The top 20 Sitcoms - from the "experts" Page 4

Quote: chipolata @ 17th April 2019, 9:31 AM

It's Political Correctness gone mad! Next thing you know these "women" will be wanting the vote. Or jobs. Or opinions of their own.
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Wasn't the point I was trying to make, but that many expert judging panels for this kind of thing are increasingly a 50/50 split for equality's sake these days. Mass polls like the 2004 TV one can't be controlled as such. giving different results. Having said that if it was half and half I don't think it represents the typical split of viewers between the sexes for sitcoms. They still are watched by more men afaik and definitely used to be.

Quote: chipolata @ 17th April 2019, 9:31 AM

I'm with the middle classes on this for the most part, although sitcoms from commercial channels worthy of inclusion include Spaced, The IT Crowd and Black Books.

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All worth a shout for the list but none were ITV. ITV isn't trendy urban liberal C4, watched liberally by journos and media folk with a middle class background. It is a different brand with a different image hoisted onto it by middle class snobs who don't want their kids watching what Wayne and Waynella from the council estate watch. It is largely a lazy distortion of the general quality of ITV broadcasts with occasional gems to rivals the BBC's, such as the extremely funny Classic sitcom Rising Damp.

There's never a George Roper around when you need a balanced view.

I wouldn't even be able to put a list together of what I consider to be the best sitcoms. My feelings about shows I feel I've enjoyed the most have changed, and continue to change, over time. My understanding of the world around me and ability to 'get' different types of humour has grown with me. My appreciation of what is funny and what isn't has also shifted as I've experienced different stages of my life. More recent comedies are more memorable, because they just happened. So many I've watched in the past have stayed with me, not so much for their excellence, but for their place in my life and relevance to it at the time. There can never be a truly accurate list of top sitcoms. There are far too many of them to choose from...and each one has its own merits for a wide range of reasons. No list-maker of supposedly top sitcoms, or any other TV show come to that, will ever be able to convince me there is an actual point to making that list, other than to have everyone who sees it pull it apart and insist it's wrong. In the bin.

I'm really surprised that 'Allo 'Allo! and One Foot in the Grave didn't make it into the list, and definitely Rising Damp to fly the ITV flag. As fond as I am of old Parky, can he really be classed as a comedy expert?

Well the title of the list is misleading if these experts haven't viewed at least 3000 British sitcoms. And at least your top 100 would have to be watched in whole again before you make a measured decision for the twenty best. It's another load of bollocks list by celebs choosing their favourites with no scientific analysis or research (probably!). They always are.

And surveys tell us that the merest little pet dislike of someone can put viewers off a proven successful show. People thinking Ricky Gervais is smarmy in real life and not getting that it's joke persona used for his own amusement is a main reason for many hating The Office, I believe. The Office imo has stood up really well for nearly 20 years old and is top ten. But it's all subjective, even if I put up a crib sheet of the formula I used for picking it. Why, because some lazy uncultured slob would call me a prize c**t for doing it and some zealous twat would disagree with my formula.

Anyway my Best 20 list would be different from my favourite 20 list because I actually would aynalise each sitcom in my collection with at least a single ep viewing. I'd put Allo Allo in while it wouldn't make my favourite 20. And maybe a couple of others but more begrudgingly.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 17th April 2019, 11:42 AM

as the extremely funny Classic sitcom Rising Damp.

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I loved how bleak and depressing the décor is in it. It's like mainlining despair through your eyes. Which is the point, of course.

Although in terms of Eric Chappell I preferred Only When I Laugh. Even though I'm in an army of one on that.

Quote: chipolata @ 24th April 2019, 6:35 AM

I loved how bleak and depressing the décor is in it. It's like mainlining despair through your eyes.

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Lived in flats like that in the early 1960s, one even had no sink in the "kitchen"!

Quote: chipolata @ 24th April 2019, 6:35 AM

I loved how bleak and depressing the décor is in it. It's like mainlining despair through your eyes. Which is the point, of course.

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The setting was so symbolic of Rigsby's own closed mind and naivety. He thought no further than the handful of squalid rooms he ruled over. Anything or anyone invading that space was destined to become part of the insular world he felt comfortable in...and the comedy came from his need to make everything and everyone fit into his own idea of how the real world really is. Philip moving in totally rocked him, but everything he assumed about Philip and his background was used so easily against him. He tried so hard to make sense of other people's actions and emotions, because he genuinely believed his own small-minded opinions were more than enough to judge them by. His lodgers just left him to believe what he believed and took every opportunity to play up to his misplaced arrogance. Again, the humour came from watching him get owned...when he had no idea it was happening. Philip's smug face every time he watched Rigsby squirm under pressure was just perfect.

Quote: Chappers @ 10th April 2019, 5:40 PM

Seems a bit strange as the Experts included the writers of some of them.

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That's what I noticed straight away, thinking this can't be fair, but then it's also got some sitcom actors in the panel, who are also likely to be biased to their sitcom. Yes they tick the expert box but what about the experts from other sitcoms not included? Unless these sitcom bods were not allowed to pick their own sitcom then it appears a highly biased list.

And like some others here, considering a lot of 90s sitcoms made the list (annoyingly), you'd have thought One Foot In The Grave would have - A solidly successful sitcom unlike Dinnerladies. If only they'd invited the writer or one of the actors on the judging panel, eh.