Boxseting Day – The Anglophile DVD List 2011

You’re American. You like British stuff like Doctor Who, The Office and Being Human. You’re looking forward to The Fades.

But you want more. Stuff that your peers might not have heard of, so you can lord it over them, lend them the box set, and get kudos back. Stuff that even BBC America won’t show.

1. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring.

A comedy team who rose to semi-fame in the early nineties who consistently rejected commercialisation of their work – and as a result aren’t nearly as famous as they could be if they’d only done those “I’m an Apple, I’m a PC” ads. Fiercely intelligent and deconstructive, scatological and heartfelt, their separate careers still seem joined, and in their solo stand up work, they still appear to impersonate each other when they need another voice to challenge them.

Their far-too-young show Fist Of Fun has a huge box set for its first series, in that it includes all the rushes from every take of the show, as they were recorded. That’s fan dedication. The second series and their subsequent live show This Morning With Richard Not Judy is to come, but their solo work is stellar.

Richard Herrings’s Christ On A Bike is my own personal favourite, tackling Richard Herring’s atheist relationship with Jesus, but Hitler Moustache, Oh Fuck I’m 40, The Headmaster’s Son, Menage A Un, Someone Likes Yoghurt and The Twelve Tasks Of Hercules are still some of the best themed standup shows around and just the kind of thing to dazzle and excite the person who thinks Eddie Izzard and Ricky Gervais is as far as you can go.

While Stewart Lee, gaining a criticial revival of late, provides some of the most nihilist self examination and despair in the name of comedy around, as he takes apart your very expectations of a joke. Don’t worry, it should still make you laugh. 90′s Comedian, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One and 41st Best Stand Up Ever are gems as is his new show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Series 1 and Series 2. You may also know him from writing Jerry Springer – The Opera, now at a ludicrously low price.

2. The Comedy Shockers

There are some comedies that are so grotesque, so dark, that it will need a very special kind of American to appreciate them. Will that be you? Here are five modern examples, that manage to avoid the purely scatalogical obscene-for-its-own-sake material like Roy Chubby Brown or Frankie Boyle.

Snuff Box. Ostensibly about a couple of hangmen, it’s more a sketch based show taking strange leaps of fantasy, and depths of depravity. Misogynist, nihilist and very funny. Never repeated by the BBC. This is why.

Jam. From Chris Morris, one of the most respected men in British Comedy by being its one of its most challenging and socking shows, this is his sketch show that went too far, tackling death, rape, paedophilia, suicide, trust in authority and the woozy feeling you get trying to cope with the world after two too many drinks. Or rohypnol.

Nighty Night. The tales of a truly horrible, selfish and psychopathic woman married to a man with cancer, and milking it for as much as she can. Then destroying her neighbours’ marriage too. So funny, so hideous.

Ideal. Far sweeter than any of the above, this sitcom about a drug dealer who won’t leave his apartment for any reason, and so brings the dregs of the world to his door rapidly turned into a Lynchian fantasy of death, torture and sexual depravity. Oh and an organised crime syndicate consisting entirely of ginger headed people.

Black Mirror. Charlie Brooker and friends take a very modern look at the Twilight Zone. With the first episode famously seeing the Prime Minister of Great Britain seriously contemplating a terrorist demand that he commit bestiality on national television to save the life of a kidnapped royal. Modern media destroyed.

The Pall Bearers’ Revue. Unavailable. Tell me if you can find a copy.

3. New Stuff

Misfits -  Okay, so you might have seen Misfits season one and two on Hulu. But they didn’t have season two’s Christmas special, and have only just started season three. Looks like you’ll have to get the box set. It is very very good – I’ve called it the best expression of the super power on the screen, big or small. I’m not wrong. See this before the US remake – which is happening. There is not one person who reads Bleeding Cool who should not watch this.

Any Human Heart - Adaptation of William Boyd’s intergenerational novel tracing the life of a young man through some of the more sensational aspects of the 20th century. Sex, scandal and terrorist politics.

Twenty Twelve – a docudrama-style telling of those planning the intricacies of the upcoming Olympic Games. Very much in the manner of People Like Us,

Eric And Ernie – a BBC4 biopic telling the early life of Morecambe and Wise, who would go on to become the most popular entertainers in Britain, as they try to avoid repeated imminent disaster.

Rev. Finishing its second season on the BBC now, this sitcom takes a different look at a priest, one who works in an inner city church with a shrinking congregation, yet somehow managing to hold on to his job if not his sanity, as his long suffering wife. Stars Tom Hollander, who you might recognise from the Pirates Of The Carribean films. He’s so much better in this though.

Getting On starred Jo Brand, who used to be a nurse, as a nurse. The mundanity of dealing with patient life, bureacracy and trying to get by doing as little work as possible. Harold Pinter’s Scrubs.

Miranda - if it hasn’t already, this will come to BBC America. Or PBS. It’s a bawdy, bold, self referential sitcom that celebrates slapstick, winks to the camera, and reminding you of a seventies British sitcom with modern values. Astoundingly good – but only if you like that sort of thing. The anti-Office,

Fresh Meat. Peep Show meets The Inbetweeners. Literally it seems. First year students at college. BTW there was also an Inbetweeners Movie which is probably worth mentioning.

Phone Shop. Two series in, this sitcom is either full of overblown grotesques who could never hold down a job in their lives… or if you like in South London, it’s a searing docudrama. You can choose. Notable for this following clip which still makes me hurt so much.

Friday Night Dinner Nothing embarrasses you like your close family. And for a North London Jewish family who still have dinner every Friday night together, it’s just even worse.

This Is England ’88. The film This Is England, a period piece council estate drama, has skipped forwards a few years. Grim, gritty, with poignant humour and made Joe Gilgun a Misfit.

The Trip - Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing semi-fictional versions of themselves, reviewing restaurants for a magazine,

Outnumbered - The kids are growing up, but there is no comedy to touch this South London semi-improvised comedy with kids on top of the parents. It makes Malcolm In The Middle look rather normal.

Facejacker - Fonejacker was a low budget prank calls show given life by poorly animated characters. Facejacker has brought those cut out characters to life as Kayvan Novak racebends all over the place to bring these grotesques to live. Terry Tibbs on QVC was a highlight.

Right that should do you for a while. Off you go and be smug.