Vicious - Series 1 Page 9

Quote: Will Carter @ April 30 2013, 1:02 PM BST

The Independent puts what I tried to say about this far more eloquently than I ever could.

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By, again, citing The Office as the highpoint of modern comedy, and throwing in a reference to Will and Grace, beloved of the box-set crowd, watched by approximately no-one in the UK otherwise.

The unfortunate problem is that TV critics don't actually like comedy. So the "comedy" they approve is not-comedy: indeed, the Indy's reviewer goes on about awkward silences and uneasy utterances, which might be something, but isn't comedy. It's the shadow of The Office, the idea that we should be ashamed of shows that set up a gag, make it, get a laugh and move on. That we should be ashamed, in fact, of sitcom, and should instead have these wry, vaguely amusing (or not) comedy-dramas like The Office.

Imagine what Fawlty Towers, or Blackadder, or Porridge would look like if made in the post-Gervais world, to keep post-Gervais critics happy.

Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 30 2013, 2:38 PM BST

The unfortunate problem is that TV critics don't actually like comedy.

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V true.

I refer the honourable gentlemen to my post in 'Worst sitcom from the last decade?'.

I think it's worse than that "TV critics don't actually like comedy" - it's not just that they don't like comedy, but that they specifically loathe what the audience love. They are utterly irrelevant.

I'm not sure of the precise source, but I heard this quote recently, attributed to 'Allo 'Allo!'s Gorden Kaye. It is utterly perfect.

"Universally panned by the critics, universally loved by the public. That's the way we like it."

Quote: Tokyo Nambu @ April 30 2013, 2:38 PM BST

The unfortunate problem is that TV critics don't actually like comedy.

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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. Why is comedy any more subjective than, for example, music? In the way that, without too much controversy, 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?

Quote: Newman @ April 30 2013, 3:34 PM BST

without too much controversy, I can say that The Rolling Stones are better than The Stereophonics

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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.

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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?

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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.

Tokyo Nambu, I enjoyed reading that - so thanks!

Quote: Aaron @ April 30 2013, 3:09 PM BST

"TV critics don't actually like comedy"

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Surely not those with their own websites (?)

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. Why is comedy any more subjective than, for example, music?

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You sort-of touch on a point here, but then almost contradict yourself. Comedy is exactly as subjective as, well, any other art form. It may be valid to say that Vicious had flimsy characterisation (and thus infer a simplicity in the script), but in brashly and bluntly declaring it and its like as flatly "unfunny", in the constant jibes about studio audiences being on drugs, and stating that every such show (last week it was The Wright Way) is the worst thing to have ever been broadcast, they are positioning and portraying themselves as exactly a representation and informer of public opinion.

And, as Tokyo Nambu described very eloquently, that's stuff and nonsense.

Quote: Tim Azure @ April 30 2013, 4:36 PM BST

Surely not those with their own websites (?)

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I categorically refute any suggestion that I am a *spits* critic.

Quote: Aaron @ April 30 2013, 4:48 PM BST

, they are positioning and portraying themselves as exactly a representation and informer of public opinion.

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Thinking about it, it's easy to deduce the low esteem that TV criticism is held in.

Newspapers employ film critics, and it's very rare for anyone else to get the chance to sit in the screening room. And there's usually a single designated theatre critic (Billington at the Graun, Spencer at the Telegraph) who has a sidekick for when they're double-booked or don't fancy the schlep into the provinces.

But random columnists get to write the TV column. The Guardian has, in recent months, had Lucy Mangan, Zoe Williams and others from their endless tube of Polly Filler getting a shot at it. It's assumed to not require the aesthetic and technical knowledge of film reviewing, or the breadth of being able to compare and contrast with long-gone productions and half-forgotten films. It's just the bassline for a "lifestyle" riff.

So TV critics aren't experts, and don't have a considered aesthetic sense. Editors assume that it's just a matter of sitting in front of the telly and writing the first thing that comes into your head. So they may not be representing mass opinion, but they're doing little more than representing their own opinion. You won't get far on an Eng Lit degree by saying "I didn't like this book because it's shit", and you're supposed to have analytic skills to justify your position. For TV criticism that's not necessary.

Quote: Aaron @ April 30 2013, 4:48 PM BST

I categorically refute any suggestion that I am a *spits* critic.

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The gentleman doth...

Quote: Matthew Stott @ April 30 2013, 12:06 PM BST

I doubt actors of the calibre of the two leads would commit to a TV sitcom if they thought it was lacking.

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Jonathan Pryce in Clone? Actors are whores, they'll do anything for the money. And if not the money then the attention. And both Jacobi and McKellan are in their seventies so this probably represents their last chance to be the leads in anything.

(And before the pro-Vicious hate-mob descend on me and start attacking me for hating the public and laughter, that's not a criticism of the show as I haven't seen it yet, just an observation that actors will do anything and the idea that a project is automatically quality because it stars such and such an actor is claptrap).

Quote: chipolata @ April 30 2013, 6:24 PM BST

claptrap).

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You nice.

Quote: chipolata @ April 30 2013, 6:24 PM BST

And both Jacobi and McKellan are in their seventies so this probably represents their last chance to be the leads in anything.

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Really? McKellen's Estragon was pretty much definitive, and he and Patrick Stewart are taking Godot to Broadway later this year. It would require the end of civilisation for it not to sweep the awards board. On stage he can name his own projects, because his calls will always go direct through to the artistic director of any company in the English speaking world. I'm told by my children and servants that the motion pictures made by a colonial chappie based on some penny dreadful novels by a man from Birmingham, would you believe, are rather popular too, and they're waiting for the next one to appear at our local Odeon.

One is reminded of the way in which Alec Guiness continued to appear on TV and even in the theatre right up until the end, even though he had 0.4% of the gross on the first three Star Wars films.

Anyone else think the young guy in this has a lego hairstyle?