The Royle Family

That was too fucking funny. It manages to excel itself every year with these specials.

the "self-satisfied wink" bit had me lolling, jim pretty much carried it though.

there was so much of it had me lolling

fucking terrible

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i don't think i saw the last special, so i missed the moment when it slipped into this one dimensional pastiche. & it's all lazy.

last year's was better... it wasn't great, but still a lot better. this was painful.

this was pretty repulsive a lot of the time and the repetition thing is lazy, extremely annoying and doesn't have the ring of truth about it. in spite of this i still laughed a lot at the "golden egg cup" argument.

of all the chrimbo specials catherine tate was, surprisingly, the best one i saw by some distance and victoria wood's, sadly but unsurprisingly, was by far the worst.

Halfway through and I don't even want to watch any more. This is fucking horrible. It's totally lost the affection it had for any of the characters*, and they have just become awful and stupid rather than likeably daft.

* except Anthony - his restraint in not twatting his family and tolerance of their incessant crassness because, well, they're his family, is the only believable thing in it now.

It's totally lost the affection it had for any of the characters*, and they have just become awful and stupid rather than likeably daft.

otm. feels really contemptuous towards the characters and by extension working-class people at large. iirc it's at its maximum shitness right about now? with the "men get erections in the morning" + "i just farted" jokes.

Just had the "famous poof Quentin Crisp" "John Hurt - I bet he did" bit. I'm not even sure why I'm not just stopping this now.

Oh dear God, caramel coloured babies to go with my sofa - JESUS WEPT what is wrong with this programme? Is this really the same programme that had me going "oh woops, something in my eye, sniff sniff" when Denise and Jim were sitting on the bathroom floor and she was terrified about becoming a mum, or when Barbara was brushing Nana's hair and saying she'd never have put her in a home?

And now it's fart jokes and poofs as far as the eye can see. Plus a bizarre obsession with the One Show.

the one show thing is mystifying... initially i thought they would put the knife in. because no-one likes that show right? but they don't seem to do anything with it and it ends up sounding like bbc circle-jerkery. there isn't a barb in sight.

I think "The One Show is the type of show these people watch and love" was meant to be the barb in itself? I have no idea. I never used to think of The Royle Family as being "these people", but the affection and truth that used to be found throughout has gone to be replaced by broad brush strokes of meanness and parody.

hated this for reasons pretty much nailed above. they were either behaving like teletubbies or just being thoroughly unpleasant.

Is this really the same programme that had me going "oh woops, something in my eye, sniff sniff" when Denise and Jim were sitting on the bathroom floor and she was terrified about becoming a mum

was thinking the same (and of that actually classic scene)

It was horribly depressing. Have no recollection of the less than a handful of times I've watched it previously so good to learn it wasn't always so horrid - I was having trouble imagining anyone getting pleasure from watching such unpleasantly parodic characters.

as mayne says, last year's was better but this was mainly down to guest star tom courtenay as dave's dad imo

I don't actually think I laughed once. Last year wasn't great, but had its moments (mostly from Tom Courtenay), this was just awful. Even the usually snigger-raising "Jim goes for a shite" bits were elevated to pantomime OH LOOK HE IS ACTUALLY ON THE TOILET levels of bashing-the-idiots-round-the-head comedy.

also, married 50 years. Really?!

Yeah, how old are the kids?! MY parents were complaining about that.

I reckon Denise is mid-30s, Anthony's about 30, so 40th anniversary would be nearer the mark. I was waiting for the "lol we can't count, it's actually 40 years" attempt at a gag, but it never materialised.

also Jim making a crack about not being able to go abroad because the social would ask questions - if he's been married 50 years, he's at least 68 (or 66 if they eloped to Scotland), either way, too old to be diddling the social.

This was total phoned-in shite. I can't believe how annoyed I'm getting at this!

Why are these specials on Gold?

last couple finally on /\BC1 this xmas

Gawd.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/timeforsleep.jpg

This week's was garbage.

last year's was so appalling i thought it might be. caught a few minutes. there was a fart joke. they repeated some lines 'for comic effect'. it wasn't funny.

I didn't even bother with it this year, last year's was so bad. I've been told it wasn't as bad as last year, but that leaves a whole lot of damning with faint praise due to immensely low bar being set.

The original series were actually good weren't they? I've started doubting myself after these Christmas specials.

I lasted 20 minutes with it this year.

No, they were actually good.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/columns/bob-odenkirk-the-royle-family-favorite-tv-show-1235833329/

You can watch “The Royle Family” now on Amazon Prime. But one tip: Turn the subtitles on.

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