After his sad and untimely passing, the BBC decided to return Sean Lock's cult sitcom to the iPlayer, to allow it to find a new audience. I watched "15 Storeys High" at the time, and my recollection was that I liked it, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to watch it again. After a couple of shaky episodes, the show really finds its feet and has some great comedic ideas.
Two men, the brusque Vince (Sean Lock) and naïve Errol (Benedict Wong) share a flat in a South London complex. Their interactions, with each other and their neighbours, form the basis of the sitcom, but each episode shows us the lives of other people living around the complex and the increasing idiosyncratic way that these people live their lives.
The first couple are, admittedly, a bit shaky. The first episode has a scene recreating "Jim'll Fix It" which has unintentionally become a lot more shocking since the revelations about Saville came out and I'm perhaps a bit surprised that the BBC didn't decide to edit this out of the re-release. Once you reach the third episode though, it settles down into the right rhythm and tone and the last four episode of this run are really good.
There's a lot of actors across this season who would go on to become regular faces in comedy across the next twenty years, Cavan Clerkin, Michael Smiley, Martin Trenaman, Toby Jones, Peter Serafinowicz, and Paul Putner are just some of the names who would appear.
It's a very funny show and makes it even sadder than during Sean's time he didn't write more narrative based comedy.
Two men, the brusque Vince (Sean Lock) and naïve Errol (Benedict Wong) share a flat in a South London complex. Their interactions, with each other and their neighbours, form the basis of the sitcom, but each episode shows us the lives of other people living around the complex and the increasing idiosyncratic way that these people live their lives.
The first couple are, admittedly, a bit shaky. The first episode has a scene recreating "Jim'll Fix It" which has unintentionally become a lot more shocking since the revelations about Saville came out and I'm perhaps a bit surprised that the BBC didn't decide to edit this out of the re-release. Once you reach the third episode though, it settles down into the right rhythm and tone and the last four episode of this run are really good.
There's a lot of actors across this season who would go on to become regular faces in comedy across the next twenty years, Cavan Clerkin, Michael Smiley, Martin Trenaman, Toby Jones, Peter Serafinowicz, and Paul Putner are just some of the names who would appear.
It's a very funny show and makes it even sadder than during Sean's time he didn't write more narrative based comedy.