Topic: Shitcoms - The Worst Sitcoms In History

[vainsharpdad]

What was that thing with Jasper Carrot and Meera Syall?
Or the one with Lynda Bellingham and James Bolam?
Or the one with Penelope Keith as a hateful grandmother to Orphans?
Or Ffizz
Or Wyatt's Watchdogs

That's those beyond the obvious - Keeping Up Appearances/Birds of a Feather/Bread axis.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I'm just reading Peter Paphides' autobiography and he mentioned how his Greek immigrant parents loved Mind Your Language and specifically the Greek character. It was essential family viewing in that household.  And not one but two Pakistani friends of mine have mentioned in the past how much they enjoyed it. As did I. My view is that if everyone's a total national stereotype it's just funny. Like (and I know this isn't exactly the same thing), Russ Abbot's C U Jimmy character. As a young Scot living in England I'd heard every fucking stereotype and 'joke' about a million times by the time he started with that. But I just found it very amusing.

In Hari Kondabolu's documentary The Problem with Apu he talks to his parents, who are from India and immigrated to the US, about Apu and they don't have a problem with the portrayal. Their attitude is much more "well but we do work in convenience stores and we do talk like that". Then his mother remarks "but for you [meaning first generation Indian-Americans] it's different." Everyone's background and experiences are going to inform how they react to hilarious comedy stereotypes and social commentary, and there's always going to be at least one person who uses said stereotypes/catchphrases as an excuse to bully others, or who takes the bigot who is clearly supposed to be wrong all the time as a True Hero Who Says What We're All Thinking.

[ajsmith2]

Stephen Moffat wrote an abominably bad sitcom in the 90s, but he's since 'Chalk' ed it up to experience.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

The Cleveland Show

My name is Cleveland Brown
And I'm a stupid pig
I'm horrible to my son
Why are you watching this tripe

It's Black Family Guy with an attempt at making it different using the idea of a blended family, and the storylines from that concept are pretty much exhausted by the end of season 1. Cleveland Brown Jr is fat and stupid now because Chris Griffin is fat and stupid, and Cleveland Brown is less sedate and more like Peter Griffin. The family unit is completed with a teenage girl who gets more and more ignored in terms of storylines as the show goes on (though that's better than being abused like Meg is) and a wise-cracking toddler. They have to have a talking animal like Family Guy so they live next to a family of bears for no reason. At least in American Dad! the talking fish and alien were explained by Stan being in the CIA and having knowledge of aliens and access to mind-swapping future tech. Overall The Cleveland Show is more meh than anything else and I'm not surprised it was cancelled after four seasons.

[Glebe]

RTÉ is notorious for failing at sitcoms and one of the worst was Upwardly Mobile, a sitcom about a couple from the Northside of Dublin winning the Lotto and moving to the much posher area of Belvedere Downs on the Southside. I had vague memories of the theme tune but little else, so decided to check YouTube for episodes.

I'm a third of the way through this one and I haven't cracked a smile once.

Oh fuck... I recall the name more than the actual programme itself. Then of course there's legendarily dreadful shitefest Leave It to Mrs. O' Brien. My memories of a lack of gags and terrible canned laughter are confirmed by this clip:

A scene from the RTÉ Television sitcom ‘Leave it to Mrs O’Brien’ from 1986.

I don't remember her being housekeeper to two priests. It's like an unfunny Father Ted meets Mrs. Brown in the '80s!

[Fambo Number Mive]

Mrs O'Brien is even less funny then her friend Mrs Brown. Nice 1970's kitchen though.

[Glebe]

Mrs O'Brien is even less funny then her friend Mrs Brown. Nice 1970's kitchen though.

It's actually the 1980's, but like, 1980's Ireland!

[notjosh]

I do a bit of work in Ghana and found that Mind Your Language gets repeated, weekend, primetime on the main local channel there. The first time was quite the shock.

I do think that having three distinctly different South Asian characters (a Punjabi Sikh, a Pakistani Muslim and a Hindu) - and trying to base some of the plotlines and characterisation on these differences - does show some insight and understanding beyond the obvious. Maybe I'm being generous.

Last time I was in India it was running constantly on Comedy Central. It doesn't surprise me at all - in most of the world it's not considered taboo to make jokes based on national stereotypes or to take the piss out of each other's accents. International comics like Russell Peters or Trevor Noah have pretty much built careers out of it.

Coming of Age - three seasons (!) - but it reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_Hook_(TV_series)
which was desperate.

Came here to say that. Dire stuff. I had remembered it being written by an 18 year old for some reason but just looked it up and the creator was 35 at the time! Having said that he recently wrote and directed Love/Wedding/Repeat which was reasonably watchable - certainly a big improvement.

[Gurke and Hare]

Can't be coincidence, can it?

Also Cleese on the right of the picture.

The intent of Love Your Neighbour was anti-racist but the execution was clumsily delivered. Like Til Death Us Do Part, most of the kids watching, bigots and thick people didn't understand the irony or the message.

Yeah - Rudolph Walker would pretty much always outsmart Jack Smethurst, but them Smethurst would say "sambo" and the audience would piss themselves en masse. Hard to know how you can get the message across in that environment really.

Is Robin Askwith really a national treasure? The Confessions movies seem to be looked fondly back at by people without any acknowledgement that they were actually total dogshit. They had value to 14-year-old boys in the 80s who might have been excited at the opportunity to see Lynda Belligham's tits but they were piss poor really. He's not been in anything else that was much cop either.

And as I've said here before I think, Chalk was great.

[Mr Banlon]

Baddiel's Syndrome

[Dusty Substance]

Stephen Moffat wrote an abominably bad sitcom in the 90s, but he's since 'Chalk' ed it up to experience.

Blimey, there's a show I've not thought about for nearly a quarter of a century.

[franticplanet]

What was that thing with Jasper Carrot and Meera Syall?

All About Me, which incredibly, was created by the guy who went onto do Peaky Blinders, Taboo, and that film where Tom Hardy's in a car on the phone the whole time.

[MojoJojo]

What about Eddie Izzard's Cows? Although that was only a pilot. With Sally Phillips!

[Brundle-Fly]

Is Robin Askwith really a national treasure? The Confessions movies seem to be looked fondly back at by people without any acknowledgement that they were actually total dogshit. They had value to 14-year-old boys in the 80s who might have been excited at the opportunity to see Lynda Belligham's tits but they were piss poor really. He's not been in anything else that was much cop either.

Nobody has ever said Robin Askwith is a national treasure. People know that the Confessions films are shit. It's just nostalgiia. He's just part of the tapestry of British low brow cinema, (apart from If (1968) )  cult film favourite and roguish raconteur, and crucially he's still around to tell the tale.

[Glebe]

Askwith is also in Britannia Hospital, I believe (I've not seen that nor If, to be honest).

[Cuellar]

Nobody has ever said Robin Askwith is a national treasure.

It's in the very first post!

[Tony Yeboah]

Keeping Mum. Mum was obviously suffering from Alzheimer's. The jokes were crap anyway, but the tone was totally wrong because all the supposed humour was generated from either laughing at the lady with Alzheimer's or the sons trying to look after their mother with Alzheimer's. That's not impossible to get right, but this show was on primetime BBC One and missed the mark badly.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Have we made it to page 3 without anyone saying My Family, a sitcom so bad that on occasion Lindsay and Wanamaker just refused to perform the scripts (if memory serves)?

For shame.

There’s a market out there for insanely bland sitcoms, which seems insane to me. Are they piping Two Pints of Lager (2001-2011) into nursing homes or something? My Family also chuntered away for yonks in the background, unwatched and unloved. Was it a BBC tax fiddle or something?

[jobotic]

Keeping Mum. Mum was obviously suffering from Alzheimer's. The jokes were crap anyway, but the tone was totally wrong because all the supposed humour was generated from either laughing at the lady with Alzheimer's or the sons trying to look after their mother with Alzheimer's. That's not impossible to get right, but this show was on primetime BBC One and missed the mark badly.

Had to look that up, no recoolection of it at all.

David "Wright Way" Haig hasn't half been in some shite hasn't he, considering that he's David "Thick of It" Haig?

[Brundle-Fly]

It's in the very first post!

When I mean 'nobody', I mean the general public not us nerds on CaB.

[Gulftastic]

Have we made it to page 3 without anyone saying My Family, a sitcom so bad that on occasion Lindsay and Wanamaker just refused to perform the scripts (if memory serves)?

For shame.

There’s a market out there for insanely bland sitcoms, which seems insane to me. Are they piping Two Pints of Lager (2001-2011) into nursing homes or something? My Family also chuntered away for yonks in the background, unwatched and unloved. Was it a BBC tax fiddle or something?

I used to work with a bloke who insisted if I had kids I'd find it funny. He was twat.

[neveragain]

Keeping Mum. Mum was obviously suffering from Alzheimer's. The jokes were crap anyway, but the tone was totally wrong because all the supposed humour was generated from either laughing at the lady with Alzheimer's or the sons trying to look after their mother with Alzheimer's. That's not impossible to get right, but this show was on primetime BBC One and missed the mark badly.

Stephanie Cole did her best, bless her.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Had to look that up, no recoolection of it at all.

David "Wright Way" Haig hasn't half been in some shite hasn't he, considering that he's David "Thick of It" Haig?

I think he's a bit of a thesp that does telly to pay the bills so I'm not sure he's that fussy.

Absolutely astonished to find out he's only 65.

[dr_christian_troy]

Never seen Love Thy Neighbour but wasn't the joke always on the racist character in it?

Bleakly, last time I looked at the Amazon bestsellers in comedy DVDs (this week), this was at no. 39 in the charts.

[Deanjam]

I think he's a bit of a thesp that does telly to pay the bills so I'm not sure he's that fussy.

Absolutely astonished to find out he's only 65.

Yeah, but he's been 65 for 40 years.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Really enjoying the blog in the initial post. I know what I’m watching Christmas 2021.

https://franticplanet.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/i-watched-jim-davidsons-adult-panto/

[Jockice]

What was that thing with Jasper Carrot and Meera Syall?

I think Meera was only in one series and then was replaced by Nina Wadia. I didn't think the show was terrible anyway, partly because I have a very soft spot for Jasper and also because it was one of very few sitcoms to feature a disabled main character. It was all about him apparently.

[pigamus]

I used to work with a bloke who insisted if I had kids I'd find it funny. He was twat.

Was he maybe thinking of that other one, the Andy Hamilton one with the kids

[petrilTanaka]

Yeah, but he's been 65 for 40 years.

kind of a sitcom Arn Anderson, who's always looked about 43



that picture could've been taken in any post-war decade and that's what Arn looked like

[Jake Thingray]

Out of the ones I've watched for it, Curry and Chips might be the worst, not just for the endless and unbelievably hateful racism, but the weird scenes where they sit around and regurgitate Johnny Speight's political opinions about contraception and "shifty Harold Wilson" for ten minutes

Presenting characters just arguing with each other, in lieu of plot, was also a criticism made of Till Death Us Do Part, defenders claimed that Speight was a polemicist like his inspiration, George Bernard Shaw. Whose work doesn't do anything for me either.

franticplanet, on your blog, when examining the psychological minefield of Michael Barrymore's live mid-90's act, you mentioned that the blind devotion displayed by his followers was similar to that of devoted fans of Michael Jackson. I really do have to ask -- are you aware of a onetime toilet cleaner from Essex named Christine Guntrip?