Old TV situation comedies from Great Britain. It is not that all Americans like them all, but, like Carl Davis' score for Pride and Prejudice, they are on the whole much more fun than our own. We won't even speak of America's addiction to Are You Being Served?, but if I started watching very old episodes of Last of the Summer Wine as well, it was because Frank Thornton was in it, and when I gave Doc Martin a try it was because we had just been deprived of the second run-through of Waiting for God, and here Stephanie Cole was again; Cornwall is pretty, too, but I don't know whether I can face much of this one. Differently, I often find that Patricia Routledge in Keeping Up Appearances is so close to the bone that I can't quite bear it (another with her wasn't so good, where she was supposed to be a detective). I just saw on the second band of our PBS a later episode of Last of the Summer Wine; it is interesting to see them try to update the streets nnd interiors a little, but even this one was more than 10 years old. I just read that they are ending the series after 30 years. Odd, how we like UK better than our own. Ours, though, have no 'edge' at all, unless of outright ugliness, and even some of the English ones have tended to ride the topics of the day. That MI5 thing is awful, and I don't like Hellen Mirren on TV at all.
Oh, well.
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The British comedies you mention are, with due respect, rather corny and old-fashioned. The dividing line for most in comedy are the new wave of comedians capable of social critique, starting with Monty Python and other 'alternative' comedians, a reaction against the sexist and racist vulgar humour such as 'Are you being served?' with its dreadful politically incorrect innuendo's about gays and race.
ReplyDeleteThe film 'A Fish called Wanda' highlighted the differences between American and British humour but it is also a generational thing.
The biggest joke of American born Terry Gilliam, a London resident of 40 years, was to keep on asking for more and more money to finance his film 'The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen' which of course the gullible Hollywood moguls kept on giving. The result, the most expensive film ever made!
Much humour these days seems to be cruel and sick laughing at others plight and misfortune, a far cry from the innocent if politically incorrect humour of establishment comedy.
"Due rrespect"? What if corniness has a raison d'être? I don't know. I think all laughter is at ourselves, basically. Oddly enough, though I've seen the Monty Python things, I never found them fun or funny. I don't know why. The reason I don't relaly like Doc Martin is that it seems compelled to address some current "issue" in every episode. Last niight, writing, as I said, in passing, I couldin't remeember the name of the one Judy Dench starred in, and perhaps Mapp and Lucia, which I love, and Jeeves, which I love, aren't exactly sitcoms, in the regular sense of the word. Actually, neither, quite is Mony Python; I guess I watfched it as Art Comedy.
ReplyDeleteWhat about Rumpole? I loved those. Oh, well. I was just thinking last night that only to write about my best aspirations and beliefs was not quite honest. So, having finished reading my mail I just wrote the first thing that came to mind, as a consequence, among 100 channels trying to find something that wasn't just crime or politics, as I wasn't sleepy, and I'd read about a hundred pages, so my eye muscles for close work were tired.
P.S. Please pardon typo, including a couple of missing commas.
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