'The Armstrong & Miller Show' In The Press...The Armstrong and Miller Show has an eclectic mix of characters ranging from Rasta-speaking Second World War RAF pilots, a dentist that loves to tell you where he has previously had his hands while delving deep into a patient's mouth, and not to mention the weekly dregs of society that get interviewed only to reveal they became a teacher - hilarious. BBC1's The Armstrong and Miller Show doesn't go in for easy catchphrases - the emphasis is on recurring characters and slightly more sophisticated comedy, like the pair of Second World War pilots speaking in upper class accents but with the vocabulary and attitude of Catherine Tate's petulent schoolgirl Lauren. After my blasting of the woefully shoddy The Omid Djalili Show, it's a totally different story on Friday night, thankfully, with Armstrong and Miller. It's good to see some solidly funny sketch comedy for a change, and this has more hits than misses. The big hit of the series are the spitfire pilots with their clipped street slang lines, and this kind of comedy isn't a million miles away from Mitchell and Webb's equally top material. In fact, Armstrong and Miller could be the reformed older brothers of the more anarchic Mitchell and Webb. Mark Wright, The Stage, 23rd November 2007 If, like Ant and Dec, you've never quite established which is which, let me clear it up for you - Alexander Armstrong is the one who did the Pimms' ads while Ben Miller was the creepy civil servant in Primeval and starred in that sitcom with Sarah Alexander, The Worst Week of My Life. After some very dubious opening titles involving dodgy dancing, there are a surprising number of funny sketches, many of them rather risque for BBC1, including splendid skewering of those 'readers emails' bits on breakfast news programmes. Gareth McLean, The Guardian, 9th November 2007 When this show started, I thought we'd been transported back ten years - Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller were on the screen together, for a start, but the opening credits also seemed incredibly old-fashioned. Indeed, some would say that the very idea of a sketch show is pretty much passed its sell-by date in any case; that those sublime final Fast Show specials should have marked the genre's end. Alexander Armstrong tells The Telegraph about the joys of returning to the classic comedy sketch show and his favourite Friday night TV. Written by Serena Davies. From The Telegraph, 20th October 2007 This late-90s sketch series has been resurrected in the BBC's autumn schedule. Watch it - it's deftly written, expertly performed, different, original and, well, good. |