Road To Anywhere - Tea And Crumpets, Anyone?

In this week's edition of Road To Anywhere - our weekly blog post about anything but movies - Jonathan talks about his current favorite Britcoms and why you should watch them.

TEA AND CRUMPETS, ANYONE?

In the last few weeks I've been watching a lot of British television shows. They're all over Netflix and, in some circles, more popular than American TV shows. So this week I decided to discuss three of them that really made an impression on me (in many different ways) and what makes them different from the rest.


SPACED

Spaced is a show about a man and a woman who pretend to be in a relationship together so they can get the perfect apartment. It doesn't sound super interesting when introduced in a single sentence, but one of the things that makes this show so amazing is the characters. From the emotionally disturbed painter to the bizarrely clueless landlady, this show has enough weird to suit everyone. Also, it's a great way to see some very early work from the Shaun of the Dead cast and crew. Edgar Wright directs every episode and it's awesome to see the early signs of his style developing. We also get to see the start of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's career as a pair, and it's quite obvious they were meant to work together. If you've never seen it, Spaced is one to watch. And if you have, watch it again.



THE IT CROWD

I immediately fell in love with this show. It follows two employees of the IT department in a large corporation and their completely computer illiterate "relationship manager". The comedy in this show really flows naturally and the characters are inescapably lovable. Even Matt Berry as their egotistical, womanizing boss. Richard Ayoade and Chris O'Dowd play off each other wonderfully and Katherine Parkinson fits right in with all the different types of characters. It's awkward situational humor punctuated by moments of extreme (and often hilarious) panic. It's The Office meets It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. How could you pass on that?

With every show I love, I make a habit of looking up the actors and crew on IMDB and watching some of their other work. That's how I discovered...



SNUFF BOX

Snuff Box is by far my favorite of the British shows I've seen recently. It's wonderfully bizarre and extremely twisted. It stars Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher as a hangman and his assistant (respectively). We even get a little Richard Ayoade in a few episodes. Often the show takes place in an eerie hangman's lounge and each episode's individual plot is drawn along through sketch comedy, most of them a recurring theme throughout every episode. Oh, and did I mention the bathroom takes them back in time? Yep. It's that kind of show.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a HUGE Mr. Show fan and this show is definitely reminiscent of that. Even though the show is connected by a single storyline, everything stays chaotic and somehow fragmented. Matt Berry's boisterous attitude is perfectly matched by Rich Fulcher's dry, deadpan deliveries. My wife even thought Fulcher was a British guy doing an impression of an American! This show is definitely not for everyone, though. You must have a taste for the bizarre and be willing to laugh at severely inappropriate things, but give it a chance, and it'll have you doubled over in laughter.


-JONATHAN

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