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So I grew up with a lot of British TV shows even if many were decades out of date: Dad's Army, Are You Being Served (and Again/Grace and Favour), Black Adder, Open All Hours, Fawlty Towers. The Good Neighbor (The Good Life),Granada's Sherlock Holmes, I, Claudius, To The Manor Born, The Pallisers, No Place Like Home, One Foot In The Grave, Keeping Up Appearances, Waiting For Good, Mr. Bean, Red Dwarf, Thin Blue Line, Vicar of Dibley, Cadfael, As Time Goes By, and I'm sure many others I cannot recall off the top of my head. And I have pretty much kept watching them again and again since childhood, while adding new ones like Black Books, Spaced, Father Ted, I'm Alan Partridge (all time favorite), IT Crowd, and Little Britain.
But one in particular has always kind of confused me: Last of the Summer Wine. I mean, I get the basic principle that these old fogeys are yukking it up acting like juves. But it's really hard to follow in specific. Not just what Compo is saying, either, but like why the characters behave like they do. I imagine it's just that the show plays on cultural tropes that are little over my head as a foreigner.
Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/21 05:55:37
I had a decent amount of British shows growing up that I watched, many you listed already, but I would add the original Dr. Who series as well as Monty Python to the list. To the IT Crowd I would add Spaced and That Mitchell and Web Look.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/21 06:01:55
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Manchu - Last of The Summer Wine is just old fogeys yukking it up.
It lasted a long while in the UK filling up a time slot on Sunday evening where there was literally nothing else but Songs of praise and antiques roadshow around it.
.... expect the entirely CGI 3-d bersion of "I love Lucy" by 2017.
IIRC it was "The Mary Whitehouse Experience" -- blast from the past there for the UK members ! -- who first pointed out that one of the UK traditions was seeing the dad's Army credits start and to sit there going " Dead. Dead. Died first. Still alive. Dead." etc etc
these old fogeys are yukking it up acting like juves
That really is it.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
To give another British (English) perspective, I never could stand Last of the Summer Wine.
It's not the northern vibe, because I love Open All Hours, also set in a northern town, it's something about the characters and the setup. Something always seemed too sentimental.
Maybe I was too young to get into it when it started. My parents are devoted to it and still watch the repeats. Perhaps I was just rebelling against their choice of TV.
It was a hugely popular show and ran for 30 years.
Anything - film or TV show - set in a US school. I used to watch stuff like that occasionally, but it bore no resemblance to anything I'd experienced. Not like Grange Hill (although even there, my school wasn't anywhere near as mental as that).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/21 09:07:17
The way the students just all up and leave, seemingly, as soon as the bell goes always seemed a bit odd.
Let's leave aside -- please , ta -- recent events/revelations, but when the Cosby show was in its prime one was always intrigued by the, apparently, amazingly tantalising "hoagie" sandwich which Dr. Huxtable was so obsessed with getting/eating.
Somewhat of a disappointment when one learnt/figured out exactly what they are.
Also the size of houses/apartments was also a bit ..... odd.
Makes sense of course when one considers the amount of space there is/was to build on - plus of course the whole TV show thing -- but it was notable how , for example, the families in "Roseanne" and the like still had houses that are, if you'll indulge the technical jargon, fething massive !
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Ahtman wrote: If we move outside of British TV I also watched The Red Green Show and The Kids in the Hall.
Kids in the hall was an odd show. The skits where either very funny or very dumb. I loved that show though growing up, and still to this day my brother and I will use SOMETHING from that show in our everyday dialect.
In all fairness, that Dad's Army trailer doesn't look as horrible as I thought it would. I mean, it still shouldn't exist and the film won't really be Dad's Army, but it might end up not being as bad as the McHale's Navy or Sgt Bilko movies were.
Emperor's Eagles (undergoing Chapter reorganization)
Caledonian 95th (undergoing regimental reorganization)
Thousands Sons (undergoing Warband re--- wait, are any of my 40K armies playable?)
Kilkrazy wrote: It's not the northern vibe, because I love Open All Hours, also set in a northern town, it's something about the characters and the setup. Something always seemed too sentimental.
See, I think sentimentality is part of the appeal of LOTSW. I was born and grew up in West Yorkshire around the time it was getting popular (late 70's/early 80's and watching it just reminds me of my childhood in so many ways.
squidhills wrote: In all fairness, that Dad's Army trailer doesn't look as horrible as I thought it would. I mean, it still shouldn't exist and the film won't really be Dad's Army, but it might end up not being as bad as the McHale's Navy or Sgt Bilko movies were.
My thoughts are very similar. With such a good cast, it should be a funny film... But oh how I wish it were just a ww2 comedy based on the Home Guard rather than what will almost certainly be a watered down version of what is, to my mind, the greatest sitcom ever made. The cast of the original are probably the most perfect comedy cast ever, in terms of the interplay between every character in it, and the writing is unparalleled.
It's obvious that the cast here have done their homework, you can tell from the brief bits we've seen that they've picked up in the inflections and mannerisms of the original cast, but I fear that might just reduce it to 'famous British actors do Dad's Army impressions: the movie'. The shoes are just too big to ever fill, and I do wish they wouldn't try.
Back to the original topic, I haven't seen much LOTSW, but I didn't really 'get' it either.
It's not just you Manchu, last of the summer wine was complete and utter ****
I used to dread Sundays in the days before multichannel TVs and DVD players, because if you were going out a lot on a Saturday night, and drinking heavily, then a Sunday with a bad hangover and last of the summer wine, was a complete nightmare. Chuck in songs of praise and it's a wonder I never jumped off a cliff!
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
reds8n wrote: The way the students just all up and leave, seemingly, as soon as the bell goes always seemed a bit odd.
Also the size of houses/apartments was also a bit ..... odd.
Makes sense of course when one considers the amount of space there is/was to build on - plus of course the whole TV show thing -- but it was notable how , for example, the families in "Roseanne" and the like still had houses that are, if you'll indulge the technical jargon, fething massive!
Funny, at least in the Midwest, both of these are spot on. The Connors' house isn't tiny, but it's not so large that it seems out if their financial means. (And most classes I've been in end EXACTLY like that in the U.S.)
I'm sometimes confused by the portrayal of guns in foreign TV shows/movies until I realize the writer is from a country where the average citizen has no real world knowledge of firearms.
Yep, the house in Roseanne did not seem very big to me watching the show as a kid. Seemed very believable as a lower middle class American house.
Maybe Last of the Summer Wine seems odd to me because it can be pretty hard to comprehend what certain characters are saying. Also, I can hear Clegg just fine but I often have no idea what the hell he's on about.
Manchu wrote: But it's really hard to follow in specific. Not just what Compo is saying, either, but like why the characters behave like they do. I imagine it's just that the show plays on cultural tropes that are little over my head as a foreigner.
There's probably a lot we miss when watching foreign TV series. Some writers are quite specific in how to set up the locations and what people should wear, things that tell their countrymen a lot about the characters but us foreigners just don't see because we don't have the same background. Someone in the know can tell what political party that character supports or guess that someone who used to live in the house never came home from the war, for example.
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
Ahtman wrote: If we move outside of British TV I also watched The Red Green Show and The Kids in the Hall.
The Red Green show was the best.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
I grew up watching Benny Hill with my dad, loved that show.
For some reason I got into watching Absolutely Fabulous; those two loser, drunk/stoned women just made me laugh.
Red Green show was a hoot late at night when it was on PBS, still on sometimes I think.
Watched Blake's 7 for a bit...
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do
Makes sense of course when one considers the amount of space there is/was to build on - plus of course the whole TV show thing -- but it was notable how , for example, the families in "Roseanne" and the like still had houses that are, if you'll indulge the technical jargon, fething massive !
The thing I've always found odd in many sitcoms, like Roseanne, Cosby, Family Matters, Full House, etc. weren't that the houses were so large, but that they were so large given that the "dad" (obviously the only one working, as all proper American families do) generally has such a meaningless job, or a job which doesn't explain the apparent income level required for many of those houses
As I'm American, some of the foreign TV that I've enjoyed immensely: Top Gear, Dr. Who, IT Crowd, and occasionally I enjoy the Graham Norton Show.
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
I think houses were always large so they had a reasonable set to work on. Unless you have like a mansion most houses would be way too small to recreate on a film set without limiting your camera angles.
Every TV show which shows houses or apartments is guilty of this honestly.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Grey Templar wrote: I think houses were always large so they had a reasonable set to work on. Unless you have like a mansion most houses would be way too small to recreate on a film set without limiting your camera angles.
Every TV show which shows houses or apartments is guilty of this honestly.
I seem to recall that Roseanne was generally like that though... IIRC, basically every shot of the living room, was shot from "over" the TV. So you could always see "dad" watching the game. I think some shows even make that limited shot part of the joke set up, like Home Improvement, every time Tim Allen's character interacted with Wilson the neighbor over the fence, it was always basically the same exact shot.
I think the closer you get to the modern spate of "family sitcoms" we have, the better they've gotten with varying the shots. But shows like Who's the Boss, Cheers, Roseanne, etc. all had very limited shot angles.
When Roseanne was airing, it seemed reasonable that a couple with Dan and Roseanne's incomes would be able to afford their house (if only barely, which was a plot point). Maybe this is less plausible today because real income has been almost static since those days.
There is a lot of aging acting talent good for it.
Question is why set it in 1944. The setting is supposed to be post Dunkirk not pre D-day. Fear of German invasion was an undercurrent to the plot, though I suppose Cpt Mannering doesnt need a real threat to be anal about it, and there would be more Americans about.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Manchu wrote: So I grew up with a lot of British TV shows even if many were decades out of date: Dad's Army, Are You Being Served (and Again/Grace and Favour), Black Adder, Open All Hours, Fawlty Towers. The Good Neighbor (The Good Life),Granada's Sherlock Holmes, I, Claudius, To The Manor Born, The Pallisers, No Place Like Home, One Foot In The Grave, Keeping Up Appearances, Waiting For Good, Mr. Bean, Red Dwarf, Thin Blue Line, Vicar of Dibley, Cadfael, As Time Goes By, and I'm sure many others I cannot recall off the top of my head. And I have pretty much kept watching them again and again since childhood, while adding new ones like Black Books, Spaced, Father Ted, I'm Alan Partridge (all time favorite), IT Crowd, and Little Britain.
You missed some of the best ones:
"Listen very carefully, for I shall say this only once"
You could not make a show like Allo Allo today in our sterile PC culture. Someone would be offended, in fact some people were but the UK was less anal then.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/08/27 20:53:21
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Oh I watched all of 'Allo 'Allo several times, I don't know why I forgot to list it. I guess that memory must have been hidden a sausage along with the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies.
AndrewGPaul wrote: Anything - film or TV show - set in a US school. I used to watch stuff like that occasionally, but it bore no resemblance to anything I'd experienced. Not like Grange Hill (although even there, my school wasn't anywhere near as mental as that).
TV-land is weird like that. Always has been. While the family sit-com shows are ostensibly set in the "modern times" at school/work/whatever... the places and events depicted bear absolutely no relation to real life in any significant way.
The one exception, in my experience, was the TV show Roseanne. That show *definitely* spoke to what it meant to be white, urban and working poor.
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
-- recent events/revelations, but when the Cosby show was in its prime one was always intrigued by the, apparently, amazingly tantalising "hoagie" sandwich which Dr. Huxtable was so obsessed with getting/eating.
Emperor's Eagles (undergoing Chapter reorganization)
Caledonian 95th (undergoing regimental reorganization)
Thousands Sons (undergoing Warband re--- wait, are any of my 40K armies playable?) 
6000 pts - 
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1000 pts
