OT: Hostility in Forums

[narf poit chez BOOM]

British humor is the best. Best comedy shows I've seen? British.

Worse comedy shows I've seen? US.

[Randallw]

In my experience, worst comedies? US remakes of British comedies.

A key factor I think is that British comedies have an idea what they want to write. Sort of "I have a few great ideas for episodes" and they condense it down into 6 great episodes a year. In the US they seem to have an idea and when they get made the writers have to wrack their brains to develop 26 epsiodes a year.

There's a great show called "Top Gear". It's about cars. Now that's normally an area I have zero interest in but it's entertaining because the presenters make jokes about stuff and have fun. If the car they're testing is a piece of junk they will call it a piece of junk. I read lately that Jay Leno thinks the idea of a US version is doomed as the presenters can't criticise anything in case the sponsors take offence.

There's a US remake of an Australian comedy in development. You can't help but read about here as it the original seems to be widely considered the epitome of Aussie humour. Me personally, I can't stand the piece of
!@#$%. I fully expect the remake to burst into flames 5 minutes before it first airs. What do I know though, there's another panel quiz show I thought would be cancelled after one epsiode, whcih kept going. It was vaguely entertaining though. Actually now I come to think of it it hasn't been on for awhile. I guess it did get axed.

Addendum: Not that I mean to go on a rant, but on a related note, I recently saw the remake of Solaris. Now I've never seen the original, although since it's Soviet Union Sci-fi and I had the misfortune of seeing one of those once I doubt it was any better, but after roughly two minutes I thought "This is the most abominably boring sci-fi film I have ever seen". It's like the 5 minutes at the end of 2001 where Dave is living the rest of his life in the one room, only it goes for 2 hours. I've never understood exactly what was happening in 2001, but there is a difference between being confused and being bored out of your skull.

I heard it has a nice twist with one guy being replaced but I couldn't bring myself to torture myself waiting to see it. Yes, yes I know I didn't watch the whole thing, but boring me within 2 minutes is not conducive to making me care about the rest.

[capnq]

Randallw said:
In my experience, worst comedies? US remakes of British comedies.

A key factor I think is that British comedies have an idea what they want to write. Sort of "I have a few great ideas for episodes" and they condense it down into 6 great episodes a year. In the US they seem to have an idea and when they get made the writers have to wrack their brains to develop 26 epsiodes a year.

Not only that, but the show has to last four seasons/100 episodes to be considered viable for syndication, which is almost pure profits.

There's a great show called "Top Gear". It's about cars. Now that's normally an area I have zero interest in but it's entertaining because the presenters make jokes about stuff and have fun. If the car they're testing is a piece of junk they will call it a piece of junk. I read lately that Jay Leno thinks the idea of a US version is doomed as the presenters can't criticise anything in case the sponsors take offence.

That's something that could work on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service; AFAIK, the only nonprofit TV network in the US). PBS is where the original versions of "Brit-coms" get aired. (Also on BBC America, but that's a cable channel so I've never seen it.)

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