BOLLOCKS!

[muckefuck]

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.

Comments

[kayiwa.livejournal.com]

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.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

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.

[kayiwa.livejournal.com]

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...