behminztur
Friday 30th March 2018 11:42pm [Edited]
69 posts
Quote: everhopeful @ 30th March 2018, 5:41 PM
Perhaps peoples' perception of humour has changed. I suppose I'm a bit of a dinosaur really, but as someone else has said we all like and enjoy different things, which is what we want from T.V. I won't knock these programmes as I could not write better. Once again, a great article. Do you think that TV companies might adopt your ideas for the genre of 'dramedy'? Thank you.
This is an interesting subject really. In the early days of VHS one of the things that flourished were films that were very undemanding from a viewer's perspective - things were it mattered less if you had to just pop to the kitchen or something, because you could still hear it so you'd more or less get the gist. Same for sets with not much going on, and people not being wild enough that you have to keep your eyes on it constantly. It was perfect for it, in direct contrast to watching a film at the cinema, where the screen's massive, sound is immersive, and you want to get hooked in.
There was a sort of move away from that when more impressive action scenes became more possible and people's TVs got bigger, et cetera. You could get more immersed in your own home.
Now however in many way's it's moved back to passivity, where you can watch anything on a screen no matter how tiny or how massive, you can watch it whenever and wherever you like, and there's a ton of choice re: what you can watch.
Where in decades gone by there was a sort of British realism in our film dramas (Fish Tank and Life Is Sweet come to mind, however there are tons of much older ones like Nighthawks et al), now there is far more elements of realism in British comedy, and with it, the drama elements as well. Recent programmes like Mum, Detectorists, and This Country have exemplified that pretty well. With sitcoms, if watched passively, it may make less of a difference between multi-camera ones with big laughs and single-camera ones with fewer. The laughs then come from the relatibility, which has to be caused, rather than by being loud, to invoke emotions, which is where the drama elements come in. It's how the quiet single-camera sitcoms of recent hook people and get you to side with them, while being more reserved.
The Office really solidified British realism in comedy, and took it much further than our nu wave drama films did.
