American Situation Comedy Series - The Provisional Results of My Review

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

When Dick Van Dyke aired there no non white characters on any television here

There was Jack Benny's butler, Rochester - but doesn't exactly offer a great contradiction to what you say here!

[Lat-Literal]

The Dick Van Dyke show was a homogenized (I.e., less Jewish and made more palatable for Gentile taststes) sitcom that derived from Your Show Of Shows, an early 1950s, Live TV show with Sid Ceaser as the headliner. Dick Van Dyke show (DVDS) was created by Carl Reiner, who was a writer on YSOS. Other writers for YSOS included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neal Simon, and several other young Jewish Comics. One can only imagine the material that this melting pot produced Reportedly the best jokes that came from this group never made it on the airwaves, fearing censorship.
Anyway, DVDS attempted to capture some of this hilarity and put a white bread face on it, in the talented star and Mary Tyler Moore, who was a terrific comedic actress

There was Jack Benny's butler, Rochester - but doesn't exactly offer a great contradiction to what you say here!

Thank you - that's very interesting and new to me. I haven't explored sketch shows. However, it reinforces my view of American humour as having a very significant Jewish element, at least historically. One thing that has struck me about the sitcoms I have watched is just how many involve butlers/maids and it goes through to the 1990s. Some white American, some white English, some black, some women, some men. This puzzles me as I doubt it is true of British sitcoms with a few exceptions, eg To The Manor Born. Perhaps it is a social indicator?

I've been reviewing all these shows on the internet. Some of it involves tolerating adverts every six minutes - for example, on Daily Motion -and it's really painful. On Mon-Wed, they were punctuated by tens of showings of ITV's ad for "Trauma" and L and G talking about life insurance. I've looked at the DVDs on offer but am reeling from the prices of the box sets.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Neither the Dick van Dyke Show, nor the Jack Benny Show were "sketch shows", Lats, but sitcoms - just like the later Mary Tyler Moore and Cosby shows, the star of the show was playing a character with a featured set of other characters, and the stories centred around these people week after week.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

After a quick check at WIKI, the Jack Benny Programme on radio (before it moved to TV) was part sit-com, part variety show - with the story interrupted by Musical items and with banter between Benny and the radio announcer. This sounds rather like The Goon Show - and ??? the earlier US Burns & Allen. Superb dialogue in this latter - Gracie Allen supposedly the dim wife, but actually far more astute than her husband. On Burns' trying to explain to her what a "maiden name" means, the following exchange resulted:

Burns: So; before you married me, what did people call you?
Allen: Gracie Allen.
Burns: Yes, and what do they call you now, after you married me?
Allen: That stupid Gracie Allen.

[Lat-Literal]

Neither the Dick van Dyke Show, nor the Jack Benny Show were "sketch shows", Lats, but sitcoms - just like the later Mary Tyler Moore and Cosby shows, the star of the show was playing a character with a featured set of other characters, and the stories centred around these people week after week.

Hi ferney and thank you for your comments. I'm familiar with the DVDS. Not so the Jack Benny Show but, of course, I know the name. I have also been watching some episodes of Burns and Allen which is new to me. But I was referring to "Your Show of Shows" which on reflection is better termed a variety show than a sketch show, not that I have seen it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hi ferney and thank you for your comments. I'm familiar with the DVDS. Not so the Jack Benny Show but, of course, I know the name. I have also been watching some episodes of Burns and Allen which is new to me. But I was referring to "Your Show of Shows" which on reflection was probably better termed a variety show than a sketch show, not that I have seen it.

- I should have checked your OP before I posted, then I would have seen that you mentioned Burns & Allen.

[johncorrigan]

By the time that Seinfeld came out, I had stopped watching television completely. However, since my ex wife was addicted to television on the order of 12 hours a day, and since my children liked Seinfeld, I’ve seen several episodes .

I haven't seen much of Seinfeld, Richard. It kept getting shifted about when it was on the Beeb and I could never keep track. But there was an episode which I recall and which completely blew me away in which the story is told backwards. I thought it was genius. Wouldn't mind another view of it.
'Malcolm in the Middle' was another excellent American sitcom badly treated by the Beeb. Maybe the schedulers couldn't work out if MITM was a kids' programme or an adult programme cos it got bumped about all over the place. Anyway there was a wonderful episode of it which I wouldn't mind seeing again either which involved a huge firework and which the young Master C and I laughed about for days afterwards. Of course, Malcolm's Dad went on to be the lead in 'Breaking Bad', but I think I preferred him in MITM.

[richardfinegold]

I haven't seen much of Seinfeld, Richard. It kept getting shifted about when it was on the Beeb and I could never keep track. But there was an episode which I recall and which completely blew me away in which the story is told backwards. I thought it was genius. Wouldn't mind another view of it.
'Malcolm in the Middle' was another excellent American sitcom badly treated by the Beeb. Maybe the schedulers couldn't work out if MITM was a kids' programme or an adult programme cos it got bumped about all over the place. Anyway there was a wonderful episode of it which I wouldn't mind seeing again either which involved a huge firework and which the young Master C and I laughed about for days afterwards. Of course, Malcolm's Dad went on to be the lead in 'Breaking Bad', but I think I preferred him in MITM.

Never saw Malcolm, but since I really enjoyed Breaking Bad I should probably try it

[Nick Armstrong]

'Malcolm in the Middle' was another excellent American sitcom badly treated by the Beeb. Maybe the schedulers couldn't work out if MITM was a kids' programme or an adult programme cos it got bumped about all over the place. Anyway there was a wonderful episode of it which I wouldn't mind seeing again either which involved a huge firework and which the young Master C and I laughed about for days afterwards.

Oh yes!!

“Boys, I’d like to introduce you... to the Komodo 3000”

[Richard Tarleton]

I haven't seen much of Seinfeld, Richard. It kept getting shifted about when it was on the Beeb and I could never keep track. But there was an episode which I recall and which completely blew me away in which the story is told backwards. I thought it was genius. Wouldn't mind another view of it.

See my #8, John, that was episode 164, The Betrayal. Genius indeed. Yes it was treated very badly (and stupidly) by the Beeb, but I eventually saw it all there, and the entire series was repeated on Sky recently.

[LMcD]

See my #8, John, that was episode 164, The Betrayal. Genius indeed. Yes it was treated very badly (and stupidly) by the Beeb, but I eventually saw it all there, and the entire series was repeated on Sky recently.

I believe that every episode of 'Seinfeld' is available to those who subscribe to Amazon Prime.

[MickyD]

Will and Grace at no.90?? That's unthinkable to me.

[vinteuil]

Will and Grace at no.90?? That's unthinkable to me.

... higher? lower???




.

[Lat-Literal]

Will and Grace at no.90?? That's unthinkable to me.

Lat, there's a typo. You have Mash at #32 when you meant #1.

Well, now I am in a dilemma because I have watched more episodes of many of these programmes, especially the ones I didn't know before or about which I only knew a small amount. I was going to publish my revised list but am not so sure now I can do so, even with an invitation for further comment, with any credibility. As old father time and others know, there are actually two lists on most things in anyone. There's the true one with a few minor adjustments on the grounds of taste and the tasteful one which, while it doesn't include anything one actively dislikes, has a strong accent on what is obviously of quality and critically acclaimed. I'm in no doubt that if I were to go for the second option, Mash, Seinfeld, Frasier, The Odd Couple, The Burns and Allen Show and Will and Grace would be in its top ten along perhaps with, gawd, the sweary The Larry Sanders Show which didn't feature in the first 100 at all. The Munsters would plummet along with Mork and Mindy, I Dream of Jeannie, Police Squad, Bewitched, Happy Days, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Monkees and Mister Ed.

However, with one or two exceptions - Bob Newhart has confirmed what I have for most of my life believed which is that he is a genius, particularly in timing, and deserves a higher placing that six - I am inclined to the opposite direction. For example, the madcap Night Court is moving up rapidly as is the marmite The Wonder Years. The very childish Alf and the cartoon The Flintstones are, if anything, increasingly enjoyed. I can see where we are here. There is that point about whether the genre of sitcom should be assessed much as any serious genre from an adult perspective. The idea that much of what we might have enjoyed when young was really rather trite. No animals, no families, no sugary sentimentality, no pop groups, no supernatural beings, no people with weird attitudes on skin colour and no twerps sitting on an island, never to escape. A big yes to lawyers, journalists, writers, surgeons, soldiers, the politically correct, and those with sharp dialogue in studio sets where the main colours, literally, are black, white, blue and beige and several shades of grey.

I do "get" much of the latter. I really do - and I think it is there in a lot of what is already well placed. On the other hand, Mash to take one example is very medical at times as well as being great and I have always been uneasy in that area. There's only so much talk about sodium loss before I have a panic attack and have to leave the room. Neil Simon's The Odd Couple is also a programme of quality and it was very evidently a blueprint for some later shows but I prefer the characters in the latter. I'm thinking here specifically of Frasier. On Will and Grace, I realise that it has a considerable following but I have only seen three episodes. That is two and a half more than I have seen of Friends and Sex and the City with which I had previously associated it. They were all under the label "not of my time" as was everything in the 2000s until The Big Bang Theory and Everybody Loves Raymond came along to prove my theory wrong. It isn't, though, just about childhood or the first decades of adult life. It is also about class background. The critically rated shows in any era did well in the Nielsen index among the middle classes. Those that weren't critically rated were popular with the lower middle classes and those of working class. Like many folk, I straddle that line.

[MickyD]

... higher? lower???




.

Oh, much higher, Vints!