I have to admit to being slightly disappointed in this offering. I wondered at first if maybe my mood wasn’t right when I’d watched it, but have tried several times and it’s still not grabbing me, I have to say.
Don’t get me wrong, I find Sarah Millican very funny. I love that she punches the conventional image of a female comedian square in the face and pushes boundaries as she does. I find that on every panel show, every radio show and every television appearance she makes me laugh endlessly, but I honestly found my interest waning part way through this performance. The main problem for me was that there seemed little new material at all. In fact, some of the set we see on the DVD is the same material she was doing when we first saw her emerge on the circuit. And yes, ok, that stuff was funny – but we heard it already. Now it’s getting a little old, I’m afraid.
I don’t want it to seem like I didn’t laugh at all, because I did. There were chuckles, but mostly accompanied with the thought of “when’s she getting to some new stuff?” I couldn’t help but think that with the benefit of a section of completely new material the use of the old stuff would have been more bearable but that was not really forthcoming. There seemed far too much time dedicated to a section of audience participation, too. Performances almost solely dependant on the audience do not really fit well on a DVD simply because the audience at home do not have the investment in it. Maybe that is the problem, perhaps it just doesn’t translate to DVD well? Although you would think someone would have advised her thus before allowing her to put the effort into making this first offering.
Or maybe I missed something myself. It is possible that having watched it four times the whole point still eludes me.
Either way, this one disappointment will not colour my opinion of her; I do feel she has much to offer the comedy world, just maybe not on this occasion.
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