Radio Times Listings & Newspaper Reviews
Pilot Episode
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
Episode Five
Episode Six
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
Episode Five
Episode Six
(First broadcast 11th February 1993; against Minder on ITV)
Radio Times 6th-12th February 1993
Alas, the end of Joking Apart, Steven Moffat’s distinctive BBC2 comedy about divorce, starring Robert Bathurst as the stand-up comic who has been telling us the story of his disintegrating marriage.
Flavoured with a delicious bitterness about the perfidy of women and the conscience-less nature of the male orgasm, it was plotted with the intricacy of a good French farce.
More please!
Margaret Forwood- Daily Express, 13th February 1993
Sitcom viewers have had an odd experience recently, in some cases for the first time. It starts, apparently, in the chest cavity, works its way up though the upper part of the body, and emerges from the mouth as a loud and uninhibited guffawing noise, often accompanied by involuntary thigh slapping and a rocking motion backwards and forwards. Doctors refer to this bizarre behaviour as ‘laughing’.
You can imagine what a shock this must cause. Generations of viewers have grown used to watching situation comedies without even a flicker of a smile. In many cases, particular those starring Windsor Davies, screams of distress have been more appropriate.
And yet suddenly sitcoms are becoming funny again. The sad old sitcom format has been given a sudden and much needed lift.
Good scripts, good performances, good production values – these are not what we expect from the British sitcom. But they’re all there, in abundance, and the result is some of the funniest comedy in years.
[The reviewer cites Chef!, One Foot in the Grave, Drop the Dead Donkey, Absolutely Fabulous, Men Behaving Badly and finally:]
Joking Apart. I didn’t miss an episode of this, a strangely gloomy series that began as an essay on marriage failure and turned into a series of ever more unlikely and riotous sex farces.
The crucial thing about all these series is none of them has played safe. They’ve taken chances, they dare to fail. The result is this strange laughter noise that keeps issuing from your inner recesses. I’m all for it.
Marcus Berkmann - Daily Mail, 27th March 1993