Buy Or Don’t Buy

When I was in London last semester, my roommate and I tried to experience the local colour by watching as many British viral videos as we could. Kersal Massive was always good for a laugh and everyone loves Old Gregg, but no video inspired as much after-the-fact quoting as this one:

Maybe it was our latent misogyny or our love of inappropriate double-entendres, but “Dog Kick” spoke to a special place inside of us. Simple research into ‘Related Videos’ told us the clip came from a sketch-comedy show called Snuff Box, which premiered to general critical and audience indifference back in 2006. For a time, Wikipedia said it best: “There are no plans for a second series.” (Alan Moore apparently likes it though.)

Snuff Box was the brainchild of writers/actors Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher, who had worked together on the slightly-less-funny-but-more-consistent show The Mighty Boosh (the birthplace of Old Gregg). Berry and Fulcher play fictionalized versions of themselves, with Berry as a pompous man-about-town and Fulcher as his dimwitted sidekick. Show-Berry is Her Majesty’s Royal Hangman, which provides lots of opportunities for hanging-based humor:

It’s nice to find a show with comic sensibilities that match up so well with my own. For if you couldn’t tell from the above clips, Snuff Box is probably the darkest comedy show to be on mainstream TV, so dark that BBC3 couldn’t air it before 11 in the UK. But balancing all the black comedy is a wonderful grasp of random humor. Take this segment:

If the show has a weak spot, it’s the performance of Rich Fulcher. Fulcher is apparently a good writer (he wrote half the show) and he’s solid when he’s supporting Berry, but put him at the center of a sketch and he’s a black hole of laughter. He simply doesn’t have the comic chops to carry a scene, and it’s embarrassing to watch him try:

Even taking Fulcher into account, Snuff Box is a solid Buy. It apparently came out on DVD about a month ago, but so far I haven’t been able to find it. [EDIT: Oh, it's right here] Until then, check out the clips on YouTube and watch “Oh Brothers”, the episode with my favorite cold open, here.