Horne & Corden

From Twitter to Radio One, across all BBC channels and on the lips of many, Horne and Corden are here, and they don’t appear to be going away anytime soon. I was aware of them in Gavin and Stacey, which was a remarkable piece of television (in that it made Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps look like Blackadder). BBC 3 almost devoted their entire weeknight schedules to these two abominations for what seemed like most of its existence. Now that BBC2 is a primarily comedy free channel, this was seemingly, as good as it was going to get. Worry not sad public, for your wishes have been answered with ‘Horne and Corden’, the imaginatively titled sketch show, featuring Rowland Browning from Grange Hill and the plastic faced pederast from Lazytown. This involves the lovable pair, chumming around with a studio audience, interviewing c’lebrities, and showcasing previously recorded sketches. It’s a clumsy, awkward watch, which is apparently based on a single premise; ‘If they were your mates, you’d find them hilarious’. Well, I can confess to knowing neither of them, and maybe this is where I stand at somewhat of a disadvantage. For the outsider looking in, it appears to be a series of self aggrandising backslapping from two aging stage school graduates. One is fat, therefore funny. The other is androgynous, therefore funny. This in itself would normally be enough to evoke vitriolic hatred in any sane minded human, but does not serve as the main fault in their shtick. The worst part of all this is the writing and the execution, it is bum rupturingly atrocious. They take the most overused comedy targets (Homosexuals, the disabled) and use them in the most puerile unimaginative way imaginable. If you are going to cover ground that is considered taboo, there is no point in walking a well trodden path. The idea of the ‘character’ sketches falls flat on James Corden’s inability to keep a straight face while performing his own sketches. This smug showboating was never funny in the first place, but even when Ronnie Corbett would put himself in stitches with his own material, he would at least back it up by having an eloquent and witty anecdote behind it. This however, is a bit too close to Jim ‘Nick Nick’ Davidson to be comfortable for me. Matthew Horne spends the whole time looking like he’s thinking about how much sex being on the television will bring him, and spends the entire thing in some self-absorbed sex pest trance. They have just released a movie together entitled ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’ which looks like nothing more than an embarrassment to the worlds of both Horror and Comedy. It’s the ‘chummy’, ‘blokey’ student humour that I never got, and never want to. Weakly written and generally pointless, I am beginning to see why they are so popular at the moment. We can do better than this people, I compel you all to write something of greater merit than this overhyped drivel, if this is this is the pinnacle of televised comedy in 2009, it’s time for a cull.

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