Live and joking (From The Northern Echo)

Live and joking

6:00pm Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Tonight's TV By Steve Pratt

10 O’Clock Live (C4, 10pm)
NCIS (Channel 5, 9pm)
Roger & Val Have Just Got In (BBC2, 10pm)

MAKING a satirical comedy show is easy, right? You just take a bunch of comedians, give them each a newspaper to flick through before the programme starts, and then let them shout jokes over each other for half an hour. However, as the first run of 10 O’Clock Live proved, sometimes it’s a little more complicated than that.

The series was partly inspired by C4’s 2010 Alternative Election Night, although the presenters – David Mitchell, Lauren Laverne, Jimmy Carr and Charlie Brooker – had no idea when they signed up for that programme that they might be asked to make topical jokes on a weekly basis.

“It was very much sold to me as a oneoff, and that was, frankly, one of the reasons I agreed to it, on the basis that if it was a disaster, I’d never have to do it again,” Mitchell said.

“I sort of thought I’d kick myself if I turned down the opportunity to do a show, live, during an important General Election, and that would annoy me in hindsight a lot more than if I did one and made a bit of a fool of myself.”

The team were all asked back for 10 O’Clock Live, which began its run in January 2010. The programme got off to a strong start, and amid the gags, even managed to make a few headlines itself.

As well being the first show to announce Alan Johnston’s resignation, it also saw John Prescott taking on selfconfessed phone hacker Paul McMullan, while Lauren Laverne got to break the news of the UN’s commitment to a No Fly Zone in Libya. Beat that, Mock the Week.

But while the critics seemed to agree that the 10 O’Clock show had its moments, there seemed to be a general feeling that the format hadn’t quite gelled.

C4 took note, and the series returns having undergone a few gentle tweaks.

Darren Smith, C4’s commissioning editor for entertainment, explains: “After learning from the first series, we’re keen to cover the same kinds of stories, with a similarly acerbic angle, but will be making efforts to make the running order a little more flexible.

“That means we will have regular items but you perhaps won’t see them every single week. It’s a slightly more bespoke approach to the news agenda that gives the show room to breathe, and hopefully room to be even funnier.”

The same presenting team of Mitchell, Carr, Brooker and Laverne are back with a mix of satire, sketches, and round-table discussions.

And now it’s on Wednesdays too, so it doesn’t clash with Question Time. What more could a topical comedy fan want?

THE gang are back with more cases involving the mysterious deaths of US Navy staff in NCIS. Regular viewers may remember that during season seven, Mexican drug cartel leader Paloma Reynosa vowed to take revenge for the death of her father – and in her sights during the first edition of season eight is Gibbs’s dad, Jackson. She visits him in his hardware store, then orders her gang to pepper the place with bullets.

They expect to find him dead inside, but instead, the old man has disappeared.

Somehow he makes it to the relative safety of his son’s house, but hates being kept a virtual captive while the search for Paloma gathers pace.

As ever, Mark Harmon, David McCallum and Pauley Perrette head the cast.

COMEDY-DRAMA Roger & Val Have Just Got In returns for a new, sixpart run.

When we meet them again, food tech teacher Val (Dawn French) has become uncharacteristically ambitious. She wants to become deputy headteacher, although it seems likely she’s going to fall at the first hurdle if she can’t overcome her interview nerves.

Meanwhile, botanist Roger (Alfred Molina) is claiming he’s been unfairly dismissed for sexual harassment, arguing he was merely misunderstood.

Then, after spending a weekend away at a family wedding, the couple return home to find a hand-delivered note for Roger that could turn their carefully ordered world upside down.