Arthur Smith's Pissed-Up Chat Show

It's fortunate for the star that this show is predicated on the assumption that his audience is pissed, because they'd have to be so blathered as to be near comatose to enjoy it.

Smith sets the tone right from the off, bounding onto the stage in a bright green suit, waving his hands and arms manically in the air in an obnoxious and completely unfunny way. 

Actor Clive Mantel, promoting his Tommy Cooper impression show Jus' Like That, is given barely a minute for his routine, and the rest of his segment is taken up with a long, meandering and—given the supposedly light-hearted nature of the show—incongruent discussion about how nasty the legendary comedian was. 

Smith's next guest is the enormously talented performance poet Luke Wright, but after he has delivered his brilliantly acerbic ballad about a pair of crass Tory boys, he ushers him into a chair and ignores the most entertaining person on the stage for the rest of the show, forcing him to sit silently through a rambling and barely audible set from Hardeep Singh Kohli, who seems to think eating a pickled egg whole is the height of comedy .

The show closes with a rendition of No Nay Never, the lyrics to which are—for reasons entirely beyond anyone—printed on cards held by two unfortunate and completely naked stage hands, the young man clearly trying his best not to look mortified, desperately attempting to sing and hide his modesty at the same time.

Perhaps predictably, given the subject matter, the shows ends up like most drunks: stumbling, incoherent, boring, and never knowing when to stop.