The Fast Show pt 2 (Big Train)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Big Train
Date:	05/02/02 (330 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quickfire, Very funny

Disadvantages: Sometimes doesn't work

The spirit, imagination and all round tight as a gnats' ass focus of that marvellous epic, The Fast Show, has returned to plague our consciousnesses in the form of the very, very wonderful Big Train, and it's one of the funniest damn things around. The Fast Show was pretty damn excellent, making stars of Mark Williams, Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson and Simon Day, but is now sadly gone, but The Big Train is a true inheritor of that mantle and is here right now to pep up our lives.

You get it on Monday nights, sandwiched in between the excellent Never Mind The Buzzcocks and the amazing docu soap comedy The Office, and for me this 90 minutes represents on eof the true highlights of this and any other week, consistently funny and sharp, and never prolonging the joke too far, which is often the case with such things, which consider themselves funny.

They make the hugely comical out of the surprisingly mundane and once they've had the chance to barf up the punchline, they're off and running with the next bit, often before you've had enough chance to get the gag, leaving you helplessly trailing in their wake, never really getting back in the groove for another three or four sketches.

However, there ain't that much more you can say about this delightful eighth wonder of the world, unless you're desperate to pad things out rather more than somewhat and that certainly wouldn't be in keeping with the lean and mean wafer of a comedy show, and all without any of that normally over the top canned laughter and applause which is so distastefully plastered all over the normal comedy show. You do get the odd guffaw and snicker, but they're normally quite restrained and apologetic, embarrassed that they might be intruding on a private party. Just for once, watch one of those comedy progs that do feature such trashy accessories with the picture off and spot how irritating such accoutrements are.

Now dave27 has
never been in the habit of yacking for yack's sake and I'm not going to intrude on your evening's entertainment much longer.

The people behind this show are wonderful comic talents, manufacturing some great moments from everyday experience, revelling in the absurdity of modern life, but doing so without it seeming in the slightest bit odd, even when it includes mermaids and the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz.

Big Train is written by the guys who penned the marvellous Father Ted comedy series, Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews. It features performers whose faces you will know, but whose names generally mean nothing to most audiences - Amelia Bullmore, Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon, Mark Heal and Simon Pegg, very, very funny people who do this wonder full justice.

For something based on situations so mundane, The Big Train features some pretty bizarre flights of fancy and spirit you away into their own private universe and it's the sort of show you either love or hate, a distant descendant of a line begun by The Goons and developed by the Monty Python team, big cliche though that may be. You may not get the joke (I can believe it), but I certainly do, so you'd be well advised to check it out.

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