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Post by Miisa on Jan 10, 2013 19:59:33 GMT
Does anyone here like "situation comedies"? If so, which ones?
I generally don't like sitcoms easily, but some I can put up with and others I adore. There are two distinct types which are very different in feel and thus hard to compare with each other; with and without laugh tracks. Generally laugh track ones can easily get really annoying, while non-laughtrack ones all too often have a snobbish, in-joke or just-too-subtle air about them.
Some ones I like: laugh track: The Big Bang Theory (US) Miranda (UK) Father Ted (UK)
non-laugh track: Better off Ted (US) Community (US)
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Post by Kye on Jan 10, 2013 22:44:31 GMT
I watch: New Girl, Raising Hope, Girls, Modern Family, Community and The Big C. There used to be others, but they've finished now.
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Post by Shake on Jan 11, 2013 5:24:41 GMT
We're watching Friends again ... we own all 10 seasons and are going through them an episode at a time. We're up to season 3 now. Oh, and "Santa" got us a similar set of Seinfeld DVDs.
We used to watch Scrubs, King of Queens and a couple of others. I get the feeling I might like The Big Bang Theory.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jan 11, 2013 12:04:25 GMT
I am a fan of Sledge Hammer but in one of the box sets is a documentary in which they show the originally-aired version of it where a laugh track has been added. It is painful to watch and would have totally ruined the program for me. Apparently when they ran audience testing it got higher ratings with the track, even though it sounds like the audible equivalent of putting "Laugh now!" on the screen in flashing red letters!
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Post by Miisa on Jan 11, 2013 12:45:49 GMT
"Laugh tracks" can be good for shows that actually are filmed in front of an audience, if the laughter is allowed to come naturally (you can usually hear when a few "get it sooner" and some later, so they are not all synced), and that allows a sort of instant feedback for the actors. In some cases it does come off as actually canned, though, and that is just annoying.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jan 11, 2013 13:00:42 GMT
Yes, I agree that a studio recorded laugh track is usually okay. The ones where someone has an "insert laugh" button usually sound very bad. I was interested to see that, when recording Seinfeld, they would re-enact external scenes in front of the studio audience and use that on top of the shots where they could not be present so that the laughs went with the jokes that they came after. Another thing that can ruin it is when you have an excessively sycophantic audience that laugh disproportionately at things. Obviously, the majority of the audience is going to be there to see a particular show, but some cult comedians have some very strange followers! "New Girl" took me a while to get a handle on but I think it benefits from no laugh track as I think different people will find different parts funny in different ways. Much as I appreciate Zooey Deschanel, I think she can take "quirky" too far some days and people laughing over it would push it over the edge and make it annoying instead of excessive.
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Post by charliebrown on Jan 11, 2013 19:26:05 GMT
I learned English with Three's Company (US).
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2013 11:18:58 GMT
I have to admit that I've never liked "Scrubs". I enjoy watching "Big Bang Theory" and "2 Broke Girls" and we used to watch "Two and a half men". I ejoyed watching "Father Ted" when we were in England and "Outnumbered". And Frank's sister gave him all the DVD's of "Peep Show" for his birthday. I wasn't sure I'd like it at first, but we actually enjoy it very much.
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Post by Miisa on Jan 12, 2013 11:20:19 GMT
"Allo, allo" was on when I was growing up, I remember loving, looooving, that one. And, of course, "Blackadder".
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Post by raspberrybullets on Jan 13, 2013 11:14:59 GMT
We watch "Family Guy" and "Big Bang Theory" semi regularly. I think those are the only ones.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jan 13, 2013 22:09:33 GMT
Now I'm back at the house I can see some of my DVD sets. I have Allo allo, Family Guy, American Dad, Frasier, Ellen, Cybill, Seinfeld, Men Behaving Badly....
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Post by jayme on Jan 13, 2013 22:16:19 GMT
I watch Big Bang Theory, Two Broke Girls, and sometimes Mike and Molly, and Two and a Half Men. I've seen The New Girl and The Mindy Project a few times, and they are pretty good, but for some reason I never catch them.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2013 22:26:27 GMT
Mike and Molly was on here for a short time, but only for about three or four weeks.
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Post by Shake on Jan 15, 2013 4:18:21 GMT
I caught some of the early Two and a Half Men, but that's about the most recent sitcom I've seen.
Ooh, wait ... I just remembered another show: The Young Ones! ;D
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Post by Alvamiga on Jan 15, 2013 9:44:59 GMT
Of course!!!
"Excuse me! Is this a cheese shop?"
"No"
"Well, that's that sketch knackered then!"
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Post by Miisa on Jan 15, 2013 10:13:39 GMT
Just watched yesterday's Miranda, not as good as last week, but still funny.
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bill
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Post by bill on Feb 6, 2013 10:09:39 GMT
Just discovered that most if not all the episodes of Waiting for God are on YouTube. Brilliant series. I have just finished watching the first season.
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Post by Moose on Feb 7, 2013 3:11:22 GMT
Fawlty Towers, Red Dwarf. Waiting for God was okay, I remember it from childhood. Not seen it in ages
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bill
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Post by bill on Feb 7, 2013 9:34:55 GMT
You probably need to be of a certain age group to really appreciate it.
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Post by Alvamiga on Feb 7, 2013 20:26:28 GMT
It was one of those programs that I always turned off when it came on because I assumed it was rubbish, but then I actually watched it one day!
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bill
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Post by bill on Feb 7, 2013 20:51:57 GMT
It was one of those programs that I always turned off when it came on because I assumed it was rubbish, but then I actually watched it one day! .....and ?
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Post by Alvamiga on Feb 7, 2013 20:56:11 GMT
I actually like it quite a lot, especially Stephanie Cole's very barbarous characterisation.
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Post by Moose on Feb 7, 2013 21:55:07 GMT
She was only in her fifties when she made that. I remember her from Tenko, which I watched as a kid but did not entirely understand.
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Post by Alvamiga on Feb 8, 2013 8:43:06 GMT
I remember Tenko being on and every week, when my mum started watching it, going off to do something that wasn't "booooooooooring" I might understand it now, but back then I had zero interest in such things.
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bill
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Post by bill on Feb 8, 2013 10:26:45 GMT
There was not much to understand but it was an excellent series.
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bill
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Post by bill on Feb 11, 2013 20:03:14 GMT
Dinnerladies !!!!! How could I have forgotten Dinnerladies? Definitely in my top five.
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Post by Alvamiga on Feb 11, 2013 21:01:01 GMT
I recently acquired the Porridge box set and am about half-way through it. It has been voted by at least a couple of polls to be Britain's Best sitcom, which I think is quite and achievement, given that it is a comedy about a prison, which doesn't exactly lend itself to being so appreciated.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2013 8:57:36 GMT
I really wish I could watch "Outnumbered" here. *sigh*
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Post by whollygoats on Feb 21, 2013 14:33:39 GMT
I haven't followed sitcoms for years now. I'm kinda stuck in the police procedurals loop. But back in the day, I used to love me some sitcoms. Yeah, I got hung up on the Friends scene, but I was really a Home Improvements kind of guy. I liked to sit down and have a beer with the guys at Cheers, or a round of Kranko in the tents with the doctors of M*A*S*H.
There was the dramady Northern Exposure that we really enjoyed, too, but I don't know as it fit the 'sitcom' definition. Nor did The Red Green Show, which was more of an offbeat variety show.
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Post by juju on Feb 22, 2013 11:13:29 GMT
Miisa, have you ever seen The IT Crowd? I think you'd really like it. It's written by Graham Linehan, who wrote Father Ted (another one of my favourites). The series got better as they went along - the last one was brilliant. I really like/liked Green Wing, Fresh Meat, The Inbetweeners and Friday Night Dinner, which I'm not sure anyone outside the UK will have seen Oh, and The Office of course. The only US sitcom I like is My Name is Earl. Northern Exposure was good, but that's going back a few years. I never really got into Friends (even though everyone kept comparing me to Pheobe at the time ). I seem to remember my husband really liked Frasier - I think we watched that quite regularly.
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