If there is one thing that fascinates me about improv and that is how it is portrayed in Television, books and Film. This is becoming more and more apparent in recent years because the comedy art form is sort of in fashion. There are some interesting topics that we can gain from these ways they are displayed so every so often we are going to look at different scenes from different shows and films.

A few months ago, I mentioned that for the first time ever, I had started to watch Victoria Wood’s sketch show and really enjoyed the creativity and smart humour that was created. One of the most popular sections of the show is a mini programme called Acorn Antiques and today we are going to discuss it.

Acorn Antiques is such a clear concept – it is a soap / drama based around an antiques shop which always ends on a cliffhanger. The great thing about this show is that the comedy is created by everything going wrong around the filming and acting of it and that is where the comedy lies. The thing that makes it so great is that it is very subtle that you may not even realise it at first.

You only need to look at acts like The Show That Goes Wrong to see how popular this type of show is and it is clear that inspiration was from older comedies such as this. The great thing about shows like Acorn Antiques is that you can gain so much inspiration for improv.

There is so much panic all the time in improv that a scene has to be perfect to make an audience laugh but there is so much comedy in failure and embracing it can be a powerful thing.

I really recommend watching clips of Acorn Antiques and watch the ‘fails’. Some of them are really obvious and some of them are so subtle that you only realise afterwards. This sort of actions are amazing and you can really take a lot of inspiration for the actions you can take in improv.