Newman and Baddiel in Pieces TV Show

	Name: Newman and Baddiel in Pieces Type: Children/Comedy Run Time: 1993 - 1993 Seasons: 1 Episodes: 0 Viewed: 114
Summary: Whereas The Mary Whitehouse Experience had blended traditional comedy ideas with its more radical departures, in Newman And Baddiel In Pieces the double-act experimented in a refreshingly new, darker area of comedy. The pair appeared separately in two locations - Baddiel in a flat that he shared with his girlfriend; Newman in a bizarrely palatial set - and from here they delivered monologues that introduced the week's themes and linked the sketches. The solo pieces were quite moody and satirical, eschewing cheap jokes in order to establish a darker comedic framework.The main theme of each edition was complemented by recurring set pieces that featured returning characters, especially Newman and Baddiel's old favourites the two history professors - elderly academics who fronted a TV programme titled History Today and who drifted away from their subject to indulge in a puerile and infantile name-calling feud, using schoolboy taunts to ridicule one another. The characters had struck a particular chord with younger viewers, at whom the comics also addressed other material, such as a spoof of the MTV show Unplugged (wherein musicians and singers perform without electric instrumentation) in which they showed what would happen if the then trendy all-electric bands such as the Orb and Utah Saints performed on the show - an embarrassed silence.