5 Awful TV Sketch Shows Nobody Misses

2. School Of Comedy (E4, 2009 - 2010)

Commissioned on the strength (such as it was) of an episode of comedy pilot series Comedy Lab, E4 inflicted School Of Comedy on the viewing public. It was a sketch show based on an incredibly flimsy concept: the cast are all teenagers. That was basically the only thing it had going for it. That it was children playing adult characters. Other than that, there€™s nothing. No particular style or clearly defined type of comedy. Just teenagers dressing up as adults. It also feels unbelievably juvenile with there being way too much emphasis on bad language without it being comically justified. I think the problem is that the adult writers consciously tried to make the dialogue and jokes suit the teenage cast. With appalling results. I don€™t know what went through the heads of the writers when they were scripting this but not all teenagers swear like sailors and a teenager suddenly breaking out a cluster of F-words doesn't make good comedy. Neither does them suddenly miming and dancing to music for no reason whatsoever. Interestingly, IMDB credits the cast as providing additional material. If this is correct, it explains a hell of a lot because fifteen year-olds just cannot write comedy. They don€™t have the maturity or the life experience. The entire conceit of the programme (that the cast are all teenagers) is its unique selling point and the only thing that sets it apart from the legions of other dross out there, but it just doesn€™t add anything. If anything, it seriously detracts from the programme because these children do not have the charisma or versatility to pull off sketch comedy. The supposed comedy that€™s supposed to come from the juxtaposition of a teenager playing a brain surgeon or a lawyer just isn€™t there. A fifteen year old playing these characters isn€™t inherently funny in itself and with the dire script, jokes we€™ve seen a dozen times before in other stuff and can see coming a mile off, and the terrible performances, it leads to an end product that is an unfunny mess and feels like it was taken from a reject pile at CBBC€™s offices and had some swearing and knob gags put in. What Are Its Redeeming Qualities? It at least tried to do something different.