Podcast Purview: Do The Right Thing!

Do The Right Thing (@DTRTpodcast) is a panel show podcast, featuring as it’s host the delightful Danielle Ward, of a couple of radio shows and a myriad of comedy stylings. She stars alongside team captains Michael Legge, the vegan shouting machine and veteran of the dearly departed Precious Little podcast; and Margaret Cabourn-Smith, a bewildering, bewildered and hilarious comedian herself. The show consists of the two teams facing off to give the best advice to given situations. Though they frequently avoid such advice, favouring instead less helpful solutions, such as ‘make him eat soup with a lit sparkler.’

The idea of podcasts occurring in seasons remains a point of contention for me and the podcast audience at large. In such a marginal medium, taking a leave of absence when a show begins to gain momentum can be a great hindrance to success, and is then reliant on fans being both forgiving and more than fair-weather. In spite of this, several of the more famous British podcasts take frequent gaps in recording, notably Pappy’s, Richard Herring’s various offerings and Robin Ince and Josie Long’s Utter Shambles, to name but a few, due to requiring a large amount of written material, or the performers simply have a schedule of gigs that need to get done. But much as one might whine about their favourite show disappearing for three months, when it comes back stronger than it left, resentment can only last so long, replaced by a joy that such a thing exists at all; and this is very much the case with Do The Right Thing.

With a great panel show, you’ll often find a great premise backing it up and we should take a moment to quickly discuss the brilliance of DTRTs. Since advice shows (and pretend advice shows) are an annoyingly common conceit of podcasting, it’s a great pleasure to have a show that has extracted this idea from other podcasts and subverted their subversion, by offering even more perverse and obscure advice to even more incredulous and bizarre situations. The loose concept of ‘helping people’ gives the performers great freedom to roam and uncover the most obscene or preposterous solution to problems that are various combinations of the life-threatening, heinous and innocuous. A lot of the rounds just pose a problem and ask for either the best or worst way to deal with it, the speed and endless daftness of such scenarios gives the performers even more time to, quite simply, perform. Giving the comedians space to digress is one of the key boons of DTRT, meaning that even within a tight half hour, they can create fantastic and hilarious ideas, with the help of other performers and a very comedy au fait audience. Rather than simply tying the comics to tight pre-prepared leashes or giving them the looseness of no premise at all, the chiselling of the format and idea means that the show is an explicit success. And that isnt even to mention Ward, Legge and Cabourn-Smith, all of who’s scope for comedy is tremendous and maintain a very co-conspiratorial overtone, meaning that they can quickly pile onto another’s great idea or comic possibility.

The show also has a brio and silliness that’s almost beyond compare. Thanks to the closeness of the crowd, the creative comedy of the regulars and the various guests own brands of hilarity, the whole show fizzes with both a clarity of vision and sense of fun that is frankly unmatched. Unlike many other podcasts which try and make themselves a live thing, Do The Right Thing is necessarily on-stage, and never fails to pull in a group of people who are involved and enthusiastic in their praise for the show. This live atmosphere is key to how the show runs, allowing all involved to push their humour to the limits of depravity and off the cuff brilliance. It also keeps the show immensely giddy, granting the performers license to say something which could be too disgusting or unhinged to translate well in a less forgiving audience, meaning that as a post-live listener you reap even greater rewards from the comedians ability and capability to take great comic risks. This also matches up with the shows sense for the charmingly ramshackle, making no attempt to be a show cut-and-pasted from or for television, again allowing even the questions to venture beyond belief and to be so utterly silly that, when written down, they almost read as the ramblings of a particularly odd family.

Thanks to a great sense of whimsy, silliness and obscenity, Do The Right Thing scales the podcast scene with a remarkable ease and joy. With it’s great audience, fabulous performers and crazed questions, this is a podcast that you’ll look forward to every time, no matter how long you might have to wait.

Hey you, don’t leave yet! The show’s on iTunes and via the British Comedy Guide. Danielle Ward is on a couple of other podcasts under the Absolute Radio roster and is on twitter @captainward. Michael Legge has a podcast of his assorted ramblings also on iTunes, and is on twitter @michaellegge, Whilst Margaret Cabourn-Smith hasn’t got another podcast, but has got a twitter @MCabournSmith. That is all.