7 ms·
Slightly offtopic but anyone with a dark sense of humour would do well to check out Chris Morris's stuff - I get a feeling most younger Brits haven't heard of i
by mocko 3y ago
Slightly offtopic but anyone with a dark sense of humour would do well to check out Chris Morris's stuff - I get a feeling most younger Brits haven't heard of it. Day Today and Brass Eye, both still funny, are wonderful time capsules satirising Britain as it was thirty years ago.
But IMO his finest work was Blue Jam - the radio comedy not the TV incarnation, hour-long episodes of low-key music and surreal sketches. Absolutely brilliant even today. Archive.org has a copy at https://archive.org/details/chrismorris_bluejam https://archive.org/details/chrismorris_bluejam. Best enjoyed late at night.
Trigger warning: basically everything. The BBC would never get away with broadcasting it now.
- mhh__ 3y agoI don't think it's a coincidence that both of Chris Morris's parents are doctors.
- algesten 3y agoI love the TV show also. It's just so surreal and dark.
- gybon 3y agoSome brilliant sketches in there. One of my favourites is the man who attends his own funeral: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HhBkC6B9I2U https://youtube.com/watch?v=HhBkC6B9I2U
- algesten 3y agoMy favorite is the detached upperclass parents who didn't notice their child not coming home from school: https://youtu.be/sydPKgC_Or4?t=1137 https://youtu.be/sydPKgC_Or4?t=1137
- tetris11 3y agoI like to human think that Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a spiritual successor of sorts.
- thebruce87m 3y ago> The cabin crew suggested we all go out and club it. I had no option. It was that or one of their B&Bs. I figured it'd be safer on the streets. For the first time ever I saw the Scotch in their natural habitat, and it weren't pretty. I'd seen them huddling in stations before, being loud but… this time I was surrounded. Everywhere I went it felt like they were watching me; fish-white flesh puckered by the Highland breeze; tight eyes peering out for fresh meat; screechy, booze-soaked voices hollering out for a taxi to take 'em halfway up the road to the next all-night watering hole. A shatter of glass; a round of applause; a sixteen-year-old mother of three vomiting in an open sewer, bairns looking on, chewing on potato cakes. I ain’t never going back… not never.
- zeristor 3y agoIs that you watching the YouTube video? https://youtu.be/T8wIgQB9GIA https://youtu.be/T8wIgQB9GIA
- thebruce87m 3y agoYes, lived in Glasgow for 10 years so it’s one of my favourites.
- thom 3y agoPerhaps moreso Monkey Dust?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI'm a big fan of Monkey Dust, but due to legal complications with the music copyrights, they were only able to release the first season on DVD. Pirating is the only way too watch seasons 2 and 3.
- mellosouls 3y agoWe should also remember On The Hour, the original radio precursor to The Day Today, though I think the TV series is more important. My own favourite Chris Morris production is probably his Radio 1 series with the painfully embarrassing improvised tasks he'd set his hapless roving man on the scene. I think that was also the one that got him temporarily banned from the Beeb for implying - but not outright stating - that Michael Heseltine (very senior British politician at the time) had died from a heart attack. Edit: Ah, here. Typically facetious interview with "close personal friend, colleague and bass player of the Jam, Bruce Foxton" https://youtu.be/SiTEtJN2LdU https://youtu.be/SiTEtJN2LdU "hit the ground screaming", "which of your bass lines would be a suitable sort of lament", etc, etc
- petepete 3y agoChris Morris is still on form. Here's his speech from the LMC Conference from a couple of months ago. https://youtu.be/vECEz1E0HWg https://youtu.be/vECEz1E0HWg
- AndrewOMartin 3y ago> "The Ukraine declared its own independent laws of physics. Under the new legislation only natural-born Ukrainians were granted the right to have density, speed was calculated to equal boiling-point over height and friction was abolished, which caused increased mortality around hills, but meant that Ukrainians could glide over hundreds of miles with just one push. Meanwhile in Kiev over three hundred protesters were injured in gravity riots."
- evere 3y agoBacked the full shows up here a few years ago if anyone is interested. https://archive.org/details/OnTheHour https://archive.org/details/OnTheHour The Chris Morris Music Show was another humorous radio show he did in 1994. https://archive.org/details/TheChrisMorrisMusicShow https://archive.org/details/TheChrisMorrisMusicShow
- Cipater 3y agoThank you.
- harel 3y agoBlue Jam was so funny and horrific at the same time. I actually liked the TV version of it. Good to hear it mentioned.
- totetsu 3y agoThe kind of thing they ‘got away with’ was cutting in shots of black and brown people doing their cultural dances with shots unrelated Brits with a laugh track backing.
- gsinclair 3y agoSounds awesome. Thanks so much!
- mdp2021 3y agoAnd the movies: Four Lions; The Day Shall Come. And especially the relevant interviews: the movies are the artistic depictions, but the real world facts that made it important to produce them - the rationale and the exposition of salient research material that became the movie - are explained by Chris Morris in talks.
- cm2187 3y agoI never knew what to think of Four Lions. It's a hugely politically charged topic (suicide bombers, islamist terrorism, particularly perpetrated by UK residents/nationals). I watched it 10 years ago so perhaps I misremember it, but it didn't feel to me that the movie had any particular political agenda, it was just making fun of a band of clumsy terrorists.
- frereubu 3y agoI thought of it as satirising the picture painted by the security services of terrorist groups as Mission Impossible-type bad guys who were amazingly organised and professional, so they needed loads of money for counter terrorism. Don't get me wrong, I do value (some of) the work of the security services, but I think this kind of portrayal too easily allows people to ignore the fact that "terrorists" are often just directionless people drawn into that kind of world almost by accident. The Day Shall Come, released nine years later, expands on that idea.
- cm2187 3y agoI am not sure you can get that message from the movie. In the end it does show them as dangerous, murdurous criminals. It doesn't take a PhD or lots of means to kill a large number of people. Which is also the difficult challenge posed to those security services.
- frereubu 3y agoI didn't (intentionally) say they didn't end up as dangerous, murderous criminals. I said that they were directionless people - they weren't criminal masterminds in a glamorous world of high-tech equiment and fast cars, they were tragic characters who got sucked into a farcial which saw someone blow themselves up in a shopping precinct while dressed as a chicken. It's a fundamentally humanising film which hints at the reasons people join those kinds of organisations, which are much less high-tech and organised than the security services (intentionally or otherwise) paint them as.
- ealexhudson 3y agoBBC probably wouldn't broadcast Blue Jam today, but only because it would get such limited audience. It's niche and of its time. Similar shows today would include the Skewer, and to be honest I would rank that as more legally dangerous to run, it skirts libel laws much more closely.
- GordonS 3y agoI remember staying up late as a kid, so I could listen to Blue Jam! Such amazing sounds! I seem to recall it was annoyingly late tho, like 2am or such.
- louthy 3y agoBlue Jam is amazing, but it was the TV version of it: Jam, that really blew me away. Dark as anything, surreal, challenging, spectacular use of language, amazing use of music, and video editing techniques … incredible. I remember when it was originally aired, it would be on around 10pm. Then repeated around 4am, but with the visuals just bouncing around inside a small square (like a ‘Pong’ ball). Each episode they would mess with the visuals in a different way. Definitely will never see anything like that on Tv again. Probably my favourite sketch (which is also on Blue Jam) [1], but there are so many [2][3][4][5]. Even the intros [6] were disturbing, and set you up for what was coming in the next 30 minutes. [1] https://youtu.be/5SqHtWudI24 https://youtu.be/5SqHtWudI24 - 'Suicide with an escape clause' [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGex0kLgNok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGex0kLgNok - 'Thick People as a Service' [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKxM4ToLLR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKxM4ToLLR8 - 'Symptomless Coma' [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhKla4MEstY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhKla4MEstY - 'Living Outside' [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krsj2bcnRlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krsj2bcnRlM - 'Lizards' [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-i0XIux9vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-i0XIux9vo - Intro compilation
- lordfrito 3y agoWow some seriously strange/funny/interesting stuff... Laughed my ass off at "Thick People as a Service" American here. Reminds me heavily of Monty Python. I didn't realize there were other shows in such a similar vein. Will def checkout Jam / Blue Jam. Can you recommend any other shows I might not be aware of?
- mattkevan 3y agoI’d recommend anything by Julia Davis, who was in the ‘thick people’ sketch. Her comedies are pitch black and very good, including Nighty Night and Hunderby. For a sketch show I’d recommend Big Train - it went slightly under the radar, but has an absolutely incredible lineup of talent.
- Joeboy 3y agoI love her Dear Joan and Jericha podcast, where she and Vicki Pepperdine play wildly inappropriate agony aunts.
- rwmj 3y agoIf you like Chris Morris, then you might also like Victor Lewis Smith who had a similar sense of humour. (I'm not going to get into an argument about whether one influenced the other. There was apparently a bit of bad blood.) He (VLS) died recently and the BBC did a retrospective: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kgd2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kgd2
- mattl 3y agohttps://archive.org/details/vls-archive https://archive.org/details/vls-archive seems to have a lot of good stuff
- afavour 3y agoThe Suicide Journalist sketch has been rattling around my head ever since I first heard it.
- Bluecobra 3y agoThanks for this, I never heard of Blue Jam but I do own the Jam DVDs. I had to get a region free player to watch them.
- mjhay 3y agoIn a similar and even darker vein, the animated sketch show Monkey Dust is also fantastic.