COMEDY SHOW OF THE YEAR
The Inbetweeners
Somewhat surprisingly, adolescence has never been really been properly portrayed on television. Skins, while watchable, is just too hyper-cool to approximate reality, whilst at the other extreme, I could never look at Dawson’s Creek without asking, where are the Trenchcoat Mafia when you need them?
This deficit in quality shows about teenage experiences has been decisively eliminated by The Inbetweeners, Damon Beesley’s and Iain Morris’ brilliant sitcom about four blokes caught between the polarities of adolescence – they’re too nerdy to be cool, insufficiently geeky to be actual nerds. In short, it was the space most of us occupied during that tumultuous phase twixt childhood and adulthood.
Older fans of the show could scarcely watch without cringing at the awful truth. It was all here: the ecstatic feeling when you managed to get your hands on booze of any description; the routine social embarrassments; the all-consuming obsession with the opposite sex; the constant fretting about one’s social status.
But perhaps what The Inbetweeners did better than any other show was illustrate the sheer strangeness of the behaviour that arises among groups of adolescent males. This was apparent in what was possibly the highlight of the second series, when Jay leaned out the window of Simon’s car and yelled “Bus wankers!”, for no other reason than they happened to be passing some people who were, y’know, waiting for a bus.
For this and other such laugh-out-loud moment of insight into the teenage psyche, The Inbetweeners takes the 2009 Golden Giggles Comedy Show of the Year Award. We’re already looking forward to the planned feature film.

HBO PICKS OF THE YEAR
Hung and Bored to Death
In recent years, HBO has deservedly won a reputation for quality drama, having given us shows of the quality of The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood and True Blood, to name but a few. However, the network has also traditionally been a home for great comedy: The Larry Sanders Show kick-started its winning streak in the early ’90s, while latterly they have enjoyed another big hit with Curb Your Enthusiasm (which returned this year with another cracking series).
The channel produced two superb new comedy shows this year, both of which merit a mention in the roll-call of excellence that is the Golden Giggles round-up. First up was Hung, in which Thomas Jane played the part of Ray Drecker, a struggling high school basketball coach who endures the midlife crisis to end them all. After his home is destroyed in a fire, Ray takes a decidedly unconventional approach to earning some extra cash – by going into business as a male prostitute, and using his uncommonly large penis as a selling point. What the hell – there was probably more honour in it than selling subprime mortgages, right?
HBO’s next comedic offering was Bored To Death, in which Jason Schwartzman essayed the role of Jonathan Ames (also, incidentally, the name of the creator of the show), a New York writer who moonlights as a private detective. Both a satire of boho New York society and a clever take on the detective genre, Bored To Death was tagged in some quarters as “Noir-otic”. Whichever way you chose to describe it, the show’s stylistic mix of Wes Anderson and Woody Allen was inspired.

ANIMATED SHOW OF THE YEAR
Titan Maximum
Titan Maximum was created by Tom Root and Matthew Senreich, two of the minds behind the Adult Swim hit Robot Chicken, and initially there was some concern among RC aficionados as to whether the show could live up to the high standards of its illustrious predecessor. Then it was discovered that one of the characters in Titan Maximum (a parody of various Super Robot series) was called Admiral Bitchface, and that one episode had him deliver the following lines: “Disassemble the ship piece-by-piece. And then melt the pieces into a statue of my balls.” Clearly, this was a show that wasn’t going to be anything other than ace, and there were laughs aplenty to be had courtesy of the Titan Five crew, whose ranks included the narcissistic Commander Palmer, “tabloid harlot” Sasha and silent monkey janitor Leon.

COMEDY FILMS OF THE YEAR
In the Loop and The Hangover
Armando Iannucci delivered the goods with In The Loop, the big-screen spin-off of his BBC series The Thick Of It. This time around, Iannucci gave the political satire an international dimension by sending a group of UK politicos to Washington, where all manner of farcical episodes unfold as war looms in the Middle East. In The Hangover, meanwhile, four friends (including Zach Galifiankis, whose Between Two Ferns series of spoof interviews was all the rage this year on Funny Or Die), travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, only to awake the next morning not remembering a thing and missing the groom. They embark on a comic odyssey that takes in a baby, a tiger, and Mike Tyson. Watch, laugh, and pray that your stag night doesn’t turn out like this.

IRISH COMEDIAN OF THE YEAR
Dara O’Briain
How did he fit it all in? There were the usual stand-up dates, in addition to which the Bray native filmed a new series of Three Men In A Boat, penned a column for The Guardian, presided over Mock The Week and authored a book, Tickling The English. Having conquered his adopted home, O’Briain makes a welcome return to Ireland next year for a lengthy run of gigs in Vicar Street.

COMEDY BOOKS FOR XMAS
Please allow the Golden Giggles organising committee to cut through the marketing hype and select the most essential reads this yuletide. The aforementioned Armando Iannucci has had a selection of his newspaper columns collected into one handy volume (The Audacity Of Hype), as has Charlie Brooker (The Hell Of It All). Elsewhere, Peter Kay, Justin Lee-Collins and Frankie Boyle discuss the demands of the stand-up circuit and much else besides in, respectively, Saturday Night Peter, Good Times and My Shit Life So Far, while the Peep Show boys showcase their literary talents in This Mitchell and Webb Book. Happy reading.