Yeah, those latter Arrested Development seasons were rough. Not quite as bad as the consensus would hold, I think, and I liked that they tried something new rather than just more of the same. But yeah, not as good, certainly. But I agree, most comedy tends to go that way when it outlives itself.

(I don't think anything else on TV has made gut-laugh as hard as "Bob Loblaw", dunno why that's the one that landed best for me)

Community at its best was exceptionally good. But its lows were prety low too. And it was never quite as clever as it thought it was.

Deadwood I need to continue with. I got sidetracked. Very much enjoyed what I'd seen though.

And yeah, Severance is great. I nearly mentioned that among my recent ones. *But*... I'm worried that it's just going to be a mystery box thing à la Lost or whatever. Though that one scene, where the dude from the pizza shop in Do the Right Thing is getting interviewed by the lady with the long face from The 100 in the kinda HR assessment thing - that's one of my favourite scenes of TV ever. I rewound and rewatched that like 15 times in a row. It's exquisite.

Show you might like, got something in common with Severance but more actiony: The Peripheral.

One notable thing about Arrested Development which sets it apart from most other sitcoms is that it was perfect right from the first episode. They knew *exactly* what they wanted it to be from the outset rather than having to find it as they went along, as most others do.

> The Peripheral

I kind of enjoyed this, but I'd read the book, and I wonder how it played for people who haven't. Especially in the final episodes, it kind of left me wondering what the point of it was, and since they never did a second season, I guess we'll never know. Still waiting for the third book in the trilogy, but I didn't find the second (Agency) to be particularly engaging.

Oh, I didn't know they're not doing a second season. Cos yeah, it was just getting going (intrigue-wise). Well that's fucked.

That's a real shame cos it seemed like it was going somewhere interesting.

(I've not read the book(s). I may now)

The Peripheral - yes. As a book-having-reader I was enjoying it quite a lot while wondering if it was making much sense for anyone who didn't, and it was far from perfect but I had hopes it would get it going as the second season got going. But yeah, not happening, bah. That writer's strike did it in, unfortunately (though, obviously, support the union!). Also, Chloe Grace Moretz doing the deep south accent thing, I could just listen to that all day (see also: Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle in season one of True Detective, another fine show).

Severance Mystery Box - yes definitely that's absolutely the main fear. They've taken a long time making series 2, I hope it's because they were writing something properly. John Turturro will always be "The Jesus" from The Big Lebowski to me! He's so so good in this.

We are trying out SHOGUN next. Very early impressions are that the main English guy's voice is very funny. I can only picture this, every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XebF2cgmFmU
A SUCCULENT CHINESE MEAL?

which reminds me, I thought Chloe Grace Moretz was in Outer Range but it turns out that's Imogen Poots. Anyway, I see series 2 is out but apparently they say they wrote it on the fly and it's bad. Which given that series 1 wasn't exactly great, I would say avoid that.

I thought it'd be up my street, being about cowboys and a mysterious big hole in the ground.

You covered a lot in your post. 

It's SO different now, from my first experience of television, even though there are SO many things the same.

I mean, when I was tiny, like just bigger than a toddler, we didn't have telly at all. I remember being about four with flu (I suppose. Some kind of fever) and my parents brought the wireless into the bedroom so I could hear "Beyond our Ken" which was the precursor to "Round the Horne". Of course, I missed all the gay references, but then again so did my parents. I suspect my dad thought that the nancy-boys were funny as long as they didn't go too far.

Our first telly had 2 TV channels, BBC and Independent Television. Independent Television was what the rough people watched. If you turned the clunky dial past the rough channel, you got the Home Service on the wireless, then the Third Programme. Our set couldn't be tuned to the Light Programme. Wireless was available from daybreak until bedtime. Television started around 4 pm with a news broadcast which handed over to children's broadcasting around 5 pm for an hour. Then there was more news for about 30 mins. Typically a magazine programme lasted until 7:00. Then there would be a soap opera or two, or a quiz show, maybe a drama presentation until 8:00. At 8:00 the premier programmes began, either documentary or drama. This was the same for both BBC and ITV.

It's no surprise that if the Forsyte Saga had a rape scene in prime viewing hours ON A SUNDAY with a suggestive proportion of Nyree Dawn Porter's breasts exposed, this would feed into a vast national debate at work on the Monday. There was literally nothing else to watch. Of course, it had a positive effect. Many more people were exposed to serious thought and debate (than probably wanted to be exposed). God knows what they made of it. It also allowed some quite brilliant people to rise to the top of the media. I doubt that somebody as talented as Jonathan Miller would have succeeded in a 500 channel environment. Then again, maybe a comedian so supremely untalented as Jim Davidson wouldn't have floated upwards either.

I'm struck by the fact that nearly every television show discussed in this thread is American. I have a fair few American shows in my all-time favourite list. But not all by any means. I'll come back to this.

 

For me, TV had 3 channels, (BBC1 & 2 and ITV). And they shut off at ... 10pm? 11pm? When I tell my niece about that she is aghast. Channel 4 came along while I was in primary school but we couldn't get it where we lived.

I loved documentaries as a kid. Any documentary would keep me quiet. A lot of them were nature documentaries. And they were *very good*. I distinctly remember one, I was about 6 or 7, and it was real-time footage of a snake swallowing an egg. And - and this is fucking amazing today - there were large stretches with no narration, the narrator would only speak when something happened. Remember being rapt by that.

(TV) documentaries are fucking shit now. They do that thing that shit teachers do where they feel they have to trick you into finding it interesting. They try so hard to 'make' the subject interesting that they forget to actually tell you anything and it's boring.

Most of the scripted TV I watched was American. I almost brought this up before. I can't think of very many British TV shows that I've enjoyed. House of Cards, The Thick of It, Brass Eye/The Day Today. I watched Humans recently and enjoyed it but it was enjoyable trash rather than *good* good.

I don't *generally* enjoy British comedy all that much. All the stuff that's held up, like Fawlty Towers, I never got, I can't even really tell what's *supposed* to be funny in it. My dad fucking loved Fawlty Towers and Dad's Army and that. 

Our news, documentaries and current affairs shows pissed on anything American. But for scripted/drama/comedy I think America just makes better TV for the most part.

But I grew up on The Fall Guy, The Rockford Files, Columbo, Perry Mason etc. so I dunno how much of it is just having my aesthetic preferences set young by that stuff.

Oh one thing I did want to mention. We didn't have a VHS player when I was growing up. So the only ways to see feature films were the once-a-year cinema trip or when they came to TV. Later, round friend's houses when they had VHSes.

So a big film coming to TV was a *big deal* and we'd all be talking about it at school the next day. 

I also got to see a good selection of older films. In the space that would be filled with morning TV and reality stuff now, they used to just put some random film on. I think *kids today* have a kinda shallow/narrow cultural experience for lack of something like that. 

Yeah, generally 10:30 when there would be a programme intended to be worthy or uplifting. Originally this meant Christian, and it was often just a vicar saying some prayers. Later they favoured discussion things, in a studio or supposedly set in somebody's house. I got into one or two of these, mainly because it was a rare opportunity to watch people just talking. there was one I liked on ITV which went out around 10:45 and I switched over one evening and gosh! Something was wrong! One of the main attendees had a pint of beer and they were all mid conversation. Turned out that he'd had some sort of breakdown. He didn't turn up after that.

If you removed the repeated dialogue from a modern TV documentary, especially from the USA, there would probably only be 5 minutes of speech. Every new scene opens with a summary of what was said before, or a simple repeat in a different tone of voice. Also, I know what you mean about trying to make it "seem" interesting. So many bloody documentaries about pyramids where the hidden chamber is sort of "held back" like the pay off in a cheap melodrama. Or else they start speculating about how Nefertiti may have felt that day in Thebes, as though that's on a level with showing the actual stuff and saying what we know about it.

One thing that US television drama of all kinds both benefits from and also suffers from, is the lack of a long theatrical tradition. In the UK both rich and poor went to the theatre since forever. In the last 70 years of so that's changed, and it's become far more of a middle-class thing. In the US, where theatre was always white collar, the actors generally act as though they are where they are supposed to be: in a kitchen or a garden or in the street, or a bar or whatever. This has been true since the very earliest TV productions. In the UK, sourcing its directors and actors from the stage, they didn't. They behaved as though they were on a stage set in a studio, or on a stage set in the garden, street, bar etc. Most, if not all UK productions have realised this now, but that brings me to the second big difference which is money.

UK productions are all too often cheap. I know that the story goes that money rules in the US. If you don't make it, you're done. But when it's there to be spent on a production, then it's spent. In the UK, there was, and still is, too much of the scrimp and save Blue Peter attitude. If the ray-gun can be made out of an old toilet roll and that saves half a crown, then do it. Don't bother matching the furniture in this scene, just use the chairs that were in the pub scene earlier. And when that's done across the whole production, it looks cheap.

British comedy shows. Well, they're a mixed bag. I loved Steptoe & Son. The writing is amazing and the actors were perfectly matched. I suppose that's another instance of everybody knowing right from the start exactly what was wanted. More recently Shameless held my attention for a bit. Good ensemble cast. Especially David Threlfall. Enjoyed Fleabag. Once again a great cast, especially Andrew Scott. I really like watching him (Yeah, I know he's Irish). He was fabulous in Ripley recently and he simply acted the pants off Cumberbatch and Freeman in Sherlock. Oh yeah, a blast from the past, Turtles Progress. Also Spaced, A Very Peculiar Practice. Loads of stuff I kind of enjoyed even if I wouldn't say it was great TV. The Young Ones, Peepshow.

Straight British dramas? Well, we can do them. I loved Brideshead Revisited for all its faults. I Claudius - one of the few shows which deliberately chose theatrical and it worked The Singing Detective is probably close to my all-time favourite. Then there was Edge of Darkness, the much underrated Paradise Postponed. The Camomile Lawn was good. Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes were fun. Gormenghast was a very flawed but quite enjoyable adaptation. Smiley's People and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (the Alec Guinnes versions) were excellent viewing. Some of the Pratchett adaptations (should have put in comedy). This is England - another series that was simply wonderful. Powerful, nuanced and fearless. There are plenty more. These days I usually stick something I've enjoyed onto Plex. 

Hah! Films that only ever got shown at least a year after their cinema release. Usually longer. And it would always be like the the school holidays. Then there was Disney Time although fuck knows why we wanted to see that. Almost never during the week. The BBC would cover a whole Saturday evening with some shit like a display from the Household Cavalry and ITV would have Lawrence of Arabia (again). But, sex and drugs and rock and roll started in 1972. Then as I got an art school place on the strenth of my ""O" levels so I didn't have to worry about my "A" levels, I didn't watch much telly until about 1975.

But yes, on one Monday in October 1969 the big debate at my school was who had been able to see that new Monty Python programme. Years before we had debated the merits of the Zarbis and the Daleks as we chewed our American Civil War bubblegum. That was just us kids. Ken and Deidre's wedding on Coronation Street attracted more UK viewers than that of Charles and Diana 2 days earlier. 


 

You've mentioned a lot of stuff I'd forgotten about. Steptoe and Son was great but (like a lot of good british comedy) very depressing. I like watching that kind of thing now and then, and we're very good at it, but most of the time I do want the warmth and sentimentality that US comedy tends to have underneath it. I see that as a weakness but there it is.

Shameless was great. Spaced I enjoyed at the time but wossisface has become more and more unbearable over time and made me retroactively dislike it. Also The Young Ones, yup.

I've also enjoyed the recent Cunk stuff (on Britain and on Earth).

I enjoyed I, Claudius and Cammomile Lawn, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy. A lot of it I was too young for though. Enjoyed Gormenghast, definitely flawed but doing something interesting.

Forgot about This is England. Loved the film. I don't think I've watched all of the TV stuff. I should. Shane Meadows is from just down the road.

That stagey acting you were talking about is something I think about more than you'd expect. I think I was conditioned by the American TV of my childhood to enjoy their style of more naturalistic acting. I find the more stagey british acting odd and offputting *unless* the production is stagey, then I enjopy it a lot (like in some Derek Jarman or Ken Russel films, and a lot of British TV back in the day).

But Americans, presumably cos it's unusual to them but also because of the kinda cultural imagination they have about 'Europe', fucking *love* that UK Stagey acting. There are so many British actors who have done well in Hollywood whom I just can't fucking stand to watch. Because they're acting in regular Hollywood films or TV where everyone else is acting naturalistically and they're acting in that stagey way and it's fucking weird. I'm thinking of people like Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen. Even Patrick Stewart in TNG. They fucking *love* them and I *really* don't.

But then something like Arrested Development goes the other way entirely and I love it. American production and actors but a very British feel both in terms of the production itself and the acting.

I have noticed a few things I've been watching lately is predominantly set in the UK even when it's not a UK production. I've just started 3 Body Problem and that happens mostly in the UK. Same was true of Invasion, which everyone else seemed to hate but I really enjoyed (like Black Summer with aliens instead of zombies). I'm sure there are others but I forget.

As for documentaries and current affairs stuff, that's been almost entirely (I still watch the odd theatrically released documentary) replaced by Youtube and podcasts for me.

Used to watch Newsnight, Late Review (I think it was called?), Question time, whatever was the serious political interview show of the day etc.. Also things like Moviedrome(?) on Channel 4 in the 90s, that was great. (And some Radio 4 to round it out).

And yeah, that's all been replaced by Youtube/podcast stuff. Obviously the streaming services aren't going to make that kinda stuff. And in *some* ways I think Youtube is better at it than the BBC was. Certainly less constrained. 

Problem is, these days it isn't that hard to acquire a whole series for convenient personal consumption, either expensively, or relatively less expensively. I was considering the series Cheers, which entertained me for years  through my late evenings when I needed sobering up. Now I am considering Arrested Development, of which I have only seen a handful of episodes. 

And I wouldn't be able to discuss either of them over the water cooler or the tea machine.

Incidentally, I don't think that looking for brightness rather than gloom is a weakness, either in the viewer or the creator. I get tired of unrelenting gloom - and that applies to fims, TV shows, radio shows, books, whatever. On the contrary, to a degree there's a contract between creator and viewer. This show is ultimately cheerful or this show will make you reflect on life, or even be prepared to shed a tear. Or a mix of all of them. 

Yeah, the water cooler chat is irrevocably gone, and that's a shame. Though what I can do now which I couldn't back then is watch shows in group-calls with friends from all around the world. Which does kinda recreate an aspect of that, we're watching the show at the same pace and can share our excitement and stuff.

No, I agree, but a balance is good I think. And the gloomier comedy is often smarter. 

I do get annoyed by shows that are either rather lightweight or else portentously meaningful (apparently) which suddenly develop really ghastly endings: the death of the main character, love left unrequited in some horrible twist, and so on. It's a trick to borrow all the weight of a ghastly event to make bad plotting or lack of imagination seem similarly substantial.

I mean, don't get me wrong; some stories need a hard conclusion because it fits the logic of the story. But in any case, you need to be in the right frame of mind, and also, you need to be viewing/reading for that purpose. If I switch the telly on looking for King of the hill (which you're quite right is brilliant. Where else would you find the every day life of a propane salesman. whose entertainment is chugging tins of beer in an alleyway?) then I don't want to watch the gloomier passages of Better Call Saul, or Sophie's Choice or read We Need to Talk About Kevin.

This makes me think of Game of Thrones. The first couple of seasons seemed cool, fantasy shenanigans with a bit more oomph to them than is usually the case.

But it quickly became apparent that at any given point of climax, whatever is the most shocking and devastating thing possible is what's going to happen.

Beyond that it was just entertaining characters being paired up and having interactions. And when it ran out of pairings, there was really nothing beyond that. They forgot to do a story.

And yeah, I agree. I think as 'Brits' we shy away from sentiment and sincerity a bit more than the Americans do, seeing it as unsophisticated or something. And that's a shame.
 

Game of Thrones is a  good example. I think Eddard Stark's death was one of the few justifiable shocks, because it introduced an unexpected tone of jeopardy, which is quite hard to manage in this kind of sword and occasional sorcery tale. But after that it was just ridiculous. Good person? Dies horribly. Bad person? Dies horribly. Kind, compassionate, teenage daughter who has lived a hard life? Burned alive at the stake by her father. 

Sentiment and sincerity? I'm not sure. 

No matter that the British, or the English at least, like to boast about their grasp of irony, and of the more subtle aspects of comedy, there's a thread which is ironic, dark and subtle, evident on both sides of the pond. I mentioned Better Call Saul, which I think has moments of brilliance. It's SO dark, so tied to the inevitability of failure, that it feels like a tragic drama. But it is, especially in the character of Jimmy McGill (Saul Goodman), a comedy played dead straight.

Watching Better Call Saul, I can't help thinking of something like Hancock's Half Hour. Totally different in many ways, but both owing everything to the desparate, depressive personalities of the main characters. Obviously Hancock was more obviously played for laughs in straight comedy style, but both feature lead characters unable to break free from the lure of shooting for success, even though we, and they know that it's pointless. Incidentally, two of the principal writers for Hancock's Half Hour were Galton and Simpson of Steptoe fame. So maybe there's a link.

Hancock the comic actor was, of course, a chronic alcoholic and depressive, given to domestic violence who finally killed himself. Bob Odenkirk (Jimmy/Saul) seems to be a happy and generally good-natured chap, and a very good actor. 

Yeah I wasn't quite talking about that idea that we're better at irony in comedy, which I agree is largely nonsense. If anything I think US comedy is generally a bit drier than ours.

I meant more that US comedy more often has that warmth to/underneath it that I was talking about before. It's not afraid to be earnest. Whereas over here I think we go ew, emotions, how embarassing. I don't think we're "better at irony" but I do think we believe that comedy has to have ironic distance from anything emotionally warm(? struggling for the right word). 

Things like Taxi, Cheers, Roseanne, US Office, Parks and Rec, King of the Hill, Community, even Simpsons and Futurama. They'd often get very sentimental/sincere/earnest/emotional (not quite sure which word is right) in a way that UK comedy generally backs away from or, at best, *immediately* undercuts with a joke to prevent us from the embarrassment of sitting in our emotions.

The US *also* has the other, colder/more distant, stuff - Curb Your Enthusiasm (which I think it excellent but find hard to watch for this reason), Arrested Development, Schitt's Creek etc.. But it seems less the norm.

And I struggle to think of UK comedy with that USey warmth. It's not *entirely* absent, I think it was there in Shameless? Which makes me think it has a class component, which seems likely.

Maybe it's like you were saying with theatre and it's because TV is really still a very oxbridgey, middle class endeavour over here, which I don't think is/was the case in the US. 

I've not seen Better Call Saul (or Breaking Bad) so can't comment directly. They look very good, but the subject matter has always put me off.

I think Saul in particular is pretty magnificent, though the tone switching from comedy to drama to melodrama and tragedy can be a bit whiplash-inducing at times. It usually handles it well.

I could do with a new comedy series. We tried Ted Lasso and it was sort of alright, folksy heartwarming comedy, but it started to lean a bit too hard into the heartwarming for our taste. That and that anything to do with professional sport starts to feel a bit too close to the dayjob for my liking!