Believe me - we make a lot of excruciatingly bad sitcoms. You just never get them in the States.
I think that Red Dwarf was one of the funniest, saddest and all round best things ever made. Until they lost the Red Dwarf itself and started just skittering around in Starbug - a ship originally intended as a one-gag deal. At that point they lost Holly (in either form) and it descended into a find-the-Red Dwarf farce with the same lame jokes each week. Then we had the last two series. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch it except behind my hands. IIRC one of Grant and Naylor (though I can’t remember who) stopped writing for the show and it just stank.
Same with the books. First two - hilarious. Then Grant and Naylor wrote one each and they were just wrong. I came to the conclusion that one of them (I can never remember which) is good at the quick gag and another great for storyline but too much of either loses all pacing.
Rewatch series 1 - 5 though right from episode 1. It is one of the few pieces of television I will ever use the word “genius” in reference to.
Gah! Every time someone tries to “explain” either Red Dwarf or Blackadder to me (I don’t ask; they just take it upon themselves), they always say, “Well this one says blah and that one says blah and then something happens…Well, you just have to see how he looks!” Gah! If it’s a visual gag, of COURSE I’m not going to get it!
To be fair, not visual so much as impeccable comic timing. How could a mere pion attempting to explain a BlackAdder scene attempt to compete with the combination of Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnery, Miranda Richardson,…?
Not to mention the fact that the comedy is heavily character-based and built up to over several scenes. A two minute impromptu scripting is not going to cut it.
Wow! I never knew so many people found Fawlty Towers painful! If you come into it cold, without knowing how silly John Cleese is, I guess Basil Fawlty might just seem vile. I still think, 25 years later, it’s the best sitcom ever.
Everytime I watch Red Dwarf I just keep seeing it as a Hitchhiker’s wanna-be. And were some seasons (series?) videotaped and others filmed?
Actually, when I first saw “Red Dwarf”, it reminded me of Dark Star, particularly in the first couple of seasons. I don’t know how many people are familiar with that movie - well worth seeing if you aren’t familiar with it.
And I don’t exactly find “Fawlty Towers” PAINFUL, I just find it a bit forced - I generally like Cleese better doing sketch stuff like he did with Monty Python - I find that a whole show of him sneering at people gets tiresome, even if he probably is the world free-style sneering champion. And I find a lot of the other Britcoms people have been mentioning better - “Yes, [Prime] Minister”, “Waiting for God”, “Vicar of Dibley”, “Black Adder” among them. And, oh yeah, “Red Dwarf”, at least in the first few seasons. Some lesser known ones I’ve liked: “Duck Patrol”, “Murder Most Horrid”, “The Piglet Files”.
And how come nobody ever reruns Alexei Sayle’s “Stuff”? I think I’ve seen the run of it once, and thought it was one of the funniest sketch shows I ever saw. That was years ago, and the PBS stations over here never picked it up again.
Okay, I’m really serious about my humor, one day I hope to earn a living from it. So I think long and hard about questions such as yours. Yes, indeed. Yes. Yes.
I think Cleese is always slightly painful, intentionally, that’s his persona. To me, it’s that he’s intentionally amplifying a terrified and hostile part of himself that I don’t really like in him, myself, and especially not in strangers. The sarcastic, witty side, I do like.
Red Dwarf is not nearly as uniform, however. There are four or five episodes of genius, a few that are dull, and most that are in between. The characters are more or less effective, too. The cat’s best season was his first, Rimmer’s worst seasons were later on, Lister has been slowly, very slowly getting…different. I never thought Kryten was funny. He keeps getting stuck with…uh…mechanical humor.
Speaking as a wannabe (published) humor writer, I would have no trouble whipping off a “Hitchhiker”, some difficulty with a “Faulty Towers” episode, and great difficulty matching the best Red Dwarf episodes. Since part of humor is unpredictability, “Hitchhiker” loses on that score, at least for me. It seems random.
That makes sense. This has happened several times, but it was one particular person who became impatient with me when I didn’t just fall about laughing after she clumsily reenacted a scene. I’ll take your word for it that it’s nearly impossible to properly reenact a RD scene.
And how come nobody ever reruns Alexei Sayle’s “Stuff”? I think I’ve seen the run of it once, and thought it was one of the funniest sketch shows I ever saw. That was years ago, and the PBS stations over here never picked it up again.
God bless 'ee, yabob, I thought I was the only one. “Stuff” was a little uneven at times, but more than made up for it. I even liked the song and dance routines (which is saying a lot).
I’m sure that I was the only person in the theatre who got a huge larff of recognition when he appeared in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade .
If you haven’t read his books, you’re missing out on his best material. Great Bus Journeys of the World and Train to Hell are brilliant.
Why, I’d wager my Hullo John, Got a New Motor? picture-disc singleon it!
Back here in its country of origin, Stuff never really proved that popular, so it never got that many series. Personally I loved it, but there you go. I still find myself thinking “Marks and Spencer, Marks and Spencer, what would we do without Marks and Spencer” everytime anyone mentions… well… Marks and Spencer. Similarly for the “musn’t grumble” sketch. And the following line is one of my all time favorites:
“My goal is to have more money than sense. I’ve got five pounds, so I’m nearly there!”
The fact that I still remember individual sketches after seeing them once about ten years ago is testiment to its quality.
Alexi Sayle! Alexi Sayle! Who’s the big fat bastard who is on the BBC!
I will forever worship at the altar of Alexi Sayle for giving us the genius of Bobby Chariot, Warm Up Comedian.
Hi, I’m Bobby Chariot! How you Diddlin’?
Black Adder was one of the best shows ever. I personally preferred the snide, sarcastic BA to the sniveling, cowardly one in the first series. Rowan Atkinson is amazing.
I’ve only seen one RD episode. It was pretty good, but it didn’t compare to BA or to Fawlty Towers or Yes, Prime Minister. The cat character was hysterical, though. Maybe I’d think more highly of it if I could catch a few more episodes.
FT can be painful, but some parts of it are howlingly funny. The episode where Basil ends up doing the Hitler impression was a good one.
