Quote: Marc P @ June 27 2011, 8:52 PM BSTThese shows are all about the middle class.
eh?
Anyway what makes you think the reality of middle class life isn't bleak?
Quote: chipolata @ June 27 2011, 9:59 PM BSTBeardy's right. Most of the kiddiewinks who watch Who don't give a tinkers cuss about it's history.
Yeah, but it is us old saddoes who keep on about it.
Quote: Timbo @ June 27 2011, 10:48 PM BSTeh?
Just what I said. Unless I am missing something?
Quote: Timbo @ June 27 2011, 10:48 PM BSTeh?
Anyway what makes you think the reality of middle class life isn't bleak?
Yes, but that sort of thing isn't really shown in most sitcoms anyway, is it?
Quote: Marc P @ June 28 2011, 8:23 AM BSTJust what I said. Unless I am missing something?
I am sorry, it is no use baldly asserting that Porridge and Steptoe & Son are 'about the middle class' as if the statement is self-evident. I might be able to guess at where you are coming from, but to do so would be presumptuous. Unless you care to elaborate on your argument there is not really a thesis for me to challenge.
Quote: Tim Azure @ June 28 2011, 9:25 AM BSTYes, but that sort of thing isn't really shown in most sitcoms anyway, is it?
Sitcom is all about defeated aspiration and hopeless humiliation. It is intrinsically bleak.
Steptoe is all about class. Younger aspires to be middle class but his ambitions are thwarted at every turn by his own non self awareness and his father. In a way it is all about the embourgeoisement of society - particularly in England moving from the austerity of the fifties into the seventies. Class is at the heart of most of the shows you listed and middle class is the focus.
*resolves to try and get embourgeoisement into a conversation today*
Try it on the senorita!
Quote: Marc P @ June 28 2011, 11:28 AM BSTTry it on the senorita!
I don't want to kill the relationship before it's begun!
Harold's aim is to be jet set Playboy, his objectives are wealth, totty, and his own take on the the arts.
The middle class format I have been alluding to is not touched on by many of the characters mentioned. Any references that are made are usually set out as a faux pas, so as to outline the true social limitations of the character.
Marc, I do not disagree, but this does not mean that these sitcoms are "all about the middle class"; as you say characters such as Rigsby, Bob Ferris, Del Boy, Harold Steptoe, Mildred Roper, Rita Garnett, Foggy Dewhurst and Antony Aloysius aspire in their different ways to better themselves but are unable to escape their roots - but this has always been a staple of literary and dramatic portrayals of working class life. And these sitcoms of working class social aspiration are also often as much about the defiantly working class character: Albert Steptoe, Alf Garnett, Terry Collier, Compo Simmonite, George Roper. The aspirations of the character who wishes to escape tells us far more about the world he wishes to escape from than it does the world he wishes to enter.
Basil Fawlty or Captain Mainwaring are already middle class but their aspirations for increased social cachet do not mean that these sitcoms are about the upper class.
And of course there also sitcoms characters unable to cope with or unwilling to conform with middle class life: Reggie Perrin, Tom Good, Victor Meldrew, Shelley.
The Royle Family is perhaps an example of a working class sitcom not based upon aspiration, and I am not sure Porridge fits the class paradigm at all.
Somebody who has social aspirations in a sitcom is always doomed to have those social aspirations limited. It is comment on a period of change, as in Steptoe and later on in Only Fools with a second wave of embourgeoisement if you like with the boom of the 80s and the rise of the Yuppie. Likewise with the earlier Citizen Smith when the old school of the militant left was being parodied as the norms shifted. The growing middle class, the shrinking old notion of working class... and the rich still getting richer I guess.
Quote: Timbo @ June 28 2011, 11:56 AM BSTMarc, I do not disagree, but this means that these sitcoms are "all about the middle class"; as you say characters such as Rigsby, Bob Ferris, Del Boy, Harold Steptoe, Mildred Roper, Rita Garnett, Foggy Dewhurst and Antony Aloysius aspire in their different ways to better themselves but are unable to escape their roots - but this has always been a staple of literary and dramatic portrayals of working class life. And these sitcoms of working class social aspiration are also often as much about the defiantly working class character: Albert Steptoe, Alf Garnett, Terry Collier, Compo Simmonite, George Roper. The aspirations of the character who wishes to escape tells us far more about the world he wishes to escape from than it does the world he wishes to enter.
Basil Fawlty or Captain Mainwaring are already middle class but their aspirations for increased social cachet do not mean that these sitcoms are about the upper class.
And of course there also sitcoms characters unable to cope with or unwilling to conform with middle class life: Reggie Perrin, Tom Good, Victor Meldrew, Shelley.
The Royle Family is perhaps an example of a working class sitcom not based upon aspiration, and I am not sure Porridge fits the class paradigm at all.
All true. But Basil and Mainwaring don't aspire to be upper class. They know their place - they are frustrated because other people don't know theirs.
Porridge is interesting. It's to do with the criminal class I suspect, rather than working and Fletcher tries to help his young protege not fall into the cycle of offending that he has. Trying to make him make something better of himself. But not necessarily in a class sense.
Quote: Marc P @ June 28 2011, 12:00 PM BSTAll true. But Basil and Mainwaring don't aspire to be upper class. They know their place - they are frustrated because other people don't know theirs.
Fair point.
Quote: Marc P @ June 28 2011, 12:00 PM BSTPorridge is interesting. It's to do with the criminal class I suspect, rather than working and Fletcher tries to help his young protege not fall into the cycle of offending that he has. Trying to make him make something better of himself. But not necessarily in a class sense.
Porridge is an unusual sitcom in many ways. It is the only sitcom I can think of that does not rely on embarrassment as a staple of humour.
The point I was trying to get across was regarding the actual middle class settings not the aspirations of the lower, so I can only apologiise for using the wrong end of the stick.
The format I am trying to describe is the terrible am dram type set ups, with twits for actors using dialogue you wouldn't hear anywhere in the real world. Their setting off points are middle class, the problems being encountered are middle class, it is just so dowdy it makes me f**king sick.
The sad part is it could be funny, with Margo and Jerry you got an extremely funny couple due to the fact they were being used to deride the genuine side of the Acacia Avenues of this world.
With warts and all you get comedy, it is a form of grit, bite, whatever you want to call it, it's funny and memorable, which is a great indicator of the writers' skill.
Out of interest can anyone tell me one truly memorable and original scene from 'Life of Riley'? I don't watch it but I know there won't be one.
Life of Riley is beyond indefensible.
The BBC does seem to suffer the delusion that to capture the middle class family market it has to make sitcoms about middle class families.
Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ June 28 2011, 12:28 PM BSTOut of interest can anyone tell me one truly memorable and original scene from 'Life of Riley'? I don't watch it but I know there won't be one.
Saw one ep - last one first series - she went to school, funny thing with a blender as I recall. Built to it nicely. But in the main woeful.