The Mash Report

What are you on about? It's not the sort of thing he does, it's not significant enough a programme for his yearly Wipe. And he was involved in 10 o Clock Live so is hardly one to criticise

That's what tends to happen when something moves from one medium to another. Many programmes that have moved from radio to tv have done exactly the same. Little Britain, Mitchell & Web for example.

I remember watching the first series of The Mary Whitehouse Experience TV version and being massively disappointed as I knew virtually all the sketches off by heart as they were lifted from the radio version

We almost had a bloody war last week!

Well, I know what you mean, in that Parliament is in recess, but there is still news about, and satire doesn't have to rely solely on Westminster to generate humour and make points. Craig Brown famously said the only satire that ever really achieved anything was Smashie and Nicey, and I would argue that the two most successful satirical shows of the nineties were The Day Today and Brass Eye, which of course weren't topical but contemporary - and still managed to achieve plenty in terms of satirising the media and politics, and did seem to actually care about things and do stuff.

I'm also reminded of groaning during one episode of Ten O'Clock Live when Lauren interrupted a flight of whimsy from one of the others to say "anyway, back to Westminster", because I thought that show especially could do much more than slavishly follow party politics and just joylessly tick off the stuff that was in the papers. The first series of the Armistice ran well into the summer, and the Radio Times Comedy Guide points out that one thing they were very good at doing was getting material from the inside pages of the papers rather than the banner headlines, and it was all the more refreshing and interesting for it.

I think if you go into the show with the idea that "we've got to do jokes about X, Y and Z because that's the news this week", especially in the days of jokes being on Twitter in five seconds, it starts getting a bit mechanical. It reminds me a bit of a passage from the book about the history of Spitting Image where John Lloyd had an argument with his co-producer Jon Blair. Blair didn't have a background in comedy, he had worked in factual TV and was there to shout and break balls and stuff, and he asked Lloyd what Spitting Image would do if there was a bomb at Harrods. Lloyd said they wouldn't do anything, and Blair couldn't understand it, saying it was the news and they were a satire show so they had to cover it. And eventually Lloyd had to write "IT'S NOT FUNNY" on a bit of paper.

As for The Mash Report, one bit of it I don't like is the presentation - especially in the social media bit where Nish complains all the tweets are rubbish, and in the right-wing bit where he has to react to all the jokes by pretending they're revolting. But of course, for the rest of the show he's doing equally as stupid and unpleasant jokes, so it doesn't make any sense. It just kills the jokes. It's like on The 11 O'Clock Show when Ricky Gervais came on and did an unpleasant routine and Iain Lee and Daisy Donovan had to pretend he was appalling and saying the unsayable - when for the rest of the show they were doing equally unpleasant jokes. Or like on Mock The Week when every Frankie Boyle joke had to be followed by the other panellists pulling faces and going "Oh my God, Frankie, I can't believe you said that".

It's trying to have your cake and eat it, doing seemingly unpleasant jokes but surrounding them with so much irony so they can pretend they're not. If you're going to do these jokes, have the confidence to deliver them straight, where they can stand and fall on their own merits. Don't pretend you're trying not to do them. At least it would be authentic.

It wasn't helped by some truly awful pre launch edition trail editing - either by the production team, or by the BBC Trails/promos team.
OK, so they only had the pilot to work from, but it consisted of very, very quick half sentences taken out of context of the script/sketch, and sewn together with a constant laughter and clapping track - none of which matched what was being seen on screen.
Once that was over, you had Nish doing the 'pack-shot' to camera in front of a blatant CSO where the lighting nor the sound matched the studio output to the previous 15 seconds.

There was one grating moment in the trail which had the soundbite "Donald Trump is a legend" followed by hysterical laughter (of the sound level where Clive James would have noted "Somewhere in all that a woman died laughing")

I'm guessing using that line that goes against current popular opinion, was a crude way to get viewers to watch to see if you saw the actual full context of that line, but because you were bombarded for 15 seconds with other micro-sentences and a myriad of faces, the average joe, may have thought the whole show would be as fast paced and decided not to bother watching.

I noticed that even after 2 shows of the series, they were still using the 'edited from the pilot' trail, rather than using some from the editions where there would have been some still relivent material - which, the fact that for a topical show, the BBC haven't bothered, speaks volumes in the confidence of both show and content.

Oh, and before anyone said "yeah, but Have I Got News For You doesn't have any topical gags in it's trails" different thing.
It's an established show, just the fact it's back means the audience knows what it's getting, and the way it's been trailed in the run up to a new series over the past couple of years have shown thought and humour, so they don't need to cut up a previous episode and edit in just the punchlines to a couple of jokes, and have Ian, Paul and the audience fall about laughing.

My only personal highlight from 10 O'Clock Live was when Charlie Brooker drew a penis on a pigeon that was on the front of a newspaper, forgetting he had to hold it up to discuss the front page later in the show.

Jump to 37:29 if you'd like to see it for yourself.

Those were the best bits about 10 O'Clock Live. There was one where David Mitchell pointed out that you could make a profit by buying The Independent in sterling and then reselling it in euros.

Incidentally I've been uploading lots of the episodes of the 11 O'Clock Show for Iain Lee's Rabbit Hole TV channel on YouTube.

I gave the show a chance, and although I seem to get a few laughs here and there, jumping towards different segments multiple times throughout really does feel disjointed.

The set for the Mash Report looks nice though. Aside from that, if it does get a second series, hopefully it finds its footing towards what it wants to be, whether it be as the Daily Show or the Day Today/Brass Eye, as that has been identified in this topic as the Mash Report’s biggest problem.

Edit: autocorrect screwed up again...

Honestly it's nowhere near as bad as I think it was expected to be based on previous attempts. Nish is great, social media thing is a great parody, I love Andrew Hunter Murray in anything he does...

Sometimes the news desk is funny, sometimes it isn't, much like the average Daily Mash story. Once you've read the headline you don't need anymore.

Has this been pulled?

Thought it had a 10 episode run but only 4 have aired with no more scheduled.

It’s coming back in November.

Thought the same, too, until I trawled through Twitter to find out why.

Just saw this thread and was expecting it to be about former Yorkshire announcer Maggie!