The Love Box in Your Living Room

After the success of Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield's 50 years of BBC 2, I was delighted to see the BBC invite them back this time to celebrate 100 years of the BBC.

How do you cram 100 years of radio and television broadcasting into one hour? Well you can't. Paul and Harry do there best but there was so much more left out.

Sport, sitcoms,Soaps,Wildlife and that was just the TV. The radio didn't get a look in after the early years. My only gripe which stopped me from giving me a higher mark was to much on various prime minister's yes Harry did a very funny Margret Thatcher impression, but was it relevant to the history of the BBC?

That apart there is plenty to enjoy here. 8/10.

Vanker of a mockumentary made for the montraux fesival of tv broadcasters about one of the greatests institutions in the history of the world...the british broadcasting corporation...or bbc as mentioned up in the upper left corner.

Youll have to be some kinda brit to really understand whats unfolding on these airwaves, but witty it is by all means, a humble take on stupid and stubborn old fashion program making for your pillbox, a hymn of the undertaking of linear television like rumping in the lavatory in number 10 brawling street.

Im grumpy and old, but norwegian who nevertheless have always trusted the quality of bbc, especially the important airwaves that reached our shores under the occupation by the nazis in the ww2, ''this is london calling'' was dead serious business back then, you were shot if taken by surprise by the gestapo, so bbc still have a shining glory to some...

but its an ironic clash comedy of a titan, they couldve used less words and made pantomimic stits in double speed like benny hill once did, that wouldve sent me to the glorious grave of laughter, so just a 6.

Years ago, Harry Enfield made the wonderful 'Norbert Smith: A Life', a mockumentary about the career of a fictional actor which allowed him to parody decades of British films. In 'The Love Box in Your Living Room', his focus is no disimilliar (this time, British television), but to his credit, he adds something new to the mix, as the programme is made in the style of Adam Curtis. Curtis's own (deadly serious) programmes combine striking images with consipatorial nudges to overlooked connections; and Enfield's takedown is assured and funny, while some of the commentary reminds me of Philomena Cunk. It's a little too high-concept to be utterly hillarious, but it's a worthwhile and quirky addition to the BBC's celebration of its own hundred-year history.

Tiny glimpses of the humour we used to see from Mr Enfield and Mr Whitehouse, like diamonds in dreck they were hard to spot, it was a good cast wasted on what could have been great but was instead a hodge podge of misfires and calamities.

I expected more from two of the funniest men in TV, not stilted and frankly boring slices of dullness. Thankfully there is only one part so hopefully in one hundred years time we will have some sort of mind ray to help us forget this ever existed, it's an hour of my life I wouldn't relive as a nightmare or unless I was paid two million plus pounds in cash in plastic bags.

Whitehouse and Enfield are the exact level of daft satirist needed to give the Beeb its centenary drubbing. They're allowed to go to town here, for better or worse, and what you get in "Love Box" is essentially a kaleidoscopically dense Adam Curtis parody. Whether it succeeds or fails depends entirely on how familiar with Curtis's idiosyncratically existential documentaries you are. If you're not it feels like a wild mash of callbacks, surreal asides, skits, parodies, cameos, impressions, in-jokes, found footage and title cards. The most successful part for me were the parodies (Joe Dempsie in an avant-garde 70s genre show was the best) and as it hurtled towards the conclusion I was rather stunned to discover it was actually casting itself as a eulogy for the BBC rather than a celebration of it. In amidst the clutter and silliness there was a serious point being made about the ownership of media in the UK and for whose benefit it operates. However, not to worry, this is more about foolishness and nostalgia than hard interrogation. This is Smashy and Nicey, not Curtis himself, after all.