Party's Over (Pilot) (Friday Night Comedy 23 July 2021)

[Nick Odell]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00076tk

I think I must have missed this when it was first broadcast in the
middle of the day back in 2019 so I came to it fresh last night.

Very amusing in a middle-of-the-day sortofa way, but the Friday Night
Comedy is really the BBC Radio 4 flagship slot and I don't think it
really made the grade.

Maybe the new series, starting next week, will have more Friday
nightism about it. I shall look forward to finding out.

Nick

[Peter]

I was not cognizant of its existence until you mentioned it. I shall
listen.


--
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here
Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg

[Peter]

Repeated tonight at 11pm on 4Ex.

[Nick Odell]

Nope.

I have to presume that the name of Miles Jupp blagged it the Friday
Evening Comedy slot because I still think this show failed to hit the
mark. In my opinion it was amusing but, as I said before, not in a
prime-time comedy sortofa way - if you see what I mean - and my
attention wandered throughout the series to the extent that I know I
spent the entirety of the final episode in the same room as the radio
and the radio was switched on and was broadcasting Radio 4 but I think
I must have zoned out after five minutes or so because I can't
remember how it progressed and then ended.

It was stereotypical and lazy in its construction. I don't think there
is any doubt which ex-prime minister was being parodied here and
although it is possible that we all have somebody different in our
sights, I doubt it. A whole series slagging off one politician from
one political party really doesn't seem very balanced to me. At least
a topical satirical show gets to change who it satirises every time
the government changes but if we have more series of this (please,
God, no!) it will be bashing against the same old political message
all the time.

Jim Hacker was, in my opinion, unlike any previous or contemporary
serving minister of any party of his day and yet was so beautifully
crafted that he was like all of them. (Jim Hacker, for those readers
too young to remember "Yes Minister" was a character in "Yes
Minister." Look it up on Wikipedia.) That's the sort of political
comedy that transcends party politics and Party's Over, sadly was not
a "Yes Minister" for today.

Nick