muckefuck | BOLLOCKS!

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BOLLOCKS!

Fair warning! I am now officially sick of hearing how the Brits in general and BBC in particular have much better humour than the Americans. I swear to Rod, the next time I hear someone say this, I will put them in restraints, clamp their eyelids open, and subject them to repeat viewings of Keeping Up Appearances, Father Ted, and Gimme Gimme Gimme until they beg for death.

Like the rest of you overeducated privileged nerds, I grew up watching lots of British TV on PBS. Naturally, when I entred my snotty snobbish Europhile teens (which happened when I was about 8), I began voicing a preference for sophistimicated British comedy and drama over lowbrow domestic product. Who knows how long this deluded mindset would've lingered if I hadn't actually gone to Europe and watched UK TV "in the raw"? Know what? They have the same bad shows we do! And this is despite the fact that for the longest time they had the same Big Brotherish media policy as other Europeans, meaning like three channels and a government monopoly.

Don't get me wrong. I love Blackadder. I love Red Dwarf. I think Absolutely Fabulous is a hoot. But Jennifer Saunders is no Joe Keenan and her best work never had me in stitches like the installments of Frasier with Keenan at the helm. Yes, they weren't all gems, but it's hard to keep something consistently hilarious for over 250+ episodes. How many British comedy series come close to matching that? You can watch the entire run of Fawlty Towers in a day; The Young Ones will take you a long weekend. The Simpsons has been running since I was an undergraduate; 270+ episodes and it's still howlingly funny at times.

I've seen The Office. Meh. I mean, I understand what they're doing and it's clever, but I'm not exactly ROTFL at any point during a show. I've watched Yes, Minister! Double meh. I've seen many episodes of both the American remake of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the British original. Someone tried to tell me the other day how much more "sophisticated" the humour is in the latter, but, apart from the host (Clive Anderson is more understated and droll than Drew Carey), I just don't see it. At the end of the day, it's still all a lot of funny voices and sexual innuendo.

Ah! Good to get this off my chest. Now maybe I can watch BBCAmerica again tonight without wanting to go ballistic everytime I see one of those obnoxious new "I'm a BBC American" commercials in which fatuous young people on the street assure me what naturally funny people the Brits are.

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I agree re: Whose Line ....

And you forgot the worst of the bunch: Are You Being Served. The mere thought of it makes me cringe.

I tried to watch MI-5 for a couple of shows, until Kitsune pointed out what was bothering me: "It's Femme Nikita, with bad clothes and teeth."

*grin*

I couldn't bear to mention AYBS. It's older than some of my readers and I can only hope that even Brits are embarrassed by its very existence. Its inexplicable syndication on PBS in this country is less a comment on how bad British TV can be than on how idiotic some American viewers are. Of course, it ran for thirteen years in Britain, so perhaps I'm not cutting them enough slack.

Hmmph to both of you. I *liked* AYBS (I haven't watched it for ages so I don't know if I still like it). And I think Coupling is really funny.

But this is kind of exciting, I'm usually humor-clueless because I don't appreciate the shows I should, not because I like shows I shouldn't. I feel all well-rounded now.

On the general issue, I think it's all the fault of the morpheme -phile. It just needs to be shot. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me every time someone identifies as a somethingphile, which is a crying shame because many people I love do it all the time. I want the morpheme out of the pool now.

I could never understand why, given the usual short-runs of Brit TV comedies, there were so many episodes of "Are you being served." Even more mystifying was why Chicago's WTTW-Channel 11 seemed compelled to air all of them.

WHEREAS Brits think they're better than everyone else, but locate their virtue in not rubbing peoples' noses in it; and

WHEREAS Americans also think they're better than everyone else, but by contrast, locate virtue in rubbing peoples' noses in it as much as possible;

advertising to Americans loudly and obnoxiously about how much better they are for enjoying British programming is sort of inherently not very British of BBCAmerica, is it? *Quiet* superiority really seems more to order, doesn't it?

BBCAmerica--emphasis on the latter, perhaps?

Which Brits are you thinking of? There's seems to be very little that English soccer hooligans refrain from rubbing other people's noses in. I blame PBS for the equation of "Britishness" with "stuffy middle-class Britishness". Britain also has a South; it just happens to be located in the North.

That is a VERY pertinent point re: PBS.

The bastards.

(in a british accent) maybe you just don't get it.

What I thought was really sad was when NBC tried to re-create the show Coupling. It was a horrible show even on BBC America and I was delighted when it failed to cross the pond successfully.

I still believe it is the accent... and since I am a sucker for a Swedish accent, I will not point fingers, in the event that I am ever invited to be a Swedish-African-American promo.

muckefuck will agree with you, but I actually liked the British version of "Coupling". At least I'm safe from charages of snob appeal, since I never really went through a Britcom phase. I did like Hitchhiker's Guide when it was relatively new (radio version more than the later ones), and there are Monty Python bits that I enjoyed when someone else put them on (though both have been dulled by overexposure). But none of the British comedies

muckefuck lists above did much for me, even those he gives the nod to. But then, humor is at least in part idiosyncratic and personal. (And I'm used to being out of sync-- getting away from the UK, "South Park", while occasionally brilliant, mostly isn't my thing.)

I ran across "Coupling" by accident while flipping through the TiVo listings when it was first starting up on BBC America, and recorded the first episode more or less randomly based on the show description. I tried some other BBCA comedies after my positive reaction to "Coupling", but quickly found that shows like "The Office" and "Manchild" did less than nothing for me.

The NBC "Coupling", to me, is a fascinating example of the importance of some combination of acting and direction. They had the same writer and producer, virtually the same scripts for the early episodes, and it was horrible. I'm not sure it was transplantable at all, but the delivery and characterization ensured that I'd never find out from them.

the missus enjoyed Coupling tremendously which -by default- means I watched the show quite a bit. I just found the characters to be extremely blinkered...

Hear, hear!

Yes, they weren't all gems, but it's hard to keep something consistently hilarious for over 250+ episodes. How many British comedy series come close to matching that?

"Classic. Not hard to see why it's England's longest-running series, and today, we're showing all seven episodes."

--PBS Announcer re "Do Shut Up" ("It's about a hard-drinking yet loving family of soccer hooligans. If they're not having a go with a bird, they're having a row with a wanker.") in The Simpsons, "Missionary Impossible".

Given this reputation, deserved or not, for great British comedy, can anyone explain why 80+% of BBCAmerica's offerings are lame home redecorating shows? I was excited to see it in my cable line-up, thinking I'd get some "Upstairs, Downstairs," some quirky comedies, maybe even "Blake's 7," one of my favorite SF shows. But no, it's just "life laundry" marathons.

Two words: Trading Spaces. It put TLC, which has since franchised it beyond belief, on the map, so BBC began plugging the Brit original. I imagine it must've done alright, since they proceeded to dust off every other goddamn improvement show they've ever done and show them all.

They have tried some recent sitcoms, but they never found an audience. Anyone who's suffered through the less-than-brilliant writing of Monarch of the Glen or The Royle Family can easily tell you why.

Yes, but I laugh just thinking about The Young Ones. No Frasier episode ever made me laugh that hard! Maybe it's the accents. (??)

How many of the 257 Frasier episodes have you seen? Did you catch the homage to Feydeau, for instance? A perfect French bedroom farce in less than 24 minutes! Incredible!

One of my favorite Friends episodes maintained all three Aristotelian unities (time, place, action). It warmed the cockles of my heart (and almost made AP English worthwhile).

Sure, it gets mocked, and generally sucks now, but that was another American comedy which had some fine episodes in its day.

You'll have to TiVo it for me sometime. I never managed to sit through an entire episode of Friends. Then again, I never liked Seinfeld either, so clearly I wouldn't know good comedy if it bit me on the bum.

I liked "Seinfeld" but didn't love it-- the general unlikeability of the characters (which was, of course, the point, not an accident) detracted from it for me. I can't watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm", which appears to be the same thing turned up to 11.

Then again, I merely like "Frasier" too. (Or liked, really. Around the time that Niles and Daphne got together, the show became almost unwatchable to me. Talk about negative chemistry: Jane Leeves looks positively uncomfortable in every scene she plays with David Hyde-Pierce. It doesn't help that Daphne's family is straight out of "Do Shut Up", and not in a good way.) They've had clever moments, but too many episodes seem to follow the "Frasier meets girl/Frasier dates girl/Frasier loses girl due to same personality flaws that screwed up the last 100 relationships" pattern.

Yeah, it totally jumped the shark when they ran off together. Overnight, they went from my two favourite characters to my two least favourite. I also became exhausted by the formulaic nature of Frasier's relationships, which is why my favourite episodes centred around other things. (For instance, in the Feydeau homage, it turns out that none of people involved are chasing Frasier and, as a result, he is humiliated.)

One of my favorite Friends episodes maintained all three Aristotelian unities (time, place, action). It warmed the cockles of my heart (and almost made AP English worthwhile).

Which one? (Enough general plot for a Google search is all I'm looking for.) I've seen most of the series, but apparently that didn't stick in my mind.

Sure, it gets mocked, and generally sucks now,

And stoops to stealing plots from its own descendants. (Last season they recycled the main plot from "Coupling"'s "The Cupboard of Patrick's Love" with Chandler, Monica, and Richard (Tom Selleck).)

From their episode guide:

Season 3 Episode 465252 THE ONE WHERE NO ONE'S READY 8/7pm 9/26/96 EPISODE SHOT IN REAL TIME -- When Ross is invited to speak at a black-tie museum benefit, he asks the whole gang to come. For the next twenty-two minutes, he must nag at them to get ready so that he won't be late. Monica's a mess after she discovers a message from Richard on the machine -- but can't tell if it's new or old. She leaves him a message, then decides to erase it using his access code -- which is when she hears a message for him from another woman. Chandler and Joey battle over a chair in a fight that results in Joey wearing all of Chandler's clothes. Phoebe, on the other hand, looks great, until she spills wine on her dress and covers it with an ugly Christmas bow. Rachel, meanwhile, gets annoyed by Ross's "hurry up" tactics and refuses to get ready...until it's much too late. TV-14

As far as I'm concerned, all the good episodes were in the first three seasons. At the time, they were trying to subvert a lot of what made a standard sitcom. I admired their avoidance of standard sitcom plots. Then they just stopped caring, and, like so many show before it, lived years longer than it was actually entertaining.

Ah, yes, I remember that one now; I liked it quite a bit.

As far as I'm concerned, all the good episodes were in the first three seasons. At the time, they were trying to subvert a lot of what made a standard sitcom. I admired their avoidance of standard sitcom plots. Then they just stopped caring, and, like so many show before it, lived years longer than it was actually entertaining.

That does suggest an advantage to the British practice of not having fixed numbers of episodes per season, and having short series. On the other hand, there are enough examples of great episodes showing up after a series has mostly lost its spark (e.g., Buffy's musical episode) that I'd be wary of adopting it as a rule.

Bennie Hill

I guess, thanks to syndication, there's no statute of limitations when it comes to TV and if people can dust off and trot out the Flying Circus as proof positive of British comedic brilliance then we're justified in digging up this contemporaneous piece of crap.

Actually, it's worse than that. The Benny Hill Show outlasted MPFC by fifteen years, running for twenty years altogether. Are You Being Served? lasted 13. By contrast, MPFC barely staggered to five seasons (charitable viewers will purge the Cleese-less shows from their memory) and there are a grand total of 12 episodes of The Young Ones.

I dont find one superior to the other, just different. As an Aussie, I get both but have an overall preference for the British, "The Simpsons', "South Park", Frazier", "That's my Bush", had many inspired episodes but "Seinfeld" leaves me cold, as do all blacksploitation sitcoms.

I think the "Royle Family" , which you dismiss, is inspired (it is VERY British) as is a recent similarly slow-burn britcom called "Bedtime".

I have to confess that nothing I have seen has made me laugh as much as the "Romanian Orphans" episode of "Ab-Fab" or "The Germans"episode of "Fawlty Towers" (Well, maybe the 'Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker' song from the South Park movie.)

So maybe you need to be poised between the Yanks and the Poms to appreciate both.

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