Finally a good show on Comedy Central! I look at it as a British take on Jackass. I especially like all the people in animal suits. What’s your take on it?
well I’ve seen it since it’s first been shown over here on channel 4. It is a funny show, for the first few times you see it, after that it becomes samey. Still very good but I dont see at all how you can say its a “British take on Jackass” at all, it may even have been made first, I’m not sure. However I can certainly say Dom Jolly is far funnier than any of the idiots on that particular show. The Animal suits are classic, seeing them beat each other up is the best.
Not that it matters a great deal, but ‘Trigger Happy TV’ preceded ‘Jackass’ by a long way. And in fact, Friendly, Dom Joly was doing his thing for smaller channels a little while even before Ch 4 picked it up and commissioned the first series of what we now call THTV.
I’m not sure how the THTV shows are being re-packaged for US audiences. However, you should know that after they had made the second and final series of THTV, Dom Joly and his crew produced a two-part Christmas special for Ch 4 over here in the UK, which went out last Christmas. The second of these two shows contains what I think is the the finest, most elaborate visual gag ever produced for television. It concerns a hapless member of the public walking around a maze, which was either Hampton Court maze or something very similar, and having a very surreal experience. Don’t read if you don’t want to know.
As the person walks down a straight section of the maze, the maze actually moves and re-configures itself so that the relevant section is sealed off and shut at both ends (including the end at which the person has just entered this section seconds before). This was done with members of the THTV team dressed, very convincingly, as sections of the maze! The sequence was shot from above with a crane camera and it makes for a very surreal and weird image, not to mention a very funny one IMHO.
That gag has been shown here in the US. It wasn’t on any “special episode”. It was just one gag amongst all the others in what appeared to be just another standard episode. By the way, I just recently discovered the show and it’s HILARIOUS!
My favourite THTVism has got to be the big mobile phones!
Other moments I remember -
Putting a spotlight on a complete stranger and playing the krypton-factor music as he walks down a street!
The fat American with the black-labrador who wants the old guy to take him home.
The bike delivery guy who is completely and utterly unintelligable.
The interview with Peter Stringfellow (and all the other celebrity interviews)
The damn music played with every scetch - well chosen stuff.
etc etc…
Sorry, I should have spoilered all that.
Some more
The 1 millionth customer set up where a guy is told to grab as much as he can in a shopping centre and as soon as he goes in with the trolly the guys bugger off - so it looks like the guy is just blitz-shoplifting
the one where they congratulate the next person to come out of a porn shop, making a huge display of it with trumpets and megaphones. I’d have hated to be that guy (not that I go in porn shops ahem)
the roadworks bit where they are either in bed or sat round a dinner table
well waddaya know! I had a complete guess at how to do those spoiler boxes, and it was right (in preview mode)!
omg i really like trigger happy! it was pretty sappy the last time i saw it and i didn’t laugh much but it has its moments. i was just thinking about a trigger happy post too!
My brother has his cell phone ring the same as the one on THTV. I giggle everytime I hear it.
The show is absolutely brilliant!
Bunnies in the theatre…
Active snowmen…
Stuffed dogs…
wipes a tear from her eye
too funny
My favourite scene:The one where two delivery guys turn up at an old lady’s house and tell her they’re here to deliver a “posh tiger”. Out of the van steps a guy in a tiger suit with a cane, top hat, and monocle. And just stands there for about 15 minutes after the van has driven off. I nearly pissed myself.Also, on the video of the series is a scene that wasn’t shown (presumably for reasons of length), of Dom Joly being a tourist guide in a Belgian city, taking two tourists on a horse-drawn tour of the city. I won’t say any more, but it’s priceless.
This is the funniest show I’ve seen in years. Ten-times better than jackass.
What makes it great is that it doesn’t give a crap about the ‘victims’ reactions–it just shows the gag and then moves on. American TV takes ten years to show the ‘set-up’, and then spends another 20 years on the ‘reaction-shot’, which just absolutely kills the whole bit.
Joly gets in 30 or more gags in a single 30-minute show, and it’s all the more enjoyable.
My fav is the guy going to the interview where everyone is dressed in animal suits. That was priceless.
Scene: Guy in an elevator (aka a “lift” ;)). A man with a trenchcoat and hat and carrying a briefcase enters elevator. Elevator goes to another floor. Another man dressed in the same trenchcoat and hat, and carrying the same briefcase, enters elevator. Standing side by side, the trenchcoat men exchange briefcases.
I like the squirrel gang beat-down on the guy in the phone booth.
HELLO?
I think it’s crap. Just a modern reworking of tv shows that weren’t funny either. I disagree that the non-reaction approach is innovative. i think they don’t show reactions because most targets just think/say “yeah…so?” It’s banal in the extreme. And I’m British, so I do know about British comedy. Give me The Office any day.
I don’t really see whats so funny about THTV. I guess it’s not my cup of tea, YMMV.
Count me as a big fan. I love the scene in the parking garage when Dom tries to hand a stranger a briefcase full of cash “to just put a stop to all this”. The porn shop had me crying. Also the large photo “Don’t trust this man.”
As far as it being derivitave of Candid Camera - BFD, funny is funny.
Love the show. best gag involved a fake baby and helium balloons.
I loved the bits where one of them would be dressed as a burglar carrying a sign that said THIEF and would walk right past bobbies (who would totally ignore him)
Also funny was when the guy dressed as burglar was asking people on the sidewalk if they could help him get into his house…thru the side window 
I’m on a message board.
It’s rubbish.
Ciao!
The celebrity interviews where a passer by gets beaten up were revealing; Bill Wyman does not seem to be a nice man.
I thought the funniest interview though was the one on Waterloo or Westminster Bridge when some of the interviewers’ mates come by in a cab; they say they have a spare ticket for the Oval Test (ie an international cricket match) and the interviewer disappears with them in the middle of the interview.
I always like the things that the “spies” say to the wrong person in the park, like “the cherry blossom in Leningrad is beautiful”, and I like the music that goes with these scenes.