The Evan Whitton Blog: After Hours

Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1) Image Credit: BBC If you consider yourself a fan of satire, I wou;ld probably say your search for the best of it is unfinished until you've watched 'W1A', written by the fantastic John Morton. A razor sharp, yet fantastically deadpan satire of the working world of the BBC, I firmly believe it's one of the best comedy programmes of recent times. I already went over some of my reasoning in part 1 , including the sheer brilliance of the premise, and the incredible wit and silliness of the writing, but today I'm diving deeper. So grab yourself a coffee, stand by, cue camera one, and away we go! The Plots On the flip side though, there are the plots. It’s not that they’re necessarily bad at all, in fact some of them are actually very funny at their core, but one thing you realise very quickly, is that it’s definitely a “journey rather than the destination” type of show. Th...

  Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1) Image Credit: BBC Think of the list of the UKs most renowned sitcoms and satirical comedies, and obviously behind that you’ve got some of the most brilliantly creative minds in the British media sector. Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci of ‘The Day Today’, Damon Beesley and Iain Morris behind ‘The Inbetweeners’, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong who masterminded ‘Peep Show’ and ‘Fresh Meat’, or, for a relatively more recent example, the brilliant Robert Popper, creator of ‘Friday Night Dinner.’ A name that should also be added to that list is John Morton. Originally rising to prominence in a similar “radio-show-turned-TV-hit” success story to many of his contemporaries, the mockumentary show ‘People Like Us’ received high praise and more widespread recognition following its TV debut in 1999, even netting him a Writers' Guild Award. That may well be on my watchlist, but what I wanted to t...