Armando Iannucci Shows, The

2 0 0 1 (UK)
8 x 30 minute episodes

As writer/producer of The Day Today, Knowing Me, Knowing You . . . With Alan Partridge and I’m Alan Partridge, and as writer/performer and leading light behind The Saturday Night Armistice in its various forms, Scottish satirist Iannucci had long proven his talent for delivering quirky, cutting-edge, occasionally vicious and almost always incisive comedy.

With this show, his first after moving from the BBC to C4, he burnished that reputation.

Debuting on 30 August 2001, the humour was drawn from observations of human behaviour and musings on the meaning of life.

Each of the eight programmes followed a loose theme, and the content – taped in the studio and on location – inter-cut from item to item with such deftness that one could be left almost breathless.

Embarrassment and inadequacy, in their various forms, were common topics, but it was rarely (if ever) possible to determine at the beginning of an item quite where it would end.

Although the likeable Iannucci himself was at the centre of the sketches, he was supported by a considerable company of players.

One of the team was Stephen Mangan, latterly the star of Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years.

Another complementary feature of the show was the visual effects produced by the team behind the BBC’s ground-breaking natural history series Walking With Dinosaurs, which manifested Iannucci’s remarkable flights of comedy fantasy.

Episodes

Twats | Work | Mortality | Communcation | Time Passing | Neighbours | Reality | Imagination

Video