Some great one-liners drowned by a shower of mundanities, writes Peter Edwards
His hangdog expression and sour smile have become a mainstay of the TV panel shows but, six years after he last performed stand-up, Jack Dee is treading the boards once again.
His downbeat sitcom Lead Balloon and appearances on shows like QI and Have I Got News For You mean he has become even more widely known – and surely better paid – and so it is to the apparent comforts of middle-class home and family life that Dee turns to for inspiration.
From dealing with temperamental teenage children to an obtuse handyman, the 51-year-old treats the challenges of middle-aged life with his trademark scorn.
Worried about the amount of time his son spends sitting alone playing games with friends online, Dee wakes up to the fact that his house has not been invaded by teenage boys and that, thanks to technology, “none of the bastards are actually here”.
Dee’s gloomy anecdotes resonate, at least most of the time, but as the father-of-four leads us through the pleasures and perils of family life, the feeling grows that we are being showered with mundanities. The stories drag on, and slip into one another, with too little in the way of punchlines or pay-offs.
Fortunately he has a stock of polished one-liners, which he delivers typically deadpan: “I don’t have car insurance because I’m a careful driver.” It is these that save Dee’s set from its sometimes plodding subject matter. A few of his wisecracks can be spotted a mile off – being on tour, not seeing the children, only briefly speaking to his wife and surviving on hotel room services is … “ideal really” – but plenty of others stand-out.
The Hammersmith Apollo, nearly full, roared, a lot, and enjoyed Dee’s world-weary wonderings, like why on the night of his show in London there is a huge poster of rival Jimmy Carr pinned up outside the venue. Too much of Dee’s material was bland, observational stuff, however, of the style which so enrages stand-up rebels like Stewart Lee.
Dee was often funny, but he was just as frequently forgettable. There was too much that sounded like old-fashioned Saturday night BBC light entertainment, for his example his riff about the irritating speaking labels on supermarket foods which say “keep me in the fridge”, while some of it veered on the crass, such as comparing adolescence to a mental illness and re-imagining Jesus as a teenager.
At the end Dee surprised most of us by grabbing a guitar and bitterly strumming his way through a song. It was good, and finally felt like something fresh, but couldn’t quite dispel the fear that, sated by the easy laughs of the panel show circuit, Dee risks fading into the middle-aged lifestyle he once scorned.
2.5 stars
Review written by Peter Edwards
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