Worst Acting In A Sitcom

[a duncandisorderly]

Yeah wtf! File me under always thought she was meant to be American as well! In fact I still think that.

her character's surname is 'sherman'; surely some clue there? sherman tank?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I've just been watching her in a clip from " The Wedding Party " episode  where she says " smashing ". Not  " swell " or " awesome ", but " smashing ".

[imitationleather]

EDIT: Oops.

[Hey, Punk!]

All children in sitcoms are dreadful though.
I share Sean Lock's opinion on them.

Sean Lock is great, absolutely shines in the panel format. I don't know many comedians who do the surreal style in an aggressive way, it's usually too whimsical for my taste.

[studpuppet]

A throwaway joke about studpuppet writing eek instead of eke, innit.

EDIT: Oops.

[a duncandisorderly]

I've just been watching her in a clip from " The Wedding Party " episode  where she says " smashing ". Not  " swell " or " awesome ", but " smashing ".

I'd got this idea somewhere that her residential status was questionable, & that she might've been avoiding deportation, trying to assimilate. I can't for the life of me remember where I got this notion.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

This is the first time I've ever even considered that Polly might not be American.

[neveragain]

I always thought she was Canadian.

[Danger Man]

This is the first time I've ever even considered that Polly might not be American.

Her comedy writing career went down the pan after Fawlty Towers

[St_Eddie]

Wikipedia says she's English, too.

Citation most definitely needed.  Not that Polly isn't English (although I still lean towards American) but that Wikipedia entry would have been written by a fan and not anyone involved with the production of Fawlty Towers itself.

Perhaps one of you folks with a Twitter account could ask John Cleese?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Her comedy writing career went down the pan after Fawlty Towers

That's Connie Booth, Who's a yank. Polly the Waitress is English.

[Bennett Brauer]

Graham McCann in his book about the series thinks Polly's American.

She has not yet tired of pushing on as a struggling Anglophile. Although most of her childhood was lived out in her native America, she appears - judging by the fact that the only school friends we see her reunited with are English - to have been in this country for quite a while, and shows no sign of being keen to leave.

[imitationleather]

If I had thought Polly was supposed to be English all this time the bizarre American accent she speaks in would have really dented my enjoyment of the whole show.

[a duncandisorderly]

If I had thought Polly was supposed to be English all this time the bizarre American accent she speaks in would have really dented my enjoyment of the whole show.

well, the accent & the vocabulary are both all over the place. the one solid lead (besides her name being rhyming slang) is cleese's character mocking her accent.

[bgmnts]

Everyone in Red Dwarf was shit, apart from Chris Barrie.

I think they're all pretty good. Robert Llewellyn is pretty great as Kryten.

[the]

It could be time to revive that old CaB meme, 'This thread is a load of fucking bullshit'

[hummingofevil]

Karen from Outnumbered was brilliant, but that's because she never really had a script as such. An actual rambling child saying actual rambling child things will always be so much funnier than some little shit delivering rehearsed zingers.

Yes, she was technically a child actor working within certain preordained parameters, but for the most part she delivered an improvised performance.

I remember seeing an interview where he debunked the idea that the kids were improvising in Outnumbered. He said that there was "no script" for them but this didn't mean their lines were ab-libed. He said what they actually did was just tell the kids what lines to say before each scene and the kids then repeated them as the camera's rolled. Happy to be proved wrong if anyone knows any different.

[BeardFaceMan]

Linda from The Brittas Empire. And she didn't really get any better as the series went on either.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Does Aubrey Plaza in 'Parks and Recreation' count? She just seems to be channeling Susan Tully in "Eastenders", circa 1986 with all that huffing and puffing and eye rolling and looking bored. Then again, I've seen her in a couple of films, and maybe she's just a very limited actress. Having said that, she does a very good American accent, and I'm more or less convinced that her character is American.

[magval]

She just seems to be channeling Susan Tully in "Eastenders"

Who directed last Sunday's episode of Line of Duty.

Channel THAT, so-called Aubrey.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Eek! I meant "Audrey", of course.

[Bennett Brauer]

If I had thought Polly was supposed to be English all this time the bizarre American accent she speaks in would have really dented my enjoyment of the whole show.

That was probably Connie Booth's natural accent at the time, fundamentally American with Englishness mixed in. As she wasn't an experience actress in front of a live audience, I doubt that there was any thought given to her changing her accent either way.  She sounded pretty much the same the year before Fawlty Towers alongside Cleese in Romance with a Double Bass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXAcxR2qo3Y (some full frontal Polly, and Basil in the nip too, so probably NSFW).

Booth does sound more American now, perhaps because she's been married to John Lahr for 20 years.

(Any road, she shouldn't be in this thread.)

[Small Man Big Horse]

Does Aubrey Plaza in 'Parks and Recreation' count? She just seems to be channeling Susan Tully in "Eastenders", circa 1986 with all that huffing and puffing and eye rolling and looking bored. Then again, I've seen her in a couple of films, and maybe she's just a very limited actress. Having said that, she does a very good American accent, and I'm more or less convinced that her character is American.

I liked Plaza in P&R but thought she was a fairly limited actress, and then saw her in the tv series Legion and she's fucking astonishing in it, bizarre, weird and it's one of the best performances I've ever seen on a tv show, so I can only guess that she got typecast as a surly millennial for a while / was just lazy beforehand.

[Thosworth]

I've never seen a complete episode of Absolutely Fabulous, so I have no idea when, where or why I saw this scene with Lady Victoria Hervey, but it has always stuck with me as the worst acting I've ever seen. Impressive as it's only nine words, and even the lines consisting of a single word are utterly execrable:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tyy7x?start=1065

(In the pink top, at 17.50)

[gilbertharding]

I remember seeing an interview where he debunked the idea that the kids were improvising in Outnumbered. He said that there was "no script" for them but this didn't mean their lines were ab-libed. He said what they actually did was just tell the kids what lines to say before each scene and the kids then repeated them as the camera's rolled. Happy to be proved wrong if anyone knows any different.

I remember an interview around the time of the early series - when the actors were at their youngest (obnov, I suppose) - and Andy Hamilton (or Hugh Dennis) explained that, yes - the adults had scripts, and the kids had last minute instructions from the writers. But that meant that the kids improvised in reaction to the instructions, and if the kids came up with something worth keeping (and obviously they frequently would), the adults scripts had to be rewritten around that.

And I remember a later interview where the writers took strong corrective issue with the idea which was apparently held by people who had heard the early interviews that this meant "it's all improvised = the writers done nothing", when in fact the semi-improvised nature of it meant MORE work for everyone (except the kids, presumably).

I wonder if you watched it back, as the kids parts became more and more written you'd notice a change in who you perceived as a better actor. Or writer...

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

A throwaway joke about studpuppet writing eek instead of eke, innit.

Ah, right. Sorry about that, my fault for being slow.

[Virgo76]

This is the first time I've ever even considered that Polly might not be American.

I'm the same.
I don't recall any references to her being either American or British in the script, even in the episode where the Americans viait.
The 'Sherman" thing doesn't prove anything.
But she speaks with an American accent (Booth's own accent) throughout.
Basil does an American accent when he impersonates her.
So surely...she's American?

[poodlefaker]

Vyvyan's mum in The Young Ones.

[Jockice]

Vyvyan in The Young Ones.

[Danger Man]

The Young Ones