), having spied a reasonably priced flat to rent advertised as being only available to “professional couples only,” they decide to present themselves as a happily married couple to the apartment’s landlady.
This in essence is the premise of Spaced. Although as Tim himself would say, “it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
Spaced ran for two series on Channel 4 in 1999 and 2001 and proved the perfect calling card for its two writers…
Jen, Roy and Maurice make up ‘the IT Crowd,’ the IT support team located in the basement of a large London corporation. Jen (Katherine Parkinson), is the boss. Hopelessly out of her depth having bluffed her way into a job she knows nothing about, she is even unsure how to pronounce the word, ‘computers’ correctly. Roy (Chris O’Dowd), meanwhile, is nice but lazy. He tends to answer every IT enquiry with the question, “Have you tried switching it off and on again?” Finally, there’s Maurice Moss (Richard Ayoade), an intelligent geek.
As with Graham Linehan’s other sitcoms, Father Ted and Black Books, The IT Crowd’s main characters arguably adhere to a comedy formula: an inept boss who would rather be somewhere else (Ted Crilly, Bernard Black, Jen), an amiable subordinate (Dougal, Fran, Roy) and a weirdo (Father Jack, Manny, Moss). But if it is a formula, it’s pretty loose: none…
I’m Alan Partridge (2002), Mid Morning Matters With Alan Partridge (2010-2016), This Time With Alan Partridge (2019- )
Steve Coogans Alan Partridge with Jennie played by Susannah Fielding. Photograph: BBC/Baby Cow/Colin Hutton
Like the great man himself, Norwich’s finest broadcaster makes a slightly awkward appearance on any best 21st sitcom century list, partly because many of his finest offerings occurred well before this millennium began (he first appeared on BBC Radio 4 in 1991) but also because he has switched formats so many times. Happily, whether accidentally outing his interviewer during an ‘Anglian Lives’ interview, berating his co-host ‘Sidekick Simon’ (Tim Key) on North Norfolk’s Mid Morning Matters, attempting to flirt with fellow presenter Jennie (Susannah Fielding) on The One Show-like This Time or asking the questions that matter (“just why did Herbie go bananas?”), Alan has remained as consistently a brilliant comedy creation as Alan the presenter…
Despite a surprisingly funky theme tune and title sequence, Robert Popper’s long running sitcom works on a deceptively simple premise: a family of four, Martin, Jackie and their two unmarried grown-up sons, Adam and Jonny, meet up for their regular Friday evening meal.
Dad Martin (Paul Ritter) is the most eccentric of the four; endlessly taking off his shirt (“so bloody hot!”), recycling the same lame jokes (“a lovely bit of squirrel, love!”), reacting with confusion and terror if anyone attempts to ‘high five’ him (“Jesus Christ!”) or hiding from his wife, Jackie (Tamsin Greig). Although in their twenties, the sons (Inbetweeners’ star Simon Bird and Ton Rosenthal from Plebs) revert to their childhood selves whenever they visit, putting salt in each other’s drinks or feuding over such trifles as the possession of a childhood cuddly toy.
The meal is also reliably interrupted by oddball neighbour Jim (Greig’s old Green…
“Look! Up there in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it plane? No, it’s…er…well, I’m not sure who it is actually. Do you know?”
It’s true: you won’t see any superheroes you recognise in this illustrated guide to drawing comics. Though undeniably superhero-orientated – the guide begins by encouraging the reader to draw basic cartoon images before instilling in them the techniques necessary to draw and create images in the familiar superhero comic style – the book does not feature any established characters from either the Marvel or DC universes.
Your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman is thus not here: he has presumably moved to another neighbourhood. The X-Men have gone ex-directory. Instead, we get a bunch of superheroes who are in no need for secret identities. They are already completely unknown.
But this is not to disparage this book. For one thing, the artwork throughout is consistently excellent. The book’s creators have conjured up a plethora of characters who not only look good but bear no real resemblance to any existing characters. There are no Incredible Bulks or Superbmen to be found here.
More importantly, the book does what it’s supposed to do, guiding the reader step by step through the stages necessary to achieve the level of comic book artist excellence.
Perhaps you won’t get all the way there? Well, never mind. It’s good fun and as much of the world continues to endure an enforced period of social distancing until the COVID-19 outbreak is over, there are certainly worse things you could be doing that this.
Besides: if you really do want to draw Doctor Strange, Thor, Wonder Woman, Black Widow or Batman, nobody’s stopping you getting some practice in by attempting to recreate their adventures by sketching some images inspired by one of their comics.
But if you want to do it well, you’ll probably want to look at this book first.
The Art of Comic Book Drawing. Published by: Quarto. Maury Aaseng, Bob Berry, Jim Campbell, Dana Muise, Joe Oesterle. Out: now.
Seemingly happily married with a nice house and two children, Adam Price (Richard Armitage) has a good life. Or at least, he thinks he does. That’s until ‘the stranger’ (Hannah John-Kamen) turns up.
One day, while he’s watching one of his kids play football, a young woman in a baseball cap approaches him and starts to make troubling and damaging accusations about his wife (Dervla Kirwan). Upsetting though this is, the stranger’s allegations cannot be easily dismissed. She clearly has insider knowledge and her claims seem to have the ring of truth about them. What should Adam do?
This is just the starting point for Netflix’s British-set crime drama, The Stranger which is based on US author Harlan Coben’s 2015 novel. And while never hard to follow, there’s a lot going on in this intensely plotted, incredibly gripping thriller.
Spaced is the story of Tim and Daisy, two young people in need of somewhere to live.
Daisy is a frustrated writer, keen to escape life in a squat. Tim is a small-time cartoonist who has been forced to move out after discovering his girlfriend has been having an affair with his best friend.
Together they hatch a plan. Despite not being a couple or even friends really (they have met by chance in a café), having spied a reasonably priced flat to rent advertised as being only available to “professional couples only,” they decide to present themselves as a happily married couple to the apartment’s landlady.
This in essence is the premise of Spaced. Although as Tim himself would say, “it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
Spaced ran for two series on Channel 4 in 1999 and 2001 and proved the perfect calling card for its two writers and stars, Simon Pegg (Tim) and Jessica Stevenson (now Jessica Hynes, who plays Daisy) with the show’s unseen force, the hugely talented director, Edgar Wright also making an impact.
Straddling the millennia, technically only the second of the two series is a 21st century sitcom and thus eligible for this list. But who cares? Both series are great anyway, for a number of reasons…
Firstly, whether its Tim railing against the evils of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (a film which Peter Serafinowicz who plays his hated love rival, Duane Benzie actually features in), Daisy attempting to write her masterpiece to the theme from Murder She Wrote, or Wright skilfully evoking memories of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Spaced is packed to the brim with clever popular culture references.
Secondly, many of the episodes are masterpieces in their own right. Tim and his war-obsessed friend Mike played paintball, long before the guys on Peep Show or US shows like Big Bang Theory and Community did it. Another episode skilfully turns the TV show, Robot Wars into a real life conflict while ‘Gone’ sees the stars engaged in an ingenious mimed gun battle governed by ‘masculine telepathy’ at the end of a drunken night out. And that’s not to mention the celebrated Epiphanies episode in which Tim’s odd friend Wheels (Michael Smiley) takes the gang clubbing.
Then, there’s the brilliant supporting cast. Pegg’s real life best friend and flatmate, the then unknown Nick Frost plays Tim’s war-obsessed pal, Mike, a man once expelled from the Territorial Army for “stealing a tank and attempting to invade Paris”. Or Brian (Friday Night Dinner’s Mark Heap) an eccentric artist who has an ‘arrangement’ with landlady, Marsha (Julia Deakin). There’s also a supporting cast which includes a whole host of rising comedy stars including David Walliams, Paul Kaye, Bill Bailey and Ricky Gervais.
But finally there’s the best reason of all: Spaced is likeable, endless quotable, highly watchable and very, very funny.
The years after Snow White left the forest to marry the Prince proved to be difficult for the seven dwarfs.
Chris Hallam's World View 