Monday morning at the PhoneShop (E4): Ashley and Jerwayne are discussing the weekend. "So you told her to keep her shoes on? Nice." "I didn't want to see her dry foot, innit." That's dry as in DRAAII, nice and long. Bruv.
Lance, the manager, shows up. He had a good weekend too, baking. Baking as in BEER-KING (middle-age white boy he speak like him Sean flippin' Paul man.) Yeah, we saw Lance in the opening credits, mixing maniacally in the kitchen, milk and flour everywhere, dropping a whole egg in, fishing it out all covered in chocolate gunk bro, cracking it, dropping it back into the mix again. But the muffins turned out well - they look good actually, tasty. They're not just regular muffins, these are skunky muffins, scuffins. Made with some top quality ganj Lance found in the shed, to celebrate the fact that he's finally been accepted into the WMRC. The White Man Reggae Club? That's what I'm talking about.
Where the hell are the cakes, though? Lance left them [adopts Jamaican accent] COOLIN' DOWN [drops accent] on the rack over there. Oh, Ashley and Jerwayne thought they were room cakes. Room cakes? Yeah, room cakes, cakes for the room. "It got ate." "It got ate?" "It got ate." "What ... you ..?" "It got ate." "I ate it, you ate it, she ate it, he ate it, we ate it." "It all got ate."
And that's the basis for this first episode of series three of PhoneShop. Everyone in the shop ate the cakes, not knowing they were reggae cakes. And soon, apart from Janine, who appears to be immune, they're all not just SOS (stoned on shop floor), they are off their flamin' tits. Gibbering, sobbing, paranoid - torn apart by the Tee Haitch Cee, not to mention defecating in the doorway of the Kay Ef Cee.
Unwitting drug taking - it's not clever, it's wrong, it's dangerous, boo. It's not even very original as a source of humour. But it is bloody funny. It's why it still cracks two of my so-called "friends" up when they remember the time they put magic mushrooms in my Pot Noodle (I'm not laughing, not then, not now, not ever). It's why Ben Fogle's nightmare acid-trip hell is the only entertaining thing he's ever done (this time I am laughing, a lot). It's why Ashley and Jerwayne, slapping each other, laughing, crying, scared of a snow globe, hiding in cupboards, and under beds, are so hilarious. Baking Bad the episode's called, of course. Hahaha.
I love it, can you tell? It's puerile, yes, silly as silly. Nothing wrong with that; quite a lot right with that, actually. It's also brilliantly performed by Martin Trenaman and co, and brilliantly written and made by Phil Bowker. There are so many 24-carat lines to pick out, to enjoy individually, cherish, tweet if that's what you do. "I did a fart, I didn't know what it was, I started crying cos I didn't understand it." Hashtag hashcake.
There's also a truth to PhoneShop. Go into any mobile phone retailer on any high street in the country and it'll be a bit like this. Not quite as funny perhaps, and a bit less on drugs, you'd hope, but they'll speak in the same kind of way. A sitcom for the 21st century then, and that's rarely a successful thing. There's a truth in the detail too - the WMRC, maybe not a real club maybe, but we all know members, right? And not liking a dry foot; that's an actual thing too, for some people, no? Keep your shoes ON. Innit.
Dara O Briain's Science Club (BBC2), or the DOBSC as Lance would probably call it, returns too. Delivering science to your home in nice, easily digested bite-size portions and attractively presented. It's science that's not too difficult and can be demonstrated by dramatic experiments, designed to make you go: "Wow, that's a bit cool." Not quite science disguised as not-science, but definitely science selected because it works on TV. Nothing wrong with that, this is TV after all, and it does work.
So it's about how robots are being taught to read our emotions, lie-detection, glasses that shift the visual world, crowd behaviour, how to make people have spasms with electromagnetic forces, and a miracle fruit that makes lemons tastes of oranges. See? Wow. And hahaha, because there are jokes too.
Bang Goes The Theory for grown-ups, you could say. With a hint of the Top Gear about the format, and the studio audience. But more interesting because it's not just about cars, and funnier because DOB is actually funny, not just a fool who thinks he is. Hey, maybe they should get a celebrity guest in, set them some science tests, call it "star in a white coat". You can have that one Dara, on me.
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