Sitcoms that set a new style trend, or standard?

Was thinking today about my sitcom viewing habits and taste and why they are what they are. I have pretty conservative taste in sitcoms. For that reason I go for classic and older stuff pre 2000.

I'm in New Zealand, where traditionally the British sitcom has always been considered funnier than the US sitcom. A talkback radio session on the subject always makes that clear. However, another general opinion by a lot of people is that British sitcoms aren't as funny as they used to be.

The style of the British sitcom seemed to me to change round the mid 90s. Before that the style was very predictable and reliable as was the quality - athough in NZ we tended to only get what had been the most successful on British screens.

I lived in another country for a while and so got out of touch with what was on the screen. But then I found the British sitcom had very much changed its style by the mid 2000s. I didn't like much of what I saw and so ever since have pretty much stuck to watching the increasing number of classic UK sitcoms on DVD etc. Unless a new sitcom is really recommended to me or something.

A lot of UK sitcoms these days seem to me to be: weak, in your face, juvenile, manic without good reason, without restraint, repetitive, rude and crude. That said, perhaps I'm being too harsh because I just haven't given things enough of a go which might be right. I'm sure there must be some gems out there that I'm yet to discover. I have found a few.+

It is pretty obvious that style has changed. Probably to some extent all along the way. But I'd guess more obviously so over the past 20 years. But going right back, what do you think along the decades have been the UK sitcoms that have set a new style trend or a new standard?

Operation Good Guys paved the way for audience-free fly-on-the-wall stuff, like The Office.

Well you know whatever. Because that is me. I evolve, but I don't...revolve.

Just like music, sitcoms have to evolve. Especially these days, it's very important that they keep with the times or they could be lost forever... Not that comedy or sitcoms would ever die. But it is a ratings war out there and if one channel does something cool and hip, the others follow and the trend starts.

You also have to consider there are a lot more channels to fill these days, so it's a lot harder to filter out the gems. It's easy to harp back and remember that TV used to be better but that's because there was less to filter through and you only really ever remember the good stuff.

There's the obvious and most recent mockumentary trend, as mentioned by catskillz. But before that I believe it may have been during the 90s and the ladsmag era and flatsharing sitcoms. Men Behaving Badly, Game On, Spaced. Moving away from a traditional family setting into the world of the youth, in which today seems to have gone right back to school, what with The Inbetweeners and Coming of Age.

But I'd like to think, what with all the channels there is a greater choice. BBC Four/More4 somewhat high-brow. BBC Three has the youth. Channel 4 for "the inbetweeners" and BBC One for the family, soon to be joined by ITV1 I believe?

I think the greatest change and recent threat to sitcoms is the celebrity panel show. Cheap, quick and easy to make. Sitcom writers these days you could probably argue are a bit more up their arse and require many months to write their next series and probably don't have the knack to pump out series after series like them in the old days did. Of course this is a major generalisation.

I've forgotten your original question. >_<

There are sitcoms you would have thought would set a style trend, but didn't, such as League of Gentleman, Knowing Me, Knowing You, Green Wing, Peep Show...

People Like Us started the docusoap trend - I wonder if it's carried on because cameraman, lighting directors, etc. know how to shoot a docusoap in order to make it funny? With pure sitcom it's harder.

Quote: Tim Azure @ July 21 2011, 7:49 AM BST

People Like Us started the docusoap trend

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People Like Us started in 1999 on television. Operation Good Guys in 1997. So of the two, Operation Good Guys could be said to have started the trend.

The Office was hugely influential as well for ushering in a whole wave of usually quite substandard cringe-coms. It also pushed networks into doing more non-audience sitcoms for a while.

I think Two Pints was also pretty important in that it gave rise to the likes of Lunch Monkeys and Coming of Age, and a plethora of BBC Three pilots in the same witless vein.

And let us not forget The Ruttles!

Agree with all those, especially The Office, massively influential and spawned so many Gervais clones it is worrying.

FT did the same with Cleese/Fawlty.

The Young Ones has always been labelled as a trend setting sitcom but I personally think The Goodies had already got there with the anarchic sitcom, so although there are differences I give that one to The Goodies.

What saw of Opperation Good Guys I thought was quite funny. Believe it or not I have only ever seen about 5 minutes of The Office and 5 minutes of the US The Office. Keep meaning to have a look but yet to get round to it.

Quote: catskillz @ July 20 2011, 11:14 PM BST

Operation Good Guys paved the way for audience-free fly-on-the-wall stuff, like The Office.

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Yes, there seems to have been a lot of that fly-on-the-wall stuff in recent times. The Smoking Room is a bit like that - I really liked that. But the scripts were tighter and it was more like watching a play because it was all set in one room with little activity but smoking and fiddling. I didn't think a lot of Royle Family because the laughs seemed more sparse. I like a comedy with plenty of laughs. I'm not a fan of having to wait five minutes till the next laugh.

I've heard it said a few times that Steptoe was ground breaking stuff. It is darker and real and more character centered I suppose. Dares to get serious at times and dialogue heavy. Got a bit of substance.

Although not strictly a sitcom, Channel 4's Teahers did seem to pave the way for hour long sitcommery like Green Wing and Campus on the same channel.

Quote: chipolata @ July 21 2011, 10:52 AM BST

Although not strictly a sitcom, Channel 4's Teahers did seem to pave the way for hour long sitcommery like Green Wing and Campus on the same channel.

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Were they English Teahers?

We shouldn't forget My Family. That pretty much invented the current model of the pre-watershed BBC One sitcom.

Quote: Marc P @ July 21 2011, 10:55 AM BST

Were they English Teahers?

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You've obviously never seen Green Wing or Campus!

Love The Mighty Boosh - first it seems very anarchic but it's actually very tightly-constructed, every element is part of a plot development. Like The Young Ones, it perfects the standard sitcom elements (strong and recognisable characters, consistent setting, high laugh count, intriguing plots) then twists them out of recognition. Cult! (I've been called that, atually.)

Dad's Army wasn't the first sitcom to deal with the war, but it made the subject an acceptable setting for the mainstream. There's probably also a good argument that it established the period sitcom.

Surely "The Office", the show within a show on "The Day Today" rather than the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant one, started the TV mockumentary trend (although "This is Spinal Tap" had done it on film much earlier)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rguQFPnPIYc

Really? But the trend wasn't noticed until after The Office was aired. It was then that the mockumentry became "mainstream" if you will. Sure there were others before it, but they were never picked up and rolled the same way The Office did.

There's also the fact that in and around 2000 documentaries involving people at work were all the rage. At sitcoms started to reflect that. Mainly because writers of the time wanted to be post-modern n stuff.