The Podge and Rodge Show: Poxy Box (2006 - 2010)

After A Scare at Bedtime ended, the twins from Ballydung (County Ring) weren't ready to lie down and call it a day. Luckily for us and them they didn't have to because some clever fool at RTÉ gave them their own chat show! Guests would join the brothers in their Manor kitchen for a candid chat that was guaranteed to include their public shames. They'd occasionally get lucky and have people with some actual talent (Sinéad O'Connor and… er… Dirk Benedict) but mostly it was a who's who of who the hell is that?

The original incarnation of the show ran for 4 glorious seasons, and each one got its own 'Best Of…' DVD collection that separated the wheat from the chaff. The Poxy Box collects together all the sexy wheat, delivering the cream of the crap pulled direct from the arse-end of good taste.

Podge and Rodge weren't shy about their feelings; if they didn't like someone they told them, leaving no room for doubt. Some guests clearly had no idea what they were getting into. The ones that had watched the show in advance knew the ass-ripping they'd get, and still they came. They earned some respect.
When Foster and Allen guested I almost lost my shit; there was no indication they knew about Fester and Ailin.
Women also got it pretty rough, being subjected to Rodge’s perversions.

The show was a well-deserved huge success. According to Wiki it was so popular that it even beat Lost and Desperate Housewives in the Irish ratings game.

There's a heap of extras on each disc, including a previously unseen pilot, the Ballydung weather report, the Miss Ballydung Pageant, Ballydung Idol, a sex toy show, and obligatory bloopers.

4 discs, approx 145 minutes each (581 minutes total).

4 scuttering gobsheens out of 5

Podge and Rodge: A Scare at Bedtime (1997–2006)

America has ABC. Britain has BBC. Part of Ireland has RTÉ. It's widely available now on satellite, but back in the 90s the channel broadcast to only a small part of the country. To receive it outside of the Southern region you needed an addition to your regular aerial. If you had that little red box then you had old geezers Podge Judas O'Leprosy and Rodge Spartacus O'Leprosy on your TV screen!

Each evening the channel had something called 'A Prayer at Bedtime' to remind viewers that dirty dreams about naked ladies was frowned upon by JC and his lily-white virgin momma. Podge & Rodge’s A Scare at Bedtime was a parody of that. It's also an iniquitous parody of the typical Irish stereotype. It's fun to laugh at the Irish, but no one laughs harder than the Irish themselves. Their greatest attribute is their wickedly self-deprecating sense of humour.

The format had the twins of Ballydung Manor either in bed together or chilling in their kitchen. Podge would tell Rodge a tall tale/horror story with a Poe-esque twist. Rodge would get scared or bored. He'd blaspheme, and then rub his "mickey" at what he considered a particularly sexy bit. If there were no sexy bits, he'd invent his own.

The two perverts and their scabby cat Pox are some of the shittiest constructed puppets you'll ever see, but it really didn't matter. It was all just an excuse to drop lewd jokes and say "Feck" a lot, but quite often the creativity of the two writers/puppeteers, Mick O'Hara and Ciaran Morrison, was comedy gold; it was those two guys that raised it above its limitations and made it so outrageous.

If you want to skip to the best parts go direct to series 7. By that stage they were far out of control by RTE standards. If you want to learn the seedy side of Irish colloquialism, then there's no better place to start.

150 episodes, approx 5–10 minutes each.

3½ feckless eejits out of 5