US Comedy question

[Timmoru Suzuki]

The problem with Arrested Development is that you probably have to watch it from the start to "get it" as much as anything. Grabbing a couple of episodes here and there doesn't necessarily work as it is quite self-referential, so a lot of the jokes are built upon stuff that has happened in other episodes.

[Guest mAXi]

Aye, Two and a Half Men.

I have watched it a couple of times, i enjoy it from time to time but it's nothing special. Theres 2 new sitcoms im really enjoying right now. One of them being Twenty Good Years.

Im wondering, does anyone else love this show ? I haven't seen anyone talking about the show, am i the only one watching it and... should i be ashamed of it ?

[GhostMachine]

Everybody Loves Raymond is one of the most overrated shows, comedy or otherwise, of all time. All it had going for it was Brad Garrett.

Sad to say, I don't watch many comedies nowadays - haven't since Friends ended, and I don't watch tv nearly as much as I used to...say....a couple years ago.

I wish the Public Television station here would pick up some better British comedies; I liked Keeping Up Appearances (Hyacinth > you), As Time Goes By (although it was boring at times), Waiting For God, Fawlty Towers and Vicar of Dibly, but the other stuff they have shown has been either so-so or crap (`Allo, `Allo, Last Of The Summer Wine, Are You Being Served, etc).

And the Drew Carey show *was* good, but lost something once whatshername left.

[Guest tiarnantman]

ABC1 is one of the only TV channels I watch, although, I agree, some of stuff on it is total garbage, mainly these two...

Hope & Faith?

Rodney has some good episodes, but the rest are crap.

Less Than Perfect is good as often as it's bad, so it barely passes.

8 Simple Rules Season 1 just came on DVD, and I ordered my copy on Amazon. Can't wait!

I still loved it post-Ritter, but it was never nearly as good.

Home Improvement has always been awesome, my current second favourite.

It's a shame Mad About You was cancelled, it was catching up with 8SR as my favourite.

[Big Red Fury]

The Office and Extras are the best. Scrubs is the only American show I really like at the moment. Two programmes that have gone unmentioned are Teachers and Shameless, which are both quality. Of course, all sitcoms suck in comparison to South Park.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Yes, you are.

[Dingle]

Yeah, the cartoons rock. The movie though, thumbs down.

[ACCBiggz]

No he's not. It's horrible.

[MalaCloudy Black]

So, do you guys like, wanna tell us why you think that or is "OMG it sucks" the extent of it?

Edited August 9, 2007 by Clearly Cloudy

[ACCBiggz]

Outside of it's not funny there isn't much else to tell, and I was just answering the statement that he wasn't the only one who doesn't like it.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

I never got into South Park (and I did try), but I can easily see why so many other people love it the way they do. It's not bad, it's probably really good, it's just not my cup of tea.

[Rashid]

I don't watch many sitcoms. I occasionally watch 'Everybody Loves Raymond'. It's half decent, just not that funny.

My favorites are Seinfeld, Friends, Roseanne, and Drew Carey Show (even though the later two go downhill in the final seasons).

The final season or two of Drew Carey pissed me off. Drew should have ended up with Kate. That always annoyed me. And I hate the new one they brought it, Kelly.

Roseanne was sheer excellence from Seasons 3-7. The final season was crap, though in my opinion the series finale made up for it. Gotta love the "What The Fuck" ending.

For recent comedy shows, I occasionally watch My Name Is Earl and The Office. They're both enjoyable.

[GoGo Yubari]

So, do you guys like, wanna tell us why you think that or is "OMG it sucks" the extent of it?

Well, not that I'm speaking for... whoever it was who said they didn't like it, but I personally stopped watching South Park both because, as they admit themselves in the second South Park vs. Family Guy episode, the show got entirely too preachy, and moreover, it just became completely hit-or-miss in general. It's not a terrible show, but it just... stopped appealing to me.

[Steeb]

I don't really like South Park too much either. Bores me.

However, Coupling > You. As does Garth Merenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh and motherfucking Spaced.

Shame on you all for not hawking Spaced.

[Guest tiarnantman]

I don't like Family Guy, nor do I like South Park. The former is full of random overly done jokes. There are no good plots, and no good comedic settings. Just a few cheap jokes.

South Park, on the other hand, is boring, unimaginative crap that uses discrimination and random and unneeded political jibes to attract viewers.

In all honesty, The Simpsons is the only animated comedy that has ever grasped my attention, and that is because the jokes actually fit in with the plot, and it's fun to watch.

Edited August 9, 2007 by tiarnantman

[Skummy]

As far as I can tell, there's one main problem about most American sitcoms, aside from the fact that they tend to be incredibly formulaic, and that's that so many of them seem to be a vehicle for the lead actor/actress, so it's always "Hoho, look how good (s)he is" rather than bothering to build up any likable characters.

I said it another thread recently, but I hate comedies where the "characters" are essentially just vehicles for gags and one-liners, without any real depth.

The only American sitcoms I've got into with any real furvour (ignoring animation, because I've discussed that elsewhere) are Cheers (largely by virtue of the fact that it used to be on in the morning when I got to college and had half an hour to kill), Frasier, Curb Your Enthusiasm and M*A*S*H, because they're all genuinely intelligently written, with believable characters rather than HAHA GAG CANNED LAUGHTER HIGH-LARIOUS MISUNDERSTANDING CANNED LAUGHTER "WITTY" ONE-LINER CANNED LAUGHTER HAHA.

That said, I can't think of a single "straight" British sitcom that's been good since Coupling, and that got shit when Jeff left, and Black Books, and the last series of that was nothing stellar by comparison. Spaced was phenonemal, and as far as more recent UK comedy goes; The Mighty Boosh, Look Around You and Garth Merenghi's Darkplace were all fantastic, but I wouldn't really class them as sitcoms. What sitcoms have we had recently? The I.T. Crowd? Ugh. And then a load of "My Family"-esque shit on the Beeb that's at least as bad as most of the American tripe Channel 4 churns out.

The thing is, the sitcom as "Hoho dysfunctional family" is such a tired genre, that it takes one hell of a good writer to do anything new or good with it, and it doesn't look like we have a writer like that working on any decent level in the British TV industry, so we end up with stuff just as formulaic and shallow as "Everybody Loves Raymond" or anything of the sort. Not to mention that, since The Office, we had a brief spell of every "sitcom" wanting to be a kind of hyper-realistic CYE-lite, and failing miserably.

There hasn't been a great sitcom since Black Books, hasn't been a great sketch show since Jam. If it wasn't for the Boosh, where would we be?

[VerbalPuke]

The Office and Extras are the best. Scrubs is the only American show I really like at the moment. Two programmes that have gone unmentioned are Teachers and Shameless, which are both quality. Of course, all sitcoms suck in comparison to South Park.

I think I might be the only one with this viewpoint but South Park sucks.

Chalk me up, I never got into the show in it's entire existence.

I'd also like to say that I never understood the appeal of Adult Swim. I haven't seen a show that I genuinely liked from it, and I've seen a good amount of it.

Personally, if I want to watch television or a show to make me laugh, I'll pop in my Monty Python's Flying Circus DVD's. I have the entire collection, and every episode on every DVD has had plenty of laugh out loud moments for me. It's really one of the best Christmas Gifts I have ever received.

Also, I'm a huge fan of the Three Stooges. They don't fall under the sitcom umbrella as they were 20 minute shorts, but christ were they funny. It depends on if you enjoy that kind of slapstick humor, or some of the ridiculous premises for episodes that the writers came up with (Three bumbling doctors? Three bumbling plumbers? Three down on their luck guys posing as little kids? What the fuck?). But yeah, I was, and always will be a huge fan of the Stooges.

[buck...]

Naturally, the US have given us quite a lot of good comedies over the year (Cheers, Friends, Frasier, Scrubs). However, I wanted to ask what the general US consensus was about some of the other comedies we get over here....since ABC1 (a digital channel we get) and some of the stuff on Channel 4 is some of the most diabolically bad comedy I've seen.

I just was interested if it was stuff we got because no-one liked it in America, or if this is American "cream of comedy", yet it just isn't very good.

We get stuff such as:

King Of Queens

Rodney

8 Simple Rules (which was ok until John Ritter died)

Everybody Loves Raymond (utteryly horrible)

Hope And Faith

Just Shoot Me

There are more, I can't remember them all.

[Darloboy]

I don't really like South Park too much either. Bores me.

However, Coupling > You. As does Garth Merenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh and motherfucking Spaced.

Shame on you all for not hawking Spaced.

[YI]

GAME ON!