Lee Nelson's Well Good Show is a British comedy sketch show, written and presented by Simon Brodkin and produced by Avalon Television for BBC Three. It featured Brodkin hosting a studio based show as his comedy character Lee Nelson, a happy-go-lucky chav, and also featured television sketches of Brodkin's other comedy characters.
Production
The BBC commissioned the show in 2009. Written by Brodkin, it was produced by Avalon Television.
The programme consists of Brodkin hosting a studio show before an audience, which includes audience interaction, games, and features involving the characters Omelette, and Nelson's nan. The programme also includes inserted recorded sketches featuring three other characters also portrayed by Brodkin: due to time limitations, in some episodes only two insert sketches would feature, though in others all three would appear. The insert sketches are:
110% Bent, a spoof of fly-on-the-wall celebrity documentaries featuring Brodkin as the bland and unintelligent Premiership footballer Jason Bent, who was briefly a Manchester City player;
Hospital Life, a parody of daytime medical documentaries, featuring Brodkin as the insensitive 'Dr. Bob';
Faliraki Nights, a spoof of late-evening 'nightlife' documentaries. This features Brodkin as holiday rep Chris Young, and includes narration by former BBC Three continuity announcer Lola Buckley
Some of the characters have appeared previously in Brodkin's earlier TV work: sketches featuring the Jason Bent character appeared in Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder, an Avalon production first broadcast on ITV1 in 2009; these featured Murray as a sports reporter conducting post-match interviews with Bent. The same Al Murray series also featured the Lee Nelson character in a run of comic monologues. In 2008, the Dr. Bob character had appeared in BBC Three comedy showcase series The Wall.
Reception
Despite popular appeal, the show has received mainly negative reviews from critics. Liam Tucker of TV Pixie writes, 'Lee Nelson's Well Good Show is less ‘well good’ and more a pile of irredeemable crap littered with witless demi-jokes, all limping along on the questionable talent of Simon Brodkin. Presumably someone at BBC Three saw that he looks a little like Kevin Bishop, noticed that Ali G hasn’t been around for the best part of a decade and calculated success on that shaky basis.' Stuart Heritage of The Guardian remarks in an article concerning the justification behind Television Show names that 'BBC3's Lee Nelson's Well Good Show suffers from the fact that it's almost the exact scientific opposite of well good.' Despite the negative reviews, ratings were such that the BBC commissioned a second show, Lee Nelson's Well Funny People.
DVD release
A DVD was released on 22 August 2011 entitled The Complete Series 1. "Lee Nelson Live" was also released on 19 November 2012 featuring a live stand-up routine from Lee Nelson's live 2012 stand-up tour.
