Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty?

Mark Oakley

Mark hates Two Pints Of Lager and a Packet Of Crisps. And he wants to tell you why.

Some things make you feel so angry, so filled with bile and rage that you have to speak out through fear of internally combusting. Being a Yorkshireman, there are many things that greatly aggravate me. People causing traffic jams by gawping inanely at a road accident. Pigeons constantly announcing their presence of my roof by crapping all over my windows and garden. Leeds United screwing up their chance to get back into the Championship. But one thing above all has been scratching away at the back of my brain now for a few years, and it’s time I finally got it off my chest. How the flip did Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps ever make it to TV?

Pick a weekday, any weekday, and you can be sure that this shitstorm of a TV show will be blathering its nonsensical, desperately unfunny comedic wares to an apparently eager-for-more audience. Listening to the laughter from the TV audience, you’d think you were watching the jewel in the BBC’s comedic cannon and yet whenever I’ve tuned in I’ve been left dumbfounded at the lack of jokes, comic timing and general acting talent to warrant such guffaws.

Problems with the show are so multilayered, it’s hard to know where to begin but I’ll take my first stab at the actors. I’ve seen Ralf Little in various productions, including The Royle Family and some excellent dramatic roles, and he’s a pretty good actor. So why is it that in this show he consistently looks lost? Of course, his own performance is nothing compared to Will Mellor’s. In surely one of the greatest anomalies ever to hit TV screens, this is a man who cannot act to save his life and yet has been in the business now since the mid-90s during his time as Jambo in the equally risible Hollyoaks. The three female actors are all perfectly fine but are served no favours by the script, which brings me neatly onto problem number two.

That the script is coarse, crude and defiantly adult in humour is not necessarily a bad thing – Mike Leigh has been doing it to great effect for years in his films. That it celebrates the ‘yoof’ generation in the UK is similarly not on its own something to bemoan, as many other productions have tackled this topic with great aplomb. However, to have a script that is also devoid of any laughs is fairly criminal and that’s exactly what we’re working with here.

Crappy production values (each location looks like a TV set), terrible lines, awful plotting (including supposed imbued drama as the series has progressed) and characters you just couldn’t give a stuff about make for one of the worst comedies in living memory. Then there’s those episode titles. Fags, Shags and Kebabs. Lard. On The Blob. Seriously, WTF!

And yet I haven’t even touched on the worst aspect of the show, which is that the BBC screens it constantly. Not only do we have to be exposed to this complete waste of a licence fee, we’re subjected to episodes night after night after night. Has no one at the BBC thought ‘Hold on, this is shit. Let’s just put an end to it all.’ No they haven’t, because idiots keep tuning in week after week, the same idiots who seem to think that these five dossers hanging about with each other doing sod all is hilarious comedic fodder. It’s not. It’s the worst show to ever hit TV screens in the last ten years and it has to stop.  

 

User's Comments

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by KafkasCat on June 17, 2008 11:54:46 AM I have to agree, this is really coarse and quite vulgar which would be fine if it were actually funny. How did this last so long isn't like 6 series long? Then there was that awful attempt last season at an ironic joke when Johnny jumped the shark and died. What? I think BBC 3 airs about 4 episodes every night surely they could at least replay Monkey Dust?

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by Lobscouse on June 17, 2008 12:52:50 PM I agree. It is truly terrible.

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by garlicsmack on June 17, 2008 01:09:15 PM Well, they won't replay Monkey Dust, because it was appalling one-note stuff, designed to 'shock' in the most BBC way possible. More importantly, Two Pints really isn't that bad. No matter how absurd a thing you care to write about it, the actors have damn fine comic timing, and to be quite honest, who cares if it looks like a TV set? IT'S A SITCOM. And they show it twice a day because it's one of BBC Three's biggest raters, keeping young people plugged in to Auntie's services. And Lord knows that whatever else is wrong with the youth of today, they won't watch callous trash like 'Monkey' 'Dust'. MORE: http://www.denofgeek.com/television/6036/bad_tv_redeemed_two_pints_of_lager.html

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by moakle on June 17, 2008 01:55:14 PM 'No matter how absurd a thing you care to write about it' I have to say that I don't think anything I wrote was especially absurd. I'm simply pointing out that it's not funny, has a very poor script, an extremely cheap feel, naff plots and is unnecessarily coarse. Plus it stars Will Mellor. Which part of that's absurd?

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by stuxmusic on June 17, 2008 02:44:43 PM Agreed.

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by Robmac on June 17, 2008 03:42:44 PM Sherridan Smith does have a lovely set of 'Two Pints' though

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by oopster on June 17, 2008 11:04:08 PM You don't get it, and that's fine. I've tried watching "The Royle Family" and "The Office", both of which are supposed to be the testee's of BBC comedy wit and timing, and I don't get that. Two pints is silly, gross, absurd, and apart from the last season (where Johnny had been written out of it in the worst possible way), one of the funniest things on the box. It's okay that you don't get it, not everything is for everyone and that's a good thing. Maybe, it's one of those things you have to watch enough of to be able to appreciate it humour, like "Family Guy", which would explain why it got cancelled so many times in the US, and why when Sky showed it, it was originally before "The Simpsons", not exactly tea-time viewing.

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by MinneytheKid on June 18, 2008 10:41:53 PM One of the funniest things on the box? Have you lost you're mind? Its not that we don't 'get it'! The point is that there's fuck all to get other than that the morons who watch it, are just that: morons! A true mark of this comedy shite is the canned laughter. What made the office and royle family so great was the lack of canned laughter. Those watching it were given the credit of being able to work out for themselves when the right time to laugh was. Its ok that you don't get it tho, that's fine.

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by wanderjahre on June 19, 2008 02:58:28 PM Watched it a couple - on the second occasion I managed almost six minutes before I cracked and turned over. No humour I could discern and the acting was dire.

Re: Two Pints Of Lager: a modern day TV travesty? Posted by Norton77 on June 21, 2008 11:34:03 AM It appeals to the 'Loaded' reader and his coked-up girlfriend... which, I hasten to add, isn't me. Still, I've laughed at some of it. I will say, however, that "Only Fools And Horses" is a pile of shit.

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