Some people on the internet. From left to right: Matt Gray, Gary Brannan, Chris Joel, and Tom Scott
The Technical Difficulties
are a comedy group that started in 2008 at the University of York, and have been producing shows for the radio, the internet, and for their own collective enjoyment. Founded by Tom Scott and Gary Brannan, with Chris Joel and Matt Gray joining later on; these fine four friends have been making content since 2008 online, and have so far created:
- The Technical Difficulties: An award-winning university radio show that featured Reverse Trivia (a game where Tom would read the answers from a 1984 copy of Trivial Pursuit and the others had to guess the question) and originally only had Tom, Gary, and a rotating cast of other people including Tim Jeffries and an individual named Graham. When Gary left the show, he "regenerated" into Chris. He later returned in a Christmas Special. Even later (whilst Chris was still on the show) Matt joined the team. They all met when Gary returned for the last episode of the show. They made several twenty-four-hour shows.
- The Technical Difficulties: A three-episode TV pilot show that marked the groups first foray into visual media.
- "The Reverse Trivia Podcast" (also The Technical Difficulties) A Podcast that acted as a continuation of the radio show, sometimes called "the audio episodes"
- Citation Needed (2014 - 2018): A web video series where Tom gives the name of a Wikipedia article and the others have to guess what the article is about.
- The Experiments: A four-episode mini-series that tested out three new formats for a recurring shownote .
- Two of These People Are Lying (2018 - 2021): Tom picks one of three topics that the others have written down and he has to guess which one is true by asking for two rounds of clues from each person, while the others are bluffing, counter-bluffing, all giving supposedly true information one by one.
- (We've been on) Adventures* (2022 - Present): Once an episode, one of the Technical Difficulties crew goes out on an adventure, and they recount their experiences to the rest of the crew around the table, while participating in banter and jokes.
The crew now have a dedicated Youtube channel here for future endeavours, starting with Adventures.
Tropes associated with The Technical Difficulties:
- Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: Gary's video in the second round of Adventures sees him travelling to Shetland to interview Brian Johnson, the lighthouse engineer who restored and operates Britain's last working foghorn. The sequence where Brian fires up the 70-year-old diesel engines that power the foghorn has open captions for everything he says, due to the background noise, but at one point he calls over something that's inaudible over the engine noise, and the subtitle just says "[inaudible over engine noise]".
- Malicious Misnaming: Matt repeatedly calls M. Night Shyamalan "M. Night Showaddywaddy" whenever talking about a potential film idea.
- Obligatory Joke: In the second round of Adventures, Tom's adventure involves a journey to Iceland. When he reveals this, Gary notes that it's now obligatory for somebody to make a joke based on thinking he went to Iceland.
- Running Gag: Several permeate throughout their projects:
- Chris not having a social media account and is often referred to as "doesn't do this social media nonsense".
- Comparing the supermarket Iceland with the Country of the same name.
- Matt almost always going for the "easy bishop joke" in that they can only move diagonally.
- Gary calling viewers and listeners "readers".
- Chris Joel the Ornithologist, which has its own call and response.
- In "The Experiments" Gary makes a running gag out of calling up Stephen Mulhern due to his tendency to appear frequently on prime-time television.
- Shout-Out:
- Gary has a noted tendency to mention Doctor Who and its surrounding creators in many of the listed projects. In all, he's worn a TARDIS hoodie in seven episodes of Citation Needed, mentioned Steven Moffat (the showrunner of the show between 2011-2017) at least twice, has called a cat with implants a "Cyberman Cat", used a Portable toilet as a TARDIS on Adventures, and his last words in Citation Needed were "I don't wanna go!" (the last words said by David Tennant when his tenure ended).
- Sequel Episode: Tom's episode in the second round of Adventures is a sequel to his earlier solo video "I tried to film a volcano and it was a complete disaster". Although he wasn't laid up with food poisoning this time around, he arrived too late to view the eruption, which had apparently stopped early the previous morning. Cue Precision F-Strike.
- Verbal Tic: Gary has a habit of calling the audience "Readers", and has been called out for doing this on several occasions.
- Wham Episode: "Chris does drag" for two reasons:
- Firstly, the title, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and it does not disappoint. Everyone around the table is not only shocked when Chris reveals all, but Gary is just in Stunned Silence for half the episode. Tom, for his part, said that he thought Chris would be the least likely of the four of them to do drag.note
- Second — Chris, the most reclusive of the quartet, started using social media (Instagram and Twitter specifically), despite being a Running Gag in all their projects that he "doesn't do this social media nonsense". Sadly, neither handle is "Toast" (it's ChrisTheWrongUn). Ironically, them joining Twitter came at a time when Twitter was making controversial changes and people were leaving for reasons best left unexplained here.
