We watched 5, 6 episodes yesterday and How I Met Your Mother has officially been put in the “TV as background noise when Inna is working” list. At my age, I don’t care much for shows which are about 20-somethings learning how to live life.
We turned on House of Cards which I mentioned earlier in this thread, but never got truly started. But Inna loves it and it is her time to select, so here we are…
Not sure what you mean by “style”, as the writings of PG Wodehouse along the same lines remain popular and indeed this series overlapped with Fry and Laurie starring in the popular Jeeves and Wooster in the same time period. You Rang M’Lord ran between 1988 and 1993, Jeeves and Wooster between 1990 and 1993. Both were set in approxmately the same time period around the late 20s.
As a big fan of PG Wodehouse I greatly enjoyed You Rang M’Lord because I could appreciate many of the nuances of the relationship between the servants and the idle nobility that employed them. Ironically, I never really enjoyed Jeeves and Wooster because in my mind the series just never achieved the impossible task of matching the brilliant wit of the original stories.
I think the real difference between the two series is that Wodehouse was always thoroughly lighthearted and even the worst of his characters was guilty of nothing more than being stingy or grumpy. Whereas in You Rang M’Lord we have (for example) Lord Meldrum who is having an affair with the wife of a fellow peer, a butler who is constantly pilfering Meldrum’s wine cellar and doing anything else he can to steal from him, a cook who always makes too much food for the family (“you never know when unexpected guest may arrive”) so the servants can dine in splendour, the footman James Twelvetrees who has fully bought in to the mythos of the aristocracy and considers them his “betters”, Lord Meldrum’s daughter Poppy who constantly teases James by flirting with him, etc.
I think the series is very funny but I can see some viewers being put off by the fact that basically none of the characters are likable. Well, except maybe Ivy the naive simple-minded maid, hilariously portrayed by Su Pollard who had a similar role in the preceding Croft and Perry series Hi-de-Hi!.
Very interesting series on Pompeii, the new Dig.
Except if they cut out the “brush brush brush” the series would be shorter.
They found a mural which looks to be the first documented pizza.
If you aren’t clear on this, I’m not really sure why. The ‘style’ of those writers (Dads Army, Are you being served, Allo Allo, Hi de hi) are the mainstays of the late 60s and early 70s. They often rely on innuendo, comedy homosexuality, ‘The vicar/boss/some other stuffed shirt’ scenarios along with the ‘I overheard a conversation and misinterpreted it’ tropes. It’s the comedy of the people older than us (and as you can see from the timing of the years, still continued after alternative comedy hit).
But frankly, it was bloody awful to me and everyone from my generation. After the young ones, the whole comedy taste changed for the youth, I can’t say I’ve watched one of those shows since 1985 (perhaps caught a little of Dads Army once in a while, but that wasn’t the worst offender). Out of fashion with anyone under 40 at that time. Which was the major viewing audience in the UK.
(BTW, I never watched a single episode of Jeeves and Wooster with Fry and Laurie, it wasn’t my thing. I enjoyed them in pretty much everything else they did, and they were pretty much in the forefront of alternative comedy then, but not that).
So I can’t compare those to Jeeves and Wooster, but I can say that series is pretty much an outlier of the comedy stuff then, and was produced by ITV, a channel which gave up comedy in all forms around then with the end of Spitting Image, and things like Men Behaving Badly moving to the BBC after the first season with Harry Enfield.
I also do understand that people not from the UK might not understand this case, but there’s so much excellent comedy not of that style produced in around those 20 years, the Croft and Perry stuff was forgotten. Even the likes of my mum didn’t watch them anymore around then.
(Such series as Young Ones, Filthy Rich and Catflap, Blackadder, Fry and Laurie, Fast Show, French and Saunders, Comic Strip Presents, Men Behaving Badly, Red Dwarf, Father Ted, Alas Smith and Jones, Alexi Sayles Stuff, Man From Auntie, Big Train, Blue Jam, Brass Eye, Friday Live, Saturday Live, Spitting Image, Who Dares Wins, Alan Partridge, Day Today, Drop the dead donkey, Fist of Fun, This morning with richard not judy, Goodness Gracious me, Harry enfields stuff, Murder Most Horrid, Nightingales, Punt and Dennis, Mary Whitehouse Experience, Rab C Nesbitt, Absolutely, Seans Show, Smack the pony, New Statesman, This is David Lander, Whoops Apocalypse, and I’m sure I’ve missed about 40 odd shows in this list too).
Loved this series! I wish it had more episodes, and I hope they film future targetted digs. Fascinating how they identified the family that owned the building they were excavating.
I completely agree with you. My sister liked to watch Are You Being Served? but I found it totally unwatchable and actively annoying – not funny.
I used to watch Red Dwarf and while it had its silly moments, it was actually funny.
Mitchell and Webb surveyed the genre:
a cousin of the British saucy seaside postcard
Thank you for your insight on this. You may indeed be correct, at least in some respects. In the specific case of You Rang, M’Lord?, I guess I’m so deeply immersed in the culture and times evoked by PG Wodehouse, my favourite author, that I’m always going to enjoy it.
I also have to say that, again for this specific show, I disagree with what I take to be the implication of outdated and tasteless jokes about homosexuality. In this show, yes, the elder daughter Cissy is clearly a lesbian, but note that in this crazy family she is the only sensible and level-headed one. She is kind to the maid Ivy, gives her some of her old clothes that she knows Ivy cannot afford, and advises her in difficult situations. She is kind to the servants in general, and in a family whose aristocracy naturally makes them politically conservative, shocks her father when she stands as socialist candidate for the local council because she cares for the common people. How is that offensive? Her sexual preference makes for two running jokes; Lord Meldrum frequently berates her for her choice of clothing style, apparently oblivious to the fact that his daughter is gay, and the staff frequently advising Ivy, when going into Cissy’s room, not to linger. Again, nothing offensive or dated there, IMHO.
Now that you mention it, I do see some elements of that in Are You Being Served?. One of the salesmen is an exaggerated caricature of a gay stereotype, and that definitely wouldn’t fly today. There’s also the octogenarian store owner who surrounds himself with beautiful young assistants, which today would be considered creepy.
FTR, I believe Dad’s Army is often considered the best of Croft and Perry but it’s just not for me. I watched one or two episodes and gave up on it.
I don’t know how many of those made it across the Atlantic, but despite being someone who likes British comedy I’ve only seen two of that list, Blackadder and Father Ted. Both were pretty good, and I might even watch Blackadder again though I have no immediate yearning to do so. I quite enjoyed Father Ted but it didn’t seem to hold up all that well on a second viewing, the problem IMHO being that it’s just a bit too over-the-top. If we’re going to have a comedy about vicars, I much prefer The Vicar of Dibley.
FWIW, here’s my list of my favourites of the British sitcoms I’ve seen on my side of the big pond. They’re in alphabetical order with no attempt to rate them, but I will say that Fawlty Towers is so far above them all that it’s in a class by itself. I’ve mentioned re-watching some series several times, but as befits its extraordinary status, I’ve watched Fawlty Towers so many times that I practically have the scripts memorized!
My favourite old British comedies:
Allo Allo, Blackadder, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers, Hi-De-Hi, Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley, Yes Prime Minister, You Rang M’Lord? – and a runner-up, Oh Dr Beeching.
Just a reminder for fellow fans of Evil that the much-anticipated fourth series which was delayed by the strike is now underway. Three episodes have so far been aired. The last and final episode will air on August 22.
This is supposedly the final series, which will have a record 14 episodes. Personally, I can’t deal with the weekly rationing so I’m waiting until the end of summer and then plan on re-watching Season 3 to refresh my memory and then binge-watch the final fourth season. Honestly, I think the creators would appreciate that. The weekly doling-out isn’t their choice and totally interrupts the atmosphere each episode creates.
Well, ok, back to the starting point, as I said, half of these went seriously out of fashion at the time. So it’s not usually being lack of success, they’d just had their day.
Yes Prime Minister is kind of unique, so not the same, Blackadder and The vicar of dibbley is cowritten by the same writer, Richard Curtis, who went on to do those British Films (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Nottinghill, Love Actually), but Vicar of Dibley did sort of stride the alternative comedy/old school with Curtis and Dawn French being one of the main performers of alternative stuff.
Father Ted is actually Irish, though it was a big hit on UK Channel 4 when broadcast.
Only Fools and Horses did span the two, but it was sort of dying out as a main series around mid 80s, with only a few specials left to show, but is not regarded as the same as the Are You Being Served style, so still sort of a classic in that sense.
You might want to check out a lot of others, which are more that style: George and Mildred, Man about the house, Robins Nest, The good life, Porridge, On the buses, Last of the summer wine (lasted decades though), Some Mothers do have them, To the manor born, Open all hours and Terry and June.
There are a couple which have dated so hard because of racism, Mind your language and Love thy Neighbour, along with the shows with Alf Garnett (Till death etc). The latter, though, often show the racist being stupid, and the abused being stoic and suffering, so kind of acceptable, the language often really isn’t nowadays.
There are others of this time which did stand the test of time, and are more classics like Fawlty Towers: Agony, Butterflies, Steptoe and Son, Butterflies, Reginald Perrin, Citizen Smith, Only when I laugh, The liver birds, Rising Damp and Shelley (some would argue The good life and Porridge should be in this list, but I digress).
Occasional ones from the 90s do match the last category again, and I’d put the solid One foot in the grave.
I’d say you’ll love a lot of the stuff in the list I put up first, but I’d mostly hate it.
The Fawlty towers type list, you will probably love, and I’d probably still like.
Sounds like I might like it. Where are you watching it? JustWatch says it’s not available to stream anywhere.
Porridge is definitely still worth watching, mainly for Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale (father of Kate), who are both excellent in it.
Only Fools and Horses is one of my all time favourites. Some of the more well-known clips from it were posted on SDMB recently but aren’t really representative of the programme as a whole (the chandelier scene, Batman and Robin, Del falling through the bar). It was always less about slapstick and more about clever banter between the brothers and devious scheming.
Co-signed. More Ronnie Barker in more “old-fashioned British sitcom” style includes Open All Hours and Clarence.
The limitations of the conventional-gags-and-prejudices core of these comedies are apparent, of course. But IMHO there is always some beautifully nuanced more original funniness in the dialogue and acting, especially Barker’s, that makes them rewarding to watch. YMMV of course!
Girls5Eva
I’m three episodes in. Zany, but I don’t think it is hitting quite as well as 30 Rock or even Kimmy Schmidt did. It’s clearly an attempt to be like those shows.
Does it get better? Anyone watch a lot of it?
I really enjoyed all the seasons of Girls5Eva, but I enjoyed it more or less from the start (except maybe the pilot episode).
Yeah, the show is not only called ‘How I Met Your Mother’ it’s literally the entire framing conceit of the show, and the Ted character starts the story out years before meeting the mother and tells his kids basically his entire sexual history, none of which as far as I could tell had anything to do with the actual mother meeting. Considering he was a college professor, you’d think his editing skills would be a little more on-point.
Also, good for him that he was getting work, but I always wondered why Bob Saget needed to be the ‘old Ted’ narrator, ‘Wonder Years’ style. Unlike WY, the younger version of the narrator character was already an adult-- I don’t think one’s voice changes all that much from one’s 30s to one’s 60s, unless you’re a heavy smoker or something.
It’s cute and we have laughed a bit. I do get they are going for the zanier 30 Rock vibe, but some of it is just not hitting for me.
I did like the montage of them singing “pro male” songs like, “Sometimes Girls Lie!” or the song about “only being mad at the other girl” when he cheats on you.
Even their unfortunate 9/11(ish) song was pretty humorous. Bad luck it released on September 10.
We’re about 5 episodes in on Season 1 and enjoying it.
Casting is a bit odd…why is one member of the group 20 years older than the others?
I got into that a few years ago. Apparently virtually every person of significance in the late nineteenth century apparently visited Toronto at one point or another. And the inventiveness of the main character is hilarious; he’s invented almost everything you can think of from the past 125 years or so, but only in the course of an investigation. He ought to be as famous an inventor as Edison, though now I’m trying to remember if Edison himself ever appears.
Is that the case? I think the gag is that she aged much worse or was her younger self supposed to be older as well?
Paula Pell is definitely older, but her character is supposed to be generally the same age as the other girls (as you can see in flashbacks).
The song that makes me laugh every time is “The Splingee” from episode 7. No deep meaning, just ridiculous:
