channel 4's death of the sitcom - C or D

gah. so so so very flawed.

Seinfeld, Frasier, Porridge, Fawlty Towers.

4. Frasier
3. Seinfeld
2. Porridge
1. Fawlty Towers

Porridge should win, obv.

Thank goodness Friends isn't in there!

I spoke too soon.

I dunno if Frasier will be in there. It's not quite as good as Cheers, which shoulda been higher.

My top 5...

Father Ted
Seinfeld
Larry Sanders
Spaced
Blackadder

tho frasier has some fab characters...

Dud only for Daphne's family - Antony LaPaglia in a Manchester United shirt talking like Dick van Dyke, aaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!!

it was an interesting show - seemed to big up the BBC of all things, considering it was actually on C4. Carla Lane was absolutely hilarious - they ought to make a realcom about her.

But yes, there seemed to be a lot of sketchiness when it came to their, rather conservative agenda. They didn't show any of Nathan Barley - I wonder what Carla Lane would have made of that.

WE ARE BROTHERS!

Wouldn't mind seeing Larry David versus Ricky Gervais that'll be on C4 soon.

Best moment of the double bill - John Mahoney saying Rising Damp was his favourite sitcom! But...I sorta didn't know whether to believe him. I would liked to have heard more from Victoria Wood about why she couldn't film dinnerladies like an episode of ER as she'd originally conceived it. Presumably it was just the overriding BBC1ness of the enterprise.

I suppose it's forgivable in a show like tonight's docu to ignore the glaring exceptions to whichever rule they're trying to demonstrate, but Black Books comes to mind. So very conventional, but so very '00s and so very good.

How quickly everyone has forgotten the Royle Family. A few years ago, that would have been a shoe-in for the top 10, wouldn't it? Then along comes Gervais with his "oh, I'm the master of real-life-ordinary-people-doing-real-life-ordinary-things" and everyone forgets that Caroline Aherne was doing it first. I like to think that if it had been a top 30, Black Books, Peep Show, Phoenix Nights, Rab C Nesbitt and Still Game would also have featured. And Ever Decreasing Circles, though I think maybe only Mike would agree with me on that.

I missed the start of the first programme tonight. I never really liked The Likely Lads as much as Whatever Happened To... anyway, but I think I'm realising my opinion on sitcoms counts for cock all anyway.

OK, was MASH anywhere in the rundown? Hmm?

i thought using clips from the same interviews for both programs was a bit dodgy, somehow. i then fell asleep before seeing the end (although the tivo tells me there's another showing on more4(?) later in the week)

in cheltenham over christmas i saw a shop selling complete sets of Love Thy Neighbour. that's cheltenham for you.

my family is rubbish

crosspost

that it was created by a guy who wrote for larry sanders absolutely stuns me.

i mean, friends is trash, but its like insanely well-produced trash, a junk food that's guiltily delicious if devoid of any nutritional qualities. my family is a cold and unlovely Wimpy hamburger, on a plate, with a brown bun, and cheddar cheese. it thinks its doing right, but gets all the details wrong.

You are insane.

Will and Grace is better written than Frasier. My Family is dire, but gets the viewers in, and admittedly isn't as bad as My Hero.

(You've have to do better than that, TH).

This describes Dad's Army perfectly though!

xpost Dom is OTM. and at heart, cheers is so old fashioned, being a character and dialogue-driven show.

xpost: "cheers is so old fashioned, being a character and dialogue-driven show." EXACTLY.

to be honest, Theorry, its the rofl-test for me too, and Cheers and Dad's Army both score so highly for me on that basis. and once i stop laughing, i start appreciating how well its been written and composed. but i don't see how appreciating how well Cheers is done is, in some way, 'flair-hating' or masochistic.

But anyway, "a character and dialogue-driven show" describes just about every decent comedy ever made. What's 'The Office' if it's not that (IMO at the expence of actual jokes)?

except the ones specifically aimed at my (dark, edgy) demographic niche.

some comedy (including 'the office') utilises the image-track for laffs.

I've just realised this also applies to Allo Allo, but no-one (quite rightly) is meantioning that in best sitcoms evah.

maybe it's about time to stop talking about things again

xpost

I've just realised this also applies to Allo Allo, but no-one (quite rightly) is meantioning that in best sitcoms evah.

allo allo had layers of character, but also borad performances and cliched writing. not saying i didn't laugh as a kid, but i didn't when it was recently repeated. maybe i don't find the word boobies so funny now i'm over 7.

Pete is OTM, EDC is almost suffocatingly dark.

i bought Just Good Friends on DVD last year. gotta love that vince and pen.

"they don't like it up 'em"

almost as bad as men behaving badly

it's not really a sitcom, for me -- shdn't a sitcom have a very limited number of sets, extremely pronounced character ticks, absurdly convoluted farce-type plot, etc?

And that ECD is much, much funnier than Nighty Night.

All these started out great, dangerous even, but never subscribed to the ethos "Quit while on top", and all suffered from catchphrase overload by the ends.

two crossposts

I have not seen either of these programmes, but I think Mike is right. I hate sitcoms so much these days I prefer doing corporate videos.

Is Sunday Bloody Sunday a Troubles-based Sitcom?

I have long laboured under the misconception that Steptoe and its ilk are "well-written". Now I see how wrong I was. They are dogshit.

But I hate Six Feet Under even more.

I have never watched Frasier or Seinfield, but I am sure they are shit.

does anyone have a reason for hating cheers so much? its not perfect, but no one seems to be saying anything more constructive than 'its shit'.

I think perhaps I was over-egging the pudding by using the word dogshit. In fact I was just plain wrong.

I think My Family is competent as uninteresting, MOR sitcoms go, but that's all. It's like the televisual equivalent of one of those family life columns in the weekend colour supplements. "T'cha - kids! T'cha - me getting old!" kind of knockabout stuff. It is not the Ever Decreasing Circles of a single millennium, let alone more than one. Ever Decreasing Circles had real pathos. And it had far better comic actors.

I quite enjoyed last night's programme. They seemed to make an effort to get talking heads who were qualified to speak, rather than random celebs reminiscing. I only turned on at No.12 I think, and was pleased to find I approved of everything I saw, except for the No.1! Never really liked Frasier that much. Cheers was so much more rounded, plus there was no Daphne Moon. The poncing about between Frasier and Niles got as tired as the Blackadder-Baldrick bashing soon enough. Roz was great though, yes.

I didn't know before that the Phil Silvers Show was much bigger here than Stateside. I wonder why that is? I think it's terrific, anyway.

The Upper Hand

http://imdb.com/title/tt0098939/

IAP had all of these. There was a lot of outdoor scenes but still. I think it did stretch the definition further than anything before it. Maybe it's just the canned laughter (would love to watch the series without this - would it seem as funny?)

Butterflies had far more pathos that My Family has ever had. Again, this is the thing that people don't seem to remember: 70s and 80s sitcoms did have those "dark, edgy" moments.

(it's a while since I've seen Butterflies - was Wendy Craig's character actually having an affair, or did she just fantasise about one?)

-- Sororah T Massacre (stevem7...), January 3rd, 2006.

oh i'm confused now. wasn't 'i'm' the '97 one, and the '02 series was called 'meet'? the third series, in 2002, whatever it was called, was more of a sitcom.

SO SO SO OTM

Butterflies was great becasue it had a plot, ie the slow, painful undoing of a housewife who becomes disenchanted with her lot. i find th teenage sons embarassing now, but the show is great, very sad in places, and geoffrey palmer is, as ever, wonderful.

the partridge talk show was Knowing Me Knowing You; the first 'docusoap' one at the hotel was I Am Alan Partridge, as was the second series that came a couple of years later (and which i've never seen all the way through).

disagree with the cheers slam; norm at least has to deliver a brilliant one-liner for the audience to laugh, etc.

xpost

Was it a nuclear thing? I remember when Rodney got all panicked about radioactive meltdown in OFAH too. I'd 'like' to see the modern equivalent incorporated into sitcom today.

I remember when Happy Days first started, Richie (or whoever) comes on and the audience bursts into applause. I was all like "uh, what happened? I miss something?"

Cheers did that too, didn't they?

The My Family writers should bring in an Islamist neighbour with a mysterious garden shed!

Not quite. Only Norm got cheers and that was from the bar clientele rather than the audience, at least initially.

The whole stylistic thing is quite interesting. I loved 'thick of it', but think it would be better if it was filmed with a fixed camera and had a laughter track. but it would also be too much like 'yes minister' for comfort. somebody should take the EDC scripts and shoot them on DV without a studio. Mark Lawson's head would explode.

Yes, she was having an affair. They went to a hotel and everything.

I don't know whether they actually did it.

Steve, I was just trying to say something other than "it's shit".

Still once you do get over the initial disappointment, IAP2 has lots of great and v funny bits. Not as many as IAP1 but still a lot, and they're worthy of celebration even if the series as a whole isn't.

yeah i read it as a self-conscious move away from 'the office', which is still very influential (ie on 'the thick of it' and 'nathan barley') (and which was maybe influenced in this regard by 'IAP' seies 1).

it's not as good as the first series, but it's pretty good.

WTF? I remember you briefly writing for MM, then going over to NME. I was dissapointed b/c I thought you were too good for the NME, tbh.

They did actually do it at the end of a series of "butterflies", the guy who fancied her was going off to work in America, iirc the show ended w/her watching his plane fly overhead. "Butterflies" was funny, but also very sad. I don't know if I'd really want to watch it again.

Henceforth referred to as "Nathan Barley syndrome"

1) Boston sucks (does it?).
2) There's an odd air about the whole thing sometimes - despite the mix of collar and class, the bar retained some vibe of austerity/snootiness, rooted in the upholstery perhaps...a reminder of something unpleasant about American (high) society. I didn't really like the design of the place, too much open space, too much formality - this could make on uncomfortable, but you could just accept this and get on with roffling usually.
3) The idea of Ted Danson being more popular with women than you.

that's it

to be honest, steve, lots of US bars are like that. being set in Boston, Cheers does play with concepts of class more than most sitcoms - whether its Diane and Sumner thinking they are better than the barflies (with the scripts showing they are and aren't, as the plot demands), woody dating kelly and sparring with her family, or Frasier's similar belief that he is somehow better than the barflies (with the script again undercutting or supporting that assumption, as it desires).

i think that's why i like cheers so much - its quite even-handed, the characters are there to be laughed at, but the show is strong enough that all the characters are also sympathetic and noble, even Cliffy. even Sam, who could be seen as being the 'heartthrob'star of the show, is undermined - he is good looking but terribly vain, his charm is not as successful as he thinks it is, and his cologne is objectionable - though i didn think that his Sex Addiction subplot towards the end, and unveiling his toupe, were both low, low blows. the characters are funny, yes, but never treated as mere jokes.

However, this thread has not yet mentioned "Three's Company" hence I consider it bankrupt and beneath me.

It must all be a wacky misunderstanding!

never shown on UK TV as far as i know, i'm afraid. hell, i never saw sanford and son until my redd foxx obsession led me to the dvds...

And it was interesting in how the people in the photos were supposed to match the characters played by the name on the screen at the same point, like their ancestors or equivalents of 100 years before.

yeah, i really liked that. they changed the pix when nick collasanto and shelly long left, didn't they?

everybody loves raymond - i hated it for so long, then grew to love it. its like seinfeld, in that raymond is the weakest character, and the 'star' is in reality just a foil for the amazing supporting cast (be it George, Elaine, Kramer and George's family, or Raymond's brother, mum and father).

i love sitcoms too much.

Cosby was fab. within the mawkish constraints of family-orientated teevee, the scripts were sharp. okay, the kids were often annoying, but cosby has enough charisma to redeem it, and the relationship of cliff and claire was lots of fun. and fuck it, Cosby kills me every time (tho I can understand his having a marmite-esque appeal, you either love him or hate him).

"WE WIN"

best sign ever.

To enter the previous controversy above, I don't hate My Family either. Next to some of the corkers mentioned on the thread we did a couple of weeks ago (Is it just me, or is "The worst week of my life" the most unfunny sitcom ever?), it's a work of genius. I've never gone out of my way to watch it, but I've laughed a couple of times when I've seen it, which is surely the point of a comedy. (note I'm not making claims of greatness, just of watchability)

i'm just reading this thread now, at my leisure, while i wait for some proofs to come back ... however, i felt i had to nick down here and post something about EDC, and how it is one of the single greatest achievements in the english language. it was perfect, and its omission from the C4 list astonishes me.

i only saw from #11 (father ted) onwards, but ... hmm. there do seem to be other glaring omissions. was the royle family in the "best sitcoms" list at all? from what i understand from talking to a colleague today, liddiment's central argument was that TRF changed everything. for it then not to appear in the subsequent programme seems odd.

Where was the Good Life in the list, anyway? And Reggie Perrin? And Taxi?

1) FRASIER

2) FAWLTY TOWERS

3) SEINFELD

4) PORRIDGE

5) THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW

6) THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW

7) DAD’S ARMY

8) BLACKADDER

9) SPACED

10) THE OFFICE

11) FATHER TED

12) CHEERS

13) I’M ALAN PARTRIDGE

14) YES MINISTER

15) CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM

16) THE GOOD LIFE

17) THE FALL & RISE OF REGINALD PERRIN

18) HANCOCK’S HALF HOUR

19) RISING DAMP

20) THE YOUNG ONES

Yes Minister was perfect, really. In lesser hands it could so easily have been naff, coarse satire but it's just exquisitely pitched and played. There's loads of episodes I haven't seen, too, which makes me happy. Did Jonathan Lynn write any other sitcoms?

does anybody else round these parts rate "nightingales", or is that just me?

oh well, that's all right then. i bow to the superior knowledge of the tall dude out of look around you.

btw, dom, am i right in understanding you have a swishy new job?

Thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure I haven't confused his feelings towards HDYWM? with those of our mutual friend Stevie T.

Anyway, in the course of checking this, I found this thread:

The Greatest Sitcoms of All Time

which may be the source of MJ's reference to my unremembered laughter track comment.

Yeah, I'm curious about this too.

xp

but no: it's gone again.

nightingales, people! nightingales!

Frasier won a fuckload of Emmys and did relatively well ratings-wise, but I can't help feel like it was more popular in the UK than in the US. Channel 4's New Year's Eve telecast in 1998 was a Frasier marathon, ffs.

I never saw that many episodes of HDYWM? but I liked what I saw.

Cor, the Pinefox and I indulge in daft Kinnear banter on that other thread. Comedy bronze!

Ummmm...

http://images.windowsmedia.com/img/prov_w/300_80/093624934066.jpg

I looked away from the telly for 30 seconds while they played the Yes, Minister clip and so missed Alba's dad! But then someone followed up by saying that the show was distinguished by not just having the best comic actors around but the best actors full stop. Now I know who they were talking about.

* i'm just trying to avoid having to spell serafinowicz here. can you tell?

(speaking of whom. that goodies documentary seemed to feature a fore-runner of Look Around You starring the beardy one who isn't bill oddie)

someone at old job(?) used to rave about nightingales and then made me sit down and watch an episode. didn't enjoy it.

but much less drunk.

nightingales, people! nightingales!

Yes! I remember it faintly - Robert Lindsay's finest comedic hour, quite surreal, needs repeated asap.

(incidentally, it took me ages to recognise private pike from dad's army in eastenders too.)

Nightingales was great, I wish they'd show this again or release it on dvd. but i spose there's no way of that happening.

eh? i thought Pike died long ago (in perverse ironing drama)

Two series of Nightingales available on torrenting sites.

they're guaranteed two sales, i suppose. maybe three.

Hywel Bennett played Jack Dalton, gangland overland and nasty piece of work. It turned out that it was him what "killed" Den the first time round, and he beat some people up then got killed by Dennis.

Ian Lavender played Derek, Pauline Fowler's gay tenant. He had no storylines at all, except for making Pauline unwanted cups of tea whenever she had some problem or other (i.e. all the time) and making people think Martin was gay for a minute because he got driving lessons off him (two men, one straight, one gay, with a forty year age gap get in car together = they are TEH GAY!).

Does no-one like One Foot in the Grave any more?

"Dhondy had deliberated over several possible titles, Tandoori Is The Night, Chappati's Over and Paperback Raita all being in the melting pot before Tandoori Nights was settled upon." BBC Sitcom guide.

How? How do you choose the worst title on your shortlist?

Balti Towers.

Ringstinger of Bright Water.

Paneerama
Aloo Aloo

Tue 24 Jan (5.30 pm, St Anne's College, Oxford)
`British TV Comedy: Dead or Alive?' by the News International
Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media, Armando Iannucci (comedy
writer and producer). Inaugural lecture - `Ever Decreasing Viewing
Figures: the decline of mainstream comedy'. Followed by drinks.

Tue 31 Jan (5.30 pm, St Anne's College)
Armando Iannucci: `British TV Comedy: Dead or Alive?'. Lecture 2 -
`Little Office: the rise of cult comedy'.

Tue 7 Feb (5.30 pm, Green College)
Armando Iannucci: `British TV Comedy: Dead or Alive?'. Lecture 3 -
`Help!: TV comedy under threat.'

Tue 14 Feb (5.30 pm, Green College)
Armando Iannucci: `British TV Comedy: Dead or Alive?'. Lecture 4 -
`Two Feet In The Grave?: how can mainstream comedy survive?'

i'd forgotten david threlfall was in it.

I am particularly looking forward to drinks after the first one. Its not every day you get the opportunity to drunkleny bother a hero in earshot of my employers AND senior Channel 4 editorial staff. Good times.

"My fly's got no nose." "How does he smell?" "He's got a thousand eyes and that compensates."

Even 'Hyperdrive', however, is not as bad as 'TittyBangBang'.

Tittybangbang's script definitely isn't worth the money they spent on prosthetics.

Specifically the bit that's a takeoff of that sexliesvideo bit.. "I like to have a wazz on the ladies.."

OK, I laughed. So did Dawn. and not 'knowingly' before you go off on one!

Rest assured I will be sending a strongly worded email to those responsible[*] and go to the remaining three.

[*] Is not joke. The ratio of TV-people-up-from-London to members-of-the-university-he's-actually-supposed-to-be-teaching looked like about 3:1. I actually heard the woman on the door say to a group of undergraduates waiting outside, "Oh, we have enough students in here, you'll have to go next door" as though they only needed a few to pose with him for press shots.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/listings/programme.shtml?day=today&service_id=4223&filename=20060131/20060131_2245_4223_21938_60

Imagine...
Tue 31 Jan, 10:45 pm - 11:45 pm 60mins

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Studio

People keep saying the British sitcom is dead - too middle aged, too middle class and too middle English. But if that's true, says Alan Yentob, then why are our finest comic writers and performers making sitcoms? Why are they winning prizes? Why are they making so much money? Alan speaks to Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Armando Iannucci, Graham Linehan, Chris Langham and the casts of Green Wing and Peep Show, and makes a surprise entrance on My Family. What he discovers is a comic form in rude good health.

I don't think they are, but we have no way of knowing.

Why are they winning prizes?

Because the prizes are for sitcoms.

Why are they making so much money?

The runaway success of DVD and live tours.

I am not stopping up to watch this if this is the standard of question it raises.

What constitutes "middle aged" - from late 20s to late 30s? Because that's the only people i see making sitcoms these days.

they forgot 'too white' and 'too male' (with apologies to dean lerner and fran katzenjammer).

was ok otherwise, fascinating to see behind the scenes on peep show (since cancelled, although aren't they about to jump to bbc2 with a differnt show anyway?) especially Jez sat in a corner reciting his lines whilst the other one talked to the camera.

Kitson has this rather complicated theory that, for a given absolute quality, how 'good' something is inversely proportional to how many people like it. Like Coldplay would be great if you were their only fan, but the fact that millions buy their album affects your ability to enjoy it because people ruin everything. This may have something to do with his rumoured continuous refusal to do TV (apparently Channel 4 have asked him more than once).

"In a series of acclaimed lectures at Oxford, Armando Iannucci, Britain's leading comic writer and producer - and Observer columnist - is addressing the question, 'British TV Comedy: dead or alive?' In this, his second lecture, he calls for an end to the false war between the fringes and the mainstream"

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1702520,00.html

Without Peter Kay this type of humour just doesn't convince.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/programmes/?id=thin_ice