Who's da best at Comedy, US or UK

[Twatybollocks]

Above are a list of classic American and UK comedies, you can vote for as many as you like, but it will be interesting to see if the UK or the US comedies get the most votes...

[qwerto]

all except the office!

[streety]

The UK comes out on top easily... I hate Friends with passion. The cheesey laughter that they put on every couple of seconds is just annoying! They are all just sooo American!* Fawlty Towers is amazing, as is Red Dwarf and The Office. The only decent American show on the list is The Simpsons.


*Please address complaints "We won the war not you" via PM and I may send you something... **


**If you send me a PM you will not receive anything

[Space Prawn]

The UK are better at toe curling, subtle comedy that you remember forever. The US are a better at presenting real life and making it funny. Friends, Will and Grace, Fraiser, Sex and the City... all realistic compared to Blackadder, The Office (which is subtle humour) and Fawlty Towers.

But the UK win hands down for Stand-Ups. Anyone who says Bill Bailey is a pants stand-up comedian will be destroyed.

[renatzu]

Friends, Will and Grace, and Frasier are all awful, cheesy, contrived, sitcoms. While Fawlty Towers and Blackadder are hysterically funny, The Simpsons may be the funniest and most consistent TV show ever (13 seasons?).
I have to say U.S. since you couldn't put Britain and comedy into the same sentance before Monty Python.

[c0ffee]

Originally posted by Streety
The UK comes out on top easily... I hate Friends with passion. The cheesey laughter that they put on every couple of seconds is just annoying! They are all just sooo American!* Fawlty Towers is amazing, as is Red Dwarf and The Office. The only decent American show on the list is The Simpsons.


*Please address complaints "We won the war not you" via PM and I may send you something... **


**If you send me a PM you will not receive anything

i agree, my parents love friends, when the jokes are ones made in second grade. I like the Office, Mr.Bean, Red Dwarf, and also Waiting for God.

[nutnoodle]

I don't get it..

I've tried to watch the Office several times and got bored within like five minutes... what's so great about it?? It just seems like a bunch of people who can't act :p

*waits for flaming to begin*

...

The only other one I didn't pick was Married with Children, having never seen it. The rest are great though :D

I couldn't pick between UK and US. I like comedy from both really... I suppose if I had to pick I'd choose US. Simply because so many of my favourites have come from there... Friends, the Simpsons, Fraiser etc.

[amr40]

wheres weebl from if uk then wooooooooooo

[Panto]

UK by far.....I love Red Dwarf, Blackadder, Bottom, The Office, Coupling, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools And Horses, Steptoe and Son (what Sanford and Son was based on), Porridge, Open All Hours, One Foot In The Grave, Dad's Army, Morecombe And Wise....there are more...I just can't think of them right now

[Playbus]

UK wins overall, but the Simpsons cannot be ignored in the US portfolio.

[Panto]

My opinion of the Simpsons has been going down for years...Like most American TV programs it has gone on for waaaay too long.

[Playbus]

I agree, the Simpsons is not as good now as it used to be. But there are still hundreds of episodes which are truly hilarious!

A lot of series' suffer from it, Red Dwarf did. Absolute comedy gold at first, but by series 8 was flogging a dead horse.

posted by Her Pinkness
A lot of UK humor just isn't funny to me. They think it's irony, but most of it is really not. It's just so obviously funny that it's just not anymore. Not to say that none of it is funny, but I do prefer US comedy.


I think it's fair to say that both the UK and US produce some good shows, as well as their own fair share of utter crap as well.

;)

[queenofself]

i prefer US because much of the comedy in the UK is either depressing or horribly frustrating. i do love the office but i think watching US comedy is much more fun. although people have said that the UK comedies like the office aren't realistic, their settings and general visual elements are depressingly realistic to me. either that or they're horribly contrived and trying to go for the whole random/almost abstract thing. i prefer the big, glossy, fantasy scale of UK comedy, probably because i find it much much more escapist.

the greatest comedy show i found when i was over in the US was crank yankers, im hoping thatll come over to the UK one day

[vampiress]

i'm thinking it's a grass is greener situation. i am bored with typical us humour, so i tend to like british humour. i think this maybe because i don't have the same access to british humour, as i only get to see stuff on pbs or bbca when i can find it. i'm sure british humour has as much crap comedy as us humour, i just don't get to see it.

[Playbus]

Did anyone else ever see the US remake of Episode 1 of Red Dwarf?

*shudders at the memory*

[queenofself]

im scared to say this at all in here so ill say it in the dark...

its things like red dwarf that make me hate Uk comedy

bring on the - ratings!

[Playbus]

:eek:

Did you just watch series 8 or something?


I'm not going to - you just for stating your opinion

[queenofself]

it could just be my extreme hatred for craig charles, but i think it goes deeper than that!

[Playbus]

Well I dislike Craig Charles in a way too. I don't like him as a television presenter. Or in that soap he's been in. In fact I don't think I've seen him do anything well on TV since Red Dwarf.


But I think that there is simply no-one else who could replace him as Lister.

[Dibbie]

Historically the innovators of comedy have been British but we are occasionally over-taken in style and content. The problem is that Britain and the US have very different senses of humour. A major factor in comedy is social commentary and British society is very different from that of the US.

Take, for example, the famous scene from "Faulty Towers" where Basil is beating the hell out of his car because it has broken down. To the British audience this is a remark on internal collapse - as a nation we are generally quite stayed and calm on the outside never resorting to emotion as far as humanly possible so the comedy lies in the fact that he is doing the thing we wish we could all do. For the US audience however this is a remark on British eccentricity and loses some impact due to it's quaintness.

The most remarkable thing about Faulty Towers is that it was written by John Cleese (English) and Connie Booth (American) so the humour does transcend both nations pretty well.

Ultimately the question shouldn't be "Who is better at comedy?" but rather "Who is most consistant?"

From a consistantly funny point of view the US tends to have the edge because a great deal of modern comedy is written by a consortiem of writers instead of the one or two used by British comedies. The Simpsons uses a vast number of writers to ensure that each episode is as funny as the last. When it comes to innovation however Britain reigns supreme - love it or hate it Britain was responsible for both Monty Python and The Office.

Whilst a lot of American comedies tend to outstay their welcome British ones are very short-lived which means that we never get the chance to become tired of the main characters whether it is Fletch in Porridge (weighing in at a massive 3 series and 2 Christmas Specials) or David Brent from The Office (2 Series and a two-part Christmas Special). The comedies that we have let live for too long lose their appeal (Allo Allo or Are You Being Served for example) because we realise that the protagonists tend to be one trick ponies and that trick tends to wear pretty thin pretty quickly. America tends to do well at longevity though - take Frasier and The Simpsons both are relatively fresh and both continue to win awards.

So who is better? Neither, we just have to accept that there are as many senses of humour as there people in the world and each one is as subjective as the last. On a completely subjective note though I would say British comedy is my favourite for the time being but it is not a steady opinion - if you''d asked 5 years ago I would have said the USA!

Finally, but importantly, the poll only really relates to sit-coms which is fair enough but if we were to ask the same about stand-up comedy I would heavily favour the Americans.

[eidderf]

I rarely laugh at American comedy, I think hey thats funny, but don't laugh. I disagree that the comedy in the UK is depressing since if comedy depress you because you really shouldn't take them seriously enough for them to depress you. Also the list proves that there aren't as many memorable American comedies which is not to say the ones they have aren't good. I also laugh out loud at most UK comedies, though not at American ones. I think the UK is also thinking of many original styles of comedy and American is not thinking as much.

[queenofself]

i just think its depressing because its so much more realistic. i was working in the city over the summer when i first saw the office & although i love it it was depressing to know that it isnt that far from real life. & the episode when they go to chasers was also depressingly true to life. ok maybe i was only thinking of the office!

on the other hand i find u.s comedy much more uplifting because in some ways its much more fantastical, i mean who could afford to live in the apartments they do in friends whilst seeming to have no steady jobs, infact, who has friends anyway? :)

[eidderf]

Originally posted by queenofself
on the other hand i find u.s comedy much more uplifting because in some ways its much more fantastical
I know this may have been a joke, but if not Red dwarf, darkplace, Father Ted, my hero etc.

[queenofself]

i meant as in making real life waaaay more glamorous than it ever is

[Panto]

I like the fact that most UK comedies are only written by a few people...that whole 12 people script team very rarely comes up with true originality in shows.

I would like to add Father Ted and The Royle Family o my earlier list.

[squealpiggy]

Father Ted is technically not British as it was written, produced and cast by people from Southern Ireland.

British comedy is superb though, and American comedy tends to be a little but polished. You forgot to mention Monty Python in the poll, you also forgot to mention Saturday Night Live on the American side.

One thing that I feel I should mention about American comedy is that it tends to overdo the serious emotional bit, and they do it in a bit of a sentimental way. Every episode of Friends seems to have some kind of moral or lesson, the bit where the studio audience goes "aaawwwww...". It's rare that this happens in British comedy and it tends to be bleak with it, for example at the end of Blackadder Goes Forth, the Office often ends like that, it just displays the utter awfulness of the character's lives, once all the laughter stops.

I also agree that longevity often spoils a series though the simpsons is still great.

[Dibbie]

Good point.

I think Britain uses sadness to temper the comedy (you need to get high before you taste the lows as one philosopher once put it). In Britain we tend to leave morality to soaps - this, interestingly, is also true in Australia!!

[Gohan]

us by far i just think they have a better sense of humour

[vampiress]

Originally posted by squealpiggy
British comedy is superb though, and American comedy tends to be a little but polished. You forgot to mention Monty Python in the poll, you also forgot to mention Saturday Night Live on the American side.

One thing that I feel I should mention about American comedy is that it tends to overdo the serious emotional bit, and they do it in a bit of a sentimental way. Every episode of Friends seems to have some kind of moral or lesson, the bit where the studio audience goes "aaawwwww...". It's rare that this happens in British comedy and it tends to be bleak with it, for example at the end of Blackadder Goes Forth, the Office often ends like that, it just displays the utter awfulness of the character's lives, once all the laughter stops.

I also agree that longevity often spoils a series though the simpsons is still great. snl WAS great. it the last several years though it has suffered from, omg this bit is funny at a minute so lets make is a 10 minute sketch now. they don't realize that we lost interest if we have to wait for the jooke too long. south park used to be funny, but again, they run every joke into the ground until it is boring, or they really overstep their bounds. yes i realize the first season was so funny because it was so shocking, but the he eipsode about pubes was just not funny cartman supposedly kills the kids parents and cooks them up in chili while radiohead mocks the crying kid was a bit much. i like soem of the jokes, but the patricide was just not amusing to me and since the movie, every episode is some sort of a musical. american comedy tends to rely too much on gimickes i think. that being said, we do have some fine examples of comedy aslo that have already been listed numerous times. i have not expierenced a stand up british comedian (well i saw the dave gorman show which was briliant) so i can't compare, but stand up is so hit or miss, but i do like going to the comedy zone club to see live comedy.

[Rogue]

the best funny tv shows i have ever watched have (quite honestly) been British.

The best novels i have read have been by british peebles.

(I am an american btw)

[sack the chimp]

Well, Simpsons comes top out of that list, but I'd say the british are much funnier. But then I like my dark humour, and I'm british.
One question though, how many of the scriptwirters of american sitcoms are british (I heard somewhere loads of them are)?

and
Originally posted by dark ninja
you couldn't put Britain and comedy into the same sentance before Monty Python. ?????????????

So what was there before python in the US?

[bigmother]

I think the most interesting comedy I've seen in a while has to be the league of gentlemen, very british in its own way, it's just very dark and a lot more innovative than a lot of american humour.