UKTV is a comedy television channel here which appears to have the budget of 43p and half a hob nob biscuit but it has posed a very interesting question. What decade was the best for comedy?
It is a hard question to answer because there were some classic comedy personalities around in each generation. I would be hard pressed to name many of them before the seventies although i do have a chuckle at the Marx Brothers films who i would pick as the best from that Era, i never really found Charlie Chaplin or much else from that era very funny.
So i would have to pick from the seventies onwards and apart from the clothes and hairstyles of that time, MASH, Monty Python, Mork & Mindy, Fawlty Towers, Blazing saddles and Happy Days are the stand out comedies of the 70s.
The 80s gave us The Young Ones, Cheers, Blackadder, Only Fools & Horses, Chevvy Chase and the Airplane films, Steve Martin, the National Lampoon films, John Candy, The Naked Gun, Police Academy, Bill Murray and Michael J Fox. All very funny and a tough choice between this decade and the next for the high water mark of comedy so far.
Friends, Vicar of Dibly, 3rd Rock from the sun, Frasier, Simpsons, Red Dwarf, Father Ted, Eddie Izzard, Whose Line it is anyway (Colin Mochrie was a genius) were all knocking around in the 90s and so it's a tough choice but Father Ted just gives the 90s the edge for me.
3 comments:
We get that channel here!
My fav era is the Only Fools and Horses, Open All Hours, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life - and those comedies with Judi Dench - forgotten the names.
The 80's. Of course, I grew up then, so I'm a little biased. I mean, "Married with Children" and "In Living Color" bloomed back then. :)
I do happen to love some of the comedy programming now. "My Name is Earl","The Office" (Our Version...LOL),"Monk", "Psych" and, of course, "The Daily Show".
There's not much British comedy on BBC America. I do like the one (I forget what it's called now) with the family of misfits (the girl's single parent and the son's way off his rocker). I'll have to look it up. But it's way funny.
This is a mugs game. First, humor is so subjective. I mean, I find Moby Dick and Angela's Ashes to be honestly laugh-out-loud funny, while others find them to be either tedious or depressing.
And let's not forget nostalgia! As JJ said, she grew up in the 80's and is pre-disposed to prefer those shows. Me? 70's so I find All in the Family to be much edgier than anything today.
All that being said, it has to be the 80's. Endy story.
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