Released on the BBC3 and iPlayer websites as a series of pilot shows, the BBC Comedy Feeds are, most would agree, a worthy enterprise. The Office, the last truly great British comedy, is long gone. The Inbetweeners has finished, Peep Show is on its last legs and The Thick of It is all but dead. It’s about time there was another British comedy show worthy of the name. The shows are certainly a mixed bag, but there are four very good reasons to be hopeful for the future.

 The Failures:

Kerry – One Star

The sketch shows are only 15 minutes each, and in Kerry this proves to be very problematic. Star Kerry Howard plays four characters, and each appears three or four times, meaning not only that the set-ups are tediously predictable, but that each character manages to outstay its welcome. As they rely on the same punchlines, the sketches – for example, a perfectionist who goes on a destructive rampage at the slightest criticism – have an easily foreseeable shelf life. A series of such characters would be nigh-on tortuous.

The Committee Meeting – Two Stars

It’s filmed with a live audience, who are ostensibly members of the committee, chaired by Mr Chairman (Elis James), helped by his number two, health-and-safety conscious Rex (Chris Corcoran). The two chat, and after a while another local character or two arrives, and later a celebrity guest who they interview in character (a rather bemused Colin Baker). The atmosphere is very genial, and you could be quite content watching it for half an hour before realising that it hasn’t once inspired in you any greater reaction than a wry smile or two.

Nick Helm’s Heavy Entertainment – Two Stars

Nick Helm’s show is glorified stand-up: half an hour of mildly amusing jokes, one mildly amusing sketch, and three terrible songs. He has a winning dedication, and would doubtless win over a small comedy club, but I’m unsure why anyone thought his act would make for a good TV show.

Going Native – Two Stars

A hidden-camera show featuring Mona Yousefi, who plays three separate immigrants to the UK. Though the format works very well when it shows up British assumptions about other cultures (an elderly couple happily watch Yousefi rattle off an impressive number of euphemisms for ‘vagina’ without comment) it is spoiled by the scenes of childishly annoying people, such as playing up on community service with a clearly exasperated cleaner. Also, some of it borders on racism, particularly the “Japanese Youtube sensation”, who introduces herself to everyone with a shrill cry of “Herro prease!”.

The Successes:

The Cariad Show – Three Stars

Though far from perfect, this show from Cariad Lloyd demonstrates that sketch comedy need not be a series of trudges to the same destination. The best sketches are characterised by touches of lovely originality; rival French parkour teams picnic together in playgrounds, and the impossibly sweet fantasy girl who plagues lonely men has cupcakes inexplicably falling from her hair. There is a creative silliness to the show, which suggests that a series would have many such moments.

 Fuzzbox – Three Stars

The script is disappointingly light on jokes, but Fuzzbox should be celebrated for its originality; it is set in a high school and uses puppets, with real teenagers providing the voices. This may seem unnecessarily gimmicky, but in fact adds a surprising realism to the conversations and the relationships, which feel immediately real. The only problem is the teenagers’ constant mumbling which often makes it quite difficult to follow.

Bamboo – Four Stars

Comedy duo Totally Tom (Tom Stourton and Tom Palmer) play two friends who open a nightclub, and they’re a send up of the oblivious, “Gap Yah-style” rich young man. Though the trailer describes them as “two douchebags united by a common dream”, the show works because their naïve idiocy makes them pretty lovable; they get a Buddha statue for luck because they think he’s the Prime Minister of Thailand. Their relationship drives the show, and the actors’ devotion to silly, over-the-top performances makes for a very watchable half hour.

C-Box – Four Stars

Rob Madin stars as Charlie, or “C-Bomb”, the “dubstep Da Vinci” unrecognised outside of his Sheffield suburb. Charlie is a great character; he lives with his mum, but he calls her by her first name and quickly corrects himself when he slips up in company. He’s brilliantly played, Madin giving him the perfect mix of impotence, bravado and honesty to make him instantly likeable. The stand-out moment is when, losing an argument, he fantasises about performing a dubstep hit that says exactly what he wants to say, but can’t. Charlie is a classic sitcom sap, and C-Bomb could be a sitcom with real legs.

This year’s BBC Comedy Feeds are available to watch here.

One Star

Screen reunions can be tricky things. Vince Vaughn should know. Last year saw the release of The Watch, a film which was, perhaps unfairly, hyped as the second coming of Vaughn’s partnership with Ben Stiller. Unfortunately, the film, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 16% was, to put it mildly, certainly no Dodgeball. Despite this, I held out some hope for The Internship. It sees Vaughn starring alongside the third of that erstwhile trio, Owen Wilson, for the first time since Wedding Crashers.

Unfortunately, The Internship fails to live up to even these low expectations. For starters, it appears to be not so much a film as an extended advert for Google. There are less than ten minutes devoted to introducing the main characters before they are whisked to Google’s San Francisco headquarters, the premise being that Vaughn (Billy McMahon) and Wilson (Nick Campbell), sacked from their jobs as travelling salesmen, are accepted onto the summer internship programme.

Most of the screen time is then aken up by their wide-eyed gazing at the wonders of working for the internet giant (slides! relaxation pods! free bagels!), while the backdrops seem to consist entirely of hotel-standard accommodation, and idyllic, forever-sunny grounds. There is repeated, un-mocking use of the term “Googly-ness” to describe the sought-after attribute of successful candidates, and the tasks the interns perform are the sort of thing that people at summer camps pay good money for. The praise is relentless and the effect is quite bizarre; a bit like watching a version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where Willy Wonka has been replaced by Mr Cadbury.

Even judged on its merits, the film is still a disappointment. Over-long, predictable, and low on laughs, it bores and frustrates in equal measure. The plot adheres to a well-worn formula. The interns are put into teams, and compete over a series of tasks with the winning team getting jobs; a premise at once too convenient to be realistic, and too dull to successfully hold interest. Nick and Billy are mocked by the other, vastly younger, candidates, and not without reason; they quickly prove to be almost entirely unfamiliar with computers (a skill which would seem to be the only necessary qualification for pursuing a career at Google).

In a shocking twist, however, they start to show these technologically-competent brats how it’s done, through pure old-fashioned hard work and chutzpah. They even show them a thing or two about partying, because the only thing that’s changed since the 80s is the clothes, daddio. There is, of course, a love story thrown in for good measure, which sees Nick attempting to woo a character so woefully under-developed I had to look up her name (Dana, played by Rose Byrne).

What grates most of all isn’t the fact that the film is so predictable, but that it goes through the motions of the story so lazily. The scenes whip by at a fair rate of knots, with very little energy expended on establishing either character or motive. For example, a section in which Billy drops out, gets another job, is hunted down by Nick and talked round to coming back plays out over less than five minutes of screen time. The film does this constantly, rushing you from one significant moment to the next without bothering to set the scene or provide more than a hint of motivation. The result is a rushed, unengaging end product, and it only adds to the sense that the entire thing is just a vehicle allowing Google to advertise on the silver screen.

This is a great shame in a way, because Wilson and Vaughn clearly have something still to offer as a partnership. Their presence is welcome in every scene, their interplay warm and easy, even producing some moments of surprising emotional import. They can’t, however, triumph over a script which stifles any jokes with its relentless pace, refuses to develop characters beyond a brief introduction, and, unforgivably, shows a quite astonishing deference to Google.

The Internship feels like the result of Sergey Brin threatening to kill Ben Stiller unless someone makes him a 90-minute recruitment video in two weeks. Which would probably make for a far better film; or at least one that didn’t feel quite so much like selling out.

The Internship is showing at Vue Cinema Oxford on 17^th July and in Odeon Cinema Oxford until 18^th July.

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

On ‘Nickels and Dimes’, a lyrical consideration of his own lasting commitments to the scene and his fans which closes Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z announces that “I’d die for my niggas”. Kanye West drops the exact same line on Yeezus. This bar is startling, even amusing, in its hollowness; as per the mission statement of 2011’s Watch the Throne collaboration, neither have any opposition worth speaking of that would ever put their positions at such risk. On ‘Crown’ Jigga notes that “best friends become your enemies”, but nowadays this transition is reversed. His old rival Nas now has guest spots on his records, and the only shots he sees taken are on the basket-ball court with Obama or administrated during a guest appearance at the the local children’s hospital.

The difference between Carter and West is that while any (admittedly reasonable) objections to Yeezus relate to certain memorable, racially problematic lines studding Kanye’s work, Magna Carta sags under the weight of volumes of forgettable material. Lack of adversity is killing Jay-Z artistically, and his work here suffers accordingly.

Collaborations with Rick Ross and Frank Ocean are both uninspired; in fact, minus the fleetingly fun ‘BBC’, the entire back straight of this album is pretty disposable. When the absence of risk and danger becomes painfully noticeable, Jay simply resorts to inventing it, but ‘Part II (On the Run)’, his duet with Beyonce about an imaginary, Badlands-esque flight from the law, also ends up striking a fairly false note given their status as one of the most visible celebrity couples in history.

Magna Carta Holy Grail doesn’t even properly sustain Jay-Z’s self-mythologisation as the disdainful father of hip-hop, rising above trends and transient culture. Sure, cheap gags like “When I was talkin’ Instagram / Last thing you wanted was your picture snapped” on the enjoyable “Somewhere in America” work in and of themselves. However, the distance Carter wants to suggest between himself and these fads with the lines is given the lie by the straight-faced delivery of lines such as “might crash your internet / And I ain’t even into that”, as if this record wasn’t released via a mobile app.

Jay-Z raps “I don’t pop molly / I rock Tom Ford”, suggesting that the currents moving through underground hip-hop are no longer relevant to him. However, replacing a fashionable drug with a symbol of wealth only serves to suggest artistic irrelevance on his part, and not the other way around.

With Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z wants you to believe that he has crafted an essential, lasting document, but is seemingly unaware of the irony inherent in releasing such an LP as the first primarily digital, corporate app-album. Here, as in many places, it feels like the metaphor he strives for is wholly unsustainable.

Download: Yeezus

★★★★☆
Four Stars

It might be a truism, but sometimes we need reminding that there’s more to the British festival season than the Big G. Take Blissfields; with a capacity of 3500 it’s literally a hundred times smaller than Glasto. A moderately stellar line-up featuring Mystery Jets, Bastille, Fenech Soler, Theme Park and The Staves might initially appear to venture into dubious Radio 1 territory. However, this shouldn’t detract from the fact that as far as British festivals go, Blissfields is the real McCoy, the cat’s pyjamas, the bee’s knees — take your pick.

It all took place on a blisteringly sun-drenched Winchester farm from the 5^th to the 7^th of July. The weekend’s highlight was London synth-dance four-piece Post War Years, although a clash with Mystery Jets meant their set in the Bradley Bubble on Friday was unfortunately sparse in spectators.

In a very different vein, other than headliners Bastille’s crowd-pleasing set culminating in a riot of drum-thumping and fireworks on the main stage, Saturday presented some strong folky offerings. The ‘Hard Acoustic Café’, replete with armchairs and woollen blankets, showcased a soul-purifying set from L.A. Salami (so chilled some of the audience were comatose), rousing South London ska-gypsy folk group Gorgeous George, and a typically hilarious and irreverent set from Beans on Toast. Part Billy Bragg, part Frank Turner and part Del Boy, Beans on Toast reeled out versions of songs about hating war, loving MDMA and being rejected from (but subsequently booked by) Glastonbury.

DJ sets in the Bradley Bubble from Bondax, the Artful Dodger and The D.O.T kept the atmosphere buzzing into the early hours across the weekend. It must be said, the much hyped Blisscoteque (it’s like, a disco-on-a-bus?!) complete with disco ball didn’t really live up to expectations, not helped by a downwards slope to the dancefloor and the fact that security didn’t take kindly to attempts to board the bus. 

While most catch-all festivals aim to market themselves as ‘family friendly’ Blissfields did indeed attract most age demographics. Half-naked, hyperactive and unsteady on their feet, swarms of prepubescent teenagers happily rubbed shoulders with a sizeable cohort of infants and the grey-haired; the festival even held its first marriage ceremony on Saturday.

Blissfields might be too small, too cutesy and too gentle for some, but one really shouldn’t underestimate the value of ambling from the main stage to one’s tent in under two minutes, nor dismiss the importance of the portaloo queues never exceeding ten minutes. (And the press tent had free beer.)

Super Earlybird tickets for Blissfields 2014 are available here.

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

Evidently, the three-man cast of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged are exceptionally comfortable and well-rehearsed in their roles. However, this self-assurance and familiarity with the script is at once the play’s strength and its greatest weakness.

Gags were delivered with all the slickness you would expect from a company playing the final night of a three-month tour. However, the show now moves to a four-week residency at the Leicester Square Theatre, and the cast may well find London audiences less forgiving than the merrily shit-faced farmers, rambunctious school-children and affable pensioners who made up the audience for this performance in the grounds of Ludlow Castle in Shropshire. 

The knockabout slapstick humour of the script would benefit from a little less fluency and assurance, and a cast more willing to think on their feet. When I saw the riotous One Man, Two Guvnors over Easter, the lead role was taken by an understudy. He therefore approached the performance determined to wring every ounce of physical comedy out of the role, holding nothing back as he bounced around the stage like a madcap jester in a mustard-checked suit. It is this exuberance which was missing here from the performance of road-weary actors arguably stifled by their familiarity with the script.

Personally, though, I have an almost endless capacity to be amused by people falling over — and there were also moments of genuine wit amongst the pratfalls and funny walks. An opening monologue where a haplessly confused academic accidentally conflated Shakespeare’s biography with that of Hitler as he frantically shuffled his cue-cards worked well, as did the combination of all of Shakespeare’s comedies into a single scene full of frantic cliché. (“Enter stage left a heavy-handed metaphor for the colonial experience, pursued by two cross-dressing identical twins and a Jewish stereotype”.)

Utterly predictable pop-cultural references added nothing to this ‘revised’ version of the RSC’s original. Wikipedia is a little unreliable! Young people these days like Facebook! Justin Bieber’s fame is perhaps disproportional to his abilities! The show could have done without these moments of groundbreaking observational humour. Likewise, opportunities for audience interaction passed by as they have done in a thousand amateur pantomimes. A less formulaic and more laidback approach to this over-long section of the show would allow for the evident natural improvisational wit of the performers to shine through.

The much-vaunted idea that anyone can understand Shakespeare if it is well-performed is completely fallacious, and this show must be commended for its attempts to bring his work to audiences which would otherwise run a mile from Titus Andronicus or The Two Noble Kinsmen. A moment where one of the cast realises the true power of the Bard’s work as he delivers the ‘what a piece of work is a man’ speech from Hamlet genuinely reminded me of the beauty and clarity of the playwright’s best work.

In places, the script is very funny, and the actors’ physical humour keeps the audience ticking over well enough through lean patches. There is a sense, though, that they are going through the motions at the end of an arduous tour, and it is a shame their comedic talents are not given more room to breathe. Ultimately, this production is too professional for its own good.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged, Revised) will be performed at the Leicester Square Theatre, London from 16th July to 11th August. Tickets can be bought from directly from the theatre, here.