Turnabout is Fair Play

Sorry this is off-topic, but hey, David H is back, and he’s bigger and scarier than ever! His new book-length attack on the academy comes out today. He’s called on his troops to write glowing reviews of it at Amazon, without of course having read it. On his blog he writes, “I’m asking my supporters to get and read The Professors and post reviews that will drown the postings of these luddites and alert visitors to Amazon to its actual contents.”

Go to Amazon and at least give “no” votes to the bogus positive reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0895260034/ref=cm_rev_next/102-5318644-5720960?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=11

Yes, and I am sick of Commonwealth snobs dissing the US verion of The Office. With the demise of Arrested Development, The Office is the best comedy on US television right now. I don’t care how it compares with the UK version and neither do most viewers.

The News Quiz has its blindspots, such as when the chairman, Simon Hoggart, got exposed as a player in the Blunkett Affair. HIGNFY dealt with that sort of problem a lot better in my view.

C’mon Kieran — you’re talking apples and oranges with Yes, Prime Minister and The West Wing, and the U.S. version of The Office holds up pretty well — and improved markedly once it departed from the UK scripts.

If you really want to go down this path, tho — at least the U.S. had the good ense never to import Neighbors.

“Excreable” is inaptly placed. It seems to modify West Wing and Office (US). Take that away and the sentence, on its own, is definitely true (although West Wing is not my cup of tea; the characters all seem to talk alike). The Office (US) is not as merciless towards its characters as the UK version, where we liked Tim, but also understood his self-laceration as kind of accurate — he is a little weak.

I could go on. but my own office calls.

The UK is certainly much worse at cop shows and hospital dramas than the US.

UK cop shows (bad): The Bill.
UK cops shows (good): Cops, Between the Lines.

US cop shows (superb): Hill St Blues, HLOTS.
US cop shows (good): NYPD Blue, CSI, L&O

UK hospital shows (bad): Casualty, Holby City

US hospital shows (superb): ER, House
US hospital shows (ok): Chicago Hope, St Elsewhere

But good or bad the UK shows all nearly seem characterized by a grittier aesthetic than the US ones and the US ones are often very upfront in steering the drama towards a corny moral message or having the writers let us know how smart they are in a really obvious way (cf the way in which cultural references are handled in Sopranos, 6FU, West Wing etc).

Exception from all criticism is hereby made for the greatest, grittiest cop show ever, HLOTS, may the execs who cancelled it burn in hell forever.

Wait Wait is awful; the US Office is worse the UK version; Snooker rocks; nothing in the UK approaches the Simpsons in quality or wit. However, over-air-tv in the UK is by and large much worse than the US. On the plus side, the afternoon movie selections were great and they had both the Thunderbirds and Stingray.

A more relevant/interesting point of comparison for The West Wing would surely be House of Cards/To Play The King/Final Cut.

Or, to lower the tone by several notches, First Among Equals.

Re: 10. There seems to be an insuperable problem with a rational theory of democracy and political states.

There does indeed; there most certainly does. But the absence of a rational universe to apply their many theories to somehow never seems to stop them. It is a very great mystery, for sure.

All the stuff about quality and acting and so forth misses the real reason British TV is so much better than American TV. British (terrestrial) TV is better than American (terrestrial) TV because there’s so much swearing nowadays on British TV and as everyone knows swearing rocks.

The general flavour of US/UK comparisons is that US TV shows depict the educated/professional classes as heroes, whereas the UK counterparts do not (compare ER and Casualty, Westwing and Yes,Minister).

That’s all of a piece with 1920s feel of US politics and society more generally.

There’s not a chance in a million that a US network would make The Thick Of It, which is far and away the best thing on telly in the last few years.

The Simpsons is no longer a good show, and hasn’t been since about season 8.

Also, I’m surprised no one mentioned The Wire and Homicide as good cop shows.

And The Sopranos is a pretty good show, too, no?

Soru:

Maybe a really short burka? Perfect! In fact, I’m going to market it in Denmark!

All this TV and radio talk is so 20th century.

But I am curious as to the UK equivalents of

Springer,
The Super Bowl,
Leno and Letterman,
Home shopping network

I don’t know about the UK, but one episode of the incomparable Iron Chef made me realize the USA is an uncultured wasteland where food is concerned.

I think the world would be better served if NPR affiliates simply went off the air on Saturday mornings.

Has anyone ever heard “Piano Jazz” (it airs on Sunday mornings in Chicago)? It’s a good thing that there’s no FCC regulation against putting drunk old women on the radio.

I think the world would be better served if NPR affiliates simply went off the air on Saturday mornings.

What about Whad’ya Know? What about A Prairie Home Companion?

“Also, I’m surprised no one mentioned The Wire and Homicide as good cop shows.”

Bobcat, Chris and I were referring to “Homicide: Life on the Streets” as “HLOTS.” So don’t worry, it has been duly noted.

Whether or not the Simpsons is a good as it was is not the issue, is it?

Germany has something like Letterman/Leno Harald Schmidt, I think it is/was, who is/was dreadful. And someone sort of like Conan only funnier: Stefan Raab’s TV Total.

Since Chris Bertram mentioned House on the US side, an obvious question is: Hugh Laurie in House, or Hugh Laurie in Blackadder?

(And since no-one else has done it, I apologise on behalf of all Australians for Neighbours. But it would have gone away long ago if the Poms weren’t so susceptible. The infection there is so deep that even recent transplants from the US are affected: what else can explain why Madonna seems all of a sudden to be imitating Kylie Minogue?)

It’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” (singular, not plural) – a state of mind, not a set of thoroughfares.
It’s being shown every weekday on the Mystery Channel in North America right now. They’ve just got into the final season, which Channel 4 in the UK purchased but never showed. TV executives are annoying on both sides of the pond.

I am so getting Karl Casell’s voice on my home answering machine…

Prairie Home Companion comes on at night, not in the morning.

Hey, go easy on “Piano Jazz”–marian mcpartland does some amazing interviews. You should hear her interview with Teddy Wilson, who played on all of the greatest recordings with Billy Holiday and Lester Young. It turns out he was a huge Horowitz fan (Vladimir, not David, thank god) who would try to catch VH concerts wherever he could.

Yeah, the show drags sometimes, but McPartland is a national treasure.

Who wants to listen to Charles Pierce? He’s awful, one of those guys who is not nearly as funny as he thinks he is.

The Carell Office has matured into its own thing, in a way that hasn’t happened in quite a while for US adaptations of British comedies. If you only saw the early episodes, when they were still taking their cues from the original, you should give it another look.

As for WWDTM, it’s like all NPR, save perhaps Car Talk. I don’t know whether they add the holier-than-thou in the production studio, but it reminds me that the relative lack of condescension from the BBC’s speech radio is a thing to be cherished.

Coupling (UK) vs Coupling (US)? No contest, I’m sure you would all agree.

Chris Bertram, for great police dramas, Prime Suspect?

As mentioned before, between House of Cards and Yes (Prime) Minister, surely West Wing is outweighed (and would we all treasure WW so much if there wasn’t a Republican in office?).

What is our (the US) Foyle’s war?

Even Rome is a BBC/HBO production, and therefore cannot really be in our corner (shot in Italy, staffed by British actors and actresses… its a draw at best).

-RS

Hmm, does Adult Swim broadcast in the UK? I mean.. Harvey Birdman. Yeah.

What’s really missing on US TV is sheepdog trials. You’d think Animal Planet could fit it in between the funny videos.

On the subject of Homicide and its creaky plot lines: that may be the result of the fact that it was taken from a book written by a Baltimore Sun reporter who spent a year with a squad of homicide detectives, dealing with cases that did not always get wrapped up in any way. The first season episode with the child murder suspect whom Pembleton tried and failed to break? Straight out of the book. Likewise the suicide of I forgot his name.
Of course the plot lines did get creakier as time went on. But it was a hell of a show. I’m told The Wire is its equal.

I’ll tell you what the BBC (or any British channel) has no equivalent for: The Shield.

WRT The Shield, make that “not-yet-mentioned-at-the-time-I-was-composing-this.”

The first season episode with the child murder suspect whom Pembleton tried and failed to break? Straight out of the book. Likewise the suicide of I forgot his name.

1. The Adina Watson case.
2. Crosetti.

and I was so besotted with Sgt Kay Howard (Melissa Leo).

Thankyou for your good wishes, Russell (at 45 above). As you may know, Frank Pembleton moved to LA to work with Kojak. He and Mary and the kids are doing fine, though he gets tired of explaining that the “X.” in his name is a Catholic thing, not a Nation of Islam thing. Munch is too busy chasing sex criminals in NYC to do much blogging. As for me, I’m not blogging either – just passing through here on my way to a higher state (Washington, or maybe Oregon).
Oh, and Kay Howard (see 66 above)? I preferred her sister – though it’s true, she did look remarkably like her.

In re Harvey Birdman – absolutely nothing that Adult Swim tries to pass off as “comedy” is funny to non-Americans, unless you count The Boondocks as comedy.

The House of Cards/West Wing comparison is apt — and very, very hard to pick between. I think I’d take WW, at least the Sorkin seasons, but only just barely. (On another level, it’s still a good illustration of the cultural divide, because the thought of American television portraying a prominent public figure as an utter bastard in the mold of F.U. is laughable. It might try, but you’d end up with a cartoonishly one-dimensional bastard à la Donald Sutherland in the mercifully euthanised Commander in Chief).

Any discussion of superb hospital shows cannot omit Scrubs, even though it’s far from the traditional formula.

Nothing, but nothing, on UK TV compares to the invincible CSI.

Waking the Dead? Maybe not to CSI, but it sees CSI:Miami off in short order.

Life On Mars is the rare show that would both need to be translated radically in an American version, and would not be a waste of time doing so.

Ooh, must see.

There was a British version of That 70s Show that had a short, unhappy run — it got pulled, which is rare — under the title Days Like These. Although the 1970s provided many UK-US crossovers, it’s much harder to translate a deliberate portrayal of that decade.

is there currently anything as routinely on-target and vicious as (the first half of) The Daily Show in Britain

The opening segment? Probably Bremner, Bird & Fortune rather than HIGNFY. But the British don’t have as good source material, in terms of the woeful ‘news’ organisations that Stewart skewers.

Poor old ‘Neighbours’ has come in for a bit of a thrashing – and it is, with the greatest of respect, spelt with a ‘u’ – which, don’t get me wrong, is fully deserved. But I’m sure the reason it was never bought by a US network is that there more than enough US produced crap TV and they don’t really need to import crap Australian TV.

Although the US did import a tragic soap from Oz called ‘Prisoner’, which I think aired as ‘Cell Block H’. I wonder if Queen Bea and Vinegar Tits had their voices dubbed – does crap translate?

Oh yes, one more thing. Not even in Australia do we have the poor taste to air ‘Neighbours’ twice a day.

Normally I stay the fuck out of the water here because it’s way over my head, but yay! Teevee!

I’ve been watching some of U.K.’s “The Mighty Boosh”, and I think it’s very anagalous to Adult Swim stuff, say Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And this is purely anectodal, but I know two Austrians that swear by Space Ghost.

I agree that Adult Swim has a narrow target demo, and in it’s more extreme forms (zB 12 Oz. Mouse) it becomes so absurdist as to lose all but the most stoned of teenagers, but Space Ghost, Sealab, and ATHF are all, to my mind, seminal pieces of comedy that really did change how people laugh, esp. people around my age (early 20s).

I’m not saying that the Mighty Boosh is indebted to Adult Swim (or, more accurately, Williams Street), or that without Adult Swim you don’t get the Mighty Boosh, but the blend of pure absurdity combined with tiny moments of characters just small-talking to each other is something that I don’t think existed, say, thirty years ago.

And don’t bring up Monty Python, because while they were absurd, there was nearly always a straigh man in the skit, someone to say double you tee eff?. Adult Swim and the Mighty Boosh feature characters in surreal situations who take no more note of it than most people would to seeing the mailman. A spider that raps about candy is an annoyance; putting the Techno Mouse that’s taken a gram of speed and two microdots into the Ambient Hutch is part of the daily grind.

How about The League of Gentlemen? Any US equivalents?

Brilliant though they were, neither The Day Today nor Brass Eye were trying to do quite what The Daily Show does. The events they covered were fictional. I think they do a better job satirising the infotainment culture and media hypocrisy (if only because they were so funny and prescient) than TDS, but TDS does a better job with the political culture. Britain doesn’t seem to be very good at regular topical news satire (not since That Was The Week That Was, anyway), possibly because we don’t have the late night chat show tradition. Have I Got News For You is extremely tired and wasn’t that great in its prime. Absent Ali G, Rich Hall and Ricky Gervais,the 11 O’Clock was awful, and even with them was only OK. Meanwhile new boy Mock the Week is more akin to Whose Line Is It Anyway than anything else, and Broken News is, well, broken.

Going back to the original comparison it strikes me that there is a US counterpart to the UK Office, and it’s The Larry Sanders Sanders Show. I think it’s true to say such shows are much more likely to get made in Britain, but the US does produce them occasionally, and can make them just as well.

Tom Bach at #37:

Germany has something like Letterman/Leno Harald Schmidt, I think it is/was, who is/was dreadful. And someone sort of like Conan only funnier: Stefan Raab’s TV Total.

Now I really cannot let that pass unchallenged.

(Old) Harald Schmidt wasn’t ‘like’ Letterman/Leno, it was explicitly modelled on Letterman. Indeed, self-deprecating jokes about ripping Letterman off were a running gag on the show, which far from being dreadful was, to my mind, often rather better than the American original. (Certainly better than more recent Letterman.)

(New) Harald Schmidt is the same Schmidt, but streamlined (two nights a week only; monologue/duologue with ‘producer’ Manuel Andrack; SFAIK no non-musical guests and not always one of those. Schmidt did have Adam Green on, though. Green is huge in Germany).

Not to argue that Conan’s funny, but he’s certainly funnier than Raab. But then, so too is having your eyeballs removed by slow rough rubbing with white-hot steel-wool dipped in Tabasco suace.

Schmidt is an exception to the rule that Germans are unfunny (and never more unfunny than when doing comedy). Raab emphatically isn’t.

OZ v Porridge?

“McPartland is a national treasure.”

An English national treasure. Sure she’s kind of bland, but the shows are an invaluable archive. And almost everyone goes on the show; Shipp to Mehldau seem to respect her.

Shameless v the Waltons?

Also, come on, before you get too hard on American comedies, we made Arrested Development and My Name Is Earl. And Seinfeld. I like to think that makes up for King of Queens and Moesha.

Plus, we got Deadwood. “House of Cards” and “I, Claudius” are the only British dramas that even come close to Deadwood.