Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnScripts:The 'Are You Being Served?' election special
UnScripts:The 'Are You Being Served?' election special[edit source]
89.241.112.49 12:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
- Don't come in. I'm already in here! --Pup 03:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
| Prose and Formatting: The writing style, spelling, grammar, layout and overall appearance. |
6 | There's not much I can say. It's a script of are you being served. There's no spelling mistakes. The layout that it shows in is not the layout of a script, (see [www.imsdb.com Internet Movie Script Database] for an example of what they should look like) but that's the only objection that I could have to it .
Minor issues with the formatting, a few places where there should have been Characters names in bold or potentially proper nouns in italics. Seriously nothing major. I like the use of the {{cquote|song lyrics}} but on a very technical level, leave the quotes open for the entire song. {{cquote}} does allow you to have line breaks to break it into stanzas as well. One other thing that really irked me, which I didn't take points away for but I want to mention it anyway is the fifth wall. Either you set it up to be a "making of" script as well and have more of the "back stage" stuff going on, or you keep it confined purely to the "reality" of the show. It doesn't really fit in anywhere and given that this is never going to be filmed and breaking the fifth wall is a very Unicycle-pedestrian thing to do, you get waya with it. But only just. Hey, the person who is reading this review who is neither the reviewer or the reviewee. Yes you. I'm talking to you. This is an example of breaking a wall, as a review is normally a fourth or fifth wall thing, but due to the nature of what I'm reviewing already having five walls, and being a work of fiction gave it a sixth wall already, this review is the seventh wall, so I guess me talking to you as you watch me "talk" to the author is the eight wall. Maybe. Hey, excuse me person from the American intelligence organisation that is watching me talk to the person beyond the eight wall. I just wanted to say hello, because I'm polite that way. Oh, and to the alien overlords who watch all that our governments do, you might be able to work it out, is this the 10th wall now? |
| Concept: How good an idea is behind the article? |
3.5 | I'm not British, but I was raised on BBC comedies. I know "Are you being served?" pretty well. It filled a small niche for a small length of time by extremely low-brow humour. It was dull, repetitive character driven humour, and it also makes this extremely provincial. (And I'm using the term to describe being limited in vision. Britain can't quite be referred to as a province.)
Imagine an unscript written by another writer here on "Married with Children" script on the Iran election. Or "Carry On Ghandi." Limited in scope, and limited in audience appeal. Also the inclusion of Tony Blair as a major player. Okay, I know the name and again I've seen enough British based TV that I know a bit about his personality and his politics. But I'm also not American, so I know that there is a world outside my front door. So from the perspective of In-jokes, I can only go 3.5 If I was looking from a purely British perspective - not something I can really do, but just pretending - it would still only look at scoring 4.5. You've limited yourself amazingly as you have put yourself into this pigeon hole of "in the style of" a TV show that's pretty dated. I watched an episode of this recently and got no laughs, and decided never to watch it again. And now I'm reading one of their scripts. Oh, what fun! |
| Humour: How funny is it? Why is it funny? How can it be funnier? |
4 | You got one slightly lame joke that kept this from dropping down, and that was the very last line. But unfortunately every other joke missed out on one important factor.
I'm not going to rehash the entire section from HTBFANJS here, but this is why the concept draws you down. As you've locked yourself into this box that doesn't really allow you to do anything beyond low-brow and crass, it has made it difficult to get beyond it. |
| Images: How are the images? Are they relevant, with good quality and formatting? |
7.5 | Was going to be a 6.5, but you had a nurse. Yes, my respect for educated women in a position that demonstrates care and concern is my weakness.
I liked the images. I've seen most of them before on this site, but you put them together well. The sad thing is that the captions for the images are actually some of the best text for this page. And there was something very British about all of them. Except the nurse. Have you got her phone number? |
| Miscellaneous: The article's overall quality - that indefinable something. |
8 | High score here because there is something that is really good about the attention to detail and the writing style, if not the concept or the humour. You have stuck yourself into a horrible box, but you've worked as well as you can within those constraints.
Now I'm also having a mild issue here as I don't know if it is the original author of the piece who has put this up for a PEEReview but not logged in when they've done so, or an IP address that has done a few minor edits and expecting to get the credit for someone else's work. If it's the former, I know you can do some fantastic stuff having a look at a couple of other things that you have done. (One of which I'm happy to nominate for VFH once it's complete if it lives up to its promise.) But the only way I can see this being improved is to have every second joke be an insightful commentary on local and international politics. But I NEVER want to hear another word about Mrs Slocombe's pussy. Oh, and if it's the latter, bugger off. |
| Final Score: How much can it be improved and what are the most important areas to work on. |
29 | Okay. Good writing style, well presented, but poor concept choice led to the humour being extremely restricted. You might be able to salvage this to the point of being good if you think more along the lines of what "Dead ringers" or "Little Britain" do with their takes on known British icons, but that's about the limit. |
| Reviewer: | --Pup 04:30, 12 July 2009 (UTC) | |