PBS Classic British Comedies

Sunday nights of my youth were spent watching Black Adder, Waiting For God, Are You Being Served, Chef, Fawlty Towers, Keeping Up Apperances, 'Allo 'Allo, Mr. Bean etc.. Later on they aired the one about the woman Anglican priest and some that were more lighthearted and goofy than the relatively raunchy earlier ones. Monty Python was an early staple, but they stopped showing it - too expensive to get the rights?

Mostly terrible - Waiting For God seemed pretty edgy (she's an independent atheist!), the first season of Chef was okay. Black Adder seems like the worst, in retrospect.

Black Adder seems like the worst, in retrospect.

Are you kidding me?

Lack of Python meant my elementary school friends and I were saved from being the asshats endlessly quoting Dead Parrot skits (that was my brother instead), but we all thought we were fucking clever for discovering these instead of Home Improvement or whatever late '80s sitcoms were hot.

I would say that Blackadder 2/3/4 beats everything else in that list.

Not at all. I tried watching some on DVD recently and it's so terrible.

black adder is the bomb, http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leftkrHJkw1qf8yek.gif

Yeah, seriously. Blackadder is still really good. That's just shocking Milo.

Not at all. I tried watching some on DVD recently and it's so terrible.

― boots get knocked from here to czechoslovakier (milo z), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 2:42 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark

Wow.

I watched the Christmas special a couple weeks ago. Classic. U mad.

Blackadder is still beloved and thought of an an A list comedy here in the country of its birth. I don't see how it can be considered the worst of the ones you list at all!

Am I allowed to contribute? I've never watched PBS.

I loved watching all these shows on PBS when I was a kid but don't really revisit them anymore.

But I have been on a serious Masterpiece kick lately, so...

I'm really think maybe you're missing something with Blackadder Milo because it's really pretty great.

You're repping for Chef and knocking Blackadder? Almost as speechless as I was with Lex's all comedians are scum rant.

Keeping Up Appearances is the legitimate worst, that shit was poison even when I was a kid. Black Adder is the biggest disappointment from what I thought of it then and looking at it now.

x-post - LOL ^ this.

I think Blackadder mostly hasn't aged too well but that cd be partly over-exposure.

Is Chef the one with Lenny Henry? If so it's almost completely forgotten here.

Did you get Sorry with Ronnie Corbett? It was like some agonising Kafka nightmare that went on forever.

AYBS, KIU and Black Adder were the only three that never got rotated out. My local PBS station ran all three constantly from ~1986 til 1995. They may still, tbh.

Chap - Yes, that's Chef.

I can still hear Hyacinth Bucket's voice in my head and it makes me want to punch a kitten.

Lead actress on Waiting For God wasn't even 50 when it debuted! That's amazing.

Or what was that one with Richard Briers as the OCD control freak who kept getting pwned by his smug neighbour? Shit was ridiculously dark for a milquetoast evening sitcom.

Ever Decreasing Circles it was called. Like watching the build-up to a spree shooting.

Very early one that never got aired again was a '70s show about a couple of sorta-hippies moving in to a respectable area and making nice with their uptight neighbors?

Ever Decreasing Circles it was called. Like watching the build-up to a spree shooting.

Do you mean The Good Life? Stockbroker dude gives it up to become self-sufficient/run his own farm next door to super snooty neighbours.

I like Vicar of Dibley far far too much, given what it was.

Absolutely Fabulous, OTOH, I never had any type of lingering "I am afraid this might be terrible" doubt over. That show was fucking amazing.

also IIRC Blackadder 2-3 are maybe the funniest fucking pieces of television ever aired

i used to watch these when I was young as an extension of my Doctor Who anglophilia - Good Neighbors, To the Manor Born, Doctor in the House, Fawlty Towers, Benny Hill. my favorite was The Goodies, would love to see if it holds up now like Python

and I still watch my Young Ones tapes several times a year (though not PBS)

'Ever Decreasing Circles', a huge influence on Ricky Gervais. I'll leave you to decide whether that's a good thing or not.

I remember The Young Ones made zero sense to me until after I'd graduated from college

I was so into Ab Fab in HS. I haven't watched it in years but would prob still love if only for nostalgic reasons.

Yes, the Good Life or 'Good Neighbors' here. I am a horrible unreliable narrator when it comes to these.

The best part about AYBS and Good Neighbors as a child was beginning to grasp how weird and pastel the '70s were.

The Romanian babies episode - omg.

The way some children are frightened of clowns, I was scared shitless of Benny Hill. Probably still am.

I dunno if The Goodies has held up. The stunts and visual stuff is often great but a lot of the dialogue is pretty flat.

Ab Fab wasn't on PBS though, was it? I think Comedy Central.

Was also really into The Young Ones for a while in college. Another I haven't seen in a long while.

Shamefully, The Goodies is rarely shown on TV, despite the plethora of cable/freeview channels devoted to repeats of old comedy shows. Maybe it has to do with Bill Oddie being an antagonistic pain in the ass.

Some of The Goodies' episodes still stand up today, others less so, because they're not as stuffed with jokes as Fawlty Towers. Although 'Kung Fu Capers' is the Goodies episode that caused a viewer to actually die laughing.

I remember being completely obsessed with Yes, Minister during the 3 months they showed it on the Twin Cities PBS channel.

Saw Bill Oddie on a bus to Hull one time and I remembered hearing rumours about his rep, that plus the gob on him made me decided not to say "hi" and "thanks for lols". Graeme Garden is probly the funniest one in the show, now I'm an adult. There are rumours that the Beeb still hold a grudge against them for fucking off to ITV, hence no repeats on Dave etc.

nb I don't really believe that, sure it's some rights argument

The way some children are frightened of clowns, I was scared shitless of Benny Hill. Probably still am.

― boots get knocked from here to czechoslovakier (milo z), Tuesday, 18 January 2011 14:54 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is a perfectly logical response. With me it was Wurzel Gummage.

They never show the Lenny Henry sitcom where he played Delbert Wilkins either.

The Young Ones seems like the height of human artistic achievement when you are twelve. As an adult it still raises quite a few chuckles but has more value as an interesting snapshot of its time. I'm not trying to belittle though, I still have a lot of affection for it. Big influence on Trey Stone and Matt Parker apparently.

I remember being completely obsessed with Yes, Minister during the 3 months they showed it on the Twin Cities PBS channel.

― Indolence Mission (DJP), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 7:58 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yes, (Prime) Minister is glorious.

Saw Bill Oddie on a bus to Hull one time

I've seen him around a few times, he lives down the road. Always looks utterly miserable.

orrite some facts for you milo, you disgusting savage:

- Blackadder is ace
- The Goodies is brilliant and fun and thoroughly enjoyable and has not lost an ounce of quality over the decades
- I have never seen Ever Decreasing Circles but bloody will now having read this thread

The Young Ones seems like the height of human artistic achievement when you are twelve.

I watched the first season on VHS (all the local video store had) quite often at 14/15, and I loved the hell out of it - as an adult (more or less) I've never been tempted to seek out the later seasons.

I saw half an episode of Ever Decreasing Circles this morning while I was eating my breakfast, first time I've seen it for ages. Noodle Vague OTM upthread about the spree-shooting thing. It's way bleak.

we all thought we were fucking clever for discovering these instead of Home Improvement or whatever late '80s sitcoms were hot.

Home Improvement was early nineties, broh. Show a little respect.

my dad was really into most of these. also The Thin Blue Line

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

two words: miranda fucking richardson

Loads of Goodies episodes were re-run over christmas on BBC2.

It *has* dated in places, mostly in the 'lol gays/foreigners' dept, but apart from that...

xpost I didn't know Miranda even knew Richardson.

also The Thin Blue Line

ugh, completely forgot about that disaster. See what happens when you let Ben Elton out on his own? See what happens?

xp yeah, a few of the woman/gay/race gags have definitely dated but on the whole it's as tight and imaginative as anything going today.

kinda feel milo on blackadder. Every now and then it's glorious, but more often it's just a collection of smugness strug together with too-long ben elton clunkers.

Support characters like richardson (all-time fwiw) fry, percy and hell even rik mayall that once or twice elevate it, tbf.

Reggie perrin towers over the british (or any other country's) sitcom stable. Yes ministers too repetitive but still amazing. Steptoe and son has the performances

I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really hope you're talking about the Leonard Rossiter version.

Actually, I saw MClunes' more recent episodes, and they aren't that bad now.

Still not up to the Rossiter ones, but they are actually different (you do get the impression that this is a person having an internal crisis as opposed to "going off for some fun time")

Or maybe I understand it more now.

Anyway, yeah it's better than the first few.

i was talkin bout the proposed ben stiller US version?

(*)
|X|

i really liked keeping up appearances when i was a kid!

hard to think of a less sympathisable post-70s sitcom character than hyacinth bucket. apart from racist alf garnett, who else?

UK sitcoms? Everybody in everything Carla Lane's done for a start.

yeah not seeing that

Hyacinth isn't maybe sympathetic but I don't hate her. She's a Harold Steptoe-ish figure in many ways, struck with her vision of what life should be like but endlessly pwned by the reality she's lumbered with. But that desperation for order and sense of being the underdog makes her more sympathetic to me than say any of the main dudes in Friends.

But to return to Carla Lane, Hyacinth Bucket is less hateful than the crass stereotypes that clump thru Bread for example.

the Bread characters were all too different from each other to really be stereotypes (crass by default?) in a particularly negative way

struck with her vision of what life should be like but endlessly pwned by the reality she's lumbered with

and this is applies to most british sitcom lead characters i'd say

hard to think of a less sympathisable post-70s sitcom character than hyacinth bucket.

Was always rooting for Mr Bean to go under a bus fwiw.

"hard to think of a less sympathisable post-70s sitcom character than hyacinth bucket. apart from racist alf garnett, who else?"

Cue Rik from The Young Ones and just about everybody on Men Behaving Badly, for a kick-off.

maybe stereotypes isn't quite the word, but one-note catchphrases anyway.

The Office's Finchy is less sympathetic than HB anyway

xp yeah I guess that's what I'm saying, she's in a classic tradition of sitcom protagonists and that mitigates what a horrendous person she'd be irl

xxxxp how about the stereotype that "everyone in Liverpool is a dole cheat"?

i didn't watch KUA enough but the impression i got is that they weren't really making attempts to portray Bucket as someone you should be rooting for.

re Finchy i should've specified main character sorry

how about the stereotype that "everyone in Liverpool is a dole cheat"?

don't think that's what Liverpool-born Lane was aiming for or really demonstrating in practice.

"Grandad and the Boswells swapped houses so each could charge the other rent and then claim it back from the DHSS"

Thatcher govt though so it was ok to cheat them.

Today the Boswells would be MPs.

No I don't think the audience is invited to root for Hyacinth but in the end I think she's kinda sad rather than monstrous. Every ep seems to end up with the equivalent of that cartoon bear who drums his fingers and gives and exasperated sigh after being repeatedly pwned for the duration

(incidentally that bear is awesome I am gonna google his name now)

Thatcher govt though so it was ok to cheat them

damned if they do...(doh don't de doh)

guess my point was not 'who do we hate the most in sitcoms' but getting the sense of the writers hating their own character too much (surely not the case ever really but giving that impression all the same)

think it's Papa Bear or Henry

Dunno if Roy Clarke much cares for Hyacinth Bucket or Arkwright out of Open All Hours. Really hope Simon Nye hates those two halfwits in Men Behaving Badly.

"Who is the most halfwitted character on MBB' could almost be a poll on its own.

especially if you factor in the Harry Enfield character from the 1st series who if anything was even more jaysus

I dunno, I was always on the halfwits' side in MBB to some extent.

Clunes was okay tbh, it was just the Neil Morrissey character that made me stabby.

I don't think his character was necessarily written to be more sympathetic, but he's a far better actor.

Clunes, that is.

probably, he seems to have got a lot more leading roles than NM over the years.

wonder if he auditioned for Kryten

probably. Gary as a character is supposed to be oafish and selfish and lazy and etc and that is bad, obv, but Tony was this whining boychild who shdn't have been allowed to live outside of an institution

"especially if you factor in the Harry Enfield character from the 1st series who if anything was even more jaysus"

Not quite as tediously, nauseatingly socially backward as Neil Morrissey, though.

I remember some social critic type with too much disposable time and income calling MBB 'the male's revenge for Ab Fab' - which sounded like exactly the sort of thing Gary might say.

(Not that I can swear on a thousand Bibles that I never became thorughly jack of Pats and Eddie, or dreamt of any future future ep where Saffy set about one or both of them with a house-brick....)

Saffy was a pain in the arse herself in a very different way though.

actually yeah Eddie is surely a worse case than Bucket in the no sympathy stakes (but funnier at the same time)

also Richie and Eddie in Bottom, but that's less of an issue in a more surreal and aggressive show going out at a later time

Brittas - worse than a million Buckets

also the Richard Briers character in Ever Decreasing Circles as aforementioned

Or indeed Rimmer. But he had (initially) nice guy Lister to balance him out.

does Renwick really like Victor Meldrew? I don't think he treats him as a hero the way the Daily Mail does.

Arnie cf Harvey (WFG)?

(That's Arnie B of course)

Alan B'Stard for the most dislikable character that the writers clearly loved.

Richie Rich from 'Filthy, Rich & Catflap'?

Well Blackadder was a lovable shit as well. B'Stard was basically present day Blackadder, right? Piers = Baldrick, Thatch = Queenie.

Blackadder was only perpetrating that shit on my ancestors. B'Stard was in the here and now fucking me over.

especially if you factor in the Harry Enfield character from the 1st series who if anything was even more jaysus

I always wondered how HEnfield ever got work after that.

But, one day, an *insider* told me he was always only going to be in the first series, it was a cunning plan to get the programme green-lighted.

You're not meant to sympathise with or root for most of these characters, you're meant to laugh at their misfortune, that's kind of the point. No one rooted for Basil Fawlty.

I dunno, part of the reason that Fawlty was funny was that you could sympathise with his frustrations, even as you cringed at his monstrousness.

Certainly rooted for Basil over Sybil.

You could kind of sympathise with Basil because he was such a fish out of water and Sybil could be such a bloody pain. And I well and truly rooted for Basil in his encounters with Mrs Richards ('wildebeest sweeping majestically over the plain', 'is this a part of your brain' etc, and Hutchison, and the family with the spoilt brat. But Sybil got more 'moral support' more of the time - eg the ep with the shonky builders.

I suppose if I knew a bit more back-story about how the hell the Fawltys got to be running a hotel in the first place, I ight have a different view.

Polly is the only outright audience identification character. Also she aroused strange new feelings in an eleven year-old boy.

hard to think of a less sympathisable post-70s sitcom character than hyacinth bucket.

Was always rooting for Mr Bean to go under a bus fwiw.

― seminal fuiud (NickB), Wednesday, 19 January 2011 12:13 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM.

I like Hyacinth more than her sister tbh! That might just be the actresses though.

Yeah, Polly accounted fot well over 50% of the accumulated workable brain cell count of the entire cast. And didn't Cleese write his bits and Connie Booth basically the rest?

Oh God....Mr Bean - Don't. Get. Me. Started.

- The Goodies is brilliant and fun and thoroughly enjoyable and has not lost an ounce of quality over the decades

Having watched some of these over Xmas, I can assure that it lost considerably more than an oz - a cwt is more like it

Porridge is the best of these by a considerable margin, I watched a couple of episodes over Christmas and they still consistently made me laugh.

I know Minder wasn't really a comedy, at least not a conventional one, but I never could work out exactly why Terry stuck with such a blustering clot as Arthur - and for mine the more memorable eps were the ones (mainly later) where Arfur was allowed to use his brains and do things right.

Re the Goodies: Loved it as a kid. When they did an all-day special I filled a VCR tape with 10 hours worth and gave it to my sister, who was even bigger on them than me. She found them seriously dated but her kids, who are 30 years too young and on the wrong side of the world to get all the 'in jokes', thought they were marvellous.

oh yeah porridge is good!

"One Foot in the Grave" never made it to PBS?

No one's really repping for Dad's Army yet. I've never seen an episode that hasn't made me consistently laugh. My favourite is the one where they have to dress up as Nazis for some kind of propaganda film and Pike gets a bit to much into the spirit of the thing.

Do they show Rising Damp on PBS?

cosign both of those too

I doubt Dad's Army or Rising Damp ever made it across the Atlantic. Not sure why some UK shows ended up being shown in the US (and vice versa, to some extent) and some didn't - seems to have little to do with quality or popularity.

... money I suppose

Rising Damp in particular seems to be the perfect sitcom for ILX.

"Rising Damp" - can you imagine trying to sell that one to US TV executives in the 70s (or any other time)?

... you wouldn't even get past the title!

Porridge was consistently good, Dad's Army dates in someways but worked (and works) because the characrers and the group dynamics are so recognisable (a bit like The Office).

Was Rising Damp the one with two young blokes called Alan and Phillip and a landlord called Rigby or something like that? One of them may have been played by the bloke who plays 'Jonathan Creek'.

Yes, but it was Godber from Porridge in 'a bloke who plays 'Jonathan Creek'' wig. The bloke who plays 'Jonathan Creek' would have been about 10 at the time!

That's Rising Damp, but Alan Davies definitely wasn't in it. I think he would've been about five.

ha xpost

You're not meant to sympathise with or root for most of these characters, you're meant to laugh at their misfortune, that's kind of the point.

don't think there is a 'meant to' here but i think traditionally uk comedy writers wanted to create characters people could relate to/sympathise with in their situations as much as subject their characters to discomfort and ridicule and expose their flaws in turn. if it was all just laughing at their misfortune then why go to any great effort wrt character depth?

what interests me is the slight shift away from that in tandem with the shift away from audience laughter. removing the laugh track removed these other pre-conceptions resulting in darker comedy and darker characters becoming more 'acceptable' (would say LoG led the way here but the example really sticking in my mind is Nighty Night - a step on from Partridge and Brent who are more in the Fawlty tradition).

For "darker" read "not as funny"

Yeah - I'm not sold on 'black comedy' and whenever I hear the word 'edgy' used to describe a comedy I straight away think of 'The Emperor's New Clothes', like if I don't find this stuff absolutely damn hilarious it's my own fault for not being cool enough.

I love black comedy but I don't think the modern edgy shocks genre really grasped what it means, i.e. not "laughing at stuff that is sick" but "laughing thru tears at the absurd".

Best British comedy sitcoms of all time:

Dad's Army
'Allo 'Allo
I'm Alan Partridge
The Thick of It
Porridge

Still absolutely essential:

Ab Fab
Nathan Barley
Jeeves & Wooster
Open All Hours
Red Dwarf
Spaced
Father Ted

If you picked the best episodes and forgot the rest, it'd be a classy joint imo:
Everything Victoria Wood or Dawn French has ever done
Black Books
Black Adder
Bottom/Young Ones

Dad's Army, Porridge, 'Til Death, Steptoe and both incarnations of The Likely Lads are my solid mainstream classics. Only the first 2 or 3 series of Only Fools and most of One Foot in the Grave have been great mainstream sitcoms in the modern era.

I may be alone here, but I enjoy Last of the Summer Wine. I've been made fun of before for this.

Do you like the post Compo's death ones?

It really isn't a terrible show, dialogue-wise. It's the slapstick that sucks.

I love OFaH. Is that bad?

I think Only Fools probly went on 10 years too long? Pretty much sucks once Del and Rodders get life partners.

Yeah, I haven't seen most of it so that's prob why I still like it.

Only Fools & Horses was great at first and as funny as most of those imo, but boy was it ever painful to watch its long, slow death. xps

nah, only fools and horses is straight furnace. its only when you get into dull dad joke 100 greatest sitcom moments type situations discussing trigger falling through the bar is it bad.*

*not because canon discussions suck but because ofah was funnier in the little off hand parts than trigger falling through the bar, the wrong chandelier, the batman and robin costumes etc.

also the best character (grandad) dying was the biggest problem, which isn't their fault.

Selfish bastard.

straight furnace

I'm assuming this is young person's slang for 'jolly good'.

NV, I think I get that sick/absurd distinction - LOG and most of Little Britain fall into your first category, and The Office the second?

Allo Allo is like somebody said upthread, catchphrase comedy. Worked fine for Get Smart in 1968 but 20 years later, someone forgot to beware The Law of Diminishing Returns.

Christ I didn't know Robbie Williams had written a tribute song to Richard Beckinsale.

Do many recent sitcoms have much of the old class-aspiration-angst?

we live in a classless society now so no

Peep Show Mark, sort of. But he has angst about absolutely everything.

I remember watching Chef at age 12 or so, and the lead guy (the chef!) freaking out when someone salted his food. I thought, "People are crazy in England" when I should have been thinking, "Chefs are particular about how their food is treated."

xxxxpost

yeah Fred on those lines, tho I think LoG is horror movie fanboy stuff rather than really trying to be edgy, and Little Britain is The Fast Show with pomo racism. But The Office is more like black comedy shd be - it can be understated and doesn't need to get controversial, but the humour is in the fuckedness of the world it depicts which we recognise as a version of the world we live in. Steptoe is dark but not black comedy cos the humour arises out of jokes/funny stuff happening. Alan Partridge isn't black humour cos he's a cartoon, albeit a v. funny cartoon.

trigger falling through the bar

this is a deliberate mistake right?

Pretty much sucks once Del and Rodders get life partners.

this is the common complaint about later OFAH but the reasoning is curious - almost like a 'happiness ruins comedy' thing.

Likely Lads - good mention. Also liked its female version, The Liver Birds. Esp Neris Hughes but maybe not strictly for the comedy.

Loved the concept of The Vicar of Dibley but got progressively more irritated by Dawn French writing all the good lines for herself, and the 'romance' between the lame-brained verger and the lame-brained parish heavy's lame-brained son was the absolute dregs of the genre.

I liked the Compo/Clegg/Blaney early days of LOTSW very much - the set as much a star as any of the actors.

xp it's a frustratingly lazy dimissal too. Raquel is in the episode where Jim Broadbent's Slater returns and that's a better ep than many of the Grandad ones.

it might be coincidental with OFaH but I don't think it's happiness that ruins comedy - tho it rarely helps? - so much as Del and Rodney being funny because they are naughty boys. When they get wives they grow up and a cosy domesticity creeps in. You can write a funny show about cosy domesticity but mostly from the view of satirising it. Simpsons and Roseanne are maybe two examples of shows where domesticity is complex and adds to the comedy without over-sentimentalising it.

also maybe it's to do with bringing in 2 central characters who aren't given funny lines very often

NV they are fundamentally family-orientated shows tho. when Roseanne eventually changed that dynamic it was pretty catastrophic. but at the same time the refusal of The Simpsons to really change that dynamic for so long is a big part of what killed it for me. you can't just keep setting things up like that for so long even in an animated show.

point is i don't think OFAH changing to accommodate long-term love interests was a fundamental error, tho it may have contributed to the show's decline (but it had already run a long time by then).

I'm actually mostly familiar with the post-Compo LOTSW, as that's the era they seem to show most when I catch it on. I only just recently saw one of the earlier ones and was a little taken aback. Clegg seemed so young!

It's all about "I Didn't Know You Cared" (young) folks

xxpost

yeah I did say that the decline coincided with the life partners, I wouldn't say it was totally because of it. Are Cassandra and Raquel funny tho? Or good straight women? I'm not sure they're well used or developed.

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is a great example of taking rogue males, introducing them to the domestic to advance the story, and being dead funny with it.

xpost

I've blathered elsewhere about my love for I Didn't Know You Cared but I am a total stan for Tinniswood.

Or good straight women?

They're not very actresses, esp. Raquel

... not as bad at acting as Uncle Albert, but who is?

I'm not sure they're well used or developed.

agreed, altho Raquel had her moments (mostly just sarcastic quips at Del but still).

Albert gets good lines tho.

Yeah I can remember Raquel zinging Del, but I've got nothing with Cassandra, she's like a prop.

never got the sense that Tessa Peake-Jones and Buster Merryfield were particularly bad actors at all

it's weird cos iirc when Sullivan did Just Good Friends the Jan Francis character was really well-written?

or Wolfie's girlfriend's mum in Citizen Smith. He can write funny parts for women.

Right, time to remember Hywell Bennett's "Shelley"

and everyone else goes uh?

I don't know what they used to teach at RADA in Raquel's day but portraying working class women was obv. not on the curriculum

never got the sense that Tessa Peake-Jones and Buster Merryfield were particularly bad actors at all

Speechless!

xps jan francis/penny dual lead character tho so more scope and room to develop her

Sullivan also did Sitting Pretty with a lead woman but never watched this

xxxp no, not 'uh?'! I was thinking about Shelley the the other day (prompted by that Loveable Loser thread). Trying to remember what exactly it was like, and whether something like it might do well again now - (pseudo-)Intellectual laybout doleite loser glumness, right?

Being on the dole = scumbag, these days tho

xpost - lol i must have misremembered it. trigger is the one looking around for were del went, my bad.

Speechless!

sounds more like you just didn't like their (entirely believable) characters for whatever reason.

I was too young to stay up for Shelley and don't think I'd've got it anyway. Looking back, it was a bit literate for an ITV show wasn't it? Look Back in Anger played for chuckles? (NB the Richard Burton movie of LBiA is all chuckles tbh) Wd probly like to check out Shelley at some point, anyway.

But not before I get a Selwyn Froggit boxed set.

never got the sense that Tessa Peake-Jones and (her that played Cassandra) were particularly bad actors at all

I've seen them in other things, Her that played Cassandra was in "Frost" (her first line was "we meet again!" a ha ha lol..) and she was pretty good. So, either her character was meant to be flat and dull, or she can't do comedy. Tessa's character was meant to be a posho that had fallen, if I recall...

Was Shelley dislikeable or admirable? Can't remember & was too small to properly understand it, or see it often. Was there a 'we all know one' appeal to him & citizen smith? Guess that wouldn't play as well now.

So there goes my sitcom about a Zizek-spouting revolutionary postgrad living in Penge.

Marlene >>>>>>>>>>>> Raquel >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Cassandra

sounds more like you just didn't like their (entirely believable) characters for whatever reason.

Nah, that old guy *mugs furiously* couldn't act his way of a *juts chin out several times* paper bag

Citizen Smith was totally played for laughs, his Marxism undermined by venality, laziness and stupidness. Shelley I think was more antiheroic.

My irritation with Uncle Albert adnittedly has much to do with him being such a poor replacement for the Grandad, who was great and terribly camp

Marlene was probably the best actress in OFAH but didn't really have to do much.

scratch what i said earlier about Compo. Character confusion.

But not before I get a Selwyn Froggit boxed set.

OK, that's you. And me. Selling two copies is not really economically viable tho, I fear.

Looking back, it was a bit literate for an ITV show wasn't it?

Was it in that Agony Sunday slot? Maybe they'd run the slightly adult-themed stuff there?

i think ingrained parental snobbery aside, the fact is that ITV didn't hate writers and put out some good programming in the 70s and 80s too

Yah true, strange to think there was a plater-rosenthal era of itv now Downton fucking Abbey is treated as miracle of old-fashioned telly on their part.

(sry for off-topic old man grumbling.)

Is that Jim or Jack Rosenthal there?

My irritation with Uncle Albert adnittedly has much to do with him being such a poor replacement for the Grandad, who was great and terribly camp

Didn't Grandad go on to play the older Salieri in Amadeus?

What are people's thoughts on Rab C. Nesbitt?

"One Foot in the Grave" never made it to PBS?

It was on PBS in my town, and apartantly it also got to the right people in the U.S., because there was a American version w/Bill Cosby.

NV & Dada, you do know Selwyn Frogitt actually is out on DVD, yes? Network even have it in stock for cheap.

:D last time I looked there was only a bits and pieces DVD. roll on pay day.

Fuck me how did Curry and Chips get a DVD release?

Ah well, no Come Back, Mrs Noah, no credibility.

huge clamour for it after everyone got out of the pub xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd_Vjq5MEeQ

warning: mind-bogglingly rong on most conceivable levels

Re gay humour in The Goodies &c.:

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2011/01/19/12578/carry_on_camping

Camp comedy is dying because gay culture has been accepted into the mainstream.

The ‘tiresome’ reliance on arch irony and shrill double entendres also meant that the theatrically ostentatious style was in danger of being in an artistic cul-de-sac, a panel of experts suggested.

eternal faves:
Blackadder
Young Ones
Goodies

Watched with me Dad and loved
Fawlty towers
Porridge
Open All Hours
Only Fools and Horses
Minder

When I was little I thought Ronnie Barker was the funniest dude around, lol

no mention of Dear John yet? John 'Only Fools And Horses' Sullivan's other amazing sitcom. just released on DVD after years of people campaigning:
http://content9.flixster.com/question/66/66/21/6666211_std.jpg
Kirk St Moritz: one of the grestest, saddest comedy creations of all time imo.

Rodney getting married and moving out of the flat in the '89 series was what did for Only Fools.. there was 1 or 2 bright spots after that (Margate xmas special)
but as soon as it became about miscarriages and domestio rows oyyyyyy.

Wow, I didn't realize that "Dear John" started over there. We had it on NBC w/Judd Hirsch.

What are people's thoughts on Rab C. Nesbitt?

Used to be great, got quite bad towards the end (the first time round), should never have been brought back. Same trajectory as OFAH, really.

Was wondering how the stereotyping went down in Scotland?

i remember the theme tune to the US dear john, but nothing more about either version

Was wondering how the stereotyping went down in Scotland?

Mostly OK, I think. I certainly saw it as affectionate rather than cruel, the crux being that Rab was intelligent, if not educated. Where it went wrong in later years, much in the same way that Caroline Aherne did with the Royle Family, is that it stopped caring about the details in its characters and just started painting in broad crude strokes.

Hmm, I thought what Caroline Aherne did was to make her character less sympathetic/more selfish.

A bit like neil from the Young ones, second series.

I haven't seen the most recent Royle Family, but the last couple of Christmas episodes seem to be playing up the lazy/dull/stupid characteristics and forgetting about any actual depth of characterisation. Which was my main complaint with the new Rab C as well (I only watched two of them, right enough...). I like my sitcom characters to be credible, if not likeable. And it's worse when they used to be and now they aren't.

tbf i know loads of real ppl that go that way in terms of character progression

Tru dat.

Bill Oddie was/is a big funk fan. There's an article somewhere in which he talks about the sound he was trying to achieve on "Funky Gibbon". He mentions Sly Stone & On The Corner.
Used to be seen at Prince gigs in the 80s.

Bill Oddie:
You won't believe the musical pretensions that went on in my head. I listened to a lot of jazz and a lot of funk, and that period of the '70s for me was fantastic - it was really the era when fusion started. The people I liked were Sly Stone and early Parliament, and I listened to what was happening in jazz at the time, when Miles Davis was coming up with some very interesting hybrid music. With 'Funky Gibbon', I started off - it's almost unbelievable considering how stupid the song is - trying to get the feel of a Miles Davis track, I can't remember which, probably just after Bitches Brew and that sort of era: some really choppy Miles Davis-type rhythm, again with a Sly Stone influence.
We had marvellous musicians on those sessions, but they couldn't get it. They knew what I was sort of trying to do, but I probably listened to that sort of thing more than they did, and it was driving us nuts, so we sent the drummer and the bass-player and the guitarist home. And I had a keyboard player called Dave Macrae, who'd played with Matching Mole and Robert Wyatt and people like that - governor player - and he started playing some clavinet, very Stevie Wonder-type feel to it, and I said, 'That's fine; could you do a synth-bass on it?'
And then I literally started whacking the top of the grand piano. So the actual rhythm-track of 'The Funky Gibbon' has only got me and Dave on it - he plays clavinet and synth-bass and we miked up the top of the piano. Then we got the horn section of Gonzales playing a Memphis Horns-type thing. It was lovely for me to be able to use musicians I liked and try to reproduce sounds which I also listened to. And then put the stupid song over the top of it. The idea that all that effort went into 'The Funky Gibbon'!
It sounds like Parliament on a bad day, or something like that (laughs), that kind of thing. I think subconsciously people feel it - this was always my theory about it, I thought: I want the music to sound good or authentic, whatever style it happens to be in.