Support NeoGAF

[Carna]

Jam (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

.
The sketches themselves would often begin with a simple premise, i.e. two parents showing indifference to the whereabouts of their young child, and then escalate it with ever-more disturbing developments (the parents being phoned to come and identify the child's corpse, but asking if it can instead be taxied to their home, as they don't want to interrupt their evening). The cast, composed of actors Morris had worked with in his early satirical shows, such as The Day Today and Brass Eye, included Amelia Bullmore, David Cann, Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon, and Mark Heap, as well as occasional appearances from Morris himself.

Morris introduced each episode in the style of a surreal compère, reading free form poetry over a nightmarish montage, often depicting someone as their life spirals out of control (for instance, one montage sees an unkempt man drinking from a bottle in a bag as he walks down the street, before being kidnapped by "dung-breathed men" and forced to wrestle pigs in the Fens).

Jam was co-written by Peter Baynham, with additional material contributed by Jane Bussmann, David Quantick, Graham Linehan, Arthur Mathews and the cast themselves. The show perplexed audiences and critics on its initial broadcast. Some hailed it as breakthrough, daringly original television,[2] while others dismissed it as merely sickening and juvenile.[3]

Plots for two episodes

.

"Jam 1: chemotherapy wig"
Robert Kilroy Silk loses his mind, a man picks up his car from the garage only to find it is only four feet long, a suicidal man jumps off a first-floor balcony forty times rather than once off the top of the building, and an agency provides thick people for jobs that thick people are particularly good at.
2	"Jam 2: astonishing sod ape"
A woman calls a plumber to fix her dead baby, porn stars are afflicted by a deadly disease called "the gush", a man is buried alive because he doesn't want to die in his old age, and Mr Ventham goes to a therapist to find out what he should do on Saturday evening.

This sounds amazingly messed up.

 

[poppabk]

Yeah I think I watched one episode but it was a little to depressing for me, I prefer Chris Morris lighter works like Brass Eye, even though they too were focused on depressing or horrific topics, they had actual funny parts.

 

[Mistershine.]

Chris Morris is a genius. The paedophile episode of Brass Eye is probably his best, although Four Lions also amazing.

 

[Mistershine.]

 

[FreedomOfSpeech]

Video unavailable
This video contains content from LDS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

 

[Dazrael]

This originally started out as Blue Jam on the wireless, on BBC Radio 1 of all channels. They just adapted the radio sketches into the TV series but it lost none of its surreality.

It's more of an experience than a comedy show what with music interspersed with the sketches. Definitely disturbing but pretty groundbreaking too.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Chris Morris is a genius. The paedophile episode of Brass Eye is probably his best, although Four Lions also amazing.

Pedoggedon and 'Cake' are amazing.

"Some pedophiles are even disguising themselves as schools"

 

[Breakage]

You'll never see stuff like that Brass Eye episode on British TV these days.

 

[Kadayi]

Yeah I remember Blue Jam and Jam. Nutty stuff tbh.

Still I think the series where Morris really excelled was Nathan Barley. I mean it's 15 years old at this point in time and he essentially captured Hipsters in all their absurdity from the off.