TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

markrequest 5.3 is not a truly reflective score for this show. Available on 4od.com, I return to it quite often to cheer me up. Complaints about the writing or the concept of kids doing adult humour fall flat on the ground with me. The true concept is that here we have young teenagers developing enough of an understanding about adult life and using their comedic talents to poke fun at it. As for the writing, it is subjective to British life. That said, the viewer needs to overcome the fact that it is being delivered by children, albeit teenagers. When you can appreciate both points, teens making fun of adults with adult based humour, then you are in for a treat. The French taxi passenger who finds football boring and prefers opera and small boys, the estate agent reluctant to show the last room and the (sublime) sketches of the two immigrant South African security guards. Even the thought that teenagers can make fun of these tickles but to see it enacted, and so well, is hugely enjoyable.

Steve B I think this show as great potential, and the cast is certainly brilliant on all fronts. It makes me feel very good about the future of acting and comedy in the UK.But, I do agree that the writing got a bit lazy at times. Though there are some characters, like Leonard Lizard, who for me, expressed deep pathos. The man (Will Poulter) for all his wealth, power, and privilege broke my heart every time he was on the screen.And the 'Two Men in the Van' sketches absolutely cracked me up.The basic premise is not just kids playing adults, but playing their view of adults, with all the irrationality, banality, and crudeness in tact. Does it go a bit over the top, yes. But let me remind you that there is also a British comedy in which an adult plays and skews an adult's view of what kids are like. It is equally absurd, and in this case, just painful to watch. Who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea for someone in their 40's to play a kid? But absurdity is the point, because from the view of a neutral outsider, adults are irrational nut cases who are not fit to be in charge of the world.So, the underlying point is not that they are playing adults, but that they are playing a kid's view of how completely out of it adults are.Further, the UK has something of a tradition of quirky, oddball, off center comedy. Think Monty Python, Mr. Bean, and Benny Hill. I think School of Comedy fits very nicely into this off kilter tradition of British Comedy.Yes, the sketches can be crude, but adults can be crude as well, and frequently it is the seemly respected reputable adults that can be the crudest of all. However, in most sketches, as I've implied, I feel the underlying pathos. And as I've also said, the Will Poulter character Leonard Lizard never failed to break my heart.Various sketches can be found on Internet video sites, the largest of which shall remain nameless, but they are not complete episodes. None the less, they do demonstrate the tremendous pool of young talent that is being drawn on in these sketches.I think the entire cast is brilliantly talented, even if lazy, too obvious writing sometime doesn't bring out their best. Given their ages, I see bright futures for all of them in both comedy and drama.Far more than being a brilliantly funny sketch show, School of Comedy is a showcase for brilliant young talent.

Lyco499 Have you ever sat there and watched hours of something so terrible, so bizarrely bad you feel retarded? Well I have, for I watched every episode, both series of this over the last 2 days. I don't know why, I laughed once and I have to admit I laughed at a rather damn good sketch, in the very last episode (a "woman" narrating everything at a dinner party where the predictable punch line is everyone can actually hear her slagging them off) it wasn't clever or special or unique but it tickled me.Other than that I enjoy the South Africans, possibly because I find the accent pretty. It tries to marry the juvenile and the mature with no luck and at times you feel feel genuinely bad for the cast. By far the most painful of the recurring sketches have to be the cab driver, the art gallery chubby chaser and the white van men. Basicaly they use material that would be good for one sketch, if that, and then do it over and over and over again. Don't get me started on the impromptu lip syncing.Although it has endeared me to Will Poulter, whose hideous way of speaking in Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader made me hate him for a long time. Yes I know Eustace Scrubb is meant to be an unlikable, repugnant character but still, there is no excuse for that mannerism.And while they seem to have turned the canned laughter slider down in between Series', they still use it too much. And some of the better recurring sketches from the first series were thrown out and not replaced in the second. The misanthropic bar maid from the first series was brilliant in a cringe worthy way.That sums the whole show up really, car crash television. Some morbid fascination with misery and pain keeps you watching when you know it's wrong. And a lot of it is so bad it swings back around to good, in a cringe worthy pitiful kind of way. However I do think some of the actor's are pretty talented, some of the girl's play perfectly believable adults (one of which would do better if she didn't have braces).Well there you go, my long winded confused sh-peel.

chrswlk320 It seems that people are knocking this show a little too harshly, and not appreciating it's light-hearted and fun nature. The gimmick of seeing kids act as adults is nothing new - ( Remember the 1976 movie Bugsy Malone?), but with seeing a talented cast deliver comedy sketches, the producers have definitely come up with something fresh and fun. All the performers are good, but special mention must go to Will Poulter, Max Brown, Beth Rylance, and Ella and Lilly Ainsworth, who really are top notch. Overall, as with a lot of sketch shows, there are hits and misses, but I found there to be more hits in this than in a host of other so-called comedy sketch shows currently airing. The wonderful spoofs of 1940's Noel Coward plays, but with added gayness are hilarious, as are the Saffa's, and the Polish workers taking advantage of the stupid English. I also love the Museum Perv, the therapy sessions, and the various music spoofs, when the cast launch into miming a popular song, whose lyrics match the nature of the sketch. All in all, a good series, which deserves a better response than most appear to have given it on this site.