New Hero of Comedy, also known as New Heroes of Comedy when covering more than one person, is a three-part documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 series on Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

, featuring the rise of famous comedians of recent times. The series started on 22 February 2008. The first episode covers the career of Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais

Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, director, radio presenter, producer, musician, and writer.Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator...

, the second Matt Lucas

Matt Lucas

Matthew Richard "Matt" Lucas is an English comedian, screenwriter and actor best known for his acclaimed work with David Walliams in the television show Little Britain; as well as for his portrayals of the scorekeeping baby George Dawes in the comedy panel game Shooting Stars, Tweedledee and...

 and David Walliams

David Walliams

David Edward Walliams is an English comedian, writer and actor, known for his partnership with Matt Lucas on the TV sketch show Little Britain and its predecessor Rock Profile...

, and the last Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Noam Baron Cohen is an English stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and voice artist. He is most widely known for his portrayal of three unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, and Brüno...

. The series received complaints before it was broadcast, with some people complaining that the people featured in the episodes are not "Heroes".

Production

The first two episodes were commissioned by Darren Smith, the comedy editor for Channel 4. The third was commissioned by Shane Allen, the Channel 4 comedy commissioning editor. Each episode was made by a different production company

Production company

A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...

. The Gervais episode was made by Tiger Aspect, the Lucas and Walliams episode by Shine Limited

Shine Limited

Shine Limited is a British media production company with offices in London and Manchester....

 and the Baron Cohen episode by North One Television

North One Television

North One Television is a television production company based in London and Birmingham, England, and Sydney, Australia. It was originally known as Chrysalis Television and is now part of All3Media....

.

Reception

Complaints rose before the series had begun. Gareth McLean

Gareth McLean

Gareth McLean is a Scottish journalist who writes for The Guardian newspaper and on Soap operas for the Radio Times magazine.McLean graduated with an MA in English from the University of Aberdeen, working at The Scotsman newspaper as a Feature Writer from 1997 until he began writing as a TV Critic...

 said, "I'm not sure if it speaks more of the desperate barrel-scraping at the idea-free zone that is Channel 4 or the blunting of our critical faculties and the ease with which we're impressed nowadays concomitant with the devaluing of the terms "genius" and "hero", but this is some sort of joke, right? Are we seriously meant to believe that Gervais et al. are heroes? Unless, of course, the measure of comedy heroism is the amount of merchandise you can shift."

One review in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

compared the series unfavourably to Heroes of Comedy, a previous Channel 4 programme saying, "The old Heroes of Comedy strand on Channel 4 wasn't simply an entertaining combination of clips and talking heads. Because it had the benefit of hindsight, it was able to place comedians in a broader historical context, so laughter was combined with painless social and cultural history. New Hero of Comedy, starting tonight with a profile of Ricky Gervais, will lack that crucial ingredient."

Sam Wollaston in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

said that the Gervais episode, "is just a Ricky love-in, a mass worship at the feet of Gervais." However, he did comment positively on the quality of guests appearing in the episode, such as Michael Palin

Michael Palin

Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....

 and Chris Rock

Chris Rock

Christopher Julius "Chris" Rock III is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer and director. He was voted in the US as the 5th greatest stand-up comedian of all time by Comedy Central...

.

The first episode received poor ratings, despite large amounts of advance publicity, including appearing a cover feature for the Radio Times

Radio Times

Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...

. It attracted 1.6 million viewers (7% of the total audience), the lowest of the five terrestrial channels.

External links

• Satirical article about New Heroes of Comedy in The Guardian.