Be Excellent To Each Other

I was trapped watching the laugh free Miranda earlier, a dire sitcom where a pre-op transexual mugs at the camera for 30 minutes while surrounded by some of the worst acting since the girl in the wheelchair from Eldorado.

But that set me thinking, we always remember the good sitcoms from the past, but generally not the dross. Sure, Love Thy Neighbour gets wheeled out on clips shows, but what about some other examples. Certainly in LTN's case the focus is always on the racism which although unacceptable actually tends to play second fiddle to the fact that the entire thing is just totally laugh free and tedious.

No, what we need is more obscure stuff. The sitcoms that sunk without trace.

Well if you want obscure, why not try a series that only managed to have 1 episode broadcast before it was axed. A series so obscure it was broadcast on the Galaxy Channel on BSB back in 1990, which ensured viewing figures would have been in the hundreds....

Heil Honey I'm Home sees Adolf Hitler living next door to a Jewish couple with "hilarious" consequences. The entire thing was presented in the style of a 1950's American sitcom. Only 1 episode was shown, and the entire series axed leaving several episode unaired due to the backlash. Sky took over BSB shortly after and the rest is history.

No I'm really not making this up. It wasn't a spoof, it did happen. Here's wiki and a clip:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I'm_Home!



But hey, awful as that was nobody ever saw it. Unlike our next example....

Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft had already bought us Are You Being Served (and of course Croft also co-created Dads Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum). When John Inman defected to Thames in 1977 for his own sitcom, there was an Are You Being Served sized gap in the BBC 1 schedules to fill. So Croft and Lloyd created Come Back Mrs Noah, a sitcom where Mollie Sugden and Ian Lavender were stranded on a space station. This clip appears to have been the highlight of the entire series.



Other plots included them finding the space station toilet mounted on the wall and having to use magnetic shoes to reach it. To be fair, for me, there is one thing about the entire thing that I like, the end sequence. Ian Lavender singing badly, quite a fun sequence and a nice reminder of an era where the end titles were a proper part of the show and you could read peoples names.



Somehow also fortells the style of the theme tune of You Rang My Lord which was superbly sung by Bob Monkhouse (Chinnytrufax!)

More bad sitcoms as I find relevant clips of them.........

I saw five minutes of Gavin and Stacey and was offended by how unfunny it was.

See also: Mighty Boosh.

Gavin and Stacey is excellent, you fool!

Anyway, Mianda was one of teh guests when I saw The Bubble being recorded. She wasn't particularly funny there, either. Nor was Shappi. Robert Webb was excellent, however.

I remember watching that and thinking that they had realised having Mitchell AND Webb was guaranteed win, so they could fill the other two seats with other people who were cheaper. I've never really 'got' why Shappi has reached the prominence she has, other than maybe to tick a few diversity boxes.

M+W looked visibly pained at points during the recording. I'm not sure if the two women were pissed or not.

Joey.

MrsP was a big fan of Friends, before it began to cycle itself to tedium on Channel 4, More 4 and E4, so when it came to an end, she was happy to learn that Joey was getting his own show. I promised to obtain said show for her enjoyment. This being 2004, I was reduced to crawling Kazaa and it's contemporaries and ran the risk of bad quality, poorly ripped or downright malicious files.

I only wish it was worth it. Ick. I think the writers over estimated the popularity of Joey as a character and forgot that Friends was about (hmm, let me think...) FRIENDS. How Joey lasted 2 seasons, I'll never know.

What was that BBC sitcom with the horrible smarmy smartass kids, one of which was disabled, and the main couple were a skinny white dude and an asian lady (I think she has been in eastenders). That was terrible.

(Aha, it was 'All About Me' and Jasper Carrott was in it.)

Also that one with Caroline Quentin and another family of horrible smarmy smartass kids spouting forced-cynical 'hilarious' lines. Possibly Nicholas Lydnhurst was in it, or the guy with the craggy face from Common as Muck

(Aha, it was 'the Life of Riley' and the gut is Neil Dudgeon. Possobly the Nicholas Lydhurst one I was thinking of was 'After You've Gone).

While I'm sure these are far from worst of all time, they are fucking shit and it shows how much unmemorable tripe has been churned out. In fact I had to google to remember their names, and then realise I was thinking of two or three different shows. They just seem to blur into one lump of shite. I'm not too keen smack-talking 'smart' kids, and a lot of the writing now just seems plain vile, with horrible characters saying hateful shit to each other. It'd be OK if it was actually -y'know- funny.

Also, what is the hive mind opinion of 'How I Met Your Mother'? I didn't like it much at first, but it has really grown on me and now enjoy it and will actively look out for it. It helps that it seems to be on almost all the time out here, I guess, and the rest of the tele is pretty poor. If you guys like it I will feel happy and vindicated, but if you don't then fuck you guys

How I met your mother is utter fabulousness. It has it's weak points, but Barney Stinson is easily the greatest sitcom character of all time.

Outnumbered is an example of the family sitcom done really well. The kids are really good, and outshine the parents.

So they aren't vile, trash-talking 'world-weary' smartass little shitbags then?



*basks in the group warmth*

Smart kids is such a fucking dull cliché, though.

Miranda is brilliant, fools.

Only because you want to shag her, you freak.

It's probably the other way around, to be honest.

[edit]Haha, that could be taken the wrong way

I remember Hugh Dennis coming across as a bit of a dick in one of those other bits of tat he does, and whenever I see Claire Skinner I can't help but remember her prancing about in the all-together in "A Dance to the Music of Time". Otherwise Outnumbered works pretty well for me.

I was trying to remember some details of old, crap sitcoms, and found that they made 58 episodes of "Goonight Sweetheart". 58!

o/

She's not the woman she used to be, but thats no bad memory to have.

Richard Herrings running joke of 'You found a way to travel through time and all you did was get married to the first woman you met?" is class though.

\o

Also, I nominate Green Green Grass.

Claire Skinner is quite hot.

I quite enjoyed 'My Family' during the first series, but any time I've seen it recently it just seems to be horrid people being nasty to each other (and again, not in a particularly funny way). It seems like that has been going for a long time.

Zoe Wanamaker has one of the world's most punchable faces, too.

Does "The Cleveland Show" count?

Miranda is awful, Grim... You are broken in the head.

The kids in Outnumbered weren't smartasses though, if the youngest 2 in that show were mixed together, with added tantrums, you'd have my youngest boy. The things they say, the way they act, how they have their own kind of weird logic that is hard to fault, that IS what children are like.

Worst simcoms ever....hmmm, the last few seasons of My Family. Basically after Nick moved out. Where the hell did that knob Abbie come from? And then they moved that Welsh retard in? Why? To try to fill the 'quirky one' gap left by Nick but it was never going to work and they tried too hard with it. The acting of the youngest son was horrendous, we're talking Emma Watson levels of awful and that wasn't so bad while he was a secondary character but it really became off-putting and cringy.

Damn you all got there before me!

It bloody well should do. Hey! Let's do a spin-off featuring an incredibly dull character!

Anyway, I agree with Craster's opinion of "How I Met Your Mother".

Barney Stinson is a legend. The episode with 'The Playbook' was comedy genius.

Also, in terms of terrible shite, there was a sitcom called (*Googles*) 'Clone', which featured Jonathan Pryce and some other decent enough actors, but was the worst-written thing I have ever watched in my life.

Oh god, yes - that was terrible.

Yeah, bloody awful.

The whole Smoon / SNASA one had my slapping my thigh with mirthsome glee.

Comedy is entirely subjective for me to the point where I know I won't find something remotely funny if I'm in the wrong mood.
Another thing that can kill comedy is an inability to like either the performer or the character they're playing.

I've disliked Miranda Hart in everything I've seen her in prior to her own sitcom and admit it took a good episode to get into it, but I find it genuinely laugh out loud funny now. I can understand someone not liking it if they catch a few moments though.

Did anyone see Nighty Night? That was viciously funny.

Aye. I couldn't get into the second series of it, however.

Speaking of Miranda Hart... Hyperdrive. I really wanted to like that, but it turned out to be a half baked waste of talent. Not awful, but... no, wait, it was awful

Oh fuck yes, that was bad.

I was trying to remember what it was she'd been in. Wasn't she also in Not Going Out that no better than average sitcom with Lee Mack and Tim One Line Vine (whose only redeeming feature as far as I can tell is to be slightly less irritating than his brother Jeremy)

I've seen it before and I endured nearly an entire episode last night. It's terrible. The actress is terrible, the script is terrible and the supporting cast is terrible. I've watched some shit in my time, but Miranda is down there with the worst of them.

And most importantly, THE ONLY PERSON WHO SHOULD EVER TALK DIRECTLY AT THE CAMERA IS LOVEJOY. Hart just stands there mugging at the camera without the talent or charisma required to pull it off. It just sucks.

Miranda Hart's full name you ask? Miranda Katherine Hart-Dyke. I wonder why she changed it?

Francis Urquhart disagrees. And will probably have you killed as a consequence.

I despise Friends, the audience seem to laugh at nothing. A character enters a room, the audience cheer, a character pulls a face, the audience laughs. I just don't get it.

Actually you are right. Although I was thinking more of Lovejoys more knowing comic observations to camera at the end of the scene which is what Miranda seemed to be trying to mimic last night. Mind you, having seen the repeats a couple of years back, McShane was born to act that role. Miranda probably requires no acting at all.

Deadwood has a lot to answer for

I get where you're coming from but it doesn't necessarily make your opinion correct. I would argue that she's knowingly playing a klutzy charisma free character and focusing on not liking her is going to miss the point. The humour and the situations she gets into are absurd and once you buy into that (optional obviously, if it's not for you then it's not for you) then the slapstick is amusing.

Friends isn't funny at all. People that like Friends like Stephen Fry.

From the old days - 'Terry and June.'

Currently - 'How not to live your life.' Why was a second series commissioned?

I like Miranda, but am not sure why.

Anyway, "Filthy, Rich and Catflap" had it's moments but was still a disappointment.
"The Royle Family" was an overrated heap of shite.
How "Two pints of lager" got 8 series remains one of the great mysteries of our time.
& "We Are Klang" is the most recent pile of pish I remember watching.

I suspect BBC3 were given a budget for sitcoms and as that one was the only one showing any viewing figures worth writing down... keep churning it out!

This was another one that I quite liked, but can't work out why.

I remember the name but not a single thing about the show.
LOLed many a time personally.
UTTER HATEFUL GASH
Not seen it.

Early Men Behaving Badly, try and watch the ones with Harry Enfield in them now, in fact try and watch anything he did in the 90s now.

Never watched it.
Agree.
Disagree.