Bruiser was a short-lived British sketch comedy that aired for one series in 2000. While it was not successful, it's remembered for bringing together a group of young performers several of whom would go on to become stars: David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Martin Freeman, Olivia Colman, Matt Holness and Charlotte Hudson. Furthermore, Ricky Gervais and Richard Ayoade, both of whom would go on to become big stars, have writing credits.
Bruiser contains examples of the following:
- Black Comedy: From a life-weary father begging his daughter for an early death to an obvious sociopath asking for violent methods to kill his wife, the show has buckets of morbid humour.
- The Bluebeard: The bespectacled man from the "Do You Do Poison" sketches obviously has a problem with his wife. Several problems. And maybe several wives.
- British Brevity: Only six episodes aired.
- The Eeyore: David Mitchell's "Life-Weary Father", who's so fed up with life that he's already arranging his own burial and expects his long-suffering daughter to put him out of his misery.
- Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Two main examples:
- The cops portrayed by Mitchell and Webb - Webb often blanks and relies on Mitchell to finish his sentences, whether they be common sayings or descriptions of what is happening onscreen.
- The two women talking in a pub played by Colman and Hudson. Discussing their sex lives, the two frequently finish each others' sentences... until Colman inevitably goes just a bit too far.
- Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: In a series of sketches about a married couple, the husband always has a new obsession (claiming to be gay, a nudist or a Muslim) while the wife accuses him of making it all up.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Attempted by two cops played by David Mitchell (the bad cop, whose act consists mostly of randomly shouting profanities) and Robert Webb (the good cop) in interrogating a subject as part of a documentary series.
- Improbable Weapon User: The "Do You Do Poison" sketch involves an Obviously Evil uxoricidal man conspicuously asking various shop owners about the lethality of the products they sell, starting with basic rat poison and blunt objects before getting increasingly absurd and conceptual (i.e. asking a librarian if they had poetry so sad it could make a person cry to death).
- Nobody Loves the Bassist: Parodied in a sketch in Episode 6. The band members of "Pussy on a Stick" all get applause, except for Holness (the bassist). After the performance, they all get women's underwear thrown at them... Holness gets an egg. Backstage, they are making out with groupies, except Holness, who sits alone reading a newspaper.
- Police Brutality: David Mitchell's cop character is prone to this.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial:
- The "Do You Do Poison" guy definitely doesn't want to kill his 50-year-old wife with rat poison, or a rake, or battering spades, or a holiday ticket, or a spiked mace made of dictionaries, or...
- The final sketch subverts it by opening with him overtly announcing that he wants to kill his wife, though this time, the shopkeeper actually does do poison.
- Take That!: From one "Do You Do Poison" skit:Poison Guy: Do you do poison?Shopkeeper: No sir, just shit, this is Skegness.
