coles_notes
Joined Jul 2019
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Most recently presented by Rob Brydon for the majority of its seasons and created by Peter Holmes for the BBC, we feature two team captains and comedians Lee Mack and David Mitchell, who take on two additional celebrity guests each, where the teams take turn reading off preprepared cards of statements, playing them off as either a truth or a lie. The other team must then guess which it indeed is, either a truth that actually happened to that person, or a lie, completely made up. A fairly simple premise, the two captains are both in their perfect element, David Mitchell with his depths of historical and factual knowledge, and general curmudgeonly attitude he plays up and is known for, and Lee Mack whose cleverness, wit, and ability to annoy David is perfect. Of course how good things are episode to episode certainly depends on the guests and those stories / lies prepared, however overall I've seen enough seasons to say its impressively consistent. If you're just looking for some easy watching thats a laugh, I would recommend, going now for over 17 seasons, yeah, is a good show.
Created and written by David Cross, we follow the titular Todd Margaret (Cross), a buffoon of a man making his way through a sudden promotion and overseas journey to England, where he must sell a new energy drink, Thundermuscle. A classic dominos of calamity, we follow Todd as he makes increasingly bad decisions, with lots of references to previous actions, all leading to a climactic end which is foreshadowed in the opening of each episode. Sharon Horgan shows up as an unattainable love interest which was fun, Spike Jonze even appears for a bit as a coworker, and Will Arnett joining as Todd's similarly unqualified boss, where he plays a character not too dissimilar to his earlier role in Arrested Development. Cross's Todd is also much the same, with the majority of the early humour coming from misunderstanding British things, or him being oblivious to his own innuendos. Honestly, there are some more blue, darker, or perhaps controversial points in the series which I didn't love, theres some topics that seem to repeat from both Arrested Development Tobias and sketches from Bob & David, its' definitely a bit antiquated in that aspect but also feels very David Cross. Cancelled (so it seemed) after the first two seasons, the series reaches its inevitable conclusion fairly well, so many were surprised when a follow up season 3 was eventually announced 4 years later. Minor spoilers for plot, but season 3 plays off the previous two seasons as a prophetic dream had by an alternate reality protagonist, still Todd Margaret, as he becomes the catalyst for an apocalyptic event foretold in his dreams. The season is then a series of callbacks and references to the previous two seasons events, as they all again seem to come true, though in different ways. In perhaps the final poor decision made, only seasons 1 and 2 were available on RokuTV, for the 3rd season I had to look elsewhere, which really is a shame as I think its the best one. Although self referencial humour is really my thing, so makes sense I would like it. As for the rest, it was fine for what it was, I understand how this has a small cult following, but overall I don't really see it. Its plot was too loosely scripted to get merit for something cleverly crafted in the end, at one points the numerous plotholes throughout the show was one of the after credits gags. I liked it, and for fans of any of these comedians or this type of darker humour, would certainly recommend.