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British public tired of British commedians & comedy

Dusty Ayres

Dusty Ayres

Commodore
From The Telegraph:

As John Cleese's Basil Fawlty once exclaimed through gritted teeth, while giving Manuel another clip round the ear: "You can't get the staff, you see; it's a nightmare!"
Now that Russell Brand has resigned from his Radio 2 programme and Jonathan Ross remains suspended for crassness beyond the call of duty, the pair will have plenty of time to watch re-runs of Fawlty Towers.
Plenty of time to remind themselves just why Andrew Sachs - who stooped to conquer our affections as Manuel - is held in such protective esteem by the public, more than three decades after Fawlty Towers first aired. And maybe they'll begin to wonder along with the rest of us: what on earth happened to comedy in this country?
Fawlty Towers was as innocent as it was beautifully scripted, while the antics of Brand and Ross were as grubby as they were mindlessly improvised. The contrast feels shaming and peculiarly telling about the decline of the great British sense of humour.
As a comedy critic, I often encounter material on the stand-up circuit that leaves me stunned by its inhuman coldness, its relish for tawdry detail, its sheer nastiness. "Rape" has become a comedy word; paedophilia is a regular staple. I'll never forget being told by one household-name comic that he was dying for Madeleine McCann to be found because he had the perfect joke ready for the occasion.
You might argue that it's the failure of arbiters of taste like me that has helped get us into this mess; we're all too scared of being lumped in with the po-faced likes of Mary Whitehouse to protest. Maybe we should hang our heads in shame but I'd counter that some comedians are now so powerful that words of condemnation - unless delivered en masse - can't hurt them, and if anything, can give them added kudos. At some point along the way "safe" became the dirtiest word in showbiz and "edgy" became the holy grail.
Back in 1975, when Fawlty Towers first aired, family-friendly fare was in abundance. There was Dad's Army, Porridge, Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Are You Being Served? and, of course, The Good Life. Just round the corner lay those other suburban classics, George and Mildred, Terry and June and Butterflies. Happy days. But we shouldn't get too carried away. In the midst of all that were Dudley Moore and Peter Cook as Derek and Clive - the latter pontificating, to mention one notorious instance, about getting aroused at the sight of the deceased Pope. And Monty Python's The Life of Brian (1979) caused a stink that easily eclipses the Brand/Ross debacle.
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British public tired of British commedians & comedy
 
Same idea might by why the movie Bruno has done so poorly. Critics loved it - audiences.....didn't even bother...
 
I can only speak for myself, but if I'm going to see a movie in theaters it's more likely than not going to be a big action packed adventure with 'splosions and stuff. The kind of thing that will look cool on a very large screen. With comedies, I almost feel as if I'm wasting my hard earned 20 bucks going to see it in theaters. The experience with such movies is the same as it is when I watch it on a tiny screen. Hence why I didn't go see Bruno myself ;)
 
Middle Earther said:
Same idea might by why the movie Bruno has done so poorly. Critics loved it - audiences.....didn't even bother...
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I saw quite a few bad reviews. One TV reviewer went out of their way to give the movie a 0 out of 5, her first in her history of doing reviews. :lol:
 
I see his point regarding 'edgy' comedy, which thinks being shocking is automatically funny, that the embarrassed schoolboy giggling of an audience is equivalent to the response genuinely funny stuff gets.
However, I disagree that this has eclipsed the genuinely funny, and is easily avoided if you so wish. Comedy not simply based on being as offensive as possible is still very easy to find, and anyone with any experience of comedy quickly learns who to avoid. True, this comedy is being quickly relegated from television in favour of its 'edgier, grittier' more shock-based cousin, but the gems of genuinely funny comedy remain, both in long running staples like HIGNFY and in other media, such as live stand up.
 
British comedy has a simple staple fact: if it's a sitcom, it's new, and it's on BBC1 on a Friday night, it will not be funny.

There is plenty of quality, hilarious British comedy, some of it is offensive and some of it isn't. See further: The Inbetweeners; The Thick of It; Peep Show; QI; The IT Crowd.

I am admittedly struggling to think of a recent 'safe' comedy that wasn't terrible. There are plenty of less offensive comedians out there though, such as Russell Howard, Ross Noble, Bill Bailey and Hugh Dennis.

It'll be a dark day when there really is no good British comedy left. But that is a very, very long way off.
 
^

...whit?

The critic seems to be trying to say "British comedy isn't good any more because Brand and Ross are cunts", essentially. Which is pish tosh, and less than a week into the Edinburgh Comedy Festival I know for a fact that this year-old article is nonsense. ;)
 
Jim Steele said:
Trekker4747 said:
British public tired of British commedians & comedy.
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They're about 50 years behind the rest of the world but I guess it's better than never.
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Um, what?
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He seems to think that the world grew tired of British comedy 10 years before Britain revolutionised comedy and the whole western world went crazy for it and spent the next 40 years copying it.

Interesting...
 
He's usually hiding in the Doctor Who forum, leaving us degenerates of TNZ to our own devices. A wise man.
 
The debate was particularly centred on the period before their civilization was wiped out, smart arse. :p

It was basically one bloke saying "Time Lords didn't have a working class" and the rest of us going "BUT WHO REFILLS THE FOOD PILL DISPENSERS?!?".
 
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