Jam 1: chemotherapy wig

Season 1

Specials

Jam 6: born dead through your own arse

A solid and subversive sketch comedy TV series. It’s as if someone recruited David Lynch to direct a season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The results are as horrifying as they are hilarious. 

Christopher Morris has a knack for comedic writing that is distinct from many of his peers. Not always won over by his sense of humor, but a great number of sketches are successful.

Favorite Sketch: The sketch that closes episode 4 in which a woman, desperate for attention, does harmful things to people in order to feel needed.

The show feels like the most accurate depiction of dreaming.

The entire show feels like being trapped in a fever dream, you're constantly disoriented and perplexed. Some of the sketches almost made me feel physically sick! The eerie soundtrack complements this unsettling atmosphere perfectly.

It's definitely the weirdest and most disturbing thing I've ever watched.

"Jam" originally began as a radio series called "Blue Jam," and some of the TV episodes are actually lip-synced to the original radio audio, which I find fascinating.

The cast is stacked too! Kevin Eldon (Hot Fuzz, Nighty Night), Mark Heap (Friday Night Dinner, Green Wing), Julia Davis (Nighty Night, Gavin & Stacy), Amelia Bulmore (Ashes to Ashes, Big Train), David Cann (Black Books) and the Writer and Creator of the show too Chris Morris (Brass Eye, The Day Today, The IT Crowd).

Chris Morris, the creator of "Jam," is probably best known for "Brass Eye," particularly its 2001 special, which is one of the most controversial episodes of TV ever, gaining 1000s of complaints from viewers. (I haven’t watched it yet). Morris's approach to writing these hallucinogenic sketches is some of the most unique I've ever seen and I love it for that. People have described parts of the show as being similar to David Lynch and also described as "David Lynch directing Monty Python" and I can definitely see that in certain scenes.

The show's varied frame rates and aspect ratios really make it stand out. One of my favorite sketches is shot at just 1 frame per second. The use of different aspect ratios (4:3, 16:9, and 16:9 stretched into 4:3) adds to the creepiness, and I absolutely love it. Another thing Jam does, is record some of the pre-recorded sketches from a TV screen, adding to it's uniqueness.

Some of the jokes are so bizarre but work incredibly well. A few of my favorites include:
- The middle-aged man who decides to be buried alive "in his prime" because he doesn’t want to die of old age.
- The man who jumps off a building from the first floor 40 times instead of once from the top, in case he changes his mind mid-fall.
- The stupidly prolonged "byeeeeeeeeeeeee."
- The lizards emerging from the TV.

I’d love to make something in a similar style to Jam. Using different aspect ratios, frame rates, audios, etc. With the rise in popularity of Analog Horror on YouTube e.g. "The Mandela Catalogue" it's something I might try and do in the future.

Warning: The series tackles extremely dark, upsetting and sensitive topics. so watch at your own risk.

Comedy

Channel 4

Adapted from Blue Jam, a late night radio show, Jam consists of six shows featuring dark humour and unsettling sketches unfolding over an ambient soundtrack. From the mind of Chris Morris.