When did Frankie Boyle become so boring?

In the never-ending debate about left-wing bias in BBC comedy, a more crucial issue tends to be overlooked. Namely, that the deeper problem with much of the material is that it is predictable, boring and geared towards applause rather than laughs. That most of it is also marinated in what passes for left-wing politics today, replete with all the usual talking points and lame anti-Toryism, is almost a second-order issue. Expressing a high-status opinion now takes precedence over actually landing a punchline. So much so that I’m not convinced your average anti-Tory genuinely finds this stuff funny either.

Frankie Boyle’s New World Order on BBC Two is an interesting case in point. Unlike, say, the insufferably politically correct Mash Report, recently departed to Dave after failing to find an audience on the BBC, it has at its helm one of the more talented mainstream comics of his generation. Boyle’s facility with words and his caustic, nihilistic view of the world has proved an irresistible combination for comedy fans and sick-joke-loving sixth formers alike since his Mock the Week days. And yet New World Order suffers from much of the same groupthink and laziness.

About ten years ago or so Boyle suddenly decided he was left-wing and started talking about Guantanamo Bay and Palestine. More recently, he has taken to chiding other comics for going too far, including Ricky Gervais for his jokes about transgenderism. Which is interesting, given Boyle built his career on jokes about Madeleine McCann, Down’s syndrome, Katie Price’s disabled son and raping Victoria Pendleton. He was also the last comic I can remember to use the n-word on national television. New World Order, a kind of political roundtable interspersed with tightly scripted monologues, feels like the culmination of Boyle’s ‘journey’.

This week’s end-of-year round-up begins with Boyle lamenting that we are ‘ruled by incompetent fascists’ who will shortly be despatching us to the death camps on a replacement bus service. This is one of the better gags in his opening monologue. What follows is 40 minutes of occasionally humorous conversation with four other comics – Sophie Duker, Jamali Maddix, Susie McCabe and Miles Jupp.

There’s some nice, blunt, a plague on both your houses stuff – including a Boyle gag about Joe Biden being an improvement only in that America’s president now appears like a ‘handsy uncle’ rather than a ‘full-on rapist’. But in the main the programme is littered with ‘how many kids does Boris have?’ level comedy, from a panel whose political bent is discernible from about 30 seconds in – perhaps with the exception of the suspiciously posh Jupp, who proffers largely apolitical musings.

In his closing monologue, Boyle briefly reminds us of what made him first worth listening to – as he goes into almost cinematic detail about how he intends to end his life and the lives of those who have wronged him over the years in one fell swoop. But then he finishes on a bum note, with some unfunny burble about capitalism, the ‘climate catastrophe’ and British imperialism. When Boyle is at his most ‘radical’, he is also at his most boring. So it is with so much BBC comedy today.