Just saw this clip on Youtube. We on this rock are stuck between Britain and the States and get a fair bit of both types of comedy. I thought this was pretty good and to a "non British and non American" eye, was pretty accurate
I'll view the video later but the first, immediate difference I've personally noticed between US and UK humor is the use of historical events and refences by many UK comedians. You simply don't see that in US comedy. That was actually the first thing that endeared me to Monty Python. I absolutely loved how some of their sketches would make references to the Elizabethan or Victorian era or make references to famous philosophers (for example their soccer match sketch).
This is not to say that I think all US humor is trite but it definitely lacks a certain level of intellectualism to it.
I think on the whole British humor is far more clever and memorable, while American humor is always about familiarity and is trite by design "... and what's the deal with TV dinners..." Comedians in the USA are always trying to "connect" to the audience with familiarity, always catering to the lowest common denominator ( with some exceptions of course )
British humor, on the other hand, almost dares the audience to keep up and is far more nimble and unpredictable.
I think on the whole British humor is far more clever and memorable, while American humor is always about familiarity and is trite by design "... and what's the deal with TV dinners..." Comedians in the USA are always trying to "connect" to the audience with familiarity, always catering to the lowest common denominator ( with some exceptions of course )
British humor, on the other hand, almost dares the audience to keep up and is far more nimble and unpredictable.
+1
Are there any UK equivalents for Larry the Cable Guy? God I sure hope you guys in the UK don't have one!
I'll view the video later but the first, immediate difference I've personally noticed between US and UK humor is the use of historical events and refences by many UK comedians. You simply don't see that in US comedy. That was actually the first thing that endeared me to Monty Python. I absolutely loved how some of their sketches would make references to the Elizabethan or Victorian era or make references to famous philosophers (for example their soccer match sketch).
This is not to say that I think all US humor is trite but it definitely lacks a certain level of intellectualism to it.
I grew up with Monty Python and watched it when it was shown on the telly, a lot is very clever but an equal amount is forgettable.
I was recently looking to add some stuff to my watch list.I'm now working through 'Married with Children'. I don't usually watch American sit-coms but this is good stuff (so far) but I've only done Season 1 ep 1 and 2 so far
I was recently looking to add some stuff to my watch list.I'm now working through 'Married with Children'. I don't usually watch American sit-coms but this is good stuff (so far) but I've only done Season 1 ep 1 and 2 so far
Oh dear, that is the epitome of "bad" American sitcoms, so much so that it was actually a parody. Funny stuff, great cast.
What home-grown stuff do you guys watch,or consider 'watchable'?
Depends on what genre you like but if you are talking about comedies the only ones I really like are Family Guy, South Park and Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I can't stand the standard sit-coms.
I can't stand watching it, it's like watching Roseanne
Now way. MwC seemed self-aware, they knew it was crap. Roseanne tried to get all serious sometimes. No thanks.
Originally Posted By: PanzerMeyer
Originally Posted By: Chucky
What home-grown stuff do you guys watch,or consider 'watchable'?
Depends on what genre you like but if you are talking about comedies the only ones I really like are Family Guy, South Park and Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I can't stand the standard sit-coms.
Yeah, I have been watching more animated stuff. I revisited Futurama, started the 4th season of Archer, and have really gotten into Adventure Time, and to a lesser degree, The Regular Show.
Posted By: Anonymous
Re: American vs British comedy - 05/15/1408:17 PM
i never paid much attention to british vs american sense of humor until i saw "coupling". even with the same lines/script, the american version never measured up to the original. after watching the vid i understand why.
I like our "science" humour ~ "The Ape that got lucky", "Civilisation", "It is rocket science!", with their sideways glance at serious subjects mostly 'good science' in the breach if not the observance.
'A serious attempt to trivialise an important subject'.
My favorite comedy is Fawlty Towers. Hands down, makes me laugh. Was it funny to you folks? Very short lived series so I guess not, but anyone I know that has seen it over here (US) thinks it was a very funny show.
I think on the whole British humor is far more clever and memorable, while American humor is always about familiarity and is trite by design "... and what's the deal with TV dinners..." Comedians in the USA are always trying to "connect" to the audience with familiarity, always catering to the lowest common denominator ( with some exceptions of course )
British humor, on the other hand, almost dares the audience to keep up and is far more nimble and unpredictable.
My favorite comedy is Fawlty Towers. Hands down, makes me laugh. Was it funny to you folks? Very short lived series so I guess not, but anyone I know that has seen it over here (US) thinks it was a very funny show.
Fawlty Towers has to be considered a classic - I suspect partly because it was short lived. Sadly, far too many comedy series go on well beyond the point where they become well-worn and repetitive.
I guess for me it depends one what we are comparing. In general, I dislike most modern so called comedy be it American or British. Too much vulgarity and dirty/potty humor. Just isn't funny to me. I'm often concerned and outright angry when I see people enjoying stuff that to me is trash. For example, Some of Ron White's skits can be just flat out goofy and funny but most of the stuff I see him do is utter garbage therefore I shake my head and turn the channel.
Personal taste I suppose is going to override any nationality barrier. I think its unfair to compare them if the attempt is to demean or praise one over another. Both have contributed in great ways the comedy entertainment industry.
England gave us Bob Hope and he in turn gave decades of entertainment to the world. Jonathan Winters is another example of a guy who can be over the top but he didn't have to cop out to perversity and being cruel to someone to get a laugh. Some of his stuff has me rolling on the floor.
Probably my favorite kind of humor comes from guys like Andy Griffith. His stand up comedy routines and story telling in my opinion is second to none and so full of life and laughs.
Thanks piper, Cosby is another one. His mannerisms and brand of humor is so subtle yet it hits me big sometimes and I feel like I'm the only one who just got what he did.
IMO, the problem with a lot of American comedy and sit-coms is that most people who watch things like that aren't smart enough to understand them. This is evident by things like incredibly good shows getting canceled far too early (e.g., Bakersfield PD) or modified to the point where they aren't that funny (the first season of Scrubs was MUCH better than all of the later seasons).
It's been a long while, but Bill Hicks comes to mind when I think of smart comedians. Cosby is also good
I'm liking Louis C.K. lately (he's not at a really high level like the foregoing but he's above average).
Sarah Silverman is seems to be pretty smart but she's quite vulgar which is a bit off-putting and she doesn't make me laugh out loud - I just find her mildly amusing and frequently boring.
I'm sure there are others but I rarely find one that's stellar.
The trouble is,I've watched all my favourite UK sit-coms to death.What home-grown stuff do you guys watch,or consider 'watchable'?
Just before I cast off from TV for the last time, by not bothering to respond when NTSC was terminated, I saw a few episodes of "My Name is Earl" on the telly, and I thought it was diabolically clever, all about karma and idiocy in the most brilliant fashion. No idea if it kept up the quality, but I found the unspoken philosophical concepts behind the "sit com" situations to be screamingly funny.
They can be topical and you need to know the UK political and social system,
Yeah, there are no US game shows that I can think of which have this requirement. About the only game show around that requires the contestants to have any sort of academic knowledge is "Jeopardy".
Red Dwarf? I must know every episode verbatim,watched it so many times. And the thing is I still laugh no matter how many times I watch it. To me it is the best comedy ever produced.
Fawlty Towers has to be considered a classic - I suspect partly because it was short lived. Sadly, far too many comedy series go on well beyond the point where they become well-worn and repetitive.
I don't know why Fawlty Towers was stopped after two series, but it was brilliant. John Cleese is fantastic. My wife did some interior design work for his home last year and said he's an extremely intelligent and very nice guy.
Father Ted is another favourite of mine, and that stopped after just three series because Dermot Morgan passed away.
Porridge went to what, three series? Ronnie Barker at his best, you know the script has to be good comedy when at least half of each episode takes place in a prison cell but it's still laugh out loud funny.
Only Fools and Horses was stretched out too far. They should have just left it after the Trotters became millionaires and never made the comeback with the last three episodes. They just weren't up to scratch and left such a great sitcom to exit on a low note.
Dad's Army went out to what, six or seven series and remained fantastic right up to the end. Red Dwarf went to eight series... whilst I wasn't a huge fan of it, Red Dwarf certainly wasn't bad.
When you think about it, there are plenty of fogettable sitcoms as well... The Brittas Empire, Two Point Four Children (Robert Lindsay carried that, along with whoever played the oldest son), Goodnight Sweetheart (Nicholas Lyndhurst just couldn't get away from being Rodney Trotter), The Thin Blue Line...
Perhaps not a sitcom as such, but one of my all time favourite TV characters who never fails to get a laugh out of me is Arthur Daley:
What I also find interesting is there was a 4 year hiatus between the airing of the first and second series of "Fawlty Towers". I think there were 12 episodes made in total?
What I also find interesting is there was a 4 year hiatus between the airing of the first and second series of "Fawlty Towers".
I just went and had a look on Wikipedia. It says the reason for the four year gap was because Connie Booth (Cleese's wife, co-writer and also played Polly) initially didn't want to make a second series. It also says that Cleese and Booth divorced between the first and second series, so that may have had something to do with it as well.
Ha ha! She grew up in a strict home where her parents would only let her watch Public Television. If her parents only knew what type of weird British shows the PBS aired late on a Saturday night.
Grew up watching Benny Hill, then got into Monty Python, The Young Ones, and later Absolutely Fabulous (probably thanks to MTV when they used to show them back in the late 80's).
I'd have to also add Kids in the Hall from Canada, the "North American Pythons", as one of my favorites.
A lot of the best British comedy is tempered with a melancholy and poignancy which sometimes translates and sometimes doesn't. Open All Hours, Porridge, Hancock, in particular, come to mind. Best of all is Steptoe and Son which, when you actually pay attention to it, is unremittingly dark and essentially about having the life crushed out of your aspirations. Very heavy for a 30 minute 'light entertainment' show, and ground breaking in many ways.
It's a common thread - it's largely what Fawlty Towers was about: a social climber who was always handicapped by his own crippling social insecurities and those around him. I think Cleese is on records as saying, in effect, that they quit while they were ahead.
My favourite British comedy of the last few years is Bluestone 42, which is about a bomb disposal detachment in Afghanistan. it's funny, it's clever and it doesn't pull its punches whilst being highly respectful of what those guys go through.
What else? Nighty Night from a few years back? It's very funny but extremely, extremely extremely brutally dark.
I don't really watch a great deal of American comedy, I have to admit. I'm going to buy the huge Phil Silvers Show boxset in the near future (Bilko being one of the best sit coms ever made,) and I like the Big Bang Theory but that's it. My mate keeps trying to get me to watch How I Met Your Mother, but I just don't get it. And I'm apparently the only person on earth who hated Curb Your Enthusiasm. I watched Scrubs for a while, but kind of got bored of the hyper-kinetic moralizing.
Now, Arrested Development....that was funny. And I loved 30 Rock as well. Bored To Death was brilliant too.
As for Python. Its funny as hell in places. Other, not so much. They took so much from that crop of comedians like Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine and so on who made it big when they came back from the war, and BBC radio comedy from the 40s and 50s is so sharp and so full of incredibly rich language and intelligence that you can really see where the Pythons got it from.
Of course, Milligan and Bentine took a lot of their inspiration from the Marx Brothers who in turn took their inspiration from American Vaudeville and British and German variety and music hall. It all goes around.
open all hours is one of my favourite shows Ronnie barker just sublime with his character but I also liked some short lived American shows like sledgehammer. I like to laugh and enjoy many of the shows mentioned I watch to much tv mostly comedy .
open all hours is one of my favourite shows Ronnie barker just sublime with his character but I also liked some short lived American shows like sledgehammer. I like to laugh and enjoy many of the shows mentioned I watch to much tv mostly comedy .
I'd forgotten about Sledgehammer. Wow, that's going back. Good call!
Fawlty Towers was one of my favorite shows and it was British sitcom, broadcasted on BBC. My favorite character was Manuel the Spanish guy, who barely speaks English. Great fun..
Cleese said in the extras of Fawlty Towers that the reason he didn't want to go past those 12 was frankly he got bored.
He left MP after 3 years because in his opinion they had "perfected" sketch comedy. They knew how to do it, they'd explored the boundaries, he was tired of it. With FT, he "perfected" situation comedy. While they could've done more, he didn't think it would be anything but retreading existing ground. He was still in favor of the films because they took a single chunk of time, as opposed to series which take months and months each year, and there were so many avenues to explore vs a sketch show or sitcom.
Another show I've enjoyed in the last couple of years, is the "Live from Apollo" series of stand-up. You get exposed to a great number of talented british (and irish and american too) comedians.
I used to watch Benny Hill and Are You Being Served on TV.
The visual gags are funny.
But when they start talking and doing comedy monologues and the laugh track comes on in the background, I can't comprehend what they said that was funny.
Usually pomposity, non sequiturs, euphemisms or double entendres.
Sometimes highly educated... sometimes schoolboy lavatorial.
Part of the fun is the painful/embarrassing/unexpected.
Without knowing the individual sketch you have difficulty with it isn't possible to guess at the intent.
*Most* good recentish British humour doesn't have a laugh track as such though ~ either only an audience reaction or nothing according to style. This tends to match the laugh and 'joke' better than some of the more awkward examples. Benny Hill I seem to remember had a fairly prolific laugh track that didn't really do the material justice, though some individual sketches are brilliant, much was ..meh and with laughter everywhere it diminished the best.
This has been a great thread. I have not seen "Brass" but will look it up. That short clip was great .
Without making any judgement about which is "better or worse" I think we can agree that a few hundred years apart has evolved a different sense of what consistutes funny for for the "typical" ( what ever that may be ) American vs British person. I've gone to a few ( non- mainstream) plays and comedy clubs in the UK, and genearally you can pick out the American tourists in the audience because they don't laugh "in the right places". Conversely most of my British friends don't understand US humour
I used to watch Benny Hill and Are You Being Served on TV.
The visual gags are funny.
But when they start talking and doing comedy monologues and the laugh track comes on in the background, I can't comprehend what they said that was funny.
You're not a native English speaker so most likely you miss out on the nuances and cultural references required to "get" the jokes. Humor is a highly specialized thing depending on the cultural context it is taking place in.
Egads no! I worked there for something like six months. I remember the common themes used in their music - - "I've just lost my job and I don't know what to do." - "I've just lost my girlfriend and I don't know what to do." - "I've just lost my job and girlfriend and don't know what to do."
Posted By: Anonymous
Re: American vs British comedy - 05/23/1406:51 AM
Originally Posted By: Jedi Master
Humor is very grounded in cultural background. If yours differs from the comedian's, it's quite likely you won't get it.
The Jedi Master
Not just cultural background but also with one's perspective of life. I recall this comedian being featured (my memory's bad and I hate googling) and the clips from his stand up comedy really annoyed me. They were exaggerated rants about hardships in life and my only reaction after each of his line was, "Get a grip!"
However, he's supposed to be a hit so again, to each his own.
Egads no! I worked there for something like six months. I remember the common themes used in their music - - "I've just lost my job and I don't know what to do." - "I've just lost my girlfriend and I don't know what to do." - "I've just lost my job and girlfriend and don't know what to do."
Wrt OP, yes British humour often contains historical/intellectual references ,- and then drops instantly to toilet/schoolboy humour and back again. In some ways I feel this is a form of 'self defense' against accusations of pomposity- something Brits have always had an almost inate urge to ridicule. One of the prime examples of this has got to be Spitting Image. hugely influencial (watched by more people than voted for the Govt) and was a start for alot of comedians, writers etc
Another favourite of mine is Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, surreal and quintessentially English
Generally my taste is towards the dark, and this is something that UK does very well, very often starting as radio comedies one thing the BBC is very good at supporting)
Following links are NSFW and not for those of sensitive dispositions.
Chris Morris is very dark and surreal and his various shows have 'brought on' some great talents (eg Alan Partridge, Julia Davis - Nighty Night). It was tempting to put up The Day Today but for sheer difference it has to be Jam
Then still my all time favourite, Monkeydust. Clips are funny but it really does need to be watched as episodes ( rather like League of Gentlemen imho)
One other point, I find UK comedies tend to allow 'supporting characters' more room to 'breathe' (and get some funny lines. I wonder if this has anything to do with a tradition of Music Hall/ End of Pier show/ Pantomime?
I recently stumbled on this and though you guys might enjoy it abacus.fm An internet radio station that plays non stop classic British radio comedies such as The Goon Show. Hancocks Half Hour, The Navy Lark ect. ect.
Not sure there is really American and British anymore, since there is so much carryover. Regardless, there's a lot of US humor/comedy that I don't like, but it's not as bad as it as in the 90's. My wife and I watched "Almost Royal" yesterday and found it hilarious. A smart twist of a "reality" show, where the real part is in the reaction of the Americans meeting these characters and thinking the joke is on them, not themselves. "Georgie and Poppy" (she's hot!) were very in sync with each other and extremely funny. The friends with benefits bit will be a classic. LOL