Guardian Article Page 3

It's all very well people going on about Sky producing HBO style-quality drama, but most of the great HBO or US produced dramas or comedies tend to have such small audiences as to be negligible. Remember the way Channel 4 f**ked about with Sopranos, West Wing and Six Feet Under? It took a mainstream channel several years of hype before BBC2 took a punt on The Wire.

If Sky can produce some great comedy/drama,then great. I'll hook up.
But the mainstream audience really needs to be re-educated before the big audiences get back into good drama or comedy en masse. The mainstream channels have shot themselves in the foot by feeding their audience too many easy, lifestyle shows in the past ten years.

Quote: john lucas 101 @ August 3 2009, 2:50 PM BST

But the maminstream audience really needs to be re-educated

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You're quite right, Uncle Joe!

They tried this strategy a few years ago under Elizabeth Murdoch (apparently Rupert's only off-spring who has a feel for British TV) and I think she was fired for her troubles. David Baddiel did a Seinfeld type sit-com, Harry Enfield and Al Murray were commissioned for shows but it didn't set the world on fire.
Perhaps Sky arts and indie film channel are doing well and have decided the urban smarty pants market is more lucrative than Richard Littlejohn and Noel Edmonds afterall and it's worth another go.

Quote: Tim Walker @ August 3 2009, 2:46 PM BST

The basic problem with the premise of this show is... well, it doesn't really have one, does it? I don't think a previously-divorced couple living their respective kids is a premise. It's a situation, yes, but has absolutely no effect on the characters or storylines as far as I can tell. Perhaps I'm missing somthing incredibly subtle?

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Agreed, to derive comedy from the situation there needs to be some form of conflict, which in real life in this situation the most likely would be, but the intention here seemed to depict a contented second-marriage family where everyone was completely well-adjusted and comfortable with the normality of the situation. I sniff the deadhand of BBC political correctness at work.

Maybe if they adopted a disabled Afghan refugee in series 2...?

To be fair to The Life of Riley, it was rather good at leading up to impressive visual jokes e.g. a whole class of children coming onstage as elves before the one boy came on dressed as Elvis, because his parents had misread the letter - that made me laugh, and there were other such situations later in the series.

The trouble was in the dialogue - it was dreadful.

But it does seem that generally, comedies aren't given a chance to find their feet now; if Roy Clarke were to hand in some of his best Last of the Summer Wine scripts now, does anyone think it would be commissioned*?

*Assuming LOTSW didn't already exist.