Russell Howard’s Good News: A Happy-go-lucky Review:
One of the series that actually makes BBC Three worth watching.
Russell Howard’s Good News: A Happy-Go-Lucky Review:
Viewable: BBC Three
When: Thursday at 10:30PM
Sort of like: Mock the Week and Important Things with Demetri Martin
Russell Howard’s Good News is simply a British version of E4’s American import Important Things with Demetri Martin, I can’t make that a point of criticism as each comes across as skewed version of the other: one makes use of sketches and makes you laugh (ITWDM) while the other makes use of the Family Guy styled cutaways and fails to garner a memorable laugh (RHGN), though I’m throwing this up to call Russell Howard’s Good News annoying for that, quite the opposite, the series simply works for Russell Howard’s stand-up material making up the bulk of each episode.
Good News works as a series and plays to Russell Howard strength as a stand-up comic, he’s funny and doesn’t fail to convey the week’s news in an entertaining fashion—the use of summing up part of the week at the beginning is like Have I Got News for You. What makes the series better comes from how he ends each episode with a piece of news that manages to show the good parts of the human condition in play.
The semi-cutaway styled sketches of each episode comes across as the one defining weakness to come from the series—they easily disrupt the flow of his stand-up style presentation of the week’s news and that’s a letdown on the editorial side of the show. A minute complaint that doesn’t have anything to do with the series, where they’ve decided to broadcast the series (BBC Three) doesn’t do the series justice, yes its aimed towards the under 25’s, but that doesn’t mean it has to be on BBC Three. Give it a decent slot on BBC Two or something.
Overall, the series stands as testament that BBC Three can produce programmes that aren’t all shit.
Thought of the Day: November 18th:
Got up this morning with an overwhelming mood breaking moment, Charlie Brooker’s: Screenwipe was not actually returning to the airwaves for a new series of fantastic dissection of TV, news and anything else that fails to escape his words of pure awesome.
Liked it
