Tramadol Nights
Previous Comedians You Should Know subject, Frankie Boyle, recently began a new six-part series of stand-up and sketches for Channel4 called Tramadol Nights. Possibly unsurprisingly it’s causing some scandal. The broadcasting regulatory body, Ofcom, is already investigating whether the show broke sections of the UK’s Broadcasting Code in regard to “generally accepted standards” due to offensive material, and that was only after episode two.
It’s not hard to see why though. Tramadol Nights can be a little hard to take if you’re expecting anything similar to Frankie’s appearances on Mock The Week or Live At The Apollo. Unleashed on C4′s late-night schedule, Frankie certainly pulls no punches, presents no niceties and generally leaves the audience rolling in a wave of low-brow crudeness that feels more reminiscent of the smoky Working Men’s Club atmosphere of the early 80s than anything else I have ever seen on TV.
I hate to say it but, released from the constraints of Auntie Beeb and un-censored by a panel of peers, Frankie here reminds me more of the reviled, lumbering purveyor of bad taste, Bernard Manning, than the unflinchingly sharp-edged observational comedian I know he can sometimes be. It’s a sentiment somehwat echoed by fellow comedian Marcus Brigstocke in a recent twitter post, and I will likewise admit to disappointment. Some of the sketches in Tramadol Nights seem to be both intentionally and unnecessarily unpleasant, while others are just plain un-funny. The show as a whole leaves a rather uniformly nasty aftertaste.
Frankie Boyle (photo credit: Channel 4)
There is a sense, I think, of trying far too hard to be controversial and in doing so entirely missing the point. The show winds up mostly just broadcasting a mediocre stream of profanity and violence, low on both engagement and any sense of wit, and it all comes out feeling nowhere near as clever as it seems to think it is.
Tramadol Nights doesn’t really display any genuinely contentious viewpoints because it never lingers long enough on any one topic to actually illustrate a legitimate opinion. It mostly just sort of beats you round the head with a relentless cascade of crudely-sculpted unpleasantness and hopes that it achieves the same goal.
Obviously, those aware of Frankie’s style of stand-up won’t find this any particular surprise exactly, but a great deal of the amusement I have found in his previous work came from his ability to draw a genuine adverse response from his audience. It was a laughter that came from the fact that you could never quite believe he said the things he did, and it was an unusual mix of questionable ideas, vicious observation and sometimes real situational horror that drove his performances. At his most offensive the humour was not always in what he said, so much as the responses it drew from the people around him. It was important to know that everyone was aware he was socially inappropriate even if it was sometimes tempting to agree with him. The problem with Tramadol Nights is that the audience clearly are not shocked. They’re not even mildly discomfited. Declarations that would have drawn at least a degree of rebuke if said on Mock The Week are here greeted with uproarious laughter, when to my mind the content itself is really not actually that funny.
There’s something just a little too unsavoury about Tramadol Nights. Like its set, staged to look like a crumbling, filthy, inner-city rooftop, you get the impression there are more than a few dead pigeons in attendance and you probably don’t want to look too hard at what you just stepped in.
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Lady T
Lady T is a great lover of British TV, which is helpful as that's mostly what she gets to watch. She strongly believes that tea can't be made using a microwave, that children's programming really was better when she was a kid, and that there's nothing in the world that can't be solved with a liberal application of common sense. She very much enjoys reading but like most of the rest of the world would some day like to write a book herself. If she ever succeeds in doing so there's a pretty good chance she'll never shut up about it. She can be contacted at lady_t_220 @ yahoo.co.uk.
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I saw what Marcus Brigstocke said on Twitter too, and I thought he was spot on. I think your review is spot on, too. Tramadol Nights isn’t funny, though clearly it thinks it is. And the fact that the audience seems to laugh right along at what SHOULD be scorned in some way just makes the whole thing worse. I really liked Frankie Boyle when he was on Mock the Week and stuff, but where he could actually BENEFIT from some sort of quality control, he just sort of goes forward with any old thing. Very disappointing.
I couldn’t agree with you more. It is a really, really odd show in that regard. Maybe a little editorial restraint earlier on in the process would have helped?
But he cried “censorship!” so much when he left the BBC, it was clear from the get go that he was hellbent on pushing any boundary he came across, editors or no. But in nearly every case, some form of editorial control is a GOOD thing, if for nothing else than to say, “jeez, are you *sure* you want that broadcast?”
Maybe Frankie considers himself of such rarefied talent that he doesn’t need an editor. Anne Rice thought that, too. Reeeeeeally worked for her… <_<
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