Telly Talk: Oh, Pappy’s day!
It’s hot! It’s too hot to think! Which is why it might be the perfect time to watch Matthew Crosby, Tom Parry and Ben Clark (aka award-winning comedy sketch group Pappy’s)’s new BBC3 sitcom. Because it’s both clever and silly, rapidfire punchlines coming from all directions, and just emerses you happily like a fresh breeze combined with a dunk in the paddling pool. That’d be a dunk you were looking forward to after a long day at the office with hot feet and a commute of such humidity you could swear there were eyes looking at you through palm leaves rather than newspaper pages. Suffice to say, it’s a good dunk.
Pappy’s have tried television before, adapting their live anarchic club house shows to a studio audience, which fell in a promising but dishevelled mess. This time they’ve taken stock of that and taken up the tight format of a sitcom, based in the flat they share, and it sounds like they’ve overlayed a laughter track. As much as that last point might put a few people off it shouldn’t, as the script packs so many laughs in I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a technique to make sure you didn’t miss any. I started writing a list of the kind of punchlines the show included: Rhyming punchlines, swearing punchlines, pedantic punchlines, sign language punchlines, food punchlines, logo punchlines, literal punchlines, sequel punchlines, violent punchlines… I stopped making a list as I couldn’t keep up. That’s a good thing. The trio have managed to keep the anarchic scattergun comedy that makes their live performances so much fun, and yet found a format that gives them a structure within which to hang it all. There’s also cutaway shorts for extra bonus fun, that reminded me of The Young Ones and the ridiculous asides to camera from Vyv’s pet rodent and other random inserts.
“like a fresh breeze combined with a dunk in the paddling pool”
The Young Ones parallel is an obvious one as it’s stupidly ill-equipped for the world of people sharing a home, but the Badults (bad adults – geddit?) have an underlying closer fondness for each other than Rik and the gang did in the 1980s. With anything being possible, and three distinct inter-relating personalities (Matthew’s conservative and organised, Tom’s gregarious and scheming, Ben’s dopey and good-natured) there’s more than a hint of The Goodies in there too.
The set allows them to continue with their ad hoc props, made from household everyday things, while no longer seeming ill-prepared. The chaps have managed to finally transfer their surreal playtime enthusiasm to the small screen, and they’ve done it with aplomb. They’re in their flat so of course it won’t seem odd for all three to start singing separate parts from Les Misérables together. One of them in pyjamas. Accompanied by a ghetto blaster. They’re in their home so of course they’ll happen to have bottles of home brew aftershave in the fridge. It just makes sense. (We’ve all had that weird flatmate that makes it make sense.)
I have enjoyed watching the live sketch shows from this trio for years so yes, I was already a bit of a fan. But as such, I would have been all the more disappointed if Badults had fallen short of what these guys can deliver. It’s not the live show, but it’s not trying to be anymore. Through a metamorphosis of their podcasts (and probably countless production meetings) it’s something better suited for the medium of telly. And it made me laugh out loud.
Badults, BBC3, Tuesday 23 July 2013
