I hate British Comedy (1 Viewer)

[BrianB]

Another good example is Only Fool's And Horses - the very early series (with Grandad) are currently being shown on PBS, and my wife, an American, can't make head nor tail of it. She has no context for it whatsoever.

There's a lot of UK comedy & comedians that have zero impact here in the US desite being extremely well known in the UK. I've lived here for four years & can't recall offhand any mention of the likes of Reeves & Mortimer for example.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

This is one thing that bothers me, the elitism among many Americans who like British comedy. Monty Python is the most widely known example of British comedy, and the Dead Parrot sketch is definitely one of their most famous. You're not special for knowing about this. Have you ever heard John Cleese talk about their reception in America when they first came here? He was amazed at the number of fans they had, and that was in the 70's. Eric Idle hosted SNL four times in the 70's alone! These people are hardly unknown in the US. I'm sure most of the people watching the Dead Parrot sketch got it, and they most likely knew exactly what it referenced. Just like I'm sure people understood the Dead Kenney short South Park did and that it was an homage to the Dead Parrot also.

In fact, a lot of the older shows from the UK get widely played on PBS stations around the US. Monty Python, Are You Being Served, and others. My local PBS shows more recent things including Coupling, My Hero, and Vicar of Dibley.

As for the popularity of people like Dame Edna in Britain, that's wildly different than the occasional movie with crossdressing. Dame Edna is a personality, not a movie character. It appears on lots of things. Kind of like that RuPaul thing, but much more successful.

But then I don't really think there's necessarily a trend. Yes there's Dame Edna, that guy with the hair on Changing Rooms, and a few others. But Dame Edna is really just a character, much like Father Guido Sarducci or Jiminy Glick. Granted the guys in Monty Python dressed up like women a lot, but that's no different than SNL or The State where it was either funnier to have a guy dress up as or girl, or there was a shortage of women on the cast.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Can I just stress to you American guys that Brit comedians getting dressed in drag is not an expression of latent transexuality? The whole point is to look as ridiculous as possible, and categorically *not* convincing (i.e. exactly the reverse of sexual cross-dressing). *That is why we find it funny*. For some reason, you Americans seem to think it's some kind of perversion. I was amazed to learn the other day that Queen's 'I want to break free' video was censored or banned in the USA. It played here on kids' shows with nobody batting an eyelid.

 

[Malcolm R]

OK, my bad. It wasn't "obvious" enough for me.

Though a lot of those shows also get a love/hate reaction from most people. I know lots of people who don't like Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, or Scrubs (I don't like Scrubs myself).

 

[John Watson]

America very very strange - Elvis and Little Richard could wear makeup, but it took British groups to let us hear "I'm a Boy" and "Lola"

 

[Grant B]

In the commentary for MPATHG Cleese tells about the scene where he runs up to the castle to save the 'damsel'. It did not come out well so he redid it near his home in North London.
So here is this very tall man in midevil armour running at a castle that didn't exist.
Everyone just ignored him like it wasn't happening; it was during th morning commute that he filmed it. He makes some remark like that's the English in a nutshell.
But Humor, either you find it funny or you don't.It's as simple as that.
There is a comic strip in the local paper called SALLY FORTH.
I have for years read it and have never found it funny.Somone must find it funny but I have never even smirked because of it.

 

[MattBu]

I made a reference to that. I concur, a LOT of it is class based! How is it POSSIBLE that this many Americans could understand the subtle nuances of British culture? I don't find it possible.

A lot of what I hate about British Comedy is what I hate about Anime, the elitism of the people that watch it, or the fact that if I don't find it funny I'm some how not as intelligent.

I find most American Comedy unfunny, I'm just a hard guy to please.


And I would call Phoebe carrying her brothers children subtle, I would call the fat suit broad.

I admit that Scrubs is broad, it's not as broad as Mr Bean, but it's not dry like a lot of seinfeld's humor.

Wheras the season finale of CYE was indeed VERY broad, there are also subtle nuances, like Larry wanting splash guards for the urinals, or this line "That's the thing Im worst at...that and drawing" genius.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

It's not actually that high.

 

[Michael Martin]

I'm with Matt on this. With the exception of a few shows, most American sitcoms are NOT consistently funny or well-written. Many have one or two good lines per episode, but they are extremely formulaic, and we seem to be recycling jokes, plot cliches, and story structure all the time.

I also think most American sitcoms are on for far too long. Few shows can sustain consistent character development and comedy for more than 3 or 5 seasons, let alone 8 or 10.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Speaking only for myself, I have worked in the UK and (the old) British Empire countries for a substantial part of my life. Which means that I’ve worked and played with a lot of Brits. And seen a lot of TV that came from the Mother country. So I do get a lot, but

they still make references that I don’t get (particularly rhyming slang).

 

[MarkHastings]

Being vocal about something you love is one thing, but being so vocal about something you hate is not going to go without some backlash.

The thing most may have with your statement is the fact that you've categorized EVERY British comedy. If you truly hate every single show, then I'd have to ask you why. If you say you don't get it or just don't understand it, then I'd have to ask why you hate something you don't understand...

The point is, if you don't get it, that's fine, but in order to hate everything from a certain culture, we can not help but think you have something against the culture itself and not the comedy.

 

[Grant B]

I went to England for 2 years for a job and being an Anglophile I thought I would be in TV heaven.
Mr Markworthy will confirm I lived in the hellhole of hellholes; but the TV was the same and I was bored to tears.
The funniest show I ever saw over there was Rab C Nesbit but I doubt 1 in 100 Americans could understand the accent.
Sort of a British "Married with Children" but really disgusting

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

First of all, most episodic TV shows don't aspire to character development. The networks want you to be able to tune in in any given week of any given season and be able to pick up on the same characters doing more or less the same thing. People like the familiar. They want what they know, but a little different. Most of the change and development on long-running shows comes from two things: actors coming and going, and fatigue. Writers and actors get tired and gradually the character comes to resemble the actor's real personality more and more because that's what you get at the end of an 18 hour day and the next batch of writers bases their approach to the show on the 8 or 10 episodes from last season they watched on tape.

But you're right anyway. Not only most sitcoms, but most shows over-stay their welcome. This has also been enshrined in a Hollywood Law: All TV shows stay on the air one or two years longer than they should. The trick is knowing when you're in the last good year.

Obviously this doesn't apply to shows that get cancelled early, but it really is hard to sustain a series much past 5 or 7 years. (3 to 5 is a riskier range. You need to have roughly 100 episodes in the can if you're going to make it in syndicated reruns, otherwise you cycle through the show too fast if it airs five days a week. So you want to have at least 5 and maybe a couple more - especially since 7 year contracts are common.)

X-Files, TNG, Murphy Brown and Night Court are all shows that would have done better to end a year or two (or more) earlier than they did. But there's a lot of pressure to keep a ratings hit on the air, even if both the network and the studio are losing money on the deal. (See Friends.) Again, it is economics. If you're shooting a show for $200,000 videotape, and I can get a nearly identical but unknown show for the same or less that will probably appeal to the same demographic in a metropolitan viewing area with 20 million people in it, I might let you quit when you want to. If I'm spending $10 million an episode for a show that's getting a 40 rating and a 20 share on a nationwide network that reaches an audience of 300 million - and my only option is an unknown show that costs $5 million an episode - I'm going to want you to stick around.

Some show manage to get past the limits in one way or another. M*A*S*H underwent wholesale cast/character changes over the course of its run, with a stable core surrounded by changing (and frquently better) supporting players. Law & Order has a formula that is less dependent on presonalities than most. (The Benjamin Bratt period, when they tried focusing more on the personal lives of the cops and lawyers, didn't work very well and they backed off that.) It is another series that has benefited by high cast turn-over. As long as the formula works and the cast changes often enough to keep it feeling fresh the show can run forever.

(Especially since one of the things that makes a show too expensive to produce is the automatic union-mandated raises the everybody gets each year, the contract renegotiations that the stars of highly rated shows push for before the original contract is up, and the need at some point to renegotiate with everybody after the initial 5 or 7 year deal runs out.)

That's why Paramount had a new Trek series ready to take over as its predecessor finished year 7, to star over with a fresh slate and a lower budget. L&O changes personnel often enough that there are usually only two or three high-cost, long term regulars per season.

Regards,

Joe

 

[CharlesD]

The BBC is not owned or operated by the UK Government. It is publicly financed, however (they still have TV Licenses I think).

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Charles is correct, the BBC is publically financed (via the so-called TV licence which you have to pay, whether you ever watch BBC or not) but is not owned or answerable to the government (except in terms of overall level of content and decency, the same as any other broadcaster). This past summer has seen probably the most bitter battle between the Beeb and Blair's government over the David Kelly Iraqi WMD affair.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Well, that in and of itself doesn't prove that they aren't both part of the same government. You should see what various government departments say about each other over here. Of course, here there is a distinction between "the government", which is permanent, and "the party the dominates the legislature" - and the party that runs the executive branch and provides the Head of State is something else entirely - both of which are transient. Still, I stand corrected. But the economic point remains, in that we have no major publicly funded national network, and therefore that things are simply done differently over here, which leads to different production models.

Regards,

Joe

 

[CharlesD]

Whichever definition of "The Government" you want to use doesn't apply to the BBC. It is not controlled by either "The Government" in the UK sense nor is it a government department in the US sense. It is an independent entity that is funded by the public.

Your point about funding is entirely correct however. No one gets rich doing TV for the BBC! When a good show comes along it doesn't get flogged to death for the money nor do they have to pander to advertisers. On the other hand writers/producers with good ideas may well want to explore more lucrative outlets for their creative talents than the BBC, so that model definitely has its trade offs.

Personally I love it, as we here in the US get to skim off the cream of the BBC crop and don't have to buy a "Television License" for the privilege

 

[andrew markworthy]

Absolutely - I mean nobody but elitists watch TV in the UK ...

re: the BBC. To watch BBC television, you must pay an annual licence fee - if you don't you're committing an illegal act under British law, and you will be fined. Just owning a TV set is in law sufficient justification to pay the licence fee (licences in effect cost circa a couple of pounds per week, and the only people who don't pay it are people aged over 75). Saying that you never watch BBC programmes is not an excuse in court, as several people over the years have found out to their cost. To any non-Brit (and indeed to a great many Brits) this sounds like the BBC is a government-controlled body, but it isn't. The basic explanation is this.

When radio started in the UK, there were a whole load of stations, and the government was worried about broadcasting standards - not only decency, but intellectual content. Thus the BBC was set up not only to entertain but to inform and educate as well (this was formally set out in its remit, and it's one of the reasons why a lot of Brits are so bitter about the dumbing down of Brit TV in recent years). To protect the BBC from government interference, the licence fee was introduced (originally for radio then when TV came along for TV as well, and then in the 1960s the radio licence was abolished - funding for BBC radio comes from BBC TV revenue). This meant that the BBC did not have to rely on direct government funding, but had the power to raise its own revenue without worrying about influence from industry sponsors, etc. So the licence fee is in reality a protection from interference by outside bodies.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I know, that's why I said, "I stand corrected." I was just pointing out that the example you gave of the Beeb vs. Blair was no "evidence" of the Beeb's status one way or the other.

Regards,

Joe

 

[CharlesD]

It wasn't me who gave that example, so you stand corrected AGAIN!