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Jeez...his new show is very....well very close to a lot of marks.

Iranian loose woman TV show :eek:

I turned it off after less than five minutes because it was fucking awful.

Tis not great.

Just watched it on 4od: It had its moments. Problem with the type of humour that Frankie Boyle does is that it works best when used as a series of acerbic comments rather than a monologue. Furthermore, the sketches were absolutely awful. So, please go back to Mock The Week Frankie!

I love Frankie Boyle - and you lasted longer than me.  It was beyond shit.

The canned laughter wound me up too.

Total rubbish - the sketches were the worst thing I have seen on tv, ever.

Yeah, massive shame.

God it was awful switched off half way through that crap knightrider thing!

The stand up bits had so many jokes i have heard him use before.  The Green Mile sketch was watchable but i felt embrassed for the bloke during the Knightrider shit.

Wont be watching again.

I think he is so funny but that was utter wank.

Those sketches were cringeworthy.

I think he's a cunt and didn't watch.....

Wow, these comments are so bad I'm just going to have to watch it :eek:

I Sky +'d it and watched it last night, I have to say its not the worst TV I have ever seen but its down there with it.

Utter crap, I like Frankie normally but he just seemed to go all out to shock and offend, it was not funny at all and I wont bother with watching the rest thats a certainty.

anyone know what the joke was he made about jordans son harvey?

yes.

Don't shoot the messenger.

I've thought that both episodes have had their moments. There has been the odd funny gag, but, as has been said, he has gone out to shock, whether its funny or not. The sketches, however, are abysmal.

is it wrong to find that a little bit funny!? He does like pushing those boundries!

Yes, its very fucking wrong. Its effectively suggesting paedophilia. As a parent yourself, surely you must find that in bad taste.

I think Channel 4 are going to find themselves in a world of hurt because they re-transmitted the whole episode unedited again yesterday despite Katie Price submitting a formal complaint to Ofcom.

I'm absolutely no fan of her or Andre, but having a disabled child myself, I completely understand her position.

And given Mr Boyle has history having had the stand-up row with the mother of a child with Down's Syndrome, I'd be quite happy to gag the jock cunt. Then sever his bollocks with a very blunt rusty knife......

I found it amusing... close to the bone, but it did make me both gasp and laugh at the same time

Well said. First of all, I don't actually think its funny. Second of all I don't think disabled children is really a funny subject. Thirdly, when you push boundaries, you're sometimes going to fuck up - at least have the good grace to apologise, learn and move on. Jonathan Ross is another cunt who has history taking the piss out of disabled children.
I don't have a disabled child so its nothing personal to me but being "cutting edge" does not remove your responsibilities in being a human being.

You know what you get from Frankie Boyle. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, he's a "shock comic", that's what he does and he has a massive following.

For what it's worth, Boyle is not my cup-of-tea.

When I saw him I was sat near these two women, Boyle was his usual offensive self throughout and they were roaring with laughter until he drifted into a topic which clearly affected their lives and they walked out  in outrage.

I only saw the first 5 mins of the first show, but it seems like Frankie Boyle is going down the lazy comedian route of confusing being offensive with being funny. Shock humour can be brilliant, but it doesn't mean that standing on stage and just saying vile things is automatically hilarious. It does require some effort.

He's scraping the bottom of the Jim Davidson / insert that other offensive comedian here barrel of comedy with this shit.

Agreed fB.

Shock comedy is brave but it's not easy.

I've been doing quite a lot of gigs recently and the shock comics tend to die a death because they're being lazy. I think they believe the "shock" is all they need.

Good post Ben. Boyle can and has been one of the best comedians around, but he's slipping towards being Bernard Manning esque.

I am in full agreement with you Rich and Ben, I see and work with a lot of up and coming comics and comedians and the shock value ones rarely manage it because it is such a fine line, when its done well its brilliant, but when its not done well (90% or more of the time) its pure lazy writing shit.

It's probably a step too far. But it did make me laugh..

"Over-rated passes to over paid, over paid to possible rapist, possible racist crosses to closet gay. Closet gay... GOOOOOOAL"

Spot on.

although i can see how jordan could get offended it was a joke.stuff that is meant as a joke should maybe be taken that way?

I think disability is a step to far( :doh:)when it comes to jokes.
Is making a thousand people laugh acceptable if 20 are really offended.....not for me it isn't.
But commercially it is....

I can see why this bit was amusing


But this?


If anyone can explain to me how this is considered 'a joke', please crack on because I'm clearly missing the humour in it......

Yeah, if some one told me that last joke down the pub I would actually be pretty embarassed.

The f**king bit i didnt find funny, it was the other one!
Like fB said, it seems Mr Boyle may have lost his way a little bit and the line has blurred between shock comedy and just being offensive.
I am of the view that a joke is a joke and should be seen that way. I agree that taking the piss out of a disabled child however is probably boarderline!

it's a joke.up to you whether you think it's funny or not,but should be taken as it's meant..

Mary Whitehouse would've melted :)

It's fine being a joke but it's actually very personal aswell isn't it. I can understand why she wouldn't be happy.

Can't stand the old tart myself, but she has done well for herself on limited resources, namely an inflatable chest However as my other half used to work with learning disabilities and having met lots of them my self I'm not finding it too funny. They are generally very caring lovable folk with a very sunny disposition and a strong personality that would put a lot of "normal" folk to shame

Ninja Edit: this ended up not really being a reply to leefer at all, but more of a general badly written set of thoughts on the subject, so it's not really directed at you leefs, your quote was just a starting point

I disagree. Taking advantage of an innocent party for cheap laughs (especially when it's not funny) isn't on, but tackling difficult subjects with comedy is important, if only to take a step back and look at the absurdity of things, horrible or not.

Take something we all take for granted like Blackadder Goes Forth. On the face of it making a sitcom about a war which cost the lives of so many people is pretty dark at best. With hindsight it's easy to forget the potential for offence - portraying the british war effort as anything other than heroic, showing the war dead as flawed selfish characters and the danger of taking advantage of one of the world's greatest loss of life for laughs.

Luckily it's brilliantly done. It finds that very thin line of absurdity through the middle of tragedy almost perfectly.

People had misgivings about it at the time though, and no doubt it offended some for the reasons given above. Can you imagine the outcry if it was made today, and the Daily Mail ran with the headline "BBC disrespects heroic war dead with trenches 'comedy'"? It's all too easy.

The Brass Eye Paedophile Special is probably the most divisive example of something which offended people, but in my opinion at least, was fully justified, funny and brilliant.

Child abuse is a fucking tough subject to make a comedy about. Of course the paedogeddon episode isn't directly about child abuse at all. It's about the hysterical media reaction to the point of glamorisation of paedophilia, not only finding the absurd in the media reaction, but cynically highlighting the dark scaremongering hyperbole that the papers will resort too, just to increase sales.

Which in my mind, whilst it was controversial, it really highlights where satire is really important, even if it does risk offending people. Would anybody have had the guts to make a serious documentary in the same vein of the Brass Eye episode? I don't think so. Jokes are easier to walk away from, but can still ask important questions.

It's also important to note how many of the personalities who publicly came out as 'offended' completely missed the point. Beverley Hughes MP, called it "unspeakably sick" before admitting she hadn't actually seen it. Tessa Jowel asked the Independent Telly Commission to reinstate censorship. But best of all you got this (which I've posted before I'm sure):

[url width=800 height=739]http://chilled.cream.org/graphics/charlotte.jpg[/url]


I've meandered through this massively, but the risk of offending people has to be a part of comedy, because comedy is important in breaking down the absurdity of real life, and sometimes those being mocked deserve it, offended or not. You can't judge it by simple numbers, twenty people were offended so that's too far. Especially when the whole act of being offended is now rarely people being legitimately offended, but people being offended with an agenda.

Television would be fucking shit if Mary Whitehouse had got her way.

I've just spent an hour writing that. I'm out of tef rant practice.

Great post Ben

Great write up.

Did that paper purposely write about a 15 year olds boobs on the neighbouring page?

On purpose?

Oop.

If they did then I've severely underestimated the comedy genius of the Daily Star. Unfortunately I don't think that's the case.

Can't find a picture but the daily mail also did something similar (quoting guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/aug/05/news.film)):


I think it just shows that the tabloid's moral outrage goes about as far as selling papers.

I feel a bit lost now I've finished writing all that. Can more people congratulate me on a great post, or even better, argue with me?

I agree but I think your knobhead for going into so much effort though.

Is that okay?

yeah.

I agree with what you said but i don't think the Jordan joke fits in that category.

No not at all.

The jordan joke was fucking shameful.

I think you missed the point. The “I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter – she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from f**king her.” 'joke' just wasn't fucking funny. There was no whit or humour about it. It was just dumb and crass. It's got nothing to do with being offended. If some drunk half-whit down the pub came out with that, I would just think, "What a prick".

But the point is, many people did find the Jordan/Harvey "joke" funny. Should it be on television? Should it be restricted to his own tours? I don't know. It was late night television, there were warnings pre-broadcast and it is Frankie Boyle.

axs right but I think it's relevant within the 'shock' comedy debate. Nobody does it better than Chris Morris.

In a way Four Lions was his Blackadder Goes Forth because it tackled a difficult subject and pulled it off. However, Morris doesn't wait 60 years to tackle such difficult subjects.

I was talking about shock humour in general, a half reply to leefer saying that if comedy offends 20 people then it's not worth it.

I thought it was amusing - why treat the disabled any different - we take the piss out of everything else - isn't that more liberating?
Anyway - Chubby Brown anyone??????

I have to agree FB on this - good post

However, on a more importatnt point - how good does little Miss Church look ? pity she's welsh.

...and no longer 15.

not too sure what the correct reply is to that.

Is it ok to have sex with this 3 year old girl now she's 21

See that's the biggest cause of paedophilia in this country.

The kids are so sexy.

(Jimmy Carr)

See that's the difference isn't it. Some people will find that funny mainly because it's not directed at anyone in person. I quite like frankie Boyle and hate everything Jordan stands for BUT he over stepped the mark on this one and got very personal.

Just watched his new dvd and I found about half of it to be really unfunny and half of it the opposite. He does explain at one point in the show that he makes everything so ridiculous that you know he doesn't actually mean it.

However, found the Jordan/cage fighter joke to be shit, the Jade Goodie one to be shit but the Jordan/Peter Andre joke and the joke about the Beckhams to be funny. The standard John Leslie and Barrymore jokes were equally amusing. If you can't take the piss out of one person then you can't out of anyone really.

Looking at some of the extra stuff on the dvd, it's evident he does get some satisfaction from a bad crowd reaction though.

I think Boyles problem is he can't make up his fucking mind what sort of comic he wants to be, or what sort of message he wants to deliver. His material wanders from being quite politically radical to Manning / Chubby Brown esque lowest common denominator offensiveness.

I'm with Ben in that I don't feel any subject should be off the agenda for drama / humour / art of any kind, but if you decide to tackle a subject that is controversial you've got to have some clue what it is you're trying to say.

Morris is a case in point, it's always fairly clear to anyone but idiots and the Daily Mail, (perhaps some tautology there) what the target of his satire is. With Boyle I'm not sure even he knows, and so the "shocking" material just looks like it is deliberately intended to offend.

Sometimes he gets away with it, when he's clearly just venting his own irrational hatreds and prejudices about celebrity, because there's an element of honesty in the work. There's the shock that he's dared to say something, but also a guilty recognition of understanding what he means. That can't be said of this material. I've never looked at a severely learning disabled child and thought "potential rapist" to be honest, so the "joke" pretty much dies on its arse.

Anyway, aside from the headline grabbing stuff what I've seen of the show looked fucking awful.

I gave up on him when he started joking about breast cancer.

Shock for shocks sake.

Its like watching car crash TV. I cringed my way through the two programs this week. Such a shame that its just not funny. He was so good on Mock The Week, but so awful as a stand-up comedian.

See i thought Boyle was hilarious until i read all of these posts and found myself agreeing with you all... i think i may just be mentally unstable   :suicide: