Wrong Door grows out of Web

August 24, 2008 11:54 AM

The BBC has a new sketch show, called Wrong Door. It's very heavy on CGI - indeed, the official blurb calls it 'a parallel world where the effects you see in TV and movies are real'. And it's funny - check out the trailers on YouTube. And it has Brian Blessed and a spaceship shaped like a giant silver cock and balls. Really, what's not to love? But the best bit isn't in the show,

It's that the writer got the commission through work he did on the enthusiastically childish, obscene and clever B3ta bulletin board. If you don't know it, get thee hence - it's a marvellous amalgam of Photoshopped jokes, community ragging, feelthy gossip and playground humour by grown-ups. Only the Web can do this, men. Salute!

posted by Devonian (32 comments total)

The trailer seems to be rather weak. Without all the CGI, how would the joke be funny? Now compare it to, say, this.
posted by MrMerlot at 12:02 PM on August 24, 2008

Why do I love England? Only in England would there be an egg wrangler on the crew of a television show.
posted by droplet at 12:11 PM on August 24, 2008

Heee!
posted by brain cloud at 12:17 PM on August 24, 2008

'On BBC3' is enough of a reason not to bother watching something. 'On BBC 3' and 'made by someone off B3ta' is pretty much a recipe for wet shit. (The clips confirmed my prejudices.)
posted by jack_mo at 12:21 PM on August 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

Immediate footage of Blessed in spaceship required.
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 12:23 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, he's not *in* the spaceship? Then fuckit.
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 12:24 PM on August 24, 2008

It would appear that all of the video clips that are inline on the show's site are restricted to UK-based IPs. Grrrr. Still, nice Flash development, that.
posted by mumkin at 12:31 PM on August 24, 2008

Heee!

Well that raised a smile but all the rest of the clips I've seen have just inspired hatred for all those Hoxton Finned, Shorditch Twatish, Nathan Barley types who get to piss good money up the wall making what passes for 'comedy' on BBC3 nowadays
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:34 PM on August 24, 2008

a spaceship shaped like a giant silver cock and balls. Really, what's not to love?

I see BBC3 are going for that tricky 8-12 year-old schoolboy demographic.
posted by panboi at 1:00 PM on August 24, 2008 [4 favorites]

ithout all the CGI, how would the joke be funny? Now compare it to, say,Monthy Python

Indeed something completely different. The CGI one ends up ridiculing tangentially investment in ineffective technology, but the attention is all on the soldiers being shot up a cannon, a body gag like slipping on a banana. Monthy use absurdities and exxageration to whip the officiers class, so detached from reality (there's a war out there!) and incompetent (the doctor) it's funny "because it's real". Or so seems to me.
posted by elpapacito at 1:02 PM on August 24, 2008

... a spaceship shaped like a giant silver cock and balls

Wow, ripping off a gag from a ten year old Austin Powers movie? That's edgy for you.
posted by octothorpe at 1:05 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

If your metric for judging every new comedy is "Is it as good as 'Monty Python,' and if it's good, is it good in the same way as 'Monty Python'," you'll dismiss everything right off the bat, and never enjoy anything new. You probably toss a new book aside and sigh, "not as good as Nabokov," or switch off every new band, "not quite the Beatles..."
posted by Faze at 1:18 PM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

If your metric for judging every new comedy is "Is it as good as 'Monty Python'

Then you'll form a prejudice allright. Yet comparisons of "how fun it turned out to be" are legit, having seen the show. Blackadder, Monthy and Couplings, so far, turned out to be the most entertaining pieces of brit tv I have seen so far. I probably am missing much, but not by prejudice.
posted by elpapacito at 1:39 PM on August 24, 2008

I see BBC3 are going for that tricky 8-12 year-old schoolboy demographic.

You've seen Lab Rats then?

And I note the CGI this show is filled with all looks to have that same slightly low-rent, shiny, BBC CG dept look. It's one of the things that helps to killany BBC show with CG!

There is so much dreadful shite being called comedy around at the moment. Hurry up new series of Peep Show.
posted by opsin at 1:44 PM on August 24, 2008

Without all the CGI, how would the joke be funny?
You mean without the central point of the joke - seeing all those soldiers being blasted out of the cannon?
Yeah, that wouldn't be quite as funny.
posted by Flashman at 2:46 PM on August 24, 2008

So it's Monkey Dust, but shit?
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:47 PM on August 24, 2008

Is it even CGI? You'd be surprised by what the BBC can get away with.
posted by Flashman at 2:47 PM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

If the clips on youtube are the best Wrong Door can come up with, they ought to have spent the CGI money on writing.
posted by pracowity at 3:11 PM on August 24, 2008

Faze, mate, life's too short for schlock like this
posted by MrMerlot at 3:25 PM on August 24, 2008

I miss Monkey Dust (well, not all of Monkey Dust, but quite a lot of it). This doesn't seem to be very much like it though.
posted by bjrn at 3:32 PM on August 24, 2008

Oh dear, such cynicism among the young.

The trailers made me laugh. Some more than others, and some a lot. Perhaps that's because I'm a member of the North London Media Mafia (we'll make you a pitch you can't refuse, capeesh?), even if my position in the hierarchy is ripping off parking meters. But I've been an enthusiastic and critical consumer of UK broadcast comedy for thirty years, and put in the hours on teh intarnets in search of sites of delight: Wrong Door is a very promising synthesis of the two.

If you hate it, meh. Nobody's going to clockwork orange you. And yes, there will be things there that you've seen before (Willy jokes? Let's go back to Aristophanes). But nobody's asking you to pony up - take it or leave it. Nice to have the choice, no?
posted by Devonian at 4:33 PM on August 24, 2008

I hate CGI sometimes, I really do.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:08 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

... a spaceship shaped like a giant silver cock and balls

Wow, ripping off a gag from a ten year old Austin Powers movie? That's edgy for you.

It's even worse.
posted by dhartung at 5:19 PM on August 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

FRESH HORSES!
posted by JHarris at 6:07 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I watched half a dozen of the trailers and thought that they were pretty much void of humor. Hopefully those weren't the funniest bits in the show.
posted by octothorpe at 6:59 PM on August 24, 2008

Some of them made me guffaw. There were some nicely surreal bits.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:22 PM on August 24, 2008

The whole first episode is buried in the flash mess on the BBC site. I dunno... it didn't do much for me, really. I guess it's not my sense of humor.
posted by MythMaker at 9:38 PM on August 24, 2008

bjrn wrote: I miss Monkey Dust (well, not all of Monkey Dust, but quite a lot of it).

I wonder if the reason it's never been repeated is down to the (brilliant) sketches about the hapless Brummie terrorists.

Also, it strikes me that there's already been a superb show done in a the B3ta style (in terms of animation, not writing): I Am Not An Animal.
posted by jack_mo at 3:49 AM on August 25, 2008

You probably toss a new book aside and sigh, "not as good as Nabokov,"

No, I generally let other people be the guinea pigs for new products. If smart folk I generally trust all spend hours and hours (and perhaps lots of money) reading, watching, and listening to tripe and come back to report that only X, Y, and Z were really worth their time and money, I might get around to trying X, Y, and Z. Nabokov had many contemporaries and I am not about to waste my time attempting to read them all when herds of noble guinea pigs have sacrificed their time to make sure I don't have to.

I do occasionally sample entirely new products like the one we're discussing here. Judging by that sample, it's not worth my time. If masses of smart guinea pigs later come back to tell me it's fantastic, I might give it another shot.
posted by pracowity at 4:13 AM on August 25, 2008 [2 favorites]

Wow... how incredibly dull. I don't think I've found a single UK TV comedy funny for about 5 years. Putting the label BBC3 on it just makes it a hundred times worse. It's odd because Radio2/Radio4 and even BBC7 manage to create really impressive comedy and comedy drama. There's been nothing on TV recently that's a patch on Cabin Pressure, for example.

All this seems to prove is that either CGI is a new cool buzzword for TV or putting a man in a room with a PC is now cheaper than employing a props department. Seriously, the CGI canon thing could have been done by Monty Python however many years ago. Standard tank type arrangement, some speeded up footage and a hundred incredibly unlifelike manequins. The thing is that it would have been funnier because it would have relied on the interaction of the people and the leadup/cooldown from the canon scene rather than crappy computer work and the "punchline" of 'It's a work in progress'...
posted by twine42 at 8:42 AM on August 25, 2008

You've seen Lab Rats then

I did. Then I called the NHS and scheduled MRSA insertion therapy for my eyes since it couldn't be mush worse.
posted by srboisvert at 10:36 AM on August 25, 2008

Aw, BBC3 is a'ight. But this is a load of crap. Not even a slight smile from me, let alone a great rip roaring guffaw.
posted by Lleyam at 6:41 AM on August 26, 2008