★ 2 / 10
Almost unwatchably bad at times and I hope this was not an accurate representation of the british comedy scene these days
Horst_In_Translation
"The National Comedy Awards" are, as the title already gives away, an awards ceremony with focus on standup and comedy programs mostly. This was held in London…
"The National Comedy Awards" are, as the title already gives away, an awards ceremony with focus on standup and comedy programs mostly. This was held in London at a pretty prestigious location and this makes it clear that the focus here is almost exclusively on British comedy and British comedy programs. The show itself seems to have a great deal of tradition too as it started back in 1990, so over 30 years ago now, maybe more depending on when you read this review of mine, and went uninterrupted until 2014, but then a break happened. Last year, in 2022, the show returned, so in a way this 2023 edition is only the second edition of the revamped take on the British comedy genre. The host here was Tom Allen, not Tim Allen, but that one is not British anyway, and he also hosted in 2022. Well, what can I say? I think he was pretty awful altogether, perhaps the worst comedian you would see on stage that night and I was glad when he was not part of the show for a while. Sadly, he kept returning from time to time. I am unbiased here because I think I have not come across him on everything else so far. Was this comment about being snubbed in a certain category from him? I am not sure. Then this was maybe his only decent moment. Other than that, he had none and I genuinely hope they will pick somebody else for a possible 2023 edition. The worst about his presence here was that some of his material, also in the opening segment already, seemed to only care about providing messages of love and tolerance for certain groups, which I totally support, but not on the occasion on an awards show where it is simply off-topic and not fitting thematically, no matter how hard you try to say it does fit and how many vague connections you come up with. In other words, with Allen the humor was buried for reasons of political correctness.
But back to the start now as I have not even mentioned all the basics. The show runs for over 1.5 hours, but stays under the 100-minute mark, comes pretty close though. I must say I am glad this was not longer. I have recent seen critics awards shows run for almost four hours and I am not sure I could have smocked another two hours of this one here. I will not go into detail a lot about the three writers Chawawa, Crosby (kinda not worthy of the name) and Kennard, but I looked into their bodies of works and some of the stuff there was at least tolerable. Maybe not great either, but not horrendous or anything. So I am especially disappointed how this show here turned out. You can see from my rating what I thought about it. Maybe it was indeed a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. About director Ollie Bartlett I cannot say anything positive at all either. His body of work is surely worse than the writers' no matter if we are talking about his collaborations with Ant and Dec, the unwatchable programs he has worked on in recent years or how he apparently even managed to sink a new format that stars the (most of the time) likable Stephen Fry. Takes a special absence of talent to "succeed" with that. So with him in charge here, Bartlett I mean, it was a lost cause from the very beginning in a way you can say.
There is little I remembered and when I remembered something it was for the wrong reasons, like one guy rambles on about Twitter and Elon Musk being not a nice guy. Comes easy to hate him these days of course and here they said something like he was rigging results in his own favor. Well, guess what: Musk agreed to step back from Twitter eventually after a public vote had a majority of people who said he should and a minority of people who say he shouldn't. Sounds pretty democratic procedure if you ask me. What is maybe not so democratic is having monarchs and handing on the honors to your oldest children. What is also not so dramatic is maybe whining for years and trying to manipulate the law after a majority stated that they are no longer interested in being part of the European Union. Strangely enough, subjects like these, especially the latter, are ones where not even comedians stick with reality and also cannot really joke about it without sending bizarre reality-defying propaganda messages. But this is another story.
Back to this show now: One moment I remember was the fella who was clearly so proud of his "Strictly Come Dancing" win and trophy that he brought it to show here and hid it behind his back at first before showing it to everybody. I mean it was surely for comedy reasons and not all the way he said it, but I guess he was proud nonetheless. If I compare it to the German dancing show equivalent, I am not sure if you should be proud there I must say though. It is not exactly the most convincing program on television, but then again this mention fit in with this show even better I guess because there is also no quality to be found here. Nonetheless, it was among the better moments of the broadcast. I also knew the guy from "QI" and there we have another connection to Stephen Fry, even if he is not hosting this one anymore either. Just like the BAFTAs. There were other familiar faces from "QI" here I guess. I cannot say too much about the awards (winners) wither because I have not seen most of them, but what I saw did not get me particularly curious either, even if it was admittedly much better than the show itself here honoring these programs. One thing I found nice though was Ricky Gervais winning big and we see a little video speech from him too. He is the exact opposite of Allen for example in terms of hosting events like this. He has shown his class and massive entertainment qualities on so many occasions, also in America and at least Britain understands that he is (among) their very finest if they do not understand a whole lot other stuff sadly the way this show here went.
At the beginning of my review I stated that there was a lengthy break were no new National Comedy Award editions were held and in general I would say that it is nice if they bring back old programs for new generation to check them out and for older viewers to feel a bit nostalgia again perhaps. This is done in Germany too with some courtroom shows and game shows and it is alright, but if the quality is completely absent like with this one here, then I must say the best and actually only valid approach is to not revive the event again and honestly, I think if it is better if they leave it at two new attempts and decide there will be now 2024 edition and also none the years after until they come up with a concept where this is worth watching. The 2023 edition we have here was just incredibly dull and unfunny and uninspired, even if everybody was acting as if they really brought something to the table here. The jokes about the previous Prime Minister were also not exactly a revelation. It went all wrong. Highly not recommended. There are many comedians from the UK that are big stars also in America and same can be said about many British comedy actors, but for good reason none of those would agree to being part of this ceremony, one that ironically declares itself as "national" nonetheless. Instead, they got folks like the host who was/were really nothing but loud. And the more emotional subjects, like everything linked to cancer felt also off for all kinds of reasons. That is really it then. Don't go anywhere near the 2023 edition of this event.
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4.5/10
18
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and you do realize that this is for BRITISH COMEDY, right? They're too classy for that low-brow "entertainment"