Today we have something very exciting to share – Turtle Canyon Comedy have released a brand new online gameshow called Is It A Bone? The gameshow launched last Wednesday and is created by Stuart Laws, Chloe Radcliffe and Alastair Clayton and each episode is twelve minutes long. I caught up with Stuart to find out all about it and delve into the new hilarious online show.
Hello! Tell us about Turtle Canyon Comedy ?
Turtle Canyon Comedy is an indie production company that makes comedy with your favourite live comedians. Started in 2012 and has made web series with James Acaster, Harriet Kemsley, Ed Gamble, Ian Smith and loads more, leading to working with Netflix, Prime, HBO, BBC, Channel 4 and Sky on stand up and scripted comedy. Our YouTube channel is where we get to make exactly what we want – sketches, series, stand up – all completely independent.
Tell us a bit about the show Give Us A Bone?
Is It A Bone? is a game show in the same tradition as all classic game shows – there is a puzzle to be solved and the game is to solve it better than your rival. The only puzzle in our show is: is an object a bone or not. The twist is that each of the contestant’s senses will be tested and there’s a terrifying assistant called The BoneDropper helping out.
Where did the name of the show come from?
The name came from having bone marrow at a restaurant, knocking the bone and the noise it made was very funny. From that point it was a very simple jump to: that should be a whole game show with brilliant comedians in it.
Tell us a little bit the cast
The cast is anchored by Sam Lake, our incredible host – he is such a funny stand up and has a great podcast so we knew he’d be a perfect host keeping everything on track and making the whole thing funnier. Then the comedian guests are some of our favourite comics from the British scene – our first episode is Alison Spittle and Jordan Brookes and then we have Daman Bamrah, Marjolein Robertson, Huge Davies and Sikisa in further episodes. That’s a superb line up and they each bring new energy and funny to their episodes. The BoneDropper assistant? He’s a mystery.
Turtle Canyon has created some great online content over the years – how difficult is it to make social media content now stand out in a world that is saturated with everyone trying to make it online?
It’s tough to stand out, it’s tough to constantly make the sort of material that goes viral, that hits a huge audience so we don’t try. We make exactly what we want to make, with the comedians we love – if that finds an audience we feel excited, if that doesn’t we at least got to make something we love and with talent we believe in. Also, we’ve made stuff that never hit a big audience but led to us working on other projects or with comedians we admire and that is far better than making a “middle class people at dinner parties” sketch to get a million views.
What are some of your favourite projects you have worked on previously?
Ian Smith is such a funny comedian and is off on tour soon, we’ve made a few projects with Ian over the years and the one that got the least attention was The Reaction Crew. Don’t know why it didn’t get more views because it’s a very funny parody of a crew of reaction vloggers over the course of 7 videos and all the interpersonal interactions and relationships underlying the top line joke of: watch these people react to videos that no one does reaction videos to (furniture adverts, oddly satisfying videos etc). Also, in 2019 we made a sitcom called Content about a media agency called Content Content and it has a great cast, high gag rate and is a great watch. All of this is on our YouTube channel.
What is the most challenging thing about doing the show?
Is It A Bone? was a challenging production because of our own ideas. We filmed six episodes in a day. SIX. Each episode is 12-13 minutes long so we essentially made 3 full TV episodes in a day, from scratch. The first record took 90 minutes because we were discovering flaws in the script and the game show elements and were fixing them as we went, on a skeleton crew, in a studio we built in our office. One of the records took 35 minutes so that shows the difference in time that first one took. Luckily Sam and the guests all committed to the idea 100% and made it so easy to find funny moments and let the scripted set pieces play out.
What have been some of the best highlights of creating this show?
Highlight of creating the show was having us actually achieve the record of all six episodes, there was a point where we thought it might be curtailed. Aside from that the editing process has been a joy, with Alastair Clayton taking each record and finding the rhythm and the jokes of each episode, adding new jokes through the edit and getting the whole thing to such a tight, sketch-like edit that each episode flies by and has so many laugh out loud moments.
If people want to follow you on social media, where can they find you?
Follow us on Instagram, TikTok and twitter where reels and social posts go but we have to say that our YouTube is the place to be: longer form content, compilations of some of our favourite comedians, big interviews with comedians about their specials, stand up comedy and all our web series are there.
Finally in three words why should check out Is it a Bone?
Stupid big laughs
Welcome to The Phoenix Remix 