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Amstell's Amstell

A review of Simon 'Never Mind The Buzzcock' Amstell's new comedy series: Grandma's House, showing on BBC2 at 10PM every Monday.

The cast of Simon's new comedy

The title of Simon Amstell's new comedy is rather fitting, because if I wanted to witness such an awkward exchange of opinions between quintessentially British elderly relatives I would indeed visit my grandmother's house for a spot of afternoon tea and a weekly dose of French-bashing.

A rather intentionally dull comedy with a setting that reminds me of another stereotypical English household (yes, I'm looking at you The Royal Family), Grandma's House gives you a sneak-peak of Amstell’s conventional mum and grandparents - along with other not so welcome guests, who are quite predictably contrapuntal to Simon's homosexually liberal charm, not to mention his casual ‘Topman’ Indie dress sense with skin tight jeans, man-bag and shaggy brown locks that go hand in hand to make him stick out like the British National Party at an equal rights protest.

With numerous references to the infamous Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Amstell's loveable talent of taking the piss out of celebrities turns its attention to his mother’s new fiancé and other uncouth characters. But despite how much I enjoy the witty remarks and subtle sarcasm, I found he takes a while to settle into his stride and take flight, and his acting to be lacking in substance until the later stages of the episode. This inevitably left the majority of the opening episode featuring a timid and shy performance that was drowned in an onslaught of humdrum conversation about Simon wanting to leave the show and peruse a more fulfilling life... Perhaps as a bald headed Buddhist in Thailand, as the story goes.

One of the obvious problems with this programme is the irksome similarities between Simon and his character, Simon. The Simon we know is playing Simon, who is in fact the same as both the real Simon and the pretend Simon, but who is actually the real Simon, so my reference to the real Simon playing the character Simon as pretend Simon is actually wrong, because they are both just Simon. Buzzcock’s Simon and Grandma’s Simon. See what I did there? Confusing aye. Leaving all that Simon business aside though... and despite the awkward stage presence Amstell seems to carry, I did actually enjoy the whole ‘ordinary’ ethos of the first episode. If you can put up with a slowly developing narrative and endless British cultural references, it’s worth checking out the next episode!

Video Intro

Introduction

Well hey there!

Although there must be hundreds, thousands.. in fact, hundreds of thousands of would-be, budding Journalism students eager to flex their writing muscles and ramble on about subjects ranging from your bog-standard local pub review to titles as diverse as the very audience I am currently typing to, I do hope you amazing new-media types will take a moment to check out some of the writing I intend to produce and show you all. It'll be worth it.. honest!

The entire purpose of this blog is for my work to be monitored and assessed by my course lecturers at the lovely University for the Creative Arts, but it is a great way for me to get feedback from others on my writing and critique’s. So please, do not hold back! Future entries will include reviews on Music, Film and T.V programs. One should expect a weekly update, at least.

So without further a due, I present the 29284573758353'millionth university students blog!