1. Horne & Corden (BBC3, 2009)
You know youre dealing with something abysmal when one its creators says that it was a mistake. This feeble attempt at comedy came hot on the heels of Gavin & Stacey when James Corden and Matthew Hornes popularity was at an all time high and it felt like, as a double act, they were going to conquer the world of entertainment. Which didnt happen. And if this show is anything to go by, thats a real blessing. Horne & Corden has a lot of the tropes of a bad sketch show like overused gags and flat characters but as well as ticking all those boxes of mediocrity (which is far too charitable a word to use when referring to this programme), it has one big flaw: its bizarre and adolescent fixation with sex, genitals, and homosexuality. Almost every other sketch has one of those three things at least given a passing mention to the extent where it feels like the script was written by a fourteen year old. In the first episode alone, theres a sketch about a news reporter who is the kind of mincing gay stereotype that Proposition 8 supporters are presumably assaulted by in their nightmares, a sketch about a penis drawing class in a secondary school, and a perfume advert parody that ends with Horne and Corden embracing while stripped down to their pants. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVMJKaWs07g But the most blatant case of this is one of the programmes main recurring sketches: Xander (played by Corden), the boarding school chum from hell. The main punchline of each Xander sketch is him making a reference to how both he and the sketchs other main character (played by Horne) had a lot of gay sex while at boarding school, thoroughly embarrassing Horne. As well as that, there are three sketches in the first episode alone that feature prolonged exposure of Cordens stomach, one of which (the aforementioned perfume ad parody) features Horne naked and Corden slowly stripping off. Because apparently a prolonged shot of Matthew Horne jiggling James Cordens fat is the height of hilarity, and the way to make an unfunny sketch work is for someone to start taking their clothes off. Nudity sells products but it sure as hell doesnt make good comedy. Which is a memo somebody should pass on to the makers of the American Pie spin-offs as well. Watching this, you really cant help but think that Horne and Corden should just get a room rather than write such a huge volume of sketches that involve them either semi-naked or having a large amount of sexual tension with each other like their Superman Meets Spider-Man sketches do. But the core problem is that Corden and Horne simply arent sketch comedians. Sketch comedy takes discipline, talent, and, most of all, experience. Corden and Horne became instant media darlings because of Gavin & Stacey, and just suddenly rocked up and thought that they could do anything and it would be complete gold. And the BBC agreed, allowing them to jump into a medium they knew very little about. And the result was an unmitigated disaster that will hopefully never be repeated on BBC3 again. The show's title sequence where Horne and Corden destroy a number of televisions is a fitting metaphor for it as a series.
What Are Its Redeeming Features? The BBC cancelled it after six episodes.
What awful sketch shows dont you miss? Leave a comment...