"It can be funny when you drink a lot." Ihor Kondratiuk has taken a hard look at the humor of Kvartal 95.

TV presenter and producer Igor Kondratyuk told why he believes that the humor of Kvartal-95 is of very low quality, and also explained why Ukrainians continue to buy tickets to comedy shows that are increasingly criticized for their low-quality and sometimes even offensive content.

Igor Kondratyuk spoke about this in an interview with us. The well-known media personality says that the Kvartalists do not have "subtle humor, satire, but a lot of other things - pseudo-humorous laughter."

"I'm afraid I'm wrong about the year, but I think the last time I watched them was in 2005, when they were broadcast on Inter," Kondratiuk recalls, "and I turned on the episode because I was invited to perform there, like all the other hosts of that channel at the time, with the final song. This episode was aired when Inter was celebrating an anniversary. However, it was not interesting - I had already seen enough KVN in my life. What has changed since then? I don't know. "Kvartal was too non-Ukrainian for me back then. Until they switched to the Ukrainian language, I didn't perceive them as comedians working for Ukrainians."

Kondratiuk says that the scandals surrounding Kvartal appear in his Facebook news feed before he wakes up: "There are a lot of YouTube clips. Zelensky, when he became president, asked: did it offend you? It wasn't that it offended, it was absolutely impossible for any person who has at least some love for their homeland. It seemed that many of their issues were written by anti-Ukrainian authors."

"Like jokes about ebonite sticks or the Holodomor senor," the media personality lists. "How can I find it funny when I believe, as a citizen, that the greatest crime of the Soviet Union against Ukraine was the artificial Holodomor? I'm from the countryside, so it was very painful to watch all this, knowing how people in the countryside try to grow something on every piece of land, because the memory of the terrible times will live with us for generations."

Kondratiuk agrees with the opinion of many media experts that the humor of the Kvartalists goes somewhere wrong: "But I'm against censorship. Kvartal could have been closed down if, for example, several high-profile cases had been launched against them. And in this way they would have gone bankrupt. But no one did that. We saw their representatives sitting in the hall laughing during the rule of all the governments. Although, by the way, a lot of this is edited. I remember Yuriy Lutsenko in the frame seemingly laughing at a joke about himself, but I'm not sure if it was filmed when the show was on stage. An editing director can make even unfunny jokes funny."

"Why do people go to these performances?" Kondratyuk continues, "They want to be entertained - it's trite, but it's a fact. Most people need to turn off their brains for a while, because if they don't, we'll kill each other here because of the emotional tension. The issue here is different: the quality of the jokes. Comedians should understand that it is low to make frivolous jokes about Ukrainians from Skadovsk. The Kvartal issue about an IDP from Skadovsk is a mockery. It might be funny when you drink a lot. Or for those who don't know what really good jokes are. I haven't read at least 12 Chairs by Ilf and Petrov. The Kvartal people have no subtle humor, no satire, but a lot of other things - pseudo-humorous laughter. But many people still want less than more. That's how they're built. Especially with the advent of social media, which brings a lot of things down to the level of the baseboard."