The first four episodes or so have some decidedly painful moments, but there are some absolute gems later on (and to be fair, the odd stinker too). So on the whole it does get better.
Seconded (or whatever we’re up to now).
Can I mention Russian Doll? It’s one short series, brilliantly written and acted, and a very dark comedy. It’s on Netflix here; not sure if that’s true everywhere.
I’d highly recommend Staged starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen playing themselves (sort of) interacting via Zoom during lockdown, but you’ve nixed English accents (although technically they’re Scottish and Welsh respectively…). I believe both seasons are on Hulu in the US, and on the BBC in the UK. It is insanely funny. And there’s a running gag about the credits.
I have no particular suggestions but note that you rejected some shows after only watching an episode or two, but some really great shows take a while to find their footing. I think Seinfeld and Parks and Recreation got better after the short first seasons.
We can’t stand Big Bang Theory.
Tried How I met your mother, quit after a few episodes—again, we don’t generally find ‘comedy’ centered around relationships very funny, and there seemed to be a lot of that.
I’ve never watched Franklin and Bash (or even heard of it)
Maybe. But we can usually tell if the show seems like the sort of thing we’d be interested in…if we don’t laugh once in the first episode, it’s hard to believe the show is going to suddenly become hilarious.
Plenty of shows we watched way longer than we should have before finally giving up (like Brooklyn 99, the Middle, the Goldbergs, Modern Family).
Seinfeld and Parks and Recreation got better after the first season—but it’s not like the opening episodes were utterly devoid of laughs (or, as in some of the series we gave up on right away–devoid of attempted humor. I can’t for the life of me imagine what was supposed to be funny in the first episode of Shrill or Search Party)
I’d argue that the first season of Parks and Rec was devoid of any laughs, and you’d not miss a thing for skipping it. Indeed, for some reason we hit episode 1.04 and couldn’t find the rest, skipped it, and kind of wish we’d just started from the second season.
Reporting back on this thread—I forget who suggested Corner Gas, but that was what we went with. Just finished the last episode a few days ago (haven’t found the movie anywhere yet, and I don’t think we’ll watch the animated show as my wife hates animation for some reason). So, good enough for us to stick with for the whole series, so thanks for the suggestion.
Last night we watched the first episode of News Radio. Pretty good, but the laugh track is really off-putting, and it’s on PlutoTV and looks like we’re watching someone’s thrice-taped over VHS tape from 1990. We may give it a bit longer because of Dave Foley and Phil Hartman.
The quality seems to really be that low, I’ve got a torrent download from a dvd rip and its better than one I’d previous got, but it’s like something from the 70s. Currently watching Deep Space Nine from around the same time, if not earlier and that’s as good a picture you’ll see today (effects maybe not so much, but not as dated as Babylon 5).
You might find Killing It good, but one of the main characters is Australian and has an extremely broad “this is what Americans think Australians sound like” accent.
Also, if you’re having trouble with non-American accents (please excuse my eye-twitch over this concept), why not put the subtitles on? There are a lot of really, really good British (or featuring lots of British people) comedies and just going “Nope, not interested” means I think you’re about to discover you’ve pretty much watched everything currently available that meets your (extremely limited) criteria.
Oh hey, you might like Norsemen on Netflix. Dry humor. I loved it. Helps if you like Vikings, which I very much do. (Loved the History channel drama Vikings.) Norsemen is kind of like the movie Eric the Viking but broader.
The same actors shot two versions, one in Norwegian and another in English. Pretty sure the English one is the only one available in North America, but I don’t remember any accents. I’m sure there were some, but maybe it’s not the type of accent you’re avoiding.
Hacks, seconded. Comedy is tricky for me and the partner, but this is consistently funny. Also glad to hear that the Kids in the Hall reboot is decently good – will check it out tonight.
I’m a big fan of watching things with subtitles when I can’t hear or or understand them. But I also have noticed that they very often kill the comedy, due to timing issues. Most of the time, the actual punchline shows up on screen before it actually happens. Even in the rare instances where they seem to put in the care needed to get it right, it’s still easy to read faster than people speak, seeing the end of the line before they get to it.
(And that’s just scripted comedy. Unscripted comedy seems like they type the captions live, and then never go back and realign them. That means everything is always a sentence or two behind. )
Maybe people who watch with subtitles all the time have learned to suppress automatically reading everything they see, and can read along with the speech. But I don’t find I can. And it has ruined a lot of great jokes for me. I’d honestly rather just go back and check if I miss something.
I took that to mean in reference to shows in a totally different language, as opposed to something that’s in English but a different accent where the subtitles are for clarification rather than the only way to understand what’s going on.
And I’m personally looking forward to to the new series of The Great
I thought we covered this up-thread somewhere…but neither of us like reading the TV. We’d both likely have to wear our glasses. We only watch TV before bed for the most part, and find falling asleep with glasses on leads to discomfort or broken glasses.
Accents don’t generally bother me, but for some reason my wife can’t stand them. No idea why, but she won’t watch Monty Python or Fawlty Towers because of it, so I feel like she’s definitely missing out on some great stuff. But people like what they like and it’s a dumb thing to argue about, since we definitely haven’t watched everything; I’ve got a list here of maybe 15 or so shows people have suggested --we just watched Corner Gas and found it entertaining with no laugh track, hard to understand accents, etc…
Maybe when we really have run out of things to watch I’ll convince her to give one of those shows a try that require subtitles.
