What has happened? About 30 years ago we had great sitcoms and now it's just shocking! Awful sitcoms these days! I tell you now there is only about 6 or 7 great sitcoms on these days. What has happened?
What has happened to sitcoms?
Your taste never changed with new trends?
Nope come on over the years it has just changed badly. Today it is just bad. I put on classic sitcoms on now.
If you think there are "about 6 or 7 great sitcoms on these days", then lucky you. That's about as good, if not better, than it's ever been.
Dad's Army, Only Fools And Horses, George & Mildred, Rising Damp, Steptoe & Son, Blackadder - whatever it is exactly you consider greats of 30 years+ ago, they weren't all on at the same time.
I know all them are greats. I include the 80s and 90s too.
What's your opinion on the matter, David?
Well I just looking for reasons why it has changed. RIP all the best comedians 
Well, I'm with Aaron on this one re: sitcoms gaining late recognition. That said, I do think we've hit a lean patch recently - not many good sitcoms on now, as opposed to a few years ago. Nathan Barley, IT Crowd etc. were damn good while it lasted, for eg. (at least IMO)
I think we have to wait fort a new generation of writers to come through. It seems that talent never entered the 21st century.
I'll tell you exactly what has happened to British sitcoms.......NEPOTISM!!
How can all the current privileged writers, producers, directors etc ever possibly come up with an idea for a sitcom which would appeal to the masses (working class).
When the funniest thing that has happened to the likes of them was "when father accidentally used second class stamps whilst sending out formal invitations to his bridge captains fund raiser".
You wouldn't automatically give Alex Ferguson's first born the managers job at Man Utd...would you??
The working class....who have given us some of the best drama and comedy to date.....have been gradually pushed out over the last 30 years...and this IS the reason why British comedy and gritty drama is dead.
Welcome to the site. A rant is as good an introduction as you can give around here
Nicadid I couldn't agree with you more. The middle class have hijacked the Sitcom and ts been going on for years.
Not quite true: many classic sitcom writers were far from the Four Yorkshiremen. The difference is far more subtle and insidious than just class.
Arron its a question of credibility in relation to the details that gives the story its credibility. For instance in last nights Warren the neighbours bought an outdoor tub on a whim. On many estates that simply doesn't happen unless your win dough or sell drugs and then that becomes a feckless story line.
My point being real people don't buy hot tubs on a whim or a giant pond and when they go to clairvoyant evenings in pubs the thing is well sign posted in the pub and their are others waiting. As such I think the person has heard of them but never bothered going to one.
If I tried to rewrite the Good Life especially Margo & Jerry I could only rely on stereotypes of the middle classes and cover issues that I presumed affected people in that strata and I would fall on my bum in the detail of it.
My real point is this , class does not make a great writer it just shows up in the detail if you write outside your class on a class issue which is what a sitcom normally does.
Take Shameless the first two series were beyond great as they were real life incidents from a great writer Paul Abbott. he leaves and then 'other people come in and there's horses on the estate like its the Commitments.
A great middle class comedy is as good as you can get from Ever Decreasing Circles to as I said The Good Life,.
But not all sitcoms need middle class values or issues and by the same token the working class ones need not be feckless ingrates.
In short class does not make a great writer research does and if its from experience even better
Take this as an example last week I watched Cuckoo for two minutes. In it a 6 ft 8 inch man was in a pub and he had a five foot idiot trying to entice his wife while he was standing there
I'm sorry but that premise only works if everyone watching has middle class sensibilities as most people would be thinking . Why hasn't he knocked him out?' and then that would be the story line ?
The problem to which Teddy refers is not so much the shortage/absence of working-class writers in the world of the sitcom but rather the fact that sitcoms that purport to represent working-class life in Britain today do not do so with anything even remotely resembling accuracy.
As I understand it, Teddy is complaining about the shortage/absence of authentic working-class sitcom (regardless of who writes it) rather than the shortage/absence of working-class writers.
I'm sure Teddy would not mind if a relatively posh writer came up with a sitcom that was both hilarious and stunningly accurate in its representation of working-class life in the 21st-century. The problem, of course, is that it's rather difficult to come up with a stunningly accurate representation of a situation that you've never experienced.
It can be done - but it can't be done straight off the top of one's head. It takes a hell of a lot of work and hence hell of a lot of dedication on the part of the writer.
There are not many writers who have that sort of dedication and there are not many who want to put in that amount of work when there's so much money to be earned writing much easier stuff.