msg said:
sci.electronics.basics removed from thread
Arfa Daily wrote:
I sure miss Fawlty Towers; I tried taping the series in one of its 1980's
reairings here (U.S.) on VHS but alas its like watching a blizzard out a
dirty window now. I wonder if there are uncut episodes on DVD?
Do you have any favorite U.S. sitcoms? What do you think of Married with
Children (episodes after 1990 are better) and Two and a Half Men?
I believe there are clearly Brit (or perhaps Continental?) influences in
both of them.
Regards,
Michael
I used to love "Married with Children". I don't know the other one. Another
that I used to really like was "Soap" and also "Cheers". Currently, I like
"Scrubs". I think that it is an intelligent blend of humour and serious
message conveyed by humour. Everthing in the first half of the show is
straight comedy, but with a theme leading to the second half, which often
has an underlying sadness. I think a lot of why that show works is the
faultless casting. "Friends" worked for the same reason. Did you ever get to
see the originals of "The Office" with Ricky Gervaise, before it was remade
for your TV using American actors ? Also, did you get to see Ricky in
"Extras" ? Although they were a bit variable in quality, when they were
good, they were superb. The one with Orlando Bloom in, for instance, was
hysterical, particularly the line about Johnny Depp where he said "Willy
Wonka ? Willy Wanka more like ! " The one with David Bowie in, however, I
thought was poor, and sad rather than funny.
As for Fawlty Towers, that gets run and run and run here. They were talking
to Prunella Scales (Sybil Fawlty) on the radio a while back, and I was
really surprised that there was only twelve episodes total. She said that in
some ways, she rued the day that she ever signed up for it as, considering
that there were only 12 episodes, it has defined her whole career in acting.
I also saw an interview with John Cleese and Connie Booth (Polly) who
co-wrote it with him. They said that most episodes were written in no more
than a half hour, and were modified in concept and ad-lib'd a lot during
filming. I would have thought that a lot of it might well be around on the
'net for download with a bit of searching - YouTube perhaps? - but failing
that, I'm sure it would be available from the BBC website, but whether in
NTSC / region 1 format, I don't know. I would have thought that Virgin
Megastores would be a good place to look also, as they carry a lot of stuff
like that over here, and always look to have very similar stocks in the
stores of theirs that I have looked in your side of the pond.
If you want to see some British dry humour with a London East End flavour,
check out on YouTube a programme called "Minder". There are loads of clips
on there, and you will see where my Usenet nic comes from ...
Arfa