Nighty Night was a living nightmare in the form of a sitcom, and I think there's an important point in it that often gets missed in contemporary dark comedy. / stubagful
One of my favourite things about the show is how static the camera often is. Instead of emphasising close ups or reaction shots to the gross things Jill is saying, the fact it’s placed at a distance draws the viewer in more and makes it feel like you’re in the scene and helplessly watching It’s like a horror movie filmed as a soap opera, which means the disturbing lines are more shocking because it looks like a conversation you’d have in your kitchen
@@Stubagful Oh me too. Why won’t she just throw Jill out?? Yes I know she’d come back and probably kill them all but the fact she doesn’t even try because she doesn’t want to be rude is the kind of awkward british humour I adore It says a lot that when I first watched the show (way too young at 13) the nightmares it gave me weren’t about Jill bothering me but people I know, who were helplessly falling into a trap and not listening to my warnings because ‘it would be rude’
You summed up my feelings on dark and edgy humor perfectly. It’s always at its best when there’s no in your face “I’m offensive!” Aspect and you can just bask in the morbidness. Definitely gonna check out this show sometime.
"Nighty Night puts you in Cath's shoes" is so spot on. I'm disabled, and so obvs that's a thing I'm gonna be sensitive about, but I find Nighty Night's absolute viciousness so precise and so careful that it reveals great empathy. While it might not seem to care how the viewer reacts, it's not doing this by accident, and it's honestly cathartic to go "Yeah, sometimes it feels like this when you're Cath." It's truly lovely that some modern writers are attempting to write "normal" disabled characters now, but I have never seen a depiction that was so evocative without being one of those "this is a morality tale for able bodied people to feel sad about how awful it is to be disabled" stories, which ironically exclude disabled people from the audience. Plus it's just very very funny on top.
The most insane comedy I've ever seen. There was a whole ten minute stretch of S2E4 where, at a certain point, I just had to pause and really take in what I had just witnessed. I wasn’t offended, I was OVERWHELMED, it was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life. I've said this elsewhere, but Jill really is the closest we'll ever get to a live-action Eric Cartman, they're both absolute slime and I love it. Similar dynamics between Jill and Cath/Linder as Cartman has with his mum/Butters.
I've never heard of this show and I probably won't watch it but I kind of respect its existence. Any show that successfully subverts it's genre deserves praise as it's something that is so easily fumbled.
It really does deserve respect! I think an aspect they don't quite mention is the fact that Julia Davis' character is never given the anti-hero treatment. She is not someone you quietly root for as she tears through Modern Society like other TV rebels (if anything, even its more traditional comedy draws a direct line between Comedy Rebel and Monster Someone Has To Live With), and although they say it's like it doesn't care what your reaction is, as a disabled person myself I believe there's enormous empathy and a lot of intent in making you empathise with everyone else. It remains one of my favourite depictions of a disabled person, which ought to be a monstrous claim but it deeply taps into the feelings of powerlessness that come with the realisation you're not entitled to the things everyone else takes for granted.
Nighty Night remains one of my all time favourites. Julia Davis is unbelievable in how she handles comedy so dark that its pitch black. Whenever I tell American friends about the unsympathetic comedy protagonist trope in British comedy, it’s always Jill I refer them to.
It reminded me weirdly of Joseph heller’s book Something Happened. Both are about amoral narcissists wrapped up in their heads and are sort of focused squarely on the idea of unhappiness.
She also voices in this animated adult swim show called "The Shivering Truth" which is just phenomenal. Its like Morel Orel crossed with the twilight zone
4:45 That drawing of a stand-up comedian's let itself go. Also, I know this wasn't the main point of the video, but there's a moment from the American IT Crowd that lives rent free in my head. When Reynholm calls back to unfire a floor of emloyees. I've never seen anything so utterly miss the point of a character.
Oh wow I thought I knew all the cool British comedy shows even the obscure ones.I need to check this out. Somehow seems even darker than Jam. I didn't think that was possible.
It works as just a straight sitcom as well. My daughter was about 10 when it was made and loved it and could quote huge chunks of the script, so much so I bought her a working script from one of the actors for her at Christmas. She still has it, she's 31 now!!
i knew you were a man of culture. nighty night has been one of my favourite series for well over a decade now. i never even thought about it in the same category as the edgy/u mad lol comedians, it's in a completely different class. you make a very good point that nighty night is shocking and offensive without ever feeling like it cares about being such - i think that's totally the case and it's julia davis' artistry coming through, I think she's a true artist and this sort of horror-comedy based on transgressing social mores is an art form that she can't help but create, see her more recent amazing projects such as 'camping' and 'dear joan and jericha' which have the same thread of creeping horror underneath mundane interactions. who's poisoned you, Cath?
Never heard comedy be described as a method of control over the audience but it does make sense. The comedian sets the joke's tempo and Nighty Night's tempo sounds like it'd fill me with dread
I somehow caught Nightie Night at the beginning of the second series, which was sillier but easier to watch. I don't think I'd have got through the first series if I hadn't already enjoyed the characters in the second.
Have you watched 'Speak no Evil' it's a Danish horror movie that tackles this issue of politeness turned horror quite directly, I feel you might like it although I will warn you there are some quite horrible scenes in it
New Stubagful? The day after Inside Season 9 conclusion? This’ll be swee- Oh, it’s a video about a show I’ve only vaguely heard of. I mean, it’s nice I suppose.
Tiny thing. Probably too small for you to mention. But I have always liked how despite how dark the show is, it has the most ironically upbeat theme song I’ve ever heard outside of children’s television.
Have you done something on Human Remains? The finest thing that Rob Brydon ever did and a great bit of Julia Davis quasi horror. I’ve never gone back to Nighty Night. It annoyed me so much and, as you say, series 2 wasn’t great.
I would say I agree with everyone you’ve said except there is one part that has aged so poorly that I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending this show. It’s Mark Gatiss’ character. It’s a really jarringly broad performance compared to everyone else in the show for one thing. Secondly it’s a really uncomfortable depiction of a disabled/neurodivergent character where target of the comedy seems to be “aren’t disabled people freaks?”. Yes there’s normal Nighty Night style comedy about Jill using him. But I think it would have been bolder to actually have a disabled person play the role and have a more realistic portrayal, so that we are more disturbed and laughing in shock at Jill’s manipulation of him, rather than watching lingering shots of this character’s tics which are supposed to induce laughter at his difference, very much punching down. Side note: was Gatiss the go-to for playing disabled/neurodiverse characters? (see PROBE and the Crimson Horror for Gatiss using disability as part of his unquestioning nostalgia for horror aesthetic)
Honestly this might be the main reason I don't like much of the Gatiss/League of Gentlemen crowd lol. Maybe Cath was an accident of its time in how much she struck a chord with me as representation, but lord the competition sucked
Jill may be a diagnosable sociopath, but she throws a good coffee morning. I remember having to speed run the five stages of grief for the first two episodes when you realise her character isn't blindly self-absorbed, and she knows full well what she's doing.
I remember watching this after a recommendation from a friend. Jesus Christ it is incredibly disturbing and it is the most uncomfortable watch I've had from media, on a similar level to films like requiem for a dream. It's compelling and well made but I'll never watch it again
Greta review of an underrated classic. I'm completely missed it the first time around but found out about it from Wee Lin I think and watched it within the last few years. Jill following project was very disappointing in my opinion Sally4ever. That was a real gross out "comedy" but not particularly funny despite having a promising premise and some really inspired moments occassionally.
What are your thoughts on the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? I've been binging it recently and I have a feeling you'd like it It's a dark comedy about a group of five alcoholics who own a bar together and are effectively the biggest assholes on the planet. Season one, more than the other seasons, feels like it's deliberately trying to be offensive by touching on hot button issues (episode one is titled "the gang gets racist"), however after the first season it seems to not care as much about being edgy and instead focuses on seeing just how low it can get it's main characters to go. I like it because it fleshes out each character to be a horrible human being in their own unique way, then as a group they all bring out the worst in each other but since nobody in the outside world really likes them, they only ever have each other to hang out with. For the first four seasons they go to lower lows each season, the degree of how despicable they starts to plateau around season four and they change the dynamic in other ways, but they kinda have to given that season four has them get so horrible (kidnapping a journalist, burning a family's home down, almost eating someone alive) that there wasn't much lower they could go while still feeling like real people. The core of the characters doesn't actually change that much throughout the show's run, but that's deliberate, and it finds other ways of staying fresh. They will throw each other under the bus without hesitation and they've all accepted that their friends are horrible, but they have nowhere else to go. It's effectively about five people who are trapped in the hell they've collectively built for themselves and absolutely deserve With all that said, it is laugh out loud funny with some of the best absurdist humour and comedic acting I've ever seen. I think part of what makes it work is that it's grounded with an air of realism, a lot of the stunts are done by the actors themselves, most of the dialogue is improvised so their arguments always feel like a warped version real argument you've have with your friends before.
I really enjoyed this series. The only issue I have is these 'life invasion' plots always seem to need the other characters to act unrealistically trusting and/or stupid and exist in a world where door/window locks and the police don't really exist in any major sense. I guess then there wouldn't be a story, though...
Now, I really hate being a negative nancy so I don’t really like to be critical of a show on a video where someone is complimenting it but I REALLY couldn’t get into Nighty Night personally. I usually like dark humour but this one crossed the line too far for me and just became too unpleasant for me to find funny. I rarely laughed and was more so squirming and begging for the episode to be over (I don’t know how I finished the whole show TBH). I think it’s clear that I’m just too sensitive and sentimental for this kind of show, haha 😅
I'm the same, it was just too unpleasant, dark and morbid to watch for me. And I'm usually into edgier, darker humour but this really was just too awkward uncomfortable for me to watch or laugh at/with. Different strokes I guess?
