Sitcom Hell

- peep show
- the office
- black books
- spaced
- fucking my family

do not conform to this.

Counter examples can be found just as easily as your examples. David Brent, Alan Patridge, as I see it, are classic examples of people making a pigs ear of a good situation - they are in good honest middle management/public eye positions are and shite at it, which is not in the same mould as a Steptoe/Norman Stanley Fletcher at all.

Similarly, Earl Hickey, Roseanne & Dan Conner (pre lottery-winning shark jump), are good honest decent hard-working folks who are making the best of a bad situation.

(xpost)

do not conform to this.

actually i think Black Books and Spaced kind of do.

*I quite like it, but then I don't "get" comedy.

xxxpost
didn't mean to diss cloth-capped Yorkshire coalminers, just trying to down-play the "class" card since characters in Men Behaving Badly aren't exactly lower-class, but they still represent a kind of grottiness which you just don't get on US TV. Similarly, shite like Hollyoaks just goes to show what happens if you try and sheen-up British TV in the same way American TV does - we just can't do it.

same as Brent and Partridge - how the British love to see the mighty fall, whereas someone like the good Dr Crane or Larry David is lauded and admired. Either that or they get put into embarassing situations which spiral out of control, in which case we are expected to sympathise.

^^ dude youre embarrassing yourself with the not-getting-it here

(xpost, Friends, Rachel was a waitress, Joey a *failed* actor, Phoebe a coffee-shop singer/masseuse. Hardly the high-fliers, eh?)

Green Wing - haven't really seen properly but it's really a sketch show and was set in a hospital in which case it's out of this domain. That said, compare it to something like Scrubs.

Two Pints Of Lager - barely classifies as a comedy, but this bunch of chavs aren't particularly aspirational are they?

Green Green Grass - what is this? Is it good?

(and wrt Friends, they must have been pretty well-paid waitresses to keep them in ornate wooden dogs, comfy chairs and hair straighteners, non? the concept of money is so swept under the rug in this show, you'd think they all lived in some kind of Marxist paradise).

-- and what (an...), May 30th, 2006 5:11 PM. (ooo)

The viewer is supposed to, at the end of the day, on the protagonist's side, no matter what kind of an arsehole he is being that day. You're not supposed to be so forgiving with characters like Brent or Partridge.

I'm trying to think of American comedies where the lead character isn't portrayed as 'hero' and one to aspire to sympathise with or aspire to in some way.* Even when Homer is being a jerk (99% of the time) they'll have him do a little speech that wins everyone around him over, and all is forgiven. Presumably people really do love Raymond at the end of the day too. In the case of The Office, the US stick fairly well to the original by maintaining Tim as the 'hero'.

*I never saw Sanford & Son but if it was that much like Steptoe then I guess it might be a good example?

Eh...but what about the end of The Office, when we DO start to feel sorry for Brent, and glad that he gets himself a date at the end?

After two serieses and a Christmas Special, sure. We are happy because he's straightened himself out and there's hope that he will one day become a humbler, better person than the tyrannous faux-empowered assclown that he was.

Me neither. I'd like to see it actually.

No, it isn't. It's a sitcom. Therefore firmly in this domain. Are we just comparing to Scrubs because it's in a hospital? Let's compare Cheers to Early Doors or Time Gentlemen Please while we're at it, shall we?

Nighty Night - blackly black comedy. No likeable characters, really.

Green Green Grass - Boycie and Marlene leave Peckham to join the landed gentry. Hilarity does not ensure.

TPOLAAPOC - still fits the Friends model more than your definition of the Brit model, bunch of friends hang out, do stuff, play it for laughs. Not aspirational, no, but not exactly hoho let's mock the poor and afflicted either (I've only seen it a couple of times, mind, but it seems to be written from a point of affection, not mocking)

Point being, all British sitcoms cannot be posted into your convenient little Britcom pigeonhole.

Steve, no-one aspires to be CYE's Larry David, do they?

To add, we have seen Brent be broken and then built back up again but only because he had to fail to get there. With Roseanne we are pleased because she won the lottery (or whatever) and can now afford to live like all the other normal sitcom characters.

No, it isn't. It's a sitcom. Therefore firmly in this domain. Are we just comparing to Scrubs because it's in a hospital? Let's compare Cheers to Early Doors or Time Gentlemen Please while we're at it, shall we?

Go on then, same rules apply. Cheers did come before the pre-mid 90s Friends boom though. And as we said before, Cheers has a pretty diverse range of urbanites drinking there whereas Time Gentlemen Please and Early Doors are the epitome of what I've been talking about.

Green Green Grass - Boycie and Marlene leave Peckham to join the landed gentry. Hilarity does not ensure.

I have seen this and it was genuinely the worst thing I've ever seen on TV in my life.

TPOLAAPOC - still fits the Friends model more than your definition of the Brit model, bunch of friends hang out, do stuff, play it for laughs. Not aspirational, no, but not exactly hoho let's mock the poor and afflicted either (I've only seen it a couple of times, mind, but it seems to be written from a point of affection, not mocking)

Fair enough. What's interesting though is that the first series of this was written by a 19 year old girl who would have grown up with things like Friends. Later serieses are pooled, just like US sitcoms.

Green Wing is two thirds sitcom and one third sketchshow.

How on Earth is Frasier more of a cock than Brent?? His pompousness is the only bugbear surely?

I thought everyone was outraged and bitterly disappointed when she won the lottery? As again it seemed a betrayal of the show's 'ethos'? Although the show had already started to suck before that point...

Most recently, My Name is Earl. Also: Malcom in the Middle, where being poor was the damn centerpiece of the show. And Arrested Development, while not wildly successful, did feature main characters you were intended to not be sympathetic towards--the ONLY sympathetic character was George Michael, the son of the supposed "hero."

I remember the episode where the Dad buys a PORSCHE.

No way, I totally liked and sympathised with the main character.

Careful now, saying things like this apparently means you "don't get comedy" according to fans of the show. Agree with you here, but I think the general view of CYE is that it sticks to Stevem's description of "everyone else is dumb except me". Poor Larry David with all his money and success, he's just misunderstood. Imagine recasting his character as some top British TV exec - guffaws ensue? Perhaps not unless he is turned into a fat bungling fuckwit who twats up every job he does by being a genuine plonker.

Malcolm In The Middle is NOT supposed to be poor what the frig man!

-- Konal Doddz (stevem7...), May 30th, 2006 12:42 PM. (blueski) (later) (link)

Um, is that the only episode you watched? 'Cause the poor thing is pretty obvious. The mom works in a Rite-Aid clone, for Chrissakes.

And Michael was better than the rest of his family, but not by much. He was still stubborn and fairly arrogant and a pretty bad father.

Have you ever WATCHED the show? WTF

Um didn't you say upthread you've never watched Arrested Development?