All 1 entries tagged Richard Ayoade

Deano's After Dark and Randomer

Last week I saw a couple of things that were brilliant. One was premeditated and the other I stumbled across while channel flicking, procrastinating sleep.

Deano’s After Dark is a fictional talk show airing on Channel 4 some time (June) next year. “Deano” is Dean Learner, the producer of Darkplace, the show within a show on Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, an awesomely funny spoof documentary about a science fiction television series set in a hospital. It was on last year (twice), and if you didn’t watch it you have no-one to blame but yourself and your entirely idiotic friends. As preparation for the new show, the creators Richard Ayoade and Matt Holness were doing material on stage at the Cambridge ADC last Saturday and several of us went down to check it out.

Was there any doubt the show would be entertaining with these guys involved?

Dean would come on, make a few jokes (usually involving hilarious anecdotes) and introduce his guest (all of which were played by Holness) who would then either be interviewed by Dean or do a short performance. The performances were hit and miss but the folk guitarist guest was superb value, Holness playing competent acoustic and building a story around each song (“I wrote this song for a friend who was terminally ill” *starts song, 20 seconds in* “Actually, it was a bit of a race to finish it”).

The interviews were also hit and miss with an American science fiction actor (played by Holness, of course) feeling too similar to the Marenghi character and not coming out with enough snappy jokes, preferring long descriptive sequences of farcical goings on “on set”. This would have been the weakest part of the show were it not for Ayoade’s improv, saving the segment. It started with him turning to the audience and saying “I appreciate this may be more helpful to us than it is to you” and developing this into a pseudo-tacked together apology/excuse, slipping in and out of character. When I write it like that it sounds rather pathetic, but the acting and audience manipulation were very skilful.

That improv would have been the highlight of the evening were it not trumped by later Ayoade improv when there was a Q&A session (in character) between the audience and Dean+Garth. Most of the questions were pretty rubbish fanboy nonsense about DVD releases, “directions” and so forth, which Ayoade dispatched with sarcasm. The best was when someone asked whether Deano’s After Dark would be closer to Knowing Me Knowing You or Da Ali G Show, which Ayoade responded to by saying “Both. In fact our entire intention with this show is to retread those two pieces of entertainment perfectly, because there’s not really any point at all in doing something original. Me and Garth will both be dressed as Alan Partridge and we’ll get Steve Coogan on to play Alan Partridge too”.

Excellent show, I hope the TV version works.

The other thing I saw was Randomer a short film (or an episode in a series of short films). It was on channel 4 late on Sunday night and was about two girls who steal a car and then find out there is a baby in it. With something short like this (it was about 12 minutes long), I really have two choices in description. I can either say it “was about two girls who steal a car and then find out there is a baby in it” or I can laboriously describe the entire film in detail. Which I’m not going to do.

If anyone saw it, what did you think?

I’d love to watch it again, I hope it’s reshown. TV plays this cruel trick doesn’t it, showing odd programmes at funny times which you tune in and watch and can never track down again. Perhaps worse is when you see a snatch of something and, as my friend (yes, I do have only ONE) recently described it, “it could be the best television ever produced, but you’ll never know and never be able to find it again”. This short film wasn’t the best television ever produced, but it was worth keeping, and I that’s quite a compliment.

James Miles : 22 Dec 2005 20:09 |  Tags: Cultural Comment Deanos After Dark Film And TV Garth Margenhi Matt Holness Review Richard Ayoade Stage Show Theatre |  Comments (10) |  Close comments |  Report a problem