RaspberryLucozade Like 'Little Britain', 'The Catherine Tate Show' was a favourite of mine when I was a teenager. Yet watching it again now, I struggled to raise even so much as a titter. Truth to tell, nowadays I actually find it more annoying than anything else.The gorgeous Catherine first started in comedy with appearances on shows such as 'The Harry Hill Show' and 'Big Train'. In 2004, she was awarded her own weekly comedy series which saw the birth of some of her most famous creations such as ill-mannered schoolgirl Lauren who whenever being put in her place by someone bellows at them ''Am I bovvered?'', foul mouthed pensioner Nan Taylor, uncouth Irish nurse Bernadette and Homosexual in denial Derek ( which was Tate in drag ).Tate's regular supporting cast were Niky Wardley, Ella Kenion, Angela McHale, Bruce MacKinnon and Matthew Horne. Paul Whitehouse, Peter Kay, Geraldine McNulty, Paul O'Grady, Bonnie Langford and Siobhan Redmond all appeared as guests.'The Catherine Tate Show' ended in 2007 after three series plus a couple of specials. There has been no attempt to make any further series, though Tate sometimes utilises her characters for 'Comic Relief'. I don't hate 'The Catherine Tate Show' but I just cant really be bovvered with it anymore.

galensaysyes Catherine Tate's comedy ranges from amusing to hilarious. She can be brilliantly inventive, and is almost always highly likable. I regard her less as a comedian than as a comic actress, as indicated by her parody soap-opera characters on this show and her serious performances in other shows. For someone with such a wide range of characterizations, worked in such a broadly satirical vein, she isn't as physical as I would have expected. She seldom goes in for slapstick or pantomime, and evidences little interest in working out the details of her characters' movements. Indeed, she seems to look for occasions _not_ to use her body, so that most of her characters tend to lounge or slump. Her expressiveness lies almost wholly in her face and voice. But her versatility in using these is prodigious.Her show is less enjoyable to me than she is. I first ran across segments of it as clips on YouTube, and I think that kind of venue offers the best way to see them--one at a time, or at least with a brief pause between each routine and the next. In parade one after another, as they are on the show, they don't seem nearly as funny. The likeliest reason is that they're all much of a muchness, all pitched to the same key and played, as it were, on the same instrument; like the same sketch replayed over and over. (Some of the recurring routines aren't far from being that.) And most of Tate's characters, despite the diversity of faces and accents, are alike in haranguing people to the point of distraction. A show full of such characters, I find wearing.This is the more true that few of the sketches on the show can properly be called sketches. Almost all of them are extended bits by Tate, with little dramatic structure to support them. They also have little humorous dialogue. The best of it comes with Tate's awful schoolgirl in her arguments with various adversaries. It's funny in part because in regional teen speech it finds a rhythm and a patois that are either inherently funny or lend themselves to being made funny by exaggeration. Regional speech gives the character a vehicle for progressing from tireless repetitions of her point ("But am oi bovvered, dough?") to ever more aggravated exchanges which she manages to blow to bits and, by continual interruption, to reduce to mere fragments of sentences, sometimes to one word ("Face! Bovvered!"). It's verbal terrorism (she might almost be Groucho Marx reincarnated as a puddingheaded teen). But in the end, it, too, is just a very long bit.Comparing this show with the old Carol Burnett Show, I recognized for the first time the value of the interludes between sketches on that show, and others in the traditional variety format. I was always impatient of the monologues, musical numbers, and so forth: I always wanted to be getting back to the sketches. I see now that the interludes set those off to best advantage. And anyhow they were more varied in tone than those on Tate's show, and the best of them were better developed. Burnett was a great clown; Tate, as a real actress, would have benefited all the more from greater attention to workmanship in her scripts. Her talent is a live wire that needs grounding.

bazzatuk Only online do I find anyone who will comment that they enjoy this show! I ask around with friends, at work or customers that I speak to daily - I have yet to find anyone who thinks Catherine Tate is anything special.I found myself watching several times in an attempt to determine the reason the BBC directs so much focus and promotion of this show. For a long time she has been a favourite of the BBC, evening appearing in an episode of Doctor Who to destroy that as well.I can sit and watch an entire episode without finding anything remotely interesting or funny. It'll take a lot for me not to laugh, I love comedies and this isn't comedy.Coining instantly recognisable phrases is about all this show is good for. "Am I bothered" or "How very dare you" repeated episode after episode is not funny. Little Britain started off well but eventually fell into the same trap and repeated material over and over.In recent years I can't think of any TV programme that has had me reaching for the remote as fast, as when this comes on. Maybe Big Brother comes a close second, more Junk Food TV for the generation that wouldn't understand talented television if it hit them twelve times in the face with a large cod or halibut.You needn't ask if I would recommend this to anyone.

Sian Gregory I think the Catherine Tate show is one of the modern comedies and comfortably fits with little Britain and the Office. She is truly one of the funniest women in Britian along with French and Saunders. And applies to all audiences.With the character Lauren, she cracks me up so much, as you could say it is realistic but its a bit over-done, yet still hilarious, I'm 15 and at school we find ourselves doing impressions of her to our teachers...so it beginning to come true in some ways and a common attitude in todays "teenage society"She can realistically take the micky out of ordinary people without being too over the top and too affensive, also looking genuine for example with the old grandma, she actually looks and sounds like one of those hags in England today who moan about everything (not saying all O.A.P's are like that!) In her early series she even mocked the ginger population and as she is ginger it was hilarious to watch her mock herself and me as i am "ginger", i couldn't stop laughing as it seemed so serious(but i say more auborn!) She comes across as taking her roles very seriously and it comes out as a masterpiece of comedy and i hate the fact that its only on for half an hour. If its ever on where ever you are WATCH IT...it's hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!BRING OUT THE 3RD SERIES PLEASE!