sitcoms – Paint a Mental Picture

So its time to put this particular rant in writing. I think I’ve bored enough of my family enough with it, but alas. And rants are good. They’re cathartic. And this is one rant that just feels needed.

So I’ve been seeing alot of a particular kind of article recently. More so in the last week. ‘I watched this for the first time and now I’m shocked’ type discussions, in which someone (often around my age) watches a classic film or TV show and is super offended by its outdated jokes and content (‘On the Buses’ I get, but that was an extreme case). The most recent one was about someone watching the first episode of one of my favourite shows, Only Fools and Horses. Straight away, it was racist, sexist, and how dare they focus on three white men. Look. That was the time. The time now is different. The time now is different because of shows like this. We know time is different now because we have shows like this to compare it too. Yes, some jokes were made back then that haven’t aged well. But there were jokes made in shows 10 years ago that haven’t aged well, either. We are in the midst of a huge shift in standards, and thats a good thing. But does that mean we should delete the things that remind us how far we’ve come?

I’ve also seen some wilful fabrication of TV show content in support of the BLM movement. One fine example was concerning a show called Benidorm, in which there was a character in black face during the second episode. Apparently, one of the central couples walked out in disgust, and it was supposed to be a poignant point concerning how offended one of the characters was. But no, that didn’t happen. The couple who actually walked out of a bar was a totally separate couple walking out of a completely different bar due to a very different act.

I think context is a huge factor in some jokes, particularly in classic comedy and content. To get the jokes, sometimes you need to know the characters. Case in point; Basil Fawlty, and The German’s episode. Now, this character is meant to be unlikeable. He’s meant to get in his own way. He’s bigoted, he’s old fashioned and outdated. He’s meant to contrast with the more current characters. To be prejudice is part and parcel of the characature of a middle class man who clearly wants to be higher up in the ranks, but doesn’t go about getting there in the best way. The fact that he recoils from a black doctor in the presence of his embarrassed wife just goes to show his worst traits; in the 70s, shows such as Love Thy Neighbor purposefully created unlikeable white characters to contrast with likable black characters to show the changing times. It was progress.

And this is why old comedies like this should still be valued. Shows as recent as Friends, with an all white principle cast, are products of their time. The shows we have today are products of this time. We should be proud of that progress. Not repulsed by past jokes.

If we delete these shows, and those old jokes, what have we got to learn from?

If I thought of all the TV shows I’d watched over the years, all the hours I’d spent sat down and switching on to switch off, I probably wouldn’t sound like a very productive person (a matter of perspective maybe). The last couple of months have been a real journey of discovery into (almost exclusively) British comedy shows I’d never seen, or never wanted to commit any time to. Side note…these are all quite short shows, and as of yet accessible for free.

1. Green Wing – Green Wing is one of those off the wall shows with not one serious bone in its body. Despite being set in a hospital, none of its plots are medically related, and it’s characters spend their screen time cartwheeling or playing out romances that feel like caricatures of those in more serious shows, and are just as gripping to watch.

2. Spaced – continuing the channel 4 comedy route, Spaced has been one I’ve watched on repeat for years now, once again during my time at home. It’s constant references to pop culture seem fresh in a modern TV world convoluted with geeky stereotypes who eye roll every time someone says they haven’t watched Star Wars.

3. Black Books – More 4. I know. At this point, you start spotting many of the same actors in each, and there’s a nice kind of familiarity with that. Bernard and Manny are great polar opposites as serial pessimist and serial optimist, while Fran offers the perspective of somewhere in between. Its fast and chaotic at times, exaggerated in its principle setting of a cluttered book shop.

4. The League of Gentlemen – today, some of the characters used in The League of Gentlemen, as well as some of the jokes, do seem quite outdated. But the black humour is niche, and simply reflects the attitudes of the time (some of the characters are meant to be somewhat socially isolated, after all). The characters span between the weirdly mundane to the wacky and offensive, each independent and rarely (if ever) meeting. It is bizarre, and difficult to explain why this kind of humour is so addictive to me, and I think thats part of the charm.

5. Inside No 9 – sticking with Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, Inside no 9 is an anthology…well it’s difficult to define it besides that. Comedy, horror, crime, drama…everything, really. Each as unique as the last. As a fan of older anthologies such as Hammer House of Horror and Tales of the Unexpected, I believe anthologies can never get old.

6. The Mighty Boosh – probably the most outlandish of the lot, it’s humour deviates from relatable and typical to funny words, quite beautiful imagery and total randomness. The characters are all bizarre or exaggerated versions of stereotypes we might be familiar with, but besides that it is a world in and of itself.

Honorable mentions

1. Car Share – I watched this in the space of one evening. I love any TV show or movie that can create something from one principle setting, and rely entirely on dialogue to create what it’s meant to.

2. Psychoville – I think you have to be fan of Shearsmith and Pemberton for this, but that’s just my point of view. Much like The League of Gentlemen, several characters are played by the same actors, and once again the humour comes from the mundane characters who are essentially oddballs. And it is, in places, genuinely creepy. To me, anyway.

3. Ghosts – Unmistakably British I think, with a number of typically English stereotypes such as the stuff upper lip WW2 captain, the sleazy politician, and the anguished poet. It’s jokes are fast paced, and its humour is silly and occasionally essentially adult.

Tag: sitcoms

Escapism Through the Screen – TV Shows