Shooting Stars

Well, it's finally returned, complete with Dove from Above and George Dawes. It's great to see it again, but you can tell that Jack Dee's miserable personality is clearly an act having been aware of him for so long. And what's the deal with the guy to the left of Ulrika who looks eerily like Mathew Horne? It's a clever idea to have a fake guest, but I think it's a bit too much and I'd much rather see another guest, it seems a bit too fake.

Nevertheless, Matt Lucas had me in stitches, and I was sad to see a lack of audience enthusiasm upon the return of classic gags. I didn't see many adverts for it though, I'm worried that not enough people saw it. Then again, may have been my own ignorance.

Personal opinions?

Matt Lucas makes that show brilliant. Especially when he cracks up out of character. Loved the bit about he wanted spag bol but "no sauce or pasta..just a plate"

A few things...
- bit lazy of them to bring back 'dove from above'
- Bob's shirt had duck tape to cover up a brand logo
- the show was heavily edited at the beginning to fit everything in
- the Angelo fella doesn't really fit in. Like the above poster said, I'd rather see another guest or bring back Johnny Vegas.

Still, these are minor things, time will tell. Great to see the show back!!!

(not Vic's crack!)

They've reinvented/rebranded that feature more time then you can shake a stick at they could have come up with something new in 20 minutes, the comedy produced would have been the same. I imagine it was a quite deliberate decision to use the dove from above and not 'lazy' as you put it.


Why do you assume that wasn't deliberate, it's not like they couldn't have found an identical green shirt within 10 minutes, if they wanted to.

The BBC hardly bother with trails for any programmes any more. Most junctions these days are filled with 'messages' for other BBC services and seasons: iPlayer, The Proms etc. They treat airtime on the BBC much more like advertising nowadays (and by that I mean in the last 10 years or so). They've realy changed the way they use junctions at the BBC. Back in the late 90s, a classic junction on BBC-1 peak would be a slide for the next programme BBC-2 if it was a common junction (this was known as an AV - Alternative Viewing), followed by one or two trails for programmes, possibly one more slide, symbol then the next programme. Now of course a lot of the reason for limiting junctions to two trails was to do with the fact that everything was played off tape, but also programmes were longer in their slot, so 75" of junction time per slot was about the limit to keep the schedule running to time. In recent years, programme durations per slot have been reduced so that more key 'advertising' time can be got from the schedule for 'messages'.

I honestly appreciate the need to keep audiences in touch with what other services the BBC offer, but I cannot see how confining junction time to one or two priority programmes a day means the audience knows what the hell is on the telly. The number of programmes I've missed and had to catch up on because I've merely stumbled across the 3rd episode ...

Really enjoyed it last night - great to see the show back and glad it's back for a full series this time.

One thing I did notice was the lack of the announcer from previous series. Didn't they used to have an announcer? Vic & Bob had to introduce the guests themselves at the start by walking round to each of them.

Shame that due to the current BBC credit guidelines they couldn't sing the Shooting Stars theme tune at the end of the show as the credits rolled.

No "awful joke / tumbleweed" bit last night.

Liked Christine's challenge at the end and George's song.

Pretty sure I had seen the "fake guest" guy somewhere before?

He is a character played by Dan Skinner. I honestly thought he was crap. The rest of the show was good though!!

It was late, they are minor things. I'm just going by previous series when they had Donald Cox the Sweaty Fox, the Wonderful Wonderful Car etc.

Well exactly, probably was deliberate then.

I flipped past it at the dove from above moment, and Vic doing his "iranu/oovavu" thing - which used to be the ONE bit of the show where I thought, "god, Vic, you're not as funny as all that". They were also a bit slack in announcing the "wonderful dove from above" - Bob said it, Vic missed the "wonderful" - so in that brief moment I thought it looked slack and unrehearsed.

So I flipped away. That's the mood I was in.

But I'll watch on iPlayer at the weekend and probably laugh my head off.

I thought it was all very good.

It didn't work for me I'm afraid. It just seemed so forced and didn't flow.

The problem is that the original evolved to what it was with the running gags and the like... but once they stopped that original run and then brought it back a few years later (twice), they've just lost the momentum. I think they've also got caught up in their own hype, and they've stopped trying

The only 2 good bits were the Christine Bleakly tattoo and the sketch, although that went on too long. The sketches were some of the best things about the last Shooting Stars revival, they should just do another sketch show

Also, unlike other series, the audience seemed incredibly canned. No jokes were actually reacted to, just a genral laughter sound followed regardless of the quality of the joke/comment.

Just overall seemed too flippant and last minute than other series. Hopefully it'll improve, but if it's been recorded prior to people commenting online, I doubt it will sadly.

They never used to sing it anyway, sometimes Vic or Bob would occasionally sing along to brief snatches but normally would just shout or cheer or talk to one of the guests. And they could sing if they wanted to.