The Royle Family: Joe's Crackers

amacachi

JonathanAnon wrote: »

The TV room in Amacachi's house...

I wish, I'm going to have to get a better rated regulatory thingy in the house, have a 5-plug extension off a single socket with all of them used, one of which is a 4-plug extension which has all used and one of those is a 5-plug extension with 3 used.

And I run my chargers off the other socket. :pac:

Also the TV in my room is broke so all that is hooked up to a TV that only displays the bottom half of the picture. :pac:

ScareGilly

Dave's still my favourite character, brilliant tonight.

On a side note...
Saskia


Or..

Denise

Denise for me please :rolleyes:

fryup

better than last year's, which wouldn't have been hard as it was sh!te

some of the gags are a bit tiresome now OTT vulgarity and common working class ways

still think they should have left it after the queen of sheba episode

mike65

She was also in Downton Abbey, if thats amacachis cuppa

OPENROAD

ScareGilly wrote: »

Dave's still my favourite character, brilliant tonight.

On a side note...
Saskia


Or..

Denise

Denise for me please :rolleyes:

Are we talking real life or Royle Family here?

lord lucan

As a big Royle Family fan i was apprehensive about tonights episode. In the end it was a return to form imo,had me in stitches from beginning to end. Some classic lines that will live long in the memory.

The previous 2,'The New Sofa' & 'The Golden Eggcup' were good but lacked something. Moving the action back to the Royles sitting room seems to have done the trick. It just seems to lose so much when it leaves the house so it was good to see Aherne & Cash move it back to its natural habitat.

amacachi

ScareGilly wrote: »

Dave's still my favourite character, brilliant tonight.

The head on him during the proposal was excellent.

mike65 wrote: »

She was also in Downton Abbey, if thats amacachis cuppa

Saw that she was, certainly didn't see her in that. :pac: She was the mentail in Corrie, that's what I know her from.

dominiquecruz

I must have been watching a different episode. Like the last three or four Christmas specials, I thought it was terrible. The humour is just so different now; its slapstick and vacant. They've turned Dave and Denise into caricatures of themselves, in the same way that Homer Simpson became too stupid for his own good. Jim Royle has also become a lot less subtle in character. Nana died and the show went to ****.

Merry Xmas...!

ScareGilly

OPENROAD wrote: »

Are we talking real life or Royle Family here?

Either :P Still Denise for both from me though :rolleyes:

amacachi wrote: »

The head on him during the proposal was excellent.

Brilliant when he hugged her first after she said yes..
And when he was hugging Anthony after he told him he was going to propose. Just held on that extra second that made it awkward. :pac:

Morgans

It is so bad that Im beginning to doubt that even Aherne and Cash know what made the program so sublimely brilliant in its early days.

Dave says something stupid - but in a way that he would never have done in the original series
Denise does something venal - but in a way that he would never have done in the original series
Jim is lazy and ignorant of the word done by Barbara - but in a way that he would never have done in the original series
Cheryl likes food
And they like to repeat words (momento, 3d, engagement, royal family wedding)

They think that is what people want when the fans of the show in its heyday recognised the charm of the program wasnt in the slapstick. It was a family program with realistic 3d characters whose interactions set the scene allowing the humour to be believable.

Its as if a team of writers who didnt understand what made the program great in the first place were asked to dissect the humour to come up with a formula for a Royle Family episode. Then to write a new episode using this formula. Why does ordinariness seem so so so forced. All so one dimensional these days.

I hope Cash and Aherne are getting millions for these episodes cos its ruining the legacy of one of THE few truly great sitcoms of the last 20 years. I guess that the humour in the original was so subtle to be unsuitable for a blockbuster christmas special with all the build up etc.

I used to dream that I could die happy if I wrote something as good as The Royle Family, but not these christmas specials. Shame.

amacachi

Seems to have been a marmite episode...

Morgans

Possibly. I have the highest standards set for this program. Thought the originals were superb. These christmas specials get nowhere near that standard.

Dave: Nowhere near.
Denise: Nowhere near.
Jim: Nowhere near.
Barbara: Nowhere near.

fryup

just like with Only Fools and Horses they are tarnishing the legacy of the show with these below-par xmas specials

just leave it be!! ffs

Basq

amacachi wrote: »

Also Basquille, I thought The Golden Eggcup was OK, the one before it was awful thought. Tonight was really good, more than a couple of time I snorted.

Thought 'The Golden Eggcup' was beyond awful.. they're turned a family that were largely a bit dim but lovable into absolute morons (with jokes like "i've never driven in kilometres before!").

Thought 'Joe Crackers' was superb though.. definitely back-on-form.

Jesus, the specials so far are hit-and-miss but they're nowhere close to being as bad as the 'Only Fools & Horses' specials.

Cole

I used to love the show but didn't enjoy the more recent specials and wasn't going to bother watching last night....but I did and it was hilarious.

I agree with the comments about the humour not being as subtle as before but it was still very, very funny. So many good lines, like when Joe kept mispronouncing Saskia's name and called her Swastika at one point.:D

Magic Eight Ball

I'm a firm believer that the Royle Family should have taken the same route as The Office/Fawlty Towers and ended it strong with just the first 2 seasons.

The third was a massive drop in quality and every 'special' since has been dire!! Even if you are a fan of the specials, you can't honestly say any of them hold a candle to any episode from season one.

ricero

it was average at best i think they nearly ruined the character of joe after tonights episode he was always brillant when he was quite then got drunk and said something absurb but he would shut up last night.

salad dodger

I LOLd at how Joe kept getting Saskias name wrong, calling her swastika at one point!!

Whippersnapper

Again, also a big fan but last night's episode was poor.

I hate it when writers use lines in dialogue like this:

"When I got there they had already turned off the machine"

"What, the life support machine?"

"No, the vending machine in the hall"

The line in bold is unrealistic, nobody would respond with a line like that. A better line would have been "Oh, I didn't realise she was on a life support machine" or something similiar.

Morgans

Yeah. Was a poor set up for a Cheryl-is-fat joke. Predicted that there was going to be a vending machine involved from the moment she said "the hospital, it was horrible"

I did think that the Swastika line was very good. As was Saskia's reaction to Joe's poem but that was about it.

The happiness of a loving family, regardless of wealth, was the key feature of the program at its beginning, with beautiful moments of tenderness and warmth. It was this charm that made the program great, not necessarily the jokes. Scenes, from the original programs, for example, when they are singing ads werent laugh out loud funny but were lovely. Darren and Anthony doing Ali G. There were plenty of moments of real LOL.

Now its all about setting up the characters for a punchline giving the public, not necessarily the fans, what they want. Parodies of themselves. A real shame.

DrumSteve

i thought it was brilliant

mouseboy

doreen keogh is dead she dead the 21 of feb 2011

George White

brayblue24 wrote: »

She didn't go as Desmond Tutu she went as Shaun Wright Phillips. Class line


Is Doreen Keogh, who played Mary, alive or dead does anyone know?

She lives in Ireland, and could be too old/frail/ill to make the trip over the seas. I doubt she's died,although my friend in school told me she did, and his mother worked on Fair City, when Keogh appeared, but we'd have heard something about it, especially seeing that the actress was also one of the original cast members of Coronation Street.