Quote: Steve Sunshine @ January 21 2011, 7:48 PM GMTI like it because it's the Sunshine Cab Company
Sorry Steve, can't see the connection......?
Taxi Page 3
I've got series 1 on DVD and was surprised by how it was nowhere near as good as I remembered it was. It's quite schmaltzy at points and some of the plots are really basic with no twists. Nice performances though.
Taxi was always a big favourite of mine. There's a great episode where Jim goes to the races and wins big. The guy can't afford to cover the winnings so he gives Jim the winning horse which Jim keeps in his appartment. The others troop over to see it and it's dead.
Also the company gets sued and Louis is convinced the accident victim is pulling a stroke and fights the case in court. In his final flourish he pushes the person in the chair out of the courtroom door - expecting him/her to leap out at the last minute...followed by sound effects of the chair rumbling down one, then two, then three flights of stairs.
Barry Kemp was a writer, he may have created it, then he went on to make Newhart, where Bob Newhart buys an inn in Connecticut. Jim Burrows directed so I expect the Charles Brothers were in there too.
Cheers followed with a similar ensemble.
That's all I know.
Is the second season better than the first?
I like them also!
Quote: Ben @ January 22 2011, 7:51 PM GMTIs the second season better than the first?
It got better after they ditched the kid with the hair and the face like a monkey, and recruited Christopher Lloyd, Andy Kaufman and Carol Kane.
Kaufman's in season one! Might look in to sampling some season two.
It's started being shown daily on weekdays at 6ish on CBS drama. THere showing season 2 at the minute, it's great show and so happy I can watch it as only first seasons were released on region 2.
This scene kills me - Reverend Jim as a salesman
The scene that always sticks in my mind was in the very first episode when Danny DeVito (a relative unknown then) was giving out orders from his raised booth inside the cab garage to the drivers and then stepped out to reveal just how short he was - very funny.
I vaguely remember that scene. I always think of him in 'one flew over the cookoos nest' in the poker game with Murphy and others, repeatedly asking to be dealt a card, 'hit me', 'hit me'..The camera on his grinning mush.
Taxi is another contender for "world's greatest ever sitcom".
So much talent on display in every department!
Not least among its merits is its inclusion of Andy Kaufman who, as comedians go, is just about as weird and as wonderful as they come.
Do you see what I did there? 
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 8th February 2016, 11:15 PMThe scene that always sticks in my mind was in the very first episode when Danny DeVito (a relative unknown then) was giving out orders from his raised booth inside the cab garage to the drivers and then stepped out to reveal just how short he was - very funny.
That's what I remember as the funniest running gag as well. In the 80s before the superstores arrived in town there was a private supermarket owned and run by a Danny DeVito clone in looks and stature who had a similar elevated cage he'd use to look around the shop to spot for shoplifting and make sure his shelf slackers were working. When he had to get down to sort a problem at the tills out you could hear shoppers laughing. Then Sainsbury's moved in and spoiled our fun.
Bilko, South Park and Taxi are all examples of a rare phenomenon: a sitcom that hits the ground running, absolutely jam-packed with humour and great characters.
British sitcom is an entirely different thing, of course, and British attempts to emulate the American style of sitcom have tended to fail rather embarrassingly.
We are two nations separated by the Atlantic Ocean: East is East and West is West and we could argue all day about who does it best.
Quote: Rood Eye @ 10th November 2019, 5:56 PMAndy Kaufman who, as comedians go, is just about as weird and as wonderful as they come.
Andy Kaufman was the ultimate comedic experiment. I doubt he'd have got as a far as wrestling women in today climate. What would his modern day equivalent be ?