The comics’ spoof Adam Curtis-style documentary celebrating 100 years of the BBC is full of deft satire, sharp insight and moments of utter oddness. It’s very clever – and very funny
During the recent revival of Friday Night Live, broadcast to celebrate Channel 4’s 40th anniversary, Harry Enfield came back with a couple of his old characters, including Stavros. Enfield played the one-time kebab shop proprietor as the proud owner of a posh coffee shop in Hackney, the kind of place where the London borough’s newer population might prefer to go. His suggestions as to why had me howling. People who were simply expecting the return of a sketch in which a man said “innit” and “peeps” at the end of his sentences would have found there was a bit more bite to it than that.
In The Love Box in Your Living Room, (BBC Two), Enfield and his old partner Paul Whitehouse turn to the BBC’s own birthday celebrations, putting 100 candles on the cake by way of an hour-long documentary spoof. It’s similar to their 2015 series The Story of the Twos, which marked BBC Two’s 50th anniversary, only here it’s Adam Curtis parodied rather than Simon Schama. There’s also a semi-parody of the 1976 Mike Leigh film Nuts in May and several Eurovision song contests, makes the Beatles into a singular prime minister (although, after this year, perhaps that’s not so strange) and invents a Farrow & Ball colour called Munge. It is 60 minutes of rapid-fire silliness, although, just like Stavros, there is more to it than inventing daft words and a Captain Pugwash cartoon recast with Rod Stewart and Ted Heath.
