March 5, 2006
IT CROWD NEWS
The IT Crowd finished it’s 1st run on Channel 4 last week and was generally considered a success. I’m pretty sure there’s a second series in the pipe. Some people hated it because it wasn’t sufficiently cutting edge and seemed old fashioned with it’s studio audience and all, but I believe it held on to it’s decent ratings throughout the run (sitcoms often tail off) so Graham must have been right about there still being people out there who enjoy stuff that actively avoids shocking people (which is very rare in modern TV when you think about it). Shocking people is all very well when there’s a good reason for it and it’s well done (like nudity!) but most of the time it’s just tedious and revolting (like nudity!)
Of course, I’m bound to be pro IT Crowd because Graham is a friend and I was in it! My episode, ‘The Haunting Of Bill Crouse’ went out a couple of Fridays ago and I was very excited about it. On the whole I see things I’ve been in and I want to go and hide in a box (100 Greatest Whatevers for example) because all I can see is me being self conscious but this time I thought I did OK and the whole episode made me laugh quite a bit. It looks as if they had to cut a lot of stuff with Judy, (the mad beast-woman in the orange boiler suit) which must have been a time thing. It’s a shame as she did a load of funny scenes, which made a lot more sense of her presence in the episode. As it stands it’s hard to see why she’s there sometimes, although her call to Roy complaining that her smashed computer won’t receive e-mail made me laugh a great deal. Anyway I was proud to be in it and I very much hope it won’t be the last time Graham and I get to work on something together.
I’m about to get down to work properly on my contribution to the IT Crowd DVD extras (a 15 minute spoofy behind the scenes thing narrated by my character Ken Korda) so I’ll keep you all posted because I imagine you’re quite fucking impatient for news on that front, right? Thought so.