7 posts tagged “comedy”

It's not cutting-edge, it's not fashionable and it's certainly not innovative, but I'm not afraid to admit that I love Last of the Summer Wine. In a bizarre mix of modern and old, I recently used our BTVision PVR to record the whole of the most recent series of the gentle comedy - its 30th. 

Yes, for over 30 years, the misadventures of a bunch of elderly folks who seem to have reverted to childhood in the Yorkshire dales have been entertaining people. And I've been enjoying it ever since, as a child, I watched it with my father. He dreamed of a retirement in the Last of the Summer Wine mould. He never got that chance - cancer took him in his mid-60s - but the programme endures, and I still enjoy it. 

Most of the original cast are gone now - an inevitable consequence of a show featuring the elderly. Clegg and Ivy are still around, but there's a new trio of Entwhistle, Alvin and Hobbo, roughly taking the roles of Compo, Clegg and Foggy from the classic trio of old. But, on the whole, the show hasn't changed that much. It's still an ensemble piece around a central trio, and the humour is just an exaggerated version of the mishaps of ordinary life. There was a period about 20 years ago when the stunts got more and more extravagant, but then the original cast got older and older, and the jokes slowly returned to the more conversational, situational humour in which it excels. 

Yes, it's slow, childish and fundamentally unimportant. But that's the point. It's tried and tested humour, performed by actors with more comedy experience each than many TV comedies have amongst the whole cast. It's cosy, predictable and familiar.  And that's why I love it. There's a place in live for both trendy urban design and an old blanket.

Today's bit of 1970s TV nostalgia: Terry & June.

I used to love this when I was a kid, before I became a teenager and realised just how painfully uncool it was.

Looking at it now, I can see why I liked it so much.

Terry & June look disturbingly like my Mum & Dad did back then...

Goodies! Goodie, Goodie, Yum, Yum!

These three acheived a level of pure visual comedy (the show was very much an adult TV version of comics like The Beano) that has rarely been neared since.

My brother and his wife bought me this DVD for Christmas and I was in tears of laughter watching this sequence the first time around.

It was one of Lorna's choices, even though she has absolutely no idea what made her chose it. (Her question of "why did you pick this?" is up there with "Who sent you that?", as she pointed at a postcard she'd sent me less than a week before...)

Whatever the reason, I was looking forward to it. The Odd Couple is regarded as a comedy classic, and it lurked somewhere in my brain as a "movie to see".

And you can see why the movie (and the play it is really obviously adapted from) has been so popular. The performances are really excellent. Matthau starts off as disgusting and unlovable, but wins your sympathy as the feel goes on. Lemmon charts the reverse journey. The supporting cast are good, even the ghastly Pigeon sisters from London, and the film, while wearing its stage roots on its sleeve, makes a reasonable transition to celluloid.

But, nearly 40 years on, the whole concept has lost its bite. Men leaving together just doesn't seem so strange any more, and the obsessed housewife role adopted by Jack Lemmon's character seems an oddly-conceived and slightly offensive mix of female, gay man and OCD sufferer stereotype.

There's some moments of real wit in the dialogue and the relationship between the two main leads is often compelling. But, in the end, the societal mores being explored in the movie are becoming so alien to us today that it just doesn't have the power it did in the 60s.

Song from Avenue Q, graphics from World of Warcraft.