JAM
Sketch show made in 2000. This is something you must see just to add to your own repertoire of life experience. It is simply the only 'sketch comedy' of its kind you'll ever see. It fuses a filmmaking mentality into the extremely extreme scenes. Ambient backing tracks of DJ Shadow and the like, often coloured, grainy or skewered cinematography, snappy editing, and stylish direction. This atmosphere and style goes hand in hand with the trippy content produced none other than the brilliant Chris Morris.
Unlike the Morris' spoof 'The Day Today' or satirical 'Brass Eye', 'Jam' is just a head fuck. The scenes themselves are often sick, frequently scary, always surreal and more than not hilarious. But hilarious in a way that only the strong will feel comfortable at laughing out loud at. For as funny as it is, it is also highly disturbing, which creates and uneasy feeling in the viewer. Those of moral insecurities will feel upset or denounce it as purely disgusting. Those of a more open-minded, less self-righteous nature will appreciate it fully.
The extras on the DVD take the bizarreness further by allowing the viewer to watch it on a miniature moving picture, or out of sync and focus.
LITTLE BRITAIN
For all its popularity, I don't like this or shall I say I never "got into" this. Not to say I don't laugh sometimes (About 3 times an episode). But it's laughter over something so stupid I could be watching someone falling off a bicycle to achieve the same results.
The sketches are of the lowest brow and don't have any real substance or wit behind them. Not that I am bitch when it comes to broad comedy. I've loved many of England's finest. But the fact that the same characters and sketches are repeated with the same punchline over and over every episode makes me wonder how long people can remain amused. By the ratings, a long time it seems.
Many of the sketches are pure shit, and use vulgarity over imagination for laughs (eg. the vomiting old racist lady, or the faux posh obese nude spa woman). If its funny to see the obese Matt Lucas dress as an obese woman, then I am missing something. Monty Python it is not.
How hard can it be to come up with something new. They have enough money pumped in from the BBC. Are they just lazy, or do they have nothing else to offer?