Sunday 2 April 2017

American vs British sitcoms


When I was a kid, it seemed like the smartest, funniest sitcoms were American. They were the ones with the sardonic, wisecracking kids and the risky story-lines. Unlike British sitcoms of the time, the action was not confined to the living room; in America we were taken to news rooms, bars and police stations.
In our house, we were allowed to stay up a bit later on a Friday night to watch Cheers and I have a vague memory of my Mum shrieking with laughter at the subversive comedy series, Soap. We grew up alongside the kids in Roseanne and the droll DARLENE, was a hero of mine (despite the fact that my brother said that she looked like the lead singer from The Wonderstuff). Here was a thing; a teenage girl had the best lines in a sitcom crammed full of great lines.


Britain, on the other hand, seemed to be producing a plethora of cosy, middle class, family-centred comedy: Fresh Fields, Terry and June, No Place like Home. (The Young Ones had passed me by, I was too young for it and Vivian terrified me!) Plus there were the endless repeats of The Good Life and Butterflies. All pleasant but not particularly ground-breaking stuff*. The American comedies seemed younger, edgier, zingier.  



*Only Fools and Horses was a slow grower for me, it was a while before I appreciated it. It’s hard to evaluate it these days, because it has been repeated so much that saturation has diluted its true value. John Sullivan was the king of the working class comedy and he excelled himself with Only Fools, (he also penned the brilliant Just Good Friends). Only Fools was funny but it didn’t really ‘speak to me’ in the same way that Roseanne did. In fact, no British sitcom quite did until Spaced walked into my life, with a colossal blast of fresh air!




Spaced resonated with every brilliant line. I felt that slackers DAISY and TIM were my boyfriend and I.
Tim was a talented artist who worked in a comic book shop. He spent nights playing zombie-bashing games on his games console. He was a sci-fi geek who made geekery look cool.  
Daisy wanted to be a writer, described herself as a writer but hadn’t made any money from it and had to settle for a series of dispiritingly menial agency jobs instead (once they’d cut off her dole money). (At the risk of sounding like a narcissist) Daisy was me!** I wanted to be a writer! I’d done those menial jobs! As portrayed by the brilliant Jessica Hynes (Stevenson, as was) who co-wrote the series, Daisy exemplified the ‘90s, underachieving, smart, jokey, pot-smoking woman that I identified with. She wasn’t glossy and polished like the women in Friends, she looked like a real person. And she wasn’t humourless and disapproving like the women in Men Behaving Badly either. She was funny and quirky and flawed and I loved the fact that she got as many funny lines as Tim. (I love ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ and it will always be one of my all-time favourite comedy programs but it was a bit blokey, ditto Father Ted, Spaced showed life from a realistic female perspective.)   


**I’m not saying that you have to be able to relate to a situation to find it funny but I reserve a certain fondness for the shows which have the strongest resonance.


Daisy and Tim pretended to be a couple to get a flat but the will-they-won’t they question was only a tiny aspect of the programme; more important were the portrayal of friendships and the surreal tangents the plot took. The Spaced D.V.D had a function where you could switch on an ‘homage guide’ in case you’d missed any of the pastiches or film quotes.
I have to stop myself from watching it too often and ruining it’s freshness, ‘cause, even after all these years - it debuted in 1999, it still feels fresh.


They tried to make an American version of Spaced but it bombed. It seems that it wasn’t that easy to replicate its charm and move the action elsewhere.


There seems to be a stable of great comedy now; much of it written by and starring women:
Broad City (rude, crude, brilliant!)
Parks and Recreation


And in the U.K:
Fleabag


Are we seeing a parity in quality now, on both sides of the pond?


P.S Feel free to tell me about any brilliant, groundbreaking British comedy from the ‘80s, if you like. I do realise that I didn’t include Blackadder, which I do consider to be genius and in a class of its own.


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