2010 on
I was wondering what people thought of this
I think there's been slightly less good comedy from this decade compared to others but it comes in so many forms now so maybe that's why
Best things to come out of comedy from this decade
I've seen every new sitcom since this century began and apart from the best episodes of The IT Crowd, Miranda and Not Going Out, they're all crap. The reasons are debatable, but I would suggest it's because the lack of a studio audience in most shows has given the writers a licence to not be funny. Fleabag and Detectorists left me unmoved and I wasn't even aware any of it was supposed to be amusing.
I'd agree that the majority from this decade have been weak, however thought 'People Just Do Nothing' was such a gem, it kind of made up for the schlock. Partridge's 'Scissored Isle' and Harry & Paul's 'Story of the 2's' were superb; especially in how unexpectedly hilarious they were!
It seems a less funny decade, however there's platforms and varieties as well, so it's just about doing some digging. I'd be sorely disappointed if I put all my chuckle eggs in four 'terrestrial' baskets. The current comedy commissioner at the Beeb is too busy polishing Brendan O'Carroll's prestigious 'award'
Inside No 9 is excellent (as I've said probably way too many times)
Taskmaster is a nice refreshing light entertainment thing that has me laughing out loud on a regular basis.
Not Going Out is still pretty good.
Flowers was good imo, as was Camping, if you like weird dark things.
Man Down
Peter Kay's Car Share
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
The Wrong Ones (just discovered this recently and it was definitely a fun one)
Those are some of my recent highlights. Lot of good stuff out there. I'm sure there's more I can't think of at the moment.
I don't think it's been a particularly weak decade. I've pretty consistently had something coming up that I've been really looking forward to, or was happy to discover even though it came out a while back.
There's also non-telly stuff. Lots of good radio going on, for instance.
I agree comedy has gone down hill.
A couple of reasons I think (I know not everyone will agree and it's to do with my tastes).
There's less qualify creative and more resorting to crude gags. Look at stuff like The Inbetweeners; it's just a couple of teenagers 'bragging' about sex, they're not creating proper jokes just trying to be crude. I don't find lots of crudeness funny.
Secondly there seems to be more cultural references etc. Whereas the best sitcoms (OFAH for example) 99% of their jokes are timeless, anyone from any era can understand them.
If you make references to say a general election, the chances are a year later, they'd have forgotten and won't find it funny.
Not all good old sitcoms are low on cultural references that date them. Topical humour of any era will always run the risk of becoming dated but if it's well done it can still hold up. This might be an oddball example, but Time Trumpet is super time/context dependent but the gags/writing shine through that even now (though that's kind of a bad example because no one seems to remember that show.)
To say new sitcoms are too topical to be any good is I think mislaying the blame. Political comedy especially is topical to the point of becoming dated quickly. Who wants to watch an episode of 8 out of 10 cats from 5 years ago (who would want to watch it now, also, but I digress), but some topical/political comedy does or probably will hold up well, like Comedy Vehicle. Some of the references might fall out, but if you look to Stew's 90s showd Fist of Fun and TMWRNJ, they're incredibly topical but are still well loved and very funny.
Your point about comedy being more crude now and thus not being as good doesn't work for me either. There has been crude humour as long as there's been humour. Just one example: Derek and Clive. Very much not new, very much crude, yet still funny. Bam! Counterexample!
There is also loads of excellent new comedy coming out online and happening live alllll the time. TV is not the whole comedy world. (And let's not forget radio, my friends! John Finnemore's new Double Acts are marvelous, and Souvenir Programme as well...and that's just some of the past decades output of one man in radio. So many people are making great new radio. If we're constraining it to just sitcoms, then might I point toward radio sitcoms?)
You can try to deny that great things have happened or are happening in comedy this decade, but I'll put up a fight, I will! I just did.
What you may be failing to appreciate, Davida, is that whilst there is some excellent quality comedy being made today, there is much less diversity in style and tone, and much less that people can watch together, as families, which - outside the London bubble - they really do still want to do.
That's a fair point. The few shows I do share with friends and watch together are mostly not from the past decade.
There is still plenty of good new comedy for a comedy geek to geek out on in solitude ...which is mainly my jam, could slightly be a generational thing? At least in the US 20-somethings don't tend to have tv with channels, they just stream things because cable/satellite/etc. is expensive, and if you don't pay for a service like that you get 1 public access channel and then like ABC and FOX if you don't live too far out in the middle of nowhere. If there was a half decent public broadcasting network in the US that had decent programming that might not be the case. I don't know. I get the sense though that tv is less of a dying medium in the UK than the US. Maybe not though. I'm probably in my own bubble on this one. I realise the big budget tv stuff is mainly all being made in the US and those shows are definitely popular, but I don't know anyone my age who has a tv package with any of the channels that have those shows. There's no equivalent to iPlayer here either, really. I've lost my train of thought...
It is definitely generational, and there is a similar phenomenon here of 20-somethings and 30-somethings not watching a lot of live broadcast television. However, our TV cultures are very different, as almost every channel making original comedy here is free-to-air.
Of course, many people - including the majority of BCG visitors, and some posters - are not comedy geeks. They're just regular viewers who like a good laugh and want to have something to entertain and amuse, without having to have specialist knowledge to hunt out some particular niche comedian or no-longer-being-made sitcom.
Quote: Aaron @ 10th September 2017, 10:14 PMWhat you may be failing to appreciate, Davida, is that whilst there is some excellent quality comedy being made today, there is much less diversity in style and tone, and much less that people can watch together, as families, which - outside the London bubble - they really do still want to do.
I agree with this - get really fed up with excessive effing and blinding. Whatever people say, Mrs Browns' Boys is not a seventies style sitcom. It's a lot of unappealing people swearing and avoiding questions on tax avoidance. But I have been assuming that all members of most families these days are probably like The Inbetweeners. That's the father, mother, daughters and sons and granny and her new "husband" who occasionally arrive unexpectedly from their fourth home in Honolulu. In Gogglebox, it's only those nice Indian chaps from the Midlands who talk normally so perhaps what ours were when we had a spacehopper, choppers and T Rex is now more akin to devout Muslims. Everyone else has turned into Viz.
It also helps that with some comedy there is also something else going on beneath the surface. Steptoe and Son had a dark undercurrent of resentment and bitterness. The Office peered underneath David Brent's vapid personality to show a man desperate to be accepted. Victor Meldrew is a decent man in a world surrounded by bad manners and terrible luck.
If it's belly laughs you'e after these days there's always the likes of Mrs Brown's Boys, Miranda, Citizen Khan etc. (And shame on you!)
Quote: paulted @ 23rd January 2018, 8:06 PMIt also helps that with some comedy there is also something else going on beneath the surface. Steptoe and Son had a dark undercurrent of resentment and bitterness. The Office peered underneath David Brent's vapid personality to show a man desperate to be accepted. Victor Meldrew is a decent man in a world surrounded by bad manners and terrible luck.
If it's belly laughs you'e after these days there's always the likes of Mrs Brown's Boys, Miranda, Citizen Khan etc. (And shame on you!)
Yes but that episode when David Brent was accepted into So Called Islamic State was blinking ridiculous.
Lots of comedy in previous century had topics that many people now find offensive. Love thy Neighbour, Benny Hill, even Friends many people find offensive, as sexist racist etc
I think nowadays writers are frightend of offending people and will not take risks with comedy.
New comedies now have to hit the ground running, have great viewing figures, be hilarious all the time. Previously some comedies were slow burners and took maybe a series or 2 to get up to speed, giving the writers time to develop their craft, script and characters
I prefer the new trend of having less series, it puts the focus more on ideas an less on formula. It's also generally helped more experimental ideas get on tv
For me there isn't much I like today. I'm sure there a lot of fantastic modern sitcoms out there that I haven't seen but today sitcoms' I have seen I really don't like. For me they don't live up to the standards of things from the 1970s like Porridge as an example. Is it because PC is more a thing nowadays, than it used to be I don't know? I know a lot of stuff back then, you cannot get away with now, Love Thy Neighbour as an example. Another points with the old sitcoms, I can relate it to them a lot more than I can with today sitcoms. With each decade, I seem less interested in modern sitcoms. In the 90s, I liked some lot but not a lot. Examples that I liked from the 90s are Men Behaving Badly and Bottom.
It'd be easier for me to put the worst sitcoms from the last decade. Miranda is undoubtedly the worst for that.