Stewart Lee is to the world of comedy what pans are to a chef; pretty vital unless you want cold beans, and nobody wants cold beans.
This man possesses razor sharp comic timing; somehow he can make any innocuous word comical. One small inflection or miniscule tweak of his expression conveys more than any amount of high pitched puerile drivel from the crosseyed one from Mock the Week or pretty much anyone from BBC Three.
Lee has worked on or been the star of some of the best subversive and irreverent comedy programmes to appear on our screens. Originally the slimmer half of Lee & Herring he produced Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy. The latter shamelessly provided more material and wit in its short run than the equivalent of 16 million series of Two Pints of Lager. we're being conservative in our estimate, too. After the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera, Stewart has only briefly kept us afloat by appearing as a panellist or contributor. But now he is back to save television with his Comedy Vehicle.
The opening titles depict Lee looking blissfully moronic in his car, a look he has had years to perfect and uses to great effect. Each week he presents a different topic which is performed via the medium of stand up and sketches. The latter are performed by some of his old stable mates, Kevin Eldon, Simon Munnery, and Paul Putner who are themselves comedians and writers of great esteem.
This week?s edition pits Stewart against the intellectual might of celebrity writers such as Chris Moyles and Russell Brand. He speaks polemically about said writers and the sad state of literature where one of our most well published authors (Dan Brown) can also be terrible. He also provides a useful time saving device by suggesting that we dismiss Brand?s Booky Wook as rubbish without reading it. This also applies to Chris Moyle?s second autobiography, Asher D?s literary vomit, and the entire Harry Potter series. He has (excluding Potter) read these piles of bound paper so that you don't have to, much in the same way that we watch After You've Gone and The Green Green Grass so you don't have to.
Watch this brilliantly pedantic, mesmerizingly-voiced comedian as often as you can, he offers the rare gift of being both very funny and occasionally incredibly incisive in a similar vein to the late?Bill Hicks.
You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!
MC Miker G says
I watched it and was willing him on, but a lot of what he did was slightly obvious and pedestrian. I’m not sure about the (possibly extempore) slightly surreal bits either – “rappers near the Corn Exchange” etc.
Heart in the right place he may have, but one can never get away from the nagging suspicion that Stewart Lee isn’t really ALL that funny…
Horror says
I loved it. Bit restrained, but I suspect the BBC’s hand in it. Good to see The Actor Kevin Eldon in it too. If we see Curious Orange, then I can die a happy man.
Stabby McGee says
Gah! I missed it! Curses and arse. To iPlayer!
pxpls says
I normally enjoy Stewart Lee ( ilove his anti-Braveheart rant) but I found the repetitive nature of the show to be rather hard work it was like three gags strecthed out over the course of 30 minutes (I mean do we need the sketches re-inacting the angry sentance the man has said about ten times before hand!)
Yes Stewart watching Channel 4 is like allowing sewage to flood your front room. It was midly amusing the first time you said it… demonstrating this twice in sketch form less so AND if I ever hear you say “Del Boy falling through the bar and Trigger pulling a funny face” I think my brain will burst with frustration.
Maybe I was just too hungover to deal with extreme repetition.
Stuart says
Having so far watched 5 vehicles…I would have prefered watching vehicles from any angle including straight down the exhaust with the engine running.
I continue to watch out of amazement at how unfunny this is…he has made me snigger but once when talking about getting your willy stuck in a zipper…anyone could get a laugh with that!
It amazes me how he likes to repeat the same thing several times, likes to repeat things several times, repeat things several times, several times, times.
magnetite says
I like his use of rhetorical devices like anaphora and epistrophe (among others) to great effect to egg we viewers on into a false sense of security, then – when we expect a mere punchline – we are given so much more.
He’s much smarter and much funnier than me. I have no problem with this. If I had, I wouldn’t be here either.