Bruiser

2000s British tv comedy series

Sketch show written by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, with help from such writers as Richard Ayoade, Ricky Gervais, Matt Holness and James Bachman.

When you take a look at the cast of Bruiser - Mitchell, Webb, Martin Freeman, Olivia Coleman, among writers Holness & Ayoade or Ricky Gervais - a set of great names in British entertainment it would seem certain that such set of people could not do anything less than a perfect show. Well, at least until you take a look at the Bruiser itself. Just like many other British sketch shows it is mixture of wide range of topics, youth enthusiasm and... bad choices.

We have here recurring sketches that include inept cops that take part in filming a documentary about their work, Alan Titchmarsh’s agent and his creative team, Outdoor Wee program or puppet Sparky constantly getting Roger in humiliating situations. Some of them were better (like inept cops, Bond parody or guy who has a bad day at work), some of them were really poor (like guy explaining why choir singing or lawn bowls are chick magnets, annoying IT guy or French sketches), but the main problem was with repetitions. Fast Show creators used repetitions for their benefit and it worked great, because with time they were changing the formula for the repeated sketch, while in Bruiser we watch same sketches over and over again and the only detail that is changing is the topic, not the formula.

Because of such concept of the show first episodes seemed great, fresh and original, but with each episode the repeated jokes were losing the appeal until they became annoying. Not to mention that some of those repeated sketches were simply not worth it (like "touchy" builder). Bruiser wasn’t a great show, but wasn’t bad - it had potential that creators didn’t made proper use of.

Rating	5.2
Funny	5 / 10
Entertaining	3 / 5
Characters	4 / 5
Nonrepetitive	1 / 5