These are the worst sitcoms ever to make it to UK TV…
Keeping Up Appearances. The televisual equivalent of being coshed with a methadone toffee hammer.
Married for Life. An ITV vehicle for the alleged comedian Russ Abbott. It was a localization of the US show “Married with Children” and it was dreadful, sloppy and poorly written. Apart from anything else (and the fact the only vehicle Mr Abbott ought to have is one without brakes in the vicinity of Beachy Head) it was abysmally “localised” in a drag and drop manner. Why they localize is beyond me. I have laughed at the comic capers of a set of New York flatmates. I have laughed at the antics of a pair of Seattle trick cyclists. They didn’t have to re-set those shows in Birmingham or Bristol for me to get them. Good comedy is about getting to the universal. Anyone fancy a game of cups?
2.4 Children. Utter drivel. I have laughed more during trips to the dental hygienist. It’s like when I buy cat food and the pack says “With Salmon and Trout” but the back says it contains 4% salmon and trout and God alone knows what the other 96% is. The setting was a middle-class family in North London. We shall get back to that one.
The Vicar of Dibley. Premise - there’s a vicar and she’s a woman with like tits and everything and she’s fat and she’s in a rural parish and everyone she meets are “comedic” grotesques of the sort of rural England you don’t see from your middle-class study window in North London. I once saw it on a BA flight from Gatwick to Atlanta. I don’t know whether that was flying the flag or making me reach for the sick bag but it is the closest I’ve ever come on a ‘plane to screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and getting the box-cutter out…
So Haunt Me. Yet another middle-class family in North London but this time with a middle-aged Jewish ghost and that folks is it. I shall also add that the Jewish ghost is so stereotypical as to have probably provoked the Chief Rabbi to exclaim, “Oy Vey!” but I guess you knew that already.
Last of the Summer Wine. The first twenty three times the BBC sent Compo down a hill in a wheeled bath-tub were mildly amusing. The next seventy eight times it was excrutiating. There are only so many stories you can tell about the antics of a gang of elderly Yorkshiremen. In fact they ran out of storylines around 1980 but they just projed on with the relentlessness and the pace of glaciation. The ultimate shark-jump TV. I think they are still making it.
My Family. This is about a middle class family in North London (are we spotting a trend here?) and it’s a big BBC hitter. Prime time and all that with Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker and that’s it. Really that’s it. Nothing happens and it doesn’t ever happen in an amusing way. Utter wank in the truest sense of the word.
And finally (though I have undoubtedly missed some) the utter nadir, the abysmal trench, the absolute haven of shitefulness…
Keeping Mum. A “comedy” about Alzheimer’s disease. Just re-read that. I reckon it’s practically impossible to get beyond thirty without knowing someone who suffered from that terrible malady. Now, thing is it is possible to do edgey comedy about “issues”. But the key to comedy is to be funny and and real. I think Ben Elton is a twat but he once made me laugh with a gag about a swing-bin. Everyone always overfills the kitchen bin. It was funny, observational humour. In principle I suspect you could make a comedy about Alzheimer’s work though I can’t even imagine how but I do know one of the essential laws of comedy is that the closer to the bone you go the funnier you have to be. ‘Allo ‘Allo managed it with the Nazis but that show was frequently hilarious and that is why they got away with it. This show simply wasn’t funny and it wasn’t in any sense true. Alzheimer’s is not about forgetting were you put the backdoor keys and thus prompting a comedic moment. It is about forgetting the most precious thing we have - the concept of our self. It was clearly written by someone with absolutely no knowledge of the condition and that is my biggest criticism. If you don’t know what you are talking about stick to middle-class families in North London if you want to write a BBC sitcom.
Oh no they’re not!
Though I agree with most of your choices there, you have to be my age to remember the real dross!
I am of the first television generation you see, my parents got a TV (like many people) to watch the Coronation in 1953.
I grew up on Bilko (about as near perfect a sitcom as was ever written. Still as fresh now as the 50s) and I love Lucy (complete rubbish, and bloody irritating rubbish at that).
There is a difference between British and American sitcoms in that the American ones are gag driven, and have large teams of writers, but the Brit ones are usually written by one or at most two people, and it is the social situation that is being satirised.
So we had magnificent social commentary like Hancocks Half Hour and Steptoe and son (which was written to be a kind of play for today type thing with humour in it, not a laugh a minute vehicle at all) Till Death us do part etc.
But on the other hand, for every one of those there were a shedload of Terry and Junes, My wife next door, Nearest and Dearest (about a friggin Northern Pickle Factory).
The alltime worst though, was Love Thy Neighbour. It perported to be satirising attitudes to race and immigration (black family moves in next door) but wheras Till Death us do part covered some of the same areas in was written by a genius, Johnny Speight, whoever wrote LTN had obviously never met a Black person or a working class white person in their life. I found it massively offensive even back then, but it was hugely popular.
And one thing I hate the Americans for is their habit of taking a successful Brit sitcom, and doing an American version, because some twat of an executive producer thinks that America wont get the original.
They have done it to everything from Steptoe and Son onwards and the result has always been dire. Anyone has ever seen the American version of Faulty Towers will know what I mean. Apart from being set in a hotel, it utterly misses the point, and the frustrating thing is that every American I know, and I know loads, get our classic sitcoms right off.
Ah well, you gotta laugh, havent you?
I think the best sitcoms are character driven and the writer takes the characters on an interesting journey.
RAB is absolutely right. Americans I have known have always understood about Mrs Slocombe and her pussy and I get US shows. I even got it when Abe Simpson said he was spanked by Grover Cleveland on two non-consecutive occassions.
TV execs just seem to think we are all very thick.
Though if any are reading I’ve got an idea for a talent show for witches. I call it the “Hex Factor” and I demand Ant & Dec clear their 2010 diaries.
Did any of you see “Children in Need”? Slightly less terrible than that pile of ordure “Comic Relief”. If only Lenny Henry would donate his wife an entire village in Africa could eat for a month. And we’d be shot of Dawn French who is about as amusing as a rectal prolapse.
And Wogan’s wig is beyond fucking parody. He ought to be suing the bastards who made that out of the pubic hair of Peruvian goats or something. I am amazed elfnsafety allow him on set under those hot lights because if anything looked pyro-accelerant it’s that godawful syrup.
Talking of which… Another proposal (I’m getting very Alan Partridge here) how about getting Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty to host “The Eurovision Thong Contest”.
I have hordes more but most of them even if spoken aloud would result in my detention in a secure facility at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
“Her Majesty’s Pleasure” was another one I had planned for after 9pm…
Best go. I think they have come for me.
Oye - Keeping up appearances and the Dibley of Vicar are fine.
The rest are tosh and there are many others you can add to it - like the Royle Family or whatever….
Kindly cease these hateful remarks about Sanford and Son.
Writers generally write what they know. That may be why UK sitcoms are about middle-class north Londoners. That’s definitely why US sitcoms are, all too often, about self-absorbed New Yorkers.
BTW, in honor of what’s on tonight, no, you may absolutely not have Hugh Laurie back.
I thought Hugh Laurie was quitting because the limp he has to affect, was actually now making him limp?
Have you seen him in Jeeves and Wooster as Wooster? Magic Wodehouse stuff!
As for Sanford and son, read the original and weep…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWi7c3jwyeM&feature=related
Hello, long time reader, first time caller…….since you’re pitching imaginary TV shows to imaginary producers I’ve always liked the idea of Roy Keane Chins……where Roy interviews interesting people and then thumps them.
Roy Keane could also host the game show “Stick it up your bollocks!”
I can’t recall what shocked me the most. The disgracefulness of his strop or Mr Keane’s spectacular misunderstanding of human anatomy.
Talking of utter wank on TV. Deal or No Deal. I can’t stand the whole team ethos thing and when Noel Edmonds get’s on about “keeping up the energy”! They’re opening fucking shoe-boxes for the love of fuck.
I never thought I would see anything as insulting to the intelligence…
But I was wrong. I misunderestimated (to use a Bushism) the BBC. They brought out Hole in The Wall. I honestly thought someone had put mescaline in my tea when I watched that. If you have never seen it… People in shiny jumpsuits which leave very little to the imagination I can tell you try and fit through holes in a polystrene wall and if they fail they fall into a swimming pool. And that is it. It makes It’s a Knockout (remember that) look like bloody Chekov. I kept on thinking there must be more to it than people in lycra climbing through polystrene walls surely. But no there isn’t.
I have never been more staggered by a TV show since an episode of Neighbours contained a dream sequence ifor a dog.
Sunfish,
Seinfeld (sp?). I once had a New Yorker explain to me why it was funny. Apparently it contains a lot of references to real stuff. The “soup nazi” is apparently real. It’s like an elaborate in-joke for Manhattenites. I didn’t much like NYC because they are so up themselves. I recall hearing the disparaging term “bridges and tunnels people” referring to the inhabitants of Hoboken (sp?). It’s just the other side of the bloody river! But to the confirmed Manhattenite it might as well be on Mars.
Best not go to LA.
My strangest New York story was… Happened in FAO Schwarz. I say to my companion whilst staring at more bears than they have in Alaska (certainly since Mrs Palin shots them these days) “bloody hell they’re $100″. And this guy hears me, reaches over my shoulder and grabs one exclaiming, “wow only $100!” as though it was the bargain of the century. And these were not special bears. Not Steiff or anything flash. And this was in 1996. Two years after Quentin Tarantino tried to outrage public decency by suggesting you could spend $5 on a milkshake.
Oh, and I left out “Some Mother’s do have ‘em” which was without a single redeeming feature. It could replace waterboarding. If that made it abroad then Michael Crawford ought to be doing time in the Slobodan Milosovich wing of a jail in The Hague for war crimes.
They shoot Deal or no Deal here in Bristol.
It appears to be a show for the terminally unemployed, because the contestants literally stay for weeks on end until they become a little bonded braindead family.
You missed Sorry and Ever decreasing Circles too.
For every one League of Gentlemen, there are twenty complete and utter crap.
I actually thought My Family was funny when Kris Marshall was in it. But I haven’t seen it for a long time.
Now Coupling, that’s a good sitcom.
Sorry really was utter shite. Ever Decreasing Circles had it’s moments.
Ever Decreasing Circles had its moments, but they were few and far between.
A bit hard on Seinfeld. There’s more to it than that. George Costanza is surely one of the great sitcom characters. I must admit, though, I’m never quite sure if I like it because it’s genuinely any good or because I fancy Julia Louis-Dreyfus rotten.
They made a British Married With Children? With… Russ Abbott? Good God. I’m glad that one passed me by.
More rubbish Brit-coms*? How about that Fools and Horses spin-off with Boycie moving to the country? That was bloody awful. My Hero. That stunk the place up, too. How could Ardal O’Hanlon go straight from Father Ted to that load of guff? (Of course, I’m willing to accept that it wasn’t actually that bad, but that my expectations had been raised by his previous performance.)
*Ha, ha! Do you see what I did there?
Yes Sam, “My Hero” was staggeringly bad in absolute terms. The Boycie spin-off was as well. I suspect John Sullivan had been smoking too much of the Green, Green Grass.