PLUS Vladimir

0:07Welcome to Pilot Plus, your extended guide to every show that matters. uh steph boyd good morning how are we both that wasn't supposed to be a stumper okay i was waiting for boy i just tried not to interrupt boyd because he's kind of looked like he was like he looked like he had a story he was thinking oh we're gonna delve in here i was just surprised by that james intro james doesn't usually ask how we're doing it's just kind isn't it i'm just i'm showing a little bit of pastoral care i just want to make sure you're okay you know that you're all right you're not too traumatized it's not too early in the morning it's 9 22 yeah are you are you are you boyd i've been uh as i follow you on instagram closely i was having a look at your instagram and you've been doing some really fun things but maybe you want to talk about those on the main pod um well it's just about going to arsenal stuff yeah i probably wouldn't even talk about it on the on the oh okay but you know yeah i've been hanging out with um Arsenal players yeah there you go so you're very good I am very good yeah that's true good I'm glad we've established that Boyd is fine yeah I wanted to see that Project Hail Mary did you see that last night James I did not get to Project Hail Mary but obviously it is a film therefore we are banned from discussing it but I've heard it's fabulous no you asked me about my general welfare and I'm just telling you I know your general welfare is not embargoed oh yeah okay social media reaction this is a social media reaction I see it is really good there you go yeah and I tell you who's been really promoting.

1:32Eva Mendes has been giving it a real big promotion. I can't imagine why. Well, yeah, she would. She would. The best scene is the karaoke scene. Oh, wow. You're just running roughshod over the embargo now. We're just going to review the whole film. Should we do that? Should we review the film this week, Pornie? Welcome to the Empire Podcast. This is a social media post. Anyway, all right, carry on. But crucially, James, how are you? Oh, I'm fine. I'm delighted to be here. Okay, how's your back? My back is fine. thank you yes i injured my back last week which meant that when i was supposed to go jousting on friday for a night of the seven kingdoms yes actual on on horses jousting and i was really looking forward to it and then hilariously at the i sort of had a gym injury uh which is fine now but uh i thought probably best not to get on a horse while i was slightly injured yeah because he was lifting weights yeah i sprained i sprained a muscle in my back by trying to do looks up exercise and it turns out that that's just bad for your health.

2:29You shouldn't do it. Don't do exercise kids. Just be like me and Boyd and just don't do exercise. But more importantly you were going to go jousting? Yes, I was going to go jousting and I was going to talk about it on the podcast and unfortunately I now can't because I did not get to joust. Some people I know were at the jousting thing some friends of mine and it looks like they had a whale of a time which obviously I was delighted by. Is this jousting arranged by HBO to celebrate the... Oh my god. Yes, it is. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms themed jousting. We were entering the list, charging down, doing an actual joust against a resident knight.

3:01I could have been the little egg guy. You could have been the little egg. Yeah, yeah. I could have been that wily girl who got her hand. No, I won't spoil it. Anyway. Yeah, okay. God, that's great. What a terrible life you lead, James. I know, but I didn't get to do it. It didn't happen. Well, yeah, I've thought though. I mean, yes, that is my own fault. if you will insist on trying to exercise yeah exactly i know it was not ideal but you know what are you going to do but that is not what we're here to discuss we are not here to discuss films boydy we are not here to discuss jousting james we are here to discuss vladimir on the netflix and this is a new tv comedy drama dramedy if you will starring rachel vice and leo woodall is adapted from the julia may jonas book of the same name and it's about a young man called Vladimir and a teacher who shall we say starts making goo goo eyes at said attractive young man played by Leo Woodall who has in no way been typecast as the attractive young man in yet another show now Boyd you will recall mentioned this uh slightly on the show last week Boyd who runs roughshod like a jouster if you will over embargoes uh now you described this I think along the lines of shit fleabag so I didn't say that my question is my question is do you stand by that description shit bag um uh i don't know if i i don't know if i went that far did i i don't remember going that far it sounds like something you'd say shit yeah i don't know shit is is harsh is a too strong a word for it it's it's not it's not that it is is why have they chosen to do this fleabag they've done a fleabag so we should explain basically um the story is that rachel writes this character who is not named by the way for reasons no she's credited as just m yeah but in the actual show referred to no no one refers to a bit like the characters in fleabag like stepmother who don't actually get names that's right yeah that's a good point actually and indeed fleabag herself who does not get a name very good point um and so she's known as she's she's a professor of uh of literature at a fictional one of those fictional but idyllic looking campuses, Liberal Arts College is how they're referred to in America.

5:17She is her husband, played by John Slattery of Mad Men. He is having myriad affairs or alleged to have had myriad affairs, inappropriate affairs with his students, undergraduates and graduates both. They're in a kind of open marriage in theory, although he seems to be having all the openness and she doesn't seem to be having much openness at all. And then Leo Woodall's character, Vladimir, comes along, the titular character, who is a hunky new professor at the college whose wife is also a professor at the college and they have kind of interesting marital issues as well but yeah the whole thing they've done a full-on fleabag in the sense that this is adapted from a novel as you said as james said by julia may jones it's in the first person the novel so that's the explanation but of why they've got done a fleabag and rachel vice's character the unnamed professor addresses the camera addresses the viewers, breaks the forethought, all of that throughout relentlessly, a la Fleabag.

6:14And I came away with, I've watched pretty much up to the last episode, actually, I just haven't yet watched the final episode. It does, of course, open with the signature device of our time in which there's an extreme situation. Basically, the first scene is she seems to have Leo Woodall's character chained up, tied up, in her house somewhere. and then it flashes back 10 days, weeks, something, something or other, and the story all unfolds from there. So it's all about how do we get to the point where she's seemingly, he's seemingly tied up and in a vulnerable position in the very first scene.

6:53But she's constantly narrating and telling us what's going on and telling us her thoughts in Fleabag style. And what it reminded me of was brilliance of Fleabag was in the writing of her character. Obviously, it started out as a monologue, didn't it? Yeah, that one-woman show. One-woman show. And all you've got in a one-woman show, obviously, is her doing all the characters, doing her own character, Fleabag, and the brilliant, brilliant wit and kind of seemingly effortless naturalism of her chats to camera. Her chats to camera was so kind of brilliant, and the performance was so superb, but she clearly honed through the one-woman show.

7:32I think the reason why we refer to the moments where people talk to Cameron, which there are loads of them, you know, in history, before and after Fleabag. But the reason why Fleabag has become the byword for doing this thing is because it was done so well, so beautifully and seemingly effortlessly. And it wasn't just the character explaining what was going on that we were watching anyway. It wasn't just a device to tell us, you know, the narrative, to explore the narrative. it was about her character and her tone was perfect this the problem with this is it's kind of just a bit irritating and rachel white's character is just a bit annoying the way she addresses the camera and it and she does explain what's going on and her thoughts and she does kind of narrate stuff that either we've just seen or about to see and it just is a completely different it just doesn't work anywhere near as well which is why i think people you might apparently over to his shift lead back but the annoying thing about it is I can imagine a version of this show where there isn't the breaking of the fourth wall where she doesn't talk to camera and it will be perfectly fine I think the set up that what goes on on this campus of this university and the fact that he is under investigation they've got a daughter who's kind of quite has her own issues and And they're interesting characters, and Leo Woodall were effortlessly charming.

8:59As James said, he is the, like, anque du jour. He's the guy people go to for a lust object for women and men. And they're all great, you know, John Sattridge's gay, but it's just weighed down more than anything by the use of this device. It's a real shame, because I just think, I just want to see the version of this show where it plays out in front of us, and we're not told what's going on every five minutes, every five seconds. And the bottom line is, her monologue to us is not that funny or interesting. And the most funny or interesting things that happen are in spite of the relentless monologue, the relentless talking to camera.

9:35So I do think it's a weird... So I guess once they started to do it, they couldn't go back. But it's just a weird creative choice that in the end hasn't worked. I'm so sorry. I could not agree more with every single thing you said, Boyd. as you said, this show employs a couple of narrative devices. And I will hold my hands up and say, my most despised device is breaking the fourth wall. I am going to put Fleabag aside because I think Fleabag does something that no other show does. And it's incredibly unique, which is why it absolutely deserves all the credit that it gets and all the plaudits that it gets.

10:13The other device which I find so jarring is text speech on screen. I absolutely cannot abide it when they over-explain using one of those devices. And in this, they use both of them. I want to like this show because I love John Slattery and I love Rachel Weisz. I hate to say it, but I find her American accent incredibly jarring as well. she is she comes across as a character who you should like but she isn't likable she's irritating she's she's just so annoying deeply annoying and like you say I think when she turns to camera breaking the fourth wall it does nothing to serve the storyline it doesn't advance anything apart from cutting a scene and just completely and you're like what what was the point of that you don't need to it's not a good ps it's like a shit ps that you absolutely is completely unnecessary um i could um i watched the first episode and i thought right okay we often get into these situations where we watch the first episode of something and then we go we should have watched the second episode because i did enjoy the beginning the the opening scene where you've got leo wood when you kind of just go all right i want to know why he he's tied up he's chained up in her you know but as soon as she kind of walked out and broke the fourth wall immediately I was like oh no so then I watched the second episode and in truth I hated it even more than I hated the first episode to be honest I just it's relentless the over explanation I wondered whether this was part of the whole I mean I will say again I have not read the novel so I don't know the novel.

12:05I can't speak to how closely this script is to the original novel. And I don't know how beloved this novel is, but I'm assuming it is beloved because why would they have made this adaptation of it? But God, it's just laborious trying to get through it. It was for me and I want to like it because it's got some great actors in. Yeah, Leo Woodall's lovely and he's very handsome but he's he's very little else in this and it and it seems a waste of good actors and i completely agree with you is there a is there a version of this that could be good yeah i think there is but there's they've tried to throw so many things at it that it it's just they've over spiced it they've over they've overdone everything and it in it's i'm gonna i'm gonna go as far as saying i think this is unwatchable and i do i think it's unwatchable because you know what happens to me if I can I sometimes end up watching loads of the stuff we've watched okay and I really because I get into the momentum this has no momentum nothing about it apart from do you know what I'd be satisfied if someone just tells me at the end while he was chained up that's great I don't need to see any more but I don't know I want I want to like it because I really like the actors but it's just terrible it's terrible I feel like that maybe is a little harsh but I I do agree broadly with everything both of you have said i don't think it's terrible i think it's very mid and it just feels a bit for all the reasons that you've said i think you know if you're going to in a post fleabag world use that device but not just use breaking the fourth wall because deadpool does it and does it a very different way and it's fine you know and it's been used to to great effect in a number of different things when you have an unreliable first person perspective i actually think it can work quite well but i think if you're going to have wry quote-unquote comedy to camera moments and you're going to do it so often and so relentlessly then you need to make sure it's really funny and you need to make sure the script is tight and you need to make sure that it adds something to the show and i'm not sure this does i know what you mean it made her a little irritating it didn't bother me too much but i was just like i was like i get what you're doing but it slows the storytelling down quite a lot because it doesn't really entertain and it doesn't really bring you any information and so i kind of i did i did struggle with it a little bit I think, you know, we're going to use the Fleabag comparison a lot, but it did so many clever things, like the moments in Fleabag in season two where they had that incredibly meta within meta moment where the priest notices her talking to the camera.

14:36Like moments like that, and you're just like, you're like, this is so clever. And it's so perfectly executed. And yeah, I think, boy, you're right. I think Phoebe Waller-Bridge, having honed it over many, many nights doing her show, that performance was absolutely polished within an inch of its life. I think this one isn't. and it's not because I think Rachel Weisz is bad. She isn't. I do, however, think her American accent, Steph, is all over the place. Leo Woodall's I struggled with as well. There's a lot of Brits playing American in this show, and I think in those particular cases, I did find those quite distractingly, I'm going to say uneven rather than bad, but I did find it took me out of it a little bit.

15:12I'll tell you what mystified me about. I could go along with her being American, but what was the point of making Leo's character right? He's a professor of literature. It could certainly have been English. It made absolute sense. American universities are populated by British professors, you know. Believe me. And it's just weird choice to have two British, as you say, two British people being the two leads doing dodgy American accents, and one of whom is narrating our fucking show as well in her American accent. It added to the, I think, Steph's sense of exhaustion. I don't think it was terrible either, but yeah, it's a slog.

15:50It's a slog way as it should have been. You slogged quite a long way through this. Well, yeah. Do you know what? I did want to know how it got to that point in the opening. And let me tell you, it is preposterous. I mean, I will, you know, apart from anything else, above and beyond the device, the use of the device, the Fleabag device is sure forever known. None of it makes any sense. I mean, none of it makes sense. It's one of those shows where people do behave in such ridiculous ways to advance the story, to get us to this point where we are in that first scene. And it's just – so on top of everything, it doesn't make any sense.

16:30Psychologically, the way people – what people do and how they act and decisions they're making, it's all a load of nonsense. So, yeah. It feels so – the storyline feels completely unnatural. And I know you both think I'm being harsh, but in a world where we're telling people how to spend their precious entertainment time, this is not it. This is not it. Agreed. Yeah, it's just not. I'm sorry. And like I said, I like to think that I'm very open to anything. And if it's good, it's good, regardless of genre. And I should like this because I like all the actors and I like the kind of idea behind it.

17:10But yeah, it's nonsensical in so many ways. I mean there's one scene and this isn't a spoiler there's a scene where uh Rachel Ross's character is confronting someone that she's had a liaison with and it's set in a gym and a device they use to kind of up the up the stakes of this is um how how high they're elevating their their walker the step of the gym thing you know and I was like this is just stupid this is it just and they focus in so much on that and even the parts that where they where she's having a moment where she's kind of meant to be feeling aroused, they're stupid. They're not, they're not, it's not well-crafted.

17:49It's, it's just, it's just not good. Well, James is our expert on the gym thing. Did you believe that? I was about to say, I love Steph's description of, you know, the slow, on the walker gym thing. It's like, this is someone who definitely does not exercise. The gym thing, you know, the thing in the gym. What is it called? I can't remember. I'm assuming it's a treadmill. The treadmill, yeah, the treadmill. Sorry, the incline on the treadmill, should I say. The incline on the treadmill, yes, indeed. What also is funny is that once the whole thing's been set up and you kind of know where it's heading, it takes an inordinate amount of time, which, again, once I sat through like three or four episodes, I was like, well, I might as well have to, you know, I've invested all this time, so I kind of carried on.

18:26But it's funny because in this world of, you know, the pressure on all of these shows now is that, which is the reason why all the shows open with a moment, an extreme scene, and then it goes back to what's going on, is because the pressure from the streamers to make everything instantly gripping and instantly interesting so they are planting all of their all of the key sequences at the beginning of shows but in this case it underlines the fact it just takes an eternity to get to the point it needs to get to and all the obstacles it throws in the way just don't make any sense and the other thing I think I mentioned this in the original discussion my original mention of this show it's extraordinary how Leo Woodall is not only the lust object in these shows now.

19:10But there's the scene in this show where there's a pool party and he goes into the pool and there's a slow motion thing as he gets out of the pool, glistening, wet, with watery, muscular visions of Leodold. Exactly the same scene happens in the Bridget Jones movie where he dives into the pool at the pool party. Mad about the boy. Mad about the boy. So it's weird. I was thinking, when your agent says, do I have to do this role in which I do exactly the same thing as I did in that film I've just made? What do you think? And the editor goes, yeah, might as well go for it. I mean, it's weird that there's literally the same scene revolving around him being the last subject.

19:49Shitbag then, which airs on the Netflix on Thursday today, in fact. Yes, Vladimir, which is on Netflix. You know, watch it, see for yourself. Let's know what you think. Time now for this week's Postbag.

20:09triage it's the post bag we must begin with a correction and the correction comes from Stuart Allen and Stuart says after all the chat on this James just opening with and joining myself and Boyd Hilton rather than and joining me and Boyd Hilton all I'm saying is it's unforgivable sadly with James in charge of the post bag I'm not sure messages like this have the same chance of being read versus when Kay was in charge well Stuart how little you know me um yes what's funny about that is when I was going through the podcast doing the video I immediately clocked it was like oh shit but at that point I was like I can't cut it out and I can't re-record it because I'm not in the studio and it won't sound the same it'd be like one of those dubs on tv you know when they used to dub in like a like an Eddie Murphy film and you'd have someone who sounded nothing like eddie murphy like changing like all the words from fuck to flip and things like that it was ridiculous it would have sounded like that so i was just i just had to suck it up and leave it in and i knew i knew there would be messages like this one i'm surprised you it's the only one love it when the grammar police get involved i do love a grammar police email that's great i mean i do too but i think i deserve some kind of uh credit for not jumping in steph earlier when you said that uh fleabag was so unique when of course something cannot be so unique it can be unique or not unique because it's a binary state.

21:32But, well, now you've just fucked that because you've just mentioned it. So, yes. Yeah. On board. Ironic, isn't it? It's like when people say 150 % and you're like, no, no, no, can't be that. Oh, well. I know. I'm surprised at yourself, James. I really am. Thank you, Roy. Okay. This comes from Phil. And Phil says, I read this morning that open AI is going to be used to triage intelligence for the US military. Maybe it can help triage the boast bag. Thank you, Philip, you wag. Well, there was a big controversy, wasn't there? Because it was supposed to be that idiot's – no, he's not an idiot – but that one company was supposed to be handling the AI for the American military, and they actually refused to go along with the insane demands of the administration.

22:20And so then other tech companies, literally that night, I believe, said, oh, we'll do it for a bazillion dollars. This was anthropic, yes. There was a whole thing going on there. But yes, I was seeing now that Claude has been freed up by Anthropic, we'll see if it can take over the postbag. Perhaps that will happen. I should mention, since we're talking about AI, there was quite a backlash when I was talking about replacing Boyd with a robot on the podcast the other week. One reader in particular got very, very upset and said they cancelled their subscription because I was endorsing the use of AI.

22:49I should point out, when I said I was going to replace Boyd with a robot, that was a joke. Like, you know, I'm not actually doing it. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Boyd Bot 2000 is a work in progress. Soon, Boyd. Soon it will take over. You wait. You wait and see. That seems very strange. So they've cancelled their subscription because you said you're going to turn Boyd into a robot. To be fair, I've been talking about this AI course that I'm doing through work and the stuff that I was doing when I was trying to get it to do that column in Heat magazine, you know, to see if it would work. But I should also point out that one of the points of doing that was to kind of prove that it couldn't which was in fact the case so there was reason for it i'm not training an ai to replace actual creatives which is what he thought i was doing well i would also say i have been on projects um that have tried to see if ai can replace people on various things such as podcasts for example such as podcasts and i will you know I would just say they come.

23:49Yeah, because you did a completely AI-generated podcast, didn't you? Which was narrated entirely by AI. Do you want to admit this in public? It was in things out there. It was, I mean, look, whatever you think about AI, my personal views about AI, I will share them now in terms of being creative. You love it and you hope it gets rid of all those jobs. I do not believe, I do not believe that, can it be of assistance in some ways? Yes. Can it replace journalists? No, of course it can't. Can it replace podcast narrations? Well, I think I've proven beyond a doubt that that can't happen. Should we now take the opportunity to reveal that Steph is not actually a real person?

24:30All along, she is an AI construct that we've got in to replace Kate. But really interestingly, one of the things that we found when we were doing this was that actually there's this whole idea that ai can do everything but we've had basically just had to feed everything we did we wrote all the scripts and it was just a voice in the end the only ai was just a voice reading it out and that was it so you know boyd you definitely can't be you're you know you're irreplaceable anyway as we know i do not believe people can be replaced with ai and that is what as i pointed out to our listeners if you really want to replicate me i mean literally just you know what i do and how i write so it's very hard because none of my stuff is on the internet very very little of it as i that's and i had a few messages actually from this saying is that really true i was like yeah you know 20 25 years 27 years now of working at heat and the vast majority of my my uh writing for that publication is not online anywhere no and you shouldn't don't put it on there because then it'll go into the ai and then someone will make a boyd bot yeah it's too late the boyd part has replaced you boydy i'm so sorry fair enough uh something here from darren not that darren sorry darren uh this is from darren matthews and darren matthews says i'm in australia and as such i'm lucky enough to have hbo max and the pits i've been watching one episode a night on my way home from work but yesterday my train was delayed and i watched three episodes and i finished this and was absolutely drained from stress tears feelings all the feelings So my question is, how could James and Boyd have binged a whole season while on a plane where emotions are so heightened?

26:08This listener clearly doesn't listen enough because you two are both devoid of emotions. Wow. Hold on. I'm joking. No, I mean, obviously that's James. Yeah, I'm not devoid of emotions. No, I know. I will absolutely admit to the fact that I was sobbing in various moments in public on an airplane. Luckily, I was in some kind of, you know, pod scenario. Oh yes, Boyd travels in first class, so it's absolutely fine. Boyd, the thought of you weeping alone in a first class pod makes me actually a little sad. No, don't be sad. It's brilliant. That's how emotionally devastating the show is. Did the tears ruin your champagne?

26:46A little bit, yeah. I had to get a new glass. Can I just say, do you know what? I had a cry this morning. Did you watch, sorry not to get away from the question, but I just got to say this. Have you watched Harrison Ford's acceptance speech on SAG after his lifetime? Oh, my God. I was bawling my eyes out this morning just before I came on this. Anyway, I digress. Back to the pit. How did you cope, James, being devoid of emotion? I mean, it is. It is. But that's part of the joy, isn't it? I think the pit actually lends itself very well to binge watching. I'm sure it's very, very engaging on a week-to-week basis.

27:19But it does because it is so heightened and it's so relentless. It really, really sort of drags you in. but that's part of it because it's set in real time it's like that whole idea that when you know when 24 came out you'd watch it each week and everyone would talk about it but there was a real delight in re-watching 24 and just hammering through it almost doing it in real time as it is set because you feel like you're inhabiting it and it feels like a very different experience i think the pit is the same way because it is in real time it almost feels designed to be binge watched so you experience that 15 hour shift in 15 hours and on a plane you can't go anywhere either so you're just there locked into it oh yeah i could not have the discipline to watch one a week at all no it's i mean i i i it was a genuine delight for me to be watching that on the plane and just another one another one another one and i couldn't go anywhere i couldn't do anything else and i just locked into it uh it was wonderful but yes it's it's intense and sometimes it's quite brutal and occasionally i did have to stop and get a little packet of peanuts and eat before going on to the next one.

28:20Okay, question here from Adam. And Adam says, Dear Boyd James and Steph, my friend Phil and I were recently having a friendly debate about whether there had been any great comedy TV shows since the 2000s. My friend argued that there were none at all. They had to have started post-2010. So this is the criteria. But I argued there are loads. Ghosts, Colin from Accounts. Here we go, to name but a few. He also said there wasn't anything that had the same cultural impact, but shows like Fleabag would suggest otherwise. Please help me settle this debate and tell my friend why he is wrong. And there have been lots of great comedies since 2010.

28:55Side note, he said comedies are not sitcoms, which if he'd specified just sitcoms, he may have had more of a point as there are fewer out and out sitcoms, but loads of what are broadly considered comedies in my opinion. Kind regards, Adam. Now, obviously, as the world's leading expert on comedy and funny things, I should immediately take this question. I would say, and I think you probably agree, Boyd, the iconic sitcoms do feel that they are slightly further away than that. It feels like, you know, because we talk about Seinfeld, we talk about Friends, we talk about all of these shows that definitely started prior to that.

29:28You know, in the UK, Spaced, something like that, 30 Rock, all of these things were before that time. But I don't know that we're completely wrong. Things like Catastrophe, obviously, was very funny. We loved that. Feel Good, we really loved as well. I'm going to make a play for King Gary which I thought was absolutely shockingly amazing like so good I love big Tom Davis and he came to our podcast, he's a delightful man I detested King Gary with every fiber of my being and I know this because we reviewed it on this podcast and I remember just wringing my hands but it is very not my sense of humour That show is so hilarious you could not be more wrong if you were living in a wrong house on the wrong street okay i i i'm so for you to say i can't talk to be fair you do support king of queens so you know okay which is also a fantastic show i'm gonna move on and just say i think what happens as well with a lot of comedies is with the passing of time we look back at them and we go oh amazing i and probably while we were really enjoying them in in like the 2000s we weren't going this is the best comedy ever because i think even now like i love frazier but i love it even more now do you know i mean because i suppose maybe that is maybe that's the point you've seen the reboot and you've realized how good the original was by comparison no i all yeah well um as as a boyd often says they absolutely fuck that but the thing is i suppose there were we were almost i also love will and grace which i'm sure james you hate and i think Like at that time, there was such an abundance of those types of comedies that you kind of didn't go, oh, this one's really good.

31:07This one's really good because they were all good and they don't really make those anymore. So, yeah, it's a really good point. Boyd, can you think of any? What was the criteria again? It has to have been made or started from 2010 onwards, so from the teens onwards. Things like Community Society in 2009 wouldn't qualify. The Office US wouldn't qualify. all this stuff that started in the noughties, that stuff is ruled out. Yeah, like Parks and Rec, that's 2009, which is an amazing comedy. Veep wouldn't qualify. That's 2012. Veep was brilliant. Oh, Veep. Absolutely. Yeah, Veep's fantastic. Schitt's Creek, of course.

31:43Yes. The very, very popular. The Good Place. Yes, The Good Place is a good show. I think it's one of these things where lots of people loved it at the time and talked about it. It feels like The Good Place hasn't had the cultural impact over time. It feels like it's not really talked about as much now, which is a shame because I thought it was really good. But in terms of absolute iconic comedies, Fleabag is definitely one of them. There aren't that many of those. I mean, Atlanta is a great show. I'm not sure I'd call it, you know, iconic in the same way. I don't, you know what? It doesn't, I love Atlanta.

32:20It really doesn't get, it doesn't get enough credit, that show. It's brilliant, actually. And I'm just thinking of some more along that line. Do you know what I think a lot of people would would stand for Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Because Brooklyn Nine-Nine I think has had that impact. And I think also it's been cross-generational in a way that, you know, kind of Friends kind of is where lots of people rediscovered it on Netflix. And I think everyone watches or has watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Brooklyn Nine-Nine you can watch at any time of the day and it's great. I love Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Andy Samberg is a genius.

32:48Do you know what else I'm going to punt for? Issa Rae's Insecure. I think that's a brilliant show. I love her. Let's not forget Derry Girls. Yes, absolutely. I was going to say that. Derry Girls. And Derry Girls, certainly from a British point of view, really is an iconic show. Big Boys. Big Boys, another one, yeah. That's another good shout. In fact, right now, I would say Small Profits. Yeah, going on right now. Steph, I know, doesn't like it very much, but you know. As we know, my absolute show of the year. I have had people messaging me saying, it is the best thing they've ever watched. They absolutely love it.

33:25You're extremes today. Yes, you are. This is the worst show I've ever seen. This is the best thing I've ever seen. Listen, I'm not about Shades of Grey. I'm about, listen, watch it or don't watch it. That's it. You're all about the extremes. Ride or die. Ride or die. Ride or die TV. If Beth were here, she is not, but if she were here, if Beth were here, she would, I'm sure, stump for the marvellous Mrs Maisel. Does that count? She loves it. Absolutely loved it. That's a dravity, though, isn't it? I mean it's about stand-up comics I'm saying it's I'm saying it's comedy Yeah but it's not like I think this is about half hour You think Okay Would you Would you stump for Only Murders in the Building Um I'm a huge Only Murders in the Building fan so I would Yeah A bit Not wholeheartedly I think we'll look back on Only Murders in the Building and people will say Yeah I think Wow that was a fantastic show I think it's got to become a bit of a formula is the only problem with it It doesn't feel like must see now because I think they milked it to an inch within an inch of its life but um I still yeah no I think it should be up there yeah it's brilliantly enjoyable uh Steph has not mentioned shrinking I'm not sure that I should oh god we haven't mentioned Ted Ted Lasso well Ted Lasso being the obvious one yeah I was going to say Ted Lasso I think is one of these things which has become absolutely iconic and part of the cultural conversation but then that I think is partly because of when it came out during the pandemic I think it was exactly what we needed when we needed it and then you could also argue that while it begins as a half-hour sitcom it becomes a 45 minute almost drama so it does move beyond the formula that birthed it but it's yeah that that i think is one uh we don't talk about this a lot on this podcast but a lot of people would say what we do in the shadows uh which i've seen a couple of episodes of is genuinely funny it's not quite my sense of humor but it is very good but there's a lot of i think what we've established is there are a lot of comedies out there but are there any that have the same cultural impact as some of the ones from the noughties from the 90s um maybe one or two fleabag probably the main one okay this is one i think aimed at steph who swore blind swore blind insisted was adamant sandra bullock would never ever ever jane i've got jane to go on television ever steve however and steve is not the only one we had a couple of these apologies if you also wrote in to point out Steph's extreme wrongness.

35:46But, Re, your recent discussion of how Sandra Bullock would never, ever cross over to TV, who could forget her reprising Melanie Griffith's role in the TV adaptation of Working Girl from 1990? Everyone, apparently, only got a single season. They only aired eight of the 12 episodes before it got cancelled. Most people have never heard of it, but she has indeed done a TV show. I am so embarrassed. I feel ashamed. When I worked at heat um sorry i still work at heat oh well i used to have you were fired when you first said that on this podcast i think i had used to have a whole wall which i called the wall of bullock this is how much i love her a wall of which just had pictures of sandra bullock on and on my desk i had a picture of sandra bullock with two dogs and the fact that i didn't know she had done that tv show i just feel like i'm not worthy thank you and i'm obviously now going to have to try and dig that out and watch that but that also uh boy that does not mean that you're getting 20 because I think it's from when we said, listeners, if you were indeed listening, Boyd and I have a bet that she's not going to do any TV within the year.

36:53I said ever, which I'm going to stand by. It's hard to resolve that bet, isn't it, really? I know. But luckily I have got a meeting with her agent soon, so we'll discuss. Oh, you. Oh, God. I feel sick. Yeah, yeah. Your love of Sandra Bullock has limits. it seems Listeners honestly you cannot exaggerate the extent to which Stefan's obsessive Sandra Bullock yeah didn't you stalk her once didn't you go to a premiere film premiere I remember Okay right so not only I did and I when I finally met her and it was a little bit disappointing because some people weren't very nice but however I love her so much that I don't know if I've said this before but my daughter is called Gracie and I named her after Gracie Lou Freebush which is Sandra Bullock's character in Miss Congeniality one of the best films of all time Wow wow yes that's how much i love sandra bullock i interviewed sandra bullock uh for miss congeniality the first one uh at a press conference it wasn't a one-on-one interview but i asked her a question about falling down and i said i said you know when you're watching this film you've got to think nobody falls down quite like sandra bullock and i talked to her about physical comedy and then that evening at the premiere she absolutely stacked it and fell arse over tit and so as a result that quote that she gave me was the front page of every newspaper the next day where she talks about i fall down well and i fall down a lot i can't remember the exact quote was but it was yeah it was very funny i am so jealous of you right now i can't actually i'm just so jealous yeah me and sandy we're very close yeah it's good it's good anyway anyway moving on from steph's wrongness let's see where we are here so this isn't this isn't uh an unexpected one so this comes from steve parkinson and steve says he's just produced a tv show which is going to drop on it even it even a couple of months uh and he thought we might be interested in it because it's directed by trent o'donnell off colin from accounts uh it's on hulu in the u.s dropping on march the 11th uh and he was mentioning because it's an acquisition show he's not sure if itv we're going to be doing much press it's called uh sunny nights and i was like all right fine and i kind of in my head i was like yeah okay we probably don't normally do this sort of thing from the postcard but i watched the trailer it looks really good so now i really want to see it so i'm going to say that Sunny Nights is coming soon on ITV and I very much want to see it.