What is it with Americans and Are You Being Served?
At it’s best it’s third-rate and at it’s worst (i.e. most of the time) it’s utter shite. About as funny as a funeral on a wet Monday morning. It died of lack of viewers on this side of the pond years ago. And yet on IMDB and Amazon it’s got five stars and ‘brilliant’ ratings by the hatful. All from the US.
Weird.
I feel exactly the same way about * Keeping Up Appearances*
Yup. Here’s the thread where we discussed his passing. Sadly, it turns out, that most of his stuff was kept off video at his request. No idea if his heirs have decided to release them all. I certainly hope that they will.
For some reason, our PBS stations glommed onto it like a drowning man onto a life vest. I know when I was growing up, it was on every night at 10. And as crap as I now realize it was, I’ll always have a soft spot for it, as it was the show that got me into British comedy. I’d seen The Holy Grail, and AYBS was the closest thing I could find. That led me on to Black Adder and Red Dwarf, which were shown on the weekends, and the rest is history.
Are You Being Served - the American gateway comedy.
In my view, there are three major streams of British comedy:
(1) The dadaist/absurdist stream, starting with the Goons, and continued by the Monty Python crowd. This stream tends to be full of in jokes, which you are only going to get if you watched all the earlier episodes or read the right books. (Monty Python is full of jokes about philosophers.)
(2) The middle of the road stream, typified by the Ealing comedies. Interestingly, Peter Sellers worked in both (1) and (2).
(3) The lower stream, centred on coarse joke about sex, typified by the Carry On movies and Benny Hill. Are You Being Served belong inb this stream, but does at times rise above it, with a sympathetic gay character, and many of the jokes being about the work environment and not about sex.
And many people enjoy one side of British comedy, and don’t see the point of the other side – either they don’t understand jokes about women’s underwear, or they don’ty understand jokes about Heidegger.
While at grad school in 1986, my Sunday evenings were dedicated to A&E’s showings of THE YOUNG ONES, RISING DAMP, FRENCH & SAUNDERS and THE BRITISH COMEDY HOUR (which often included Rik Mayall, Dawn French & Jennifer
Saunders in humorous surreal “dramas”) - btw, at least one of those may have
actually aired on MTV but was on soon after the A&E block.
You have a point, Giles, though I think Benny Hill and the Carry On saga had at least pretensions to some sort of intelligence (Historical references, etc). *Are You Being Served * was just over the top camp gays and ‘pussy’ jokes.
Mind you, I guess if it led people on to Python and Red Dwarf then it has justified it’s existence.
Rayne - I hate *Keeping Up Appearances * too.
Many here have recommended the Fry & Laurie sketch show. Good call. Somewhere in there you’ll find a sketch called ‘Mr Simnock’. Laurie is Mr Simnock, an old man in a nursing home. Fry plays one of the young employees paid to look after him. This is the Single. Funniest. Sketch ever broadcast on television. I have shown this to zillions of people, and no-one has ever managed not to laugh. I even have an old cassette tape with (obviously) just the audio of the sketch, and even without the pictures it still works and is still sublimely funny.
Any Doper who knows this sketch and who comes along and quotes from it or spoils it will be doing you a gross disservice. The joy is in not knowing how it unfolds and what Laurie / Simnock starts talking about. Pure bliss.
May I add my vote for Spaced and Black Books, two excellent sitcoms, both of them many creative leaps ahead of more ‘conventional’ sitcoms.
Woah now. Woah, fellah. Back up a minute.
This American loathes Are You Being Served?, and would be happy to see it gone. Totally gone. As in, all recordings around the world confiscated, packed up in crates, and launched into the Sun. Purged from our civilization.
In fact I’m disappointed NASA keeps ignoring this inspiring purpose for the space program, whenever they have to coax another year’s funding out of Congress. Instead we get the clunky Space Shuttle and the half-baked International Space Station, neither of which can destroy anything beyond a few astronauts here and there. (And technically, they weren’t really designed for that.) You could at best, I’m estimating, squeeze three seasons of Are You Being Served? tapes and discs onto the Space Station — say, all the ones with Mr. Mash — and you’d still only be storing them off planet. Full destruction would have to wait until the station’s orbit decays in a few decades, and we just can’t wait that long.
No, into the Sun it must be. “Put beyond use”, I believe the term goes. And to be safe, we should also destroy all the gratis coffee mugs and tote bags that PBS keeps handing out every pledge drive. Otherwise, millennia from now, our remote descendants might dig up enough evidence in our buried cities to reconstruct Are You Being Served? from scratch. They could inadvertantly bring the show back to life, not realizing what they’ve done until it’s too late.
You’re close, but a funeral isn’t the right yardstick. For one thing the sign has to be reversed. A funeral can still contribute a positive if small amount of humor to the day. You can remember the good times you had with the deceased, and the funny things he used to say and do. You can laugh into your sleeve when there’s a mismatch between the solemnity of the occasion and some goof-up during the prayer.
But an episode of Are You Being Served? has actual negative humor. It subtracts mirth from all that follows it, numbing the humor center of the mind, depriving you of any laughter or cheer until bedtime. Not even back-to-back episodes of Fawlty Towers and Flying Circus immediately afterward will return you to normal. Like for a hangover, time is the only healer of this wound to the brain.
Yet you ran it for ten seasons, Britain. Ten seasons!
I too will very lightly defend AYBS?, but only for its first three seasons or so (before the actor who played Mr. Grainger died, and the actor who played Mr. Lucas left). It was pretty low humor, but somewhat amusing. Thereafter the same old jokes and revolving cast members killed it, and it should never have ran as long as it did.
FWIW, I assumed amarone was being whooshed by the use of the line “it will ride up with wear.” If so, that was a line used on almost every show whenever a coat or shirt with sleeves which were obviously too long for the customer were sold to him anyway.
If he thought he was being whooshed by the fact that another poster liked the show… to each his own.
Sir Rhosis
I absolutely concur. I tried watching it on BBC America a couple of times and just could not understand why my countrymen liked it so much. I also agree with Rayne Man about Keeping Up Appearances.
I’ll add my voice to those suggesting Red Dwarf, Blackadder II-IV, The Goodies, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, The Young Ones, Black Books, and, to a lesser extent, Little Britain, and add three of my own:
Not The Nine O’Clock News, which has Rowan Atkinson, Griff-Rhys Jones, Mel Smith, and Pamela Stephenson in it. Some great stuff came out of this show… check out the DVDs and see what you think.
Hale & Pace are two English comedians- now big on the touring circuit- who had a very funny sketch series for a number of years.
The Brittas Empire If you can get past the idea of Chris Barrie playing a character other than Rimmer, The Brittas Empire was quite funny. Not high art, but amusing nonetheless…
I also enjoyed May To December–the first couple seasons with Eve Matheson, anyway.
Sir Rhosis
‘Dressed to Kill’, Eddie Izzard. I’m shocked no one else has mentioned it, really. It’s a couple hours of his stand-up and you’ll need to watch it more than once because his jokes are rapidfire.
And his makeup is bee-yoo-tee-full.
Does anyone remember “On the Buses” and “The Dustbin Men”
Jeez I’m old 
Almost forgot “Only Fools and Horses” and “Porridge”
I’m older by roughly 30 secs
I read the thread and didn’t see it: did anybody mention Mr. Bean?
Bean is also Rowan Atkinson (whom the OP will know from Blackadder), but it is a very different style of comedy than Fawlty Towers or Red Dwarf: very physical, little talking, and (to some) very funny.
I do, but I’ve spent many years trying to forget them.
Bill Bailey is good, too. Not just a very funny comedian but a ferociously talented musician. Try to get his DVD ‘Cosmic Jam’.
That reminds me. Open all Hours another Ronnie Barker show. Which leads to another skit show The Two Ronnies, simillar to Dave Allen.
There was also a short series of Erik Sykes programmes starting with The Plank and (I think) The Funeral. Each was about 45min, had no talking at all and seemed to feature almost every British actor ever in bit-parts.