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Shitcoms - The Worst Sitcoms In History

Started by Fambo Number Mive, February 24, 2021, 08:04:16 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jockice

Quote from: Retinend on February 25, 2021, 11:23:12 AM
As a former classroom TEFL-teacher, I will weigh in and certify that "Mind Your Language" is absolutely accurate about the varieties of mistakes people make in English, and the amusing situations that come up when various nationals share the same classroom. 

I think its bad reputation was retroactively extrapolated from the correct notion that if a foreigner doesn't understand you, you shouldn't imagine that they are stupid. Obviously, a show in which characters are written to comedically play up linguistic misunderstandings risks coming across as portraying those characters as stupid. Yet the show is written as if by someone who paid their dues working in such a classroom and knew their onions.

edit: minding my language

Isn't the bloke second from left here the same one who played the Italian chap in the series? He's come a long way since then obviously.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafia/comments/k11p64/diego_maradona_second_from_right_with_the/

dex

Johnny Vaughan's Orrible. Remember that one?

notjosh

Quote from: dex on February 26, 2021, 06:40:33 PM
Johnny Vaughan's Orrible. Remember that one?

Yeah, was just thinking about that. Just remember it being quite bleak with unlikeable characters and no redeeming qualities.

From a similar era, I can't remember if Stephen Tompkinson's Mr Charity was genuinely shit or just totally unremarkable.

More recently, I Live With Models, Comedy Central UK's bizarre attempt to create a homegrown American sitcom is one of the most depressing and soulless things I've ever seen. And, as someone who worked there at the time, that goes for the commissioning process too. It might as well have been created by an algorithm.

St_Eddie

Quote from: dex on February 26, 2021, 06:40:33 PM
Johnny Vaughan's Orrible. Remember that one?

I remember a scene where Johnny phones a prostitute to arrange a shag and it was presented as though it was a normal thing to do, unironically.

Chriddof

Quote from: Ptolemy Ptarmigan on February 26, 2021, 02:43:02 PM
Seems incredible that a mainstream sitcom would be completely wiped in 1976, especially as Varney would still have been a massive star in the wake of On the Buses.

His home video-recording of Series 2 on the DVD appears with all the 1976 ad breaks intact - £4.20 today in the Network sale if anyone's interested in that historical aspect.

Those advert breaks have been uploaded separately to the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/classic_tv_commercials_emperor?and%5B%5D=varney&sin=

I'm genuinely surprised that they didn't edit them out on the DVD, I would have thought they'd have to for copyright reasons.

Jockice

Quote from: Jake Thingray on February 25, 2021, 06:48:11 PM
I really do have to ask -- are you aware of a onetime toilet cleaner from Essex named Christine Guntrip?

I'm not. But I used to know a Helen with the same surname. She was a teacher. Probably still is. We have three mutual Facebook friends but I haven't seen her for at least 20 years.

Just thought you'd like to know.

I've mentioned it on here before -  Ed Stone is Dead. Early 2000s supernatural sitcom on BBC Choice starring Richard Blackwood as a ghost/zombie. It wasn't funny, cast were all wooden and shit, and after every 'joke' there was a pause for canned laugher which ended up not being added.

Can't find any clips online, but did find a script of the first episode. Imagine Ed being 'acted' by the aforementioned Blackwood.
http://www.ur.se/mb/pdf/Programmanus/Engelska/7505157601_man.pdf

Bizarrely, the show is being used to teach English - maybe it was cheap to buy the rights:
https://www.ur.se/mb/pdf/Arbetsblad/Engelska/51576_arb.pdf

Famous Mortimer

At least partially written by Bain and Armstrong, according to a quick search.

Evil Knevil

Quote from: Antiseptic Poetry on March 01, 2021, 02:10:44 AM
I've mentioned it on here before -  Ed Stone is Dead. Early 2000s supernatural sitcom on BBC Choice starring Richard Blackwood as a ghost/zombie. It wasn't funny, cast were all wooden and shit, and after every 'joke' there was a pause for canned laugher which ended up not being added.

Can't find any clips online, but did find a script of the first episode. Imagine Ed being 'acted' by the aforementioned Blackwood.
http://www.ur.se/mb/pdf/Programmanus/Engelska/7505157601_man.pdf

Bizarrely, the show is being used to teach English - maybe it was cheap to buy the rights:
https://www.ur.se/mb/pdf/Arbetsblad/Engelska/51576_arb.pdf


I've just realised after 18 years that Ed Stone is a pun on headstone...

j_u_d_a_s

Quote from: Retinend on February 25, 2021, 09:50:33 AM
Does anyone remember "Full English"?




Fun fact, I used to work with a guy who's mentioned by name in the first episode. But yes, awful hateful shit that aimed to be the British Family Guy, such ambition...


Quote from: Famous Mortimer on March 01, 2021, 02:57:52 PM
At least partially written by Bain and Armstrong, according to a quick search.

That's interesting. Maybe it's worth revising then. I just have a vivid memory of cringing at how unfunny it was.

Quote from: Evil Knevil on March 01, 2021, 03:04:23 PM
I've just realised after 18 years that Ed Stone is a pun on headstone...

Oh yeh. Similar to Ideal ("I deal").

ChillingDemon

Quote from: notjosh on February 26, 2021, 09:58:02 PM
Yeah, was just thinking about that. Just remember it being quite bleak with unlikeable characters and no redeeming qualities.

I remember a review of 'Orrible from when it was being broadcast; I think it might have been from the Mirror's TV critic, who observed "I've realised where Johnny Vaughan has put the 'h' from 'horrible' - he's added it to the word 'sitcom'."

I also remember a press interview with Vaughan after it had crashed and burned, where he claimed that it had a loyal following who "got it" and begged for them to continue with the show. I presume this group of people included his mum.

Didn't he co-write it with Dave Allen's son? You'd think there might have been a better pedigree there.

j_u_d_a_s

Quote from: notjosh on February 26, 2021, 09:58:02 PM
More recently, I Live With Models, Comedy Central UK's bizarre attempt to create a homegrown American sitcom is one of the most depressing and soulless things I've ever seen. And, as someone who worked there at the time, that goes for the commissioning process too. It might as well have been created by an algorithm.

The first series was awful, big hammy performances, unlikable characters and stale predictable jokes. But the 2nd series, when they got an experienced showrunner in, transforms the show entirely and turned it into something decent.

j_u_d_a_s

Meant to post about Channel 4's other attempt to get on the animated sitcom train...

Bromwell High, an attempt to do the British South Park and again took all the wrong lessons. Its big catchphrase was 'tolerance is for gays' and you have a big hahahahaha nutters on the bus joke at the start of this episode.Richard Osman was partially responsible for it.

Was clearly planned to be a big success with merchandise available around the time of its broadcast but was a massive flop with Channel 4 only showing the first 6 produced episodes. Racist, classist and dismally unfunny, utterly wretched.

thr0b

The UK really should stop trying to do "The British [animated sitcom from the US]".

Stressed Eric was probably the first of many big failures - though not entirely without merit, it misfired more than it succeeded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP-cnSYoSBs - being a success. Lovely animation (and Rugrats-style art) from Klasky Ksupo, top notch voice-acting, and middling scripts from (I think) the Absolutely team.

I think only Crapston Villas (because it ran for a while) and Monkey Dust (because it was bloody great, not shit like you thought) would be seen to be "successful" British adult animated comedies.

An honourable mention to House Of Rock as well, late-night schedule-filler though it was, it was never promoted as the next big thing, and so it wasn't. But by sheer force of the time of night it was on, and me being a student at the time, it usually got us laughing.

Ant Farm Keyboard

Work It, an American sitcom about two unemployed guys who find work as sales reps for a pharmaceutical firm that only hires women for these jobs. Because they pose as women to get and keep the job.

It was released in 2012, which is why it looked slightly outdated when it premiered. It was actually canceled nine days and two episodes later, but the full 13 episode season had already been produced, and ultimately aired nearly two years later on late night in New Zealand. I managed to download them and watch them all, which was excruciating.

Two decades ago, this time on late night French television, I happened to watch the end of an episode for some American sitcom that was incredibly bad. The lead, an anchorman, had an anger problem which he addressed by eating chocolate. In the last scene, things had suddenly escalated, chocolate had made him morbidly obese, and the actor was in a fat suit. It was part one of a two-parter. I've never seen the second half.
Years later, I ultimately identified the show, it was The Brian Benben Show, which was Benben's follow up project to Dream On in 1998. Turns out that it was also canceled early, after the two-parter had aired (four episodes in), but nine episodes had been produced in all (they all aired on French TV).

Ptolemy Ptarmigan

Quote from: Chriddof on February 27, 2021, 07:33:12 AM
Those advert breaks have been uploaded separately to the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/classic_tv_commercials_emperor?and%5B%5D=varney&sin=

I'm genuinely surprised that they didn't edit them out on the DVD, I would have thought they'd have to for copyright reasons.

Thanks. I've since seen someone uploaded the surviving episodes with ad breaks to Google Drive, watch or download.  You'll probably find it via a search and Reddit, but anyone who can't can PM me.

purlieu

Quote from: vainsharpdad on February 25, 2021, 01:42:53 PM
Or the one with Penelope Keith as a hateful grandmother to Orphans?
Next of Kin. A really horribly bitter programme.
Quote from: Tony Yeboah on February 25, 2021, 04:30:47 PM
Keeping Mum.
I remember this being a very similar era to
Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on February 26, 2021, 06:07:44 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dad_(TV_series)
Dad was considerably better (Andrew Marshall, if I recall correctly?) if far from a classic. Keeping Mum was very strained.

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on February 26, 2021, 06:07:44 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartburn_Hotel
Yeah, this one was really fucking bleak. Even in my "watching every sitcom because anything comedy is funny" childhood years, I struggled to get through this one.

Quote from: notjosh on February 26, 2021, 09:58:02 PM
From a similar era, I can't remember if Stephen Tompkinson's Mr Charity was genuinely shit or just totally unremarkable.
It was genuinely shit. Harvey Baines was always the weak link in the generally good Waiting for God, too much of a broad pantomime miser, and Mr Charity was like taking his character, managing to find some nuance and then ironing it out before making an entire show centre around the character. [nb]Not the same character, of course, but the same kind of character.[/nb]

A couple that only ever get mentioned in these kinds of thread: Mad About Alice, the Jamie Theakston vehicle that suffered the indignity of being buried in a graveyard slot halfway through the series (much the same as the aforementioned, and abominably unfunny, The Persuasionists, only with a much higher profile to start with), and of course Babes in the Wood.

What was the one set in a bingo hall? I remember that one giving me a real feeling of impending doom every time it started.


I'm glad both Captain Butler and A Prince Among Men appeared in franticplanet's blog, two examples of my childhood self being baffled as to why the guys from Red Dwarf were suddenly unfunny. One could say the same about O'Hanlon in My Hero, although the first series of that at least showed a little promise, which it never lived up to. In hindsight, Captain Butler has a certain charm in just how cheap and naff it is. It's terrible, but entertainingly so.

Speak of Red Dwarf, both Rob and Doug fucked up when trying to write anything else. Grant's attempt at translating the absurdity of millennium hype to a thousand years before, Dark Ages, only had one redeeming factor: introducing me to Sheridan Smith. Naylor stuck to his Red Dwarf guns until he decided to write a sitcom pilot a few years ago called Over to Bill for Comedy Playhouse. Hugh Dennis as the titular weatherman, Neil Morrissey as his mate. Being a weatherman plays no part in what was just a collection of the most tedious, obvious farce jokes (he leaves the wedding present on top of the car and doesn't notice, it falls off, he buys a cheap gift from a petrol station, swaps the name tags so it looks like someone else gave it... and that's probably the best part of the episode). Red Dwarf will probably remain my favourite TV programme until the day I die, but it's such a shame that it seemed to be the last good thing any of its cast and writers ever did.

A final vote for Rory McGrath's hideous Chelmsford 123, which is only ever remembered because in the first episode the TARDIS materialises and the Seventh Doctor gets out for a brief look around before leaving again. It's the only notable moment in the whole show.

Icehaven

I can't for the life of me remember what it was called but there was a British sitcom, early 2000s I think, about a wealthy, obnoxious bloke who lived in a big house, and it was just about his general shenanigans, what a prat he was etc. I only saw a few episodes but I remember it as being really quite nasty and off tone. In one episode he starts sleeping with a homeless woman who then decides to go back to living on the streets, and there was an incident (possibly in the same episode) where he got hammered and shit his bed. Might have been called something like "My (something?) Life". The bloke looked a bit like Paul Kaye, and I think the actor might have been a standup as well.

Edit: It's How Not To Live Your Life and I misremembered the premise a bit, he isn't particularly wealthy he just inherits a big house, and he gets a girl he fancied at school as a lodger, which I'd half remembered but thought I'd got that from Game On, like he probably did.




Phil_A

I'm amazed everyone's already forgotten Warren, the Martin Clunes sitcom that premiered the same night as This Time With Alan Partridge.

It seems like it was an attempt to create an anti-hero lead character who the audience will nonetheless find endearing like Basil Fawlty or...Alan Partridge, but Warren completely failed to do this as the character was such a horrible wanker throughout and the show was miserably unfunny. It was staggeringly misjudged.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Phil_A on March 02, 2021, 05:27:09 PM
I'm amazed everyone's already forgotten Warren, the Martin Clunes sitcom that premiered the same night as This Time With Alan Partridge.

It seems like it was an attempt to create an anti-hero lead character who the audience will nonetheless find endearing like Basil Fawlty or...Alan Partridge, but Warren completely failed to do this as the character was such a horrible wanker throughout and the show was miserably unfunny. It was staggeringly misjudged.

I'm glad Warren existed, if only for the reasons you mention. It was, like The Wright Way, a rare recent example of a sitcom that misfired in every conceivable way. They don't come around very often. No one liked it, everyone recognised it for the horseshit it was. Our divided nation was, for once, fully united.

As you say, Warren was a total arsehole with no redeeming features. The writers presumably thought they'd created an entertainingly cynical curmudgeon a la Victor Meldrew or Blackadder, but he was just a boring, miserable, unpleasant man. Martin Clunes is a gifted comic actor, but there was nothing he could do to rescue it. God only knows what he saw in the material.

purlieu

It's a common failure in shitcoms - one of the (many) ways the aforementioned A Prince Among Men fucks up is that Gary Prince is just a cunt, it makes it impossible to sympathise with him when the plotting seems to require you to. Also Extras, in which we're meant to see Gervais's character as the voice of sanity, but it doesn't work because five minutes before we've had him doing everything he can to avoid meeting a disabled fan for no clear reason.

Phil_A

Quote from: purlieu on March 02, 2021, 06:16:52 PM
It's a common failure in shitcoms - one of the (many) ways the aforementioned A Prince Among Men fucks up is that Gary Prince is just a cunt, it makes it impossible to sympathise with him when the plotting seems to require you to. Also Extras, in which we're meant to see Gervais's character as the voice of sanity, but it doesn't work because five minutes before we've had him doing everything he can to avoid meeting a disabled fan for no clear reason.

Or deliberately fucking up a play he's acting in because some hard men in the front row might think he's gay.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: purlieu on March 02, 2021, 06:16:52 PM
It's a common failure in shitcoms - one of the (many) ways the aforementioned A Prince Among Men fucks up is that Gary Prince is just a cunt, it makes it impossible to sympathise with him when the plotting seems to require you to. Also Extras, in which we're meant to see Gervais's character as the voice of sanity, but it doesn't work because five minutes before we've had him doing everything he can to avoid meeting a disabled fan for no clear reason.

For me,  that was avoided by the relationship with Bryan Pringle's character, who was Prince's first coach as a boy. Whilst Prince is absolutely desperate for his approval, Pringle is incredibly dismissive about him and anything he's done - e.g. when he played as a boy, he wasn't the one with real talent. I didn't think the series was much cop (but then again, it was far from the worst I have seen) but that omnipresent, eternally disappointed father figure was a decent element and helped make Prince more sympathetic to me.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: purlieu on March 02, 2021, 05:01:17 PM...A final vote for Rory McGrath's hideous Chelmsford 123, which is only ever remembered because in the first episode the TARDIS materialises and the Seventh Doctor gets out for a brief look around before leaving again. It's the only notable moment in the whole show.

Nah, it had one of the greatest comedy bits of business when an angel and a devil are trying to sway a character.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Glebe on February 25, 2021, 04:12:42 PM
Askwith is also in Britannia Hospital, I believe (I've not seen that nor If, to be honest).

Pretty much all of his earlier films are worth watching as they tend to be rather interesting.

I'm particularly fond of Clive Donner's Alfred The Great, which stars David Hemmings in the title role. Askwith plays a young man, who is meant to be watching over a flock of sheep but prefers to cannoolde a Celtic maiden in the field instead. Alas, their sneaky snogging gets interrupted by an invading Viking horde!

A small role but in an effective scene and Val Guest is supposed to have been highly taken with it. Guest instantly saw the potential in updating the setting to modern times, making the young man a window cleaner instead of a shepherd, replacing the angry Viking raiders with an angry husband and instead of being butchered by a sword, the hero escapes wrath by shinning down a drainpipe without his trousers on and running into the street as a policeman is helping an elderly nun across the road... and the rest, as they say, is cinema history....