"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The All New Alexei Sayle Show: Series 2, Episode 3 (1995)

 
It’d be nice if this show was using PC for something other than the “Drunk in Time” sketches.  The joke – that Doug and his buddy are so wasted, they don’t know where they are and stumble ignorantly through historical events – isn’t super sustainable.  Plus, all the sketches on this show are pretty short, and the “Drunk in Time” sketches have an opening theme that cuts into their minutes for every episode.  The Sherlock Holmes sketch from series 1 is a lot funnier than any of these, and it gives PC a lot more to do.
 
This time around, it’s Sarajevo on the eve of World War I, and we can all guess which archduke is misguidedly riding through a hostile crowd in an open car.  I think I can safely assume by now that Jim Carter will be in all of these – he’s the gunman in this one.  This installment can be found here.
 
By far, however, the most important thing to take away from this episode comes in part of its PC-less section.  In a pair of sketches following the exploits of “The League of Hirsute Gentlemen,” who should appear as the villain but Christoph Waltz?  Admittedly, I know very little about the wonderful Christoph Waltz’s pre-Inglourious Basterds career, but I’d had no idea he’d been working in English-language projects as far back as the mid-90s.  I was delighted to see him, but so surprised that, as much as it looked and sounded like him, I didn’t quite believe it until I saw his name in the end credits.

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