[OT] Most modern comedy is crap.

[Nightjar]

Are you going to share them?

Mostly dramas, but it even happens in documentaries.

[soup]

Knew it was one of them.

I remember now, he was on the lash with RM in London and RM asked him were they were and Billy said something about the chap who wrote "the streets of London" not knowing anything about the streets of London.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Another R4 fan. ;-)

[Chris French]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Well yes, but I didn't pick that snippet up from there.

An article I read somewhere.

[critcher]

I find "Early Doors" to be a very funny, sometimes sad, observational comedy. Now running on Gold I believe. You will be very lucky to find pubs like that now.

[tim.....]

First time I saw him, I couldn't understand a damned word he said :-(

tim

[Nightjar]

I had to give up watching Rab C Nesbitt because it annoyed my partner so much that I was laughing at things she had not even understood.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Ah. There was a bit about the Jaws model not working as it should the other day.

[Davey]

If I remember, it was called Bruce and was indeed very unreliable. And that's going from memory from the original film production.

[whisky-dave]

I thought he wrote the streets of London, but was actually describing his experience in Paris.

[whisky-dave]

I'm sure I remmember the hump back whales in the 4th star trek film the voyage home were so good they fooled quite a few people intom believing they were real evem some well meaning enviomentalist that protested at their use in the film. Poor George and Gracie.

[Davey]

I never saw that film, but I did see several extracts. Were they not CGI rather than 'real'? 'Walking with Dinosaurs' showed what could be done quite early on.

[whisky-dave]

No this was 1986, animatronics rather than CGI.

that was 10+ years later.

[Johnny B Good]

It wasn't Monkey Dust itself that was in bad taste, just the ghastly ills of a post Thatcher British society it was 'poking fun' at. Not so much 'poking fun' as poking the proverbial ten foot barge pole at the shit heap that British society, institutions and services had descended into.

Whilst there was some level of humour in the threaded sketches, a lot of it was basically dead pan allegory with, at best, humour only of the blackest kind (it was *all* dark humour).

[Johnny B Good]

The only one in that list that I enjoyed watching was "The IT Crowd". The rest were just a little too humdrum, 'fly-on-the-wall', or soap opera- ish styled for my liking. Too much effort for so little return imho.

[Johnny B Good]

ISTR that the BBC opted to suppress the laughter track (as per the creators' original desire) when they broadcast the series.

Interesting enough the box set of the show (11 seasons on 36 disks!) has the option to turn the laugh track on or off.

[Tim Watts]

It's weird, I hated The Office (UK version) but I really liked the US version. Partly because Steve Carrel is quite good at playing "straight but loopy" and partly because the other characters were quite likeable, even when they were generally cast to be "evil".

It's the sort of place I would like to work (well, attend work, I doubt much work would happen). Whereas the UK version just reminds me too much of places I have worked (in a not good way).

[stuart noble]

Although a spin-off from The Office, I really enjoyed Parks and Rec. Series 1 was a bit tentative but, once it got going, some good characters emerged. Ron Swanson has rightly become a legend, not least because of his d-i-y skills.

[ARW]

Due to the smoking ban IMHO.

[harry]

A lot of subjects are taboo these days due to the various political correctitudes in vogue. Eg race (Irish jokes). Woman (The loony harpies/women drivers). We have so many fragile little egos these days. All part of government attempts at thought control.