Tokyo Nambu
Tuesday 30th April 2013 3:23pm [Edited]
189 posts
Quote: Newman @ April 30 2013, 3:34 PM BST
This point will have been made before, but it's not a critic's job to echo or represent public opinion. Popularity isn't synonymous with quality, and that's true with all art-forms, comedy included.
The problem comes when the critics mistrust the medium. I get the impression that, when they aren't aspiring to the erudition of Clive James' later career, most TV critics are slumming it until a gig comes up reviewing films. And therefore they view TV as a defective form of film, and like it the closer it gets to being film.
So something which is pretty much the sine qua non of TV, the sitcom --- multi-camera, open-front stage, shot on video, live audience, scripted by writers --- is as far as possible as you can get from film, so is the least to their taste. Whereas something which could in another world be a minor film, like The Office --- single camera, shot on location, film-look or historically 16mm, no audience, authored TV probably starring and/or directed and/or exec'd by one of the writers --- is much more to their taste.
Sitcoms, like panel shows, are the essence of TV: they aim to bring the studio into your living room, and assume a social, convivial audience in both places. They trace back to music hall, and radio comedy, and a whole suite of "low" cultural references. While authored TV looks like film, which is of course (heavy irony) the most important medium of the last fifty years.
So if you like TV as a medium, you're fine with sitcoms. But if you despise TV except insofar as it apes film, you're going to hate sitcom. And most TV critics hate TV.
Quote: Newman @ April 30 2013, 3:34 PM BST
I can say that The Rolling Stones are better than The Stereophonics - why can't I say that I'm Alan Partridge is a better sitcom than My Family - irrespective of viewing figures?
A bad example, of course, because Mick'n'Keef have sold sheds more records than the Stereophonics (whomsoever they may be), and it's the Rolling Stones headlining at Glasto this year. A better comparison might be the usual critical consensus which would hold The Velvet Underground to be better than both, and a lot of that is snobbery: it's better precisely because it's less popular.