I am not sure why I was looking forward to Rich Hall’s Election Special. After all, I though Rich Hall’s Fishing Show, his previous effort for BBC4, was not any good. But having enjoyed another spin of his Otis Lee Crenshaw character at Edinburgh, and with a lack of American based comic commentary on their own election, I guess I thought it would have to do.
“It’ll have to do” just about sums it up. There were some nice gags in-between the picturesque vistas of Montana that Hall and Wilmott (not really changing their schtick from the Fishing Show) visited. But it was pitched, potentially at a BBC4 audience, who knew more about the election than the hosts cared to discuss, and who were probably not going to go for the metatextual is this a serious documentary or not. It quite clearly was not. Hall creates a memorable character in his right wing Canadian baiting shock jock, however there seems little point in reacting against a fictional talk show host when you are trying to make a point about the real ones. At any rate, anyone who read the article by Hall in last weeks Time Out would have felt a little short changed, as nearly all the gags in that were repeated here verbatim.
And is it really that funny that Kerry looks like Deputy Dawg?
(Perhaps a better question is, does Kerry look like Deputy Dawg. Um – no.)