My late H flew medivac helicopters in Vietnam and he said that MASH captured perfectly the intense, insanity-producing combination of comedy (black humor in particular) and tragedy that he experienced in a field hospital.
Flight of the Conchords is, again, a deliberately unrealistic show in many ways, but it may be the only show set in NYC that didn’t make me think “How in the world can they afford that apartment?” Not only was the apartment small and shabby*, it was clear that they could barely pay the rent – in one episode the purchase of a new cup nearly ruins them.
*I’ve never lived in NYC and for all I know their apartment on the show might still be unrealistically large, but it seemed small by TV standards and they did have to share a bedroom.
I don’t think anything else comes close to this one.
The Big Bang Theory has consultants to get the science right. And their portrayals of geeks and nerds are very true to life.
I loved Roseanne, too, and having known a lot of working class families I can get with some of the show. Except for the witty zingers and smiling-through-their-metaphorical-tears in the face of adversity. There seemed to be a lack of sassy humour in real life. All the yelling and struggle, yes. One-liners, not so much.
Real geeks and nerds are nowhere near that entertaining.
I remember thinking how unrealistic it was that the radio DJs didn’t wear headphones when on the air.
The sets on Roseanne were extremely realistic. I could see people I knew living in that house–and did, in fact. Everyone I knew growing up lived in a house like that, even down to the knitted blanket hanging on the back of the couch.
Leonard and maybe Raj are the only geeks on the show that are believable. Howard and Sheldon are over the top caricatures and as believable as Kramer.
Real cops sing better!
Another vote for “Roseanne,” which is my go-to answer for this kind of question. It gets extra points for not only being realistic, but for being realistic about a kind of life one almost never sees on TV.
Leonard’s procession of out-of-league girlfriends helped put me off the show. Their gaming habits also struck me as unlikely.
The Middle
The reason Mrs. Homie and I laugh so hard at this show is because, well, we are the Heck’s. A lower-middle-class Midwestern family trying (and mostly failing) to get by, and as Og is my witness they get everything right*. We joke with each other that if we’d had a daughter, she would be Sue; and if we’d had a son, he would be Brick.
*One thing they got outrageously wrong involved the family having to cross a covered bridge to get to the mall. If the town of Orson is large enough to have a high school, and the family lives inside the town proper (as evidenced by the fact that they live on a city street, rather than an isolated farm), there’s no way they’re going to have to cross a covered bridge to get from one part of town to the other. Not in Indiana, anyway. In New England, maybe, but I can’t speak to that.
another vote for “Roseanne”. But I can’t put my finger on why. It was about a normal family, with normal problems. Nobody had exotic jobs or drove fancy cars or travelled to faraway places or whatever*.
But the same is true for, say, “the king of queens” or “that 70’s show”, or the old Archie Bunker show(“All in the Family”).
But somehow Roseanne just seemed more realistic. Why?
Maybe it had more emotional content, more…heart.But again, I can’t define why.
**(unlike, say, Seinfeld, or Friends, which had some day-to-day realism, like the lunch counter scenes/ coffeehouse scenes, but the characters worked as actors or fine chefs or exotic museums, etc)
Plot dramas to make for good TV aside, my wife said St. Elsewhere nailed the overall feeling of working in an underfunded urban hospital.
The portrayal of scientists, engineers and other technically-minded people is wrong, or at least biased towards showing the more stereotypically nerdy types. It is natural for the show to focus on the stereotypically nerdy and thus amusing scientists, and the show does not explicitly state that all scientists are like the core cast, but the way the show handled the bullying-related episodes in the earlier seasons infuriates me. The characters are not in middle school or high school anymore, and I know no one in real life who would react like the main characters did if someone tried to steal their pants.
I once asked one of my law enforcement friends which show he considered most consistently “on” for his profession and he responded that “unfortunately” Reno 911 was far too often, spot on.
If you knew my in-laws, you would agree that life in Dallas, Texas is wonderfully accurately portrayed by King of the Hill.
Before it became a soap, The Bill was supposed to be pretty spot on.
Rosanne, King of the Hill, and Trailer Park Boys. I know all of these people.
I actually worked at a radio station where the dj’s did not wear headphones – they kept the monitor speakers loud enough to hear but set in a way that they didn’t feed back over the air. Unusual, but not unheard of.