FM

I caught a couple of episodes of this on ITV a while back, and thought it looked interesting, so sought out the full series. It's only 6 episodes, so I'd actually seen about half of it.

FM is a sitcom revolving around 2 radio DJs Lindsay (Chris O'Dowd from the IT Crowd) and Dom and their Producer Jane (Nina Sosanya from Teachers). O'Dowd plays a similar character to that of his IT Crowd persona Roy, Lindsay is a bit of an awkward character who constantly gets himself into trouble. The trio work well together and there are some hilarious situations that they get into. Cameos from bands/celebrities occur each episode but are subtley woven into the plot rather than to overtly thrown in there.

Overall, worth watching. 3.5/5

Dave Gorman

Comedian Dave Gorman is doing this thing where he is cycling from the most Southern point on the British mainland to the most Northern, taking in the most Eastern and most Western on the way up. On Friday he did a gig in the Sonachan hotel, Ardnamurchan which lies 3 miles away from the most Westerly point. Since Rosie's family's cottage is only 30 miles or so away from the point, we though we'd go up and head along to see the show, camping in a field at the hotel.

I thought it would be fun for Neil and I to cycle out to the point from the cottage, it's a 30 mile journey and was quite tough, definitely on par with the Glasgow to Edinburgh ride despite being 20 miles or so shorter.

Dave's show was excellent, a great laugh throughout with some absolutely hilarious material. I'll not say too much about the content for fear of giving anything away, but if you get the chance to catch the show, I highly recommend it.

Saturday morning we were getting ready to leave and Dave came by in a van and asked if we'd like to ride back with him and his human sat-nav Scot. We figured we'd be struggling to keep up on our mountain bikes with our fat tyres (and lack of fitness), but went along anyway. Luckily we did manage to keep up, the ride back being a bit easier than the ride along. After leaving Dave in Acharacle Scot and he were going on to Glenfinnan, another 30 miles, I'm not sure I could have kept up with them for much longer :)

Anyway, a great weekend away, and I got to cycle 60 miles and see a great comedy show and we got a mention on his blog.

The Thick of It

I hadn't heard of this BBC comedy until I saw In the Loop in the cinema. In the Loop is pretty much The Thick of It: The Film.

I picked up the first series on DVD, typically for British comedies, it only runs to 6 episodes. The series follows Hugh Abbot, a minister at the department of Social Affairs. He is bewildered and out of his depth, trying to do the best job he can in his position. The series follows him and his aides as he deals with one PR disaster after another, constantly having run-ins with Malcom Tucker, the angry, swearing, Scot whose job it is to ensure that members of the cabinet don't gather bad press coverage.

Overall, I didn't find it quite as funny as In the Loop, but it was still hilarious in places. The documentary style camera work is a little off-putting, but does add to the effect.

All in all, a series worth watching if you haven't seen it already.