trimmerb1234
I'm an admirer of music hall and the stars - sadly now nearly all dead - who carried on the tradition in Variety. What a joy then to hear the not very old Steve Delaney as a kind of living throwback to an era that ended perhaps 80 years ago. It's all in the delivery - all those - pauses, that - pause - make the difference. Hia Count Arthur,is a wonderful mixture of performance and - pause- creativite writing. What he has done is to create the once popular entertainer in his twilight years when memories and bookings have dried up and he no longer a public figure. Not that the Count will acknowledge this change, he has retained all his overbearing self-confidence, much of his old vigour but much less of his brains and almost none of his memory. Old performers never die - they merely lose their marbles.The radio shows were uncluttered. Regulars who feature in the Counts life included: Geoffrey, dimwitted friend, the local butcher (the Count loved offal), and the proprietor of the local greasy spoon, were all minor characters. Steve Delaney's magic was convincly demonstrate what utter mahen could result when gross-error and enormous undaunted overbearing self-confidence coincided.That was the Count at his very best. I cannot imagine how Delaney worked out the convoluted plots in which comprehensive havoc was wreaked without apparent design. The Count's credo was: Never apologise, never explain - he didn't give a damn about anybody else, and in any case had such a faltering grasp of reality that explanation that anyone else would understand, was totally beyond him.Graham Lineham to my mind was at his best with the IT Crowd. Here though he clutters and pads out the cast and plot with regulars who just have too much to say and no compelling logic that they should be there (why does the Greg Kinnear character's life revolve round Count Arthur?). A real life Count Arthur = mega-egotist - would be complaining to his agent and his writer, that the others are stealing his scenes and his thunder. After all these years, Count Arthur is still the star - and we should never (be allowed) forget it!
newsth
Good, in that it is funny in parts and very funny in parts. But absolutely not funny in other parts.Imagine a scale where there is Count Arthur Strong (CAS) at one end and Michael at the other. As we move from CAS on his own, through CAS with non-regular cast members to CAS with regular cast members to CAS with Michael to Michael with other cast members and finally to Michael on his own, we move from riotously, outrageously funny through mildly amusing to downright cringeworthy. The radio programmes are much, much, much, much, much, much (and I make no apologies for using the word "much" much there), much, much, much better.
stevequaltrough
I arrived late to this show, never having heard of Count Arthur Strong before the current TV series. Neither was I enticed by the trailers. But having seen episodes of the re-run on BBC 2, I am convinced that Arthur is the funniest TV comedy creation since Basil Fawlty. Having enjoyed the first 2 episodes I went out and bought the DVD only to discover that the remaining 4 episodes were even funnier than the ones I had previously viewed. Rory Kinnear gives excellent support as the bemused writer Michael. I hear this is booked for series 2. I can't wait! The delusional Arthur reminds me of some characters I used to know at a poetry writer's club, one of whom described herself as "a household name" despite the fact that no-one had ever heard of her. Maybe Arthur should start something similar as one of his rackets. It would give him excellent scope for his ham acting talents.Having read the reviews mentioning the Radio Show, I bought season 2 on audio CD and found it to be equally hilarious. Standouts were Arthur posing as a self motivation guru and his lecture on Creationism vs Darwinism with reference to the films of Charlton Heston. Totally hilarious. Whether on TV or radio comic genius is still comic genius
GD Cugham
On British radio, 'Count Arthur Strong' has over six series under its belt, some scripts stronger than others, but overall a mundane world (in the radio sow, the North of England) viewed from the perspective of the malapropic, Munchausenian "Count Arthur". Arthur is the antagonistic protagonist, consistently getting himself and others out of his/their depth due to spiralling lies, misunderstandings - or mammoth drinking sessions. On radio, he is a quixotic Falstaff, childish and hilariously self-preserving. His dubious relationships with eternal protégé "Malcolm" plus his tentative grasp of reality and Equity membership, add to the tone of a sitcom Morrissey might have penned. The humour is unabatedly "Northern" but self-effacing with it - for example, Strong constantly name drops cult Northern comedy turn, Jimmy Clitheroe, to scant recognition. For television it may have been seen as a cheap or cheating move to simply transport the radio scripts to screen. To reshape it or TV, Graham Linehan, one of 'Father Ted''s progenitors, became writing partner for Steve Delaney (the Count himself) and the outcome was positively anticipated.What results is an odd Frankenstein creation of the Count Arthur Strong stage show - which Delaney performed solo for years - and what appears to be a 'Colin's Sandwich'- style script Linehan had pre-written, ancillary to the Strong project. The location changes from a drab, 'Butchers Films' style North to, utterly incongruously for Strong's potential gravitation, a trendy Brick Lane/ Camden Lock style area of London. Gone is the camp manchild Malcolm and instead Rory Kinnear's 'Michael Baker' is Arthur's principal comic foil, a writer who has paired up with his light-entertainment icon father's former partner, Strong, in order to record his memoir. Here begins one of the many problems with the TV 'Count Arthur Strong'. Strong's name may be above the shopfront, but Linehan devotes so much time to Kinnear/Baker's reactions, right-on problems (Baker, constantly meeting with Strong in an ethnically diverse cafe, endeavours to show he's neither racist or, in his pursuit of a diamond-in-the-rough waitress, sexist) and first-world woes that he may as well be the eponymous character.The only 'Father Ted'-level belly-laughs come, ironically, when Linehan's scenarios give way to sections of Delaney/Arthur's radio scripts or original stage (a disastrous radio- drama recording; a marathon, one-man, musical showcase). These are rendered all but narratively impotent when offset by ( presumably Linehan-scripted) exchanges where the cafe waitress chides Baker for exploiting Arthur. The implication is that Arthur's caricatured exploits are those of an uncoping, possibly senile geriatric. Therefore, the Linehan tack, offsetting truly funny slapstick and malapropism, with sixth-form level political correctness, isn't just unfunny, it seeks to rob the genuinely funny (Delaney written) portions of the script of laughs - are we, the audience, daring to laugh at a person suffering from mental illness?! In the last few years, Linehan has adopted a po-faced, "arbiter of all that is politically correct-and-right-on" pose on social networking platform 'Twitter'. Under the nom de plume @Glinner, he has engaged unwary souls over the mildest of criticisms and accused even the most liberal tweeters - whom he takes against for some reason - of whichever "ist" or "ism" he sees they conveyed.The sitcom suffers from this dubious, contrary and ultimately too "preachy" hand wringing. A conspiracy theorist character, Eggy, is held up for ridicule then pathos - he questions the government and status quo because his wife was unfaithful. The chimera of a slapstick and social mores sitcom so patronising of a mainstream audience that it questions hilarity at the acts of a fool or fool(s), cannot work. Linehan, so deftly working in broad strokes and productively cake-and-eating-it with'Father Ted' taints this show with his own seemingly conflicted attitude to what should be - but not "is"- funny.His fellow twitter "King Bee", Stephen Fry, opined that sitcom 'M*A*S*H' started well but then ended in a mire of pathos and saccharine fluff with "a little Korean boy being brought on every week that the white cast could head-pat". This could be advice best heeded as, figuratively speaking, Linehan has hit the ground running with " juvenile-Korean-head- patting" in 'Count Arthur Strong' and it can only be hoped that he hands the reins back to Delaney - as he did after one series to Dylan Moran on 'Black Books' - that he might salvage his character. If that means simply televising old radio scripts, all the better.
