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Comedy Shelf Life

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Reading the pieces on Ian Lavender and Radio Four inspires the question: does comedy have a shelf life, a best-before date?

The Marx brothers are coming up to their 100th anniversary, and I still find them funny. The musical interludes have dated, but the gags remain lol-out-loud funny. The last time I tried to watch Fawlty Towers, popularly considered the GOAT at the time, I was more perplexed than amused – why are these people behaving like this? ‘Allo ‘Allo, hardly the subtlest of writing, still elicits a larf – in fact, more than it did at the time. But, surprisingly, The Goon Show now leaves me, if not cold, then only mildly warmed-over. Over the last few years I’ve become addicted, thanks to the Internet Archive, to the American radio shows of the forties and fifties – Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Duffy’s Tavern, Phil Harris … but the older BBC shows just sound quaint.

Do stand-up comedians still stand up? Should we expect humour, such a hit-or-miss thing in the first place, to last forever?

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Comments

  1. It’s a good topic, and yes, I’m sure comedy does have a shelf life.

    Our access to so much media is obviously a good thing, but it does mean that you can be disappointed when you watch/listen to things that were once considered funny.

    When I was in school, The Young Ones was *the* comedy show. Watching it again recently, I wondered what we laughed at back then (other than the shock value). Similarly, other than the bits everybody knows, I’m not sure much of Monty Python’s Flying Circus still seems as funny as it once did.

    Going further back, and using these US examples just because I know they were a really big deal back in the day, would Bilko, I Love Lucy, or The Honeymooners get a lot of laughs today?

    Obviously there are always things that stand the test of time – I expect Morecambe and Wise will still be shown in 50 years, plus Del Boy falling through the bar, maybe Dad’s Army, etc. Just why they still work when others don’t, I have no idea.

    And re the Goons: they were before my time, but I caught a repeat of the final televised recording and just didn’t get it. I know they were individually great performers (particularly Sellers), but something was lost when they were together. Too many in-jokes, too much “Isn’t this all a bit mad, eh? EH?” One of those rare occasions when the whole was weaker than the parts.

    • I’m sorry to be that Old Git, but with the Goon Show you had to be there. It was a national cult among boys of about 11 upwards in the late 50s, with the school corridors constantly echoing to outbreaks of the Ying Tong Song. In a very real sense, we were all Bluebottle, although being Bluebottle in class was not encouraged. The final recording was a slightly pointless retread and should be avoided.

      I don’t listen to it much these days, and when I do I don’t laugh, more smile in affectionate recognition. That’s partly because so much of it lives rent-free in my head.

      • It was regular family listening on the wireless (Bush, cream Bakelite, smell of dusty valves warming up, comforting glow of the linear “dial”, Hilversum! Jumpers for goalposts), and we did the funny voices and talked through Max Geldray and the other musical interlude. I doubt if it picks up any new listeners today. I’d have thought you were more a Crazy Gang fan, Mike?

    • Del boy falling through the bar was voted the greatest TV comedy moment of all time but it wasn’t, not by a long chalk. Nor was the David Brent dance or Fawlty flogging his car with a branch. They were just the things people remembered.

    • I think The Goons achieved its status simply for being the first comedy of its kind, where routines didn’t always have to make sense and where there wasn’t necessarily a punchline.
      I can remember when I was 12 or 13, shutting myself inside my mum’s tiny pantry and sitting on the drier to listen to I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again on the plugged-in wireless which lived on one of the shelves. I suppose it was what you’d now call ‘me time’, listening almost in the dark to something only I could make sense of. I still remember the Prune Tune at the end, and thanking Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, David Hatch, Graeme Garden, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie. There was the deliberately crap serial, The Curse of the Flying Wombat, which also caused a cheer from the live audience at the first appearance of Lady Constance de Coverlet. None of which I would find even remotely funny now, but I used to go to school the next day, recreating lines from the show with like-minded friends.
      This obviously led to both The Goodies, which I suspect might still be found funny by 10-year-olds, but perhaps nobody else.
      Python was an absolute revelation, even the bewildering first episode, which caused people at school the next day to wonder around saying, “Number one – the larch”, without really having any idea why. I still laugh at some of them, but mainly the ones where they were pushing their luck, such as The Undertaker Sketch and The Worst Family in Britain, featuring the infamous Mrs Niggerbaiter. People watching for the first time years later often fail to understand that the sheer awfulness of that name was entirely within its context.
      It might have been at about that time that Spike Milligan produced his now-notorious Pakistani Daleks sketch, which at the time seemed the funniest think I had ever seen. There should be no shame in laughing at it because it is entirely without malice, just one of the most surreal, riotous, and ultimately the daftest of sketches you will ever see.
      I think Bottom will remain funny for ever more, but my favourite of all time is Ideal. It seemed totally unjust that it was ended abruptly, but with hindsight I think it was probably for the best. It’s just so annoying that its subject matter seems to make the BBC scared of repeating it. It should never be shown on a commercial channel, because ad breaks and the almost inevitable editing would destroy it.
      One sitcom currently confusing me is Here We Go, which is either the best or the worst comedy ever made. It actually seems to thrive on all the old sit-com clichés but takes them to extremes. Perhaps that will make it almost timeless – who knows, but it certainly isn’t for everyone. My sister detests it, although I normally take that as a good sign.

  2. When I watch the Young Ones I know it word for word but I’m not sure it’s actually that funny as I recall. Ditto some of the other old shows

    It’s more the nostalgia of remembering when you were young and enjoyed these shows I think than the actual enjoyment itself watching it again

    Dad’s army I also tried watching recently and it was hard work. You can appreciate it for sure but it’s not that funny

  3. The only part of the Beatles’ story I really can’t ‘get’ is “The Goons”. It’s the only thing… I don’t think I’ve ever got through a whole episode after hundreds of attempts.

    BBC Four Extra’s trawl over the years reveals that 60s comedy from Oxbridge, pre-Python, and often incorporating most of Python, is very, very, very straight, and a million miles from the cutting edge of the decade. Did anything good come out of Oxbridge in the 60s? It’s a great pity so much comedy still has to come from there, and if I find a comedian has been to either Oxford or Cambridge, I studiously avoid them.

    My first ‘favourite’ show was “The Likely Lads”/”Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads”, and that hasn’t changed. “Round the Horne” is great, especially Julian and Sandy. Some Hancock episodes work in 2024, but not all. Almost 100 years after the event, Laurel and Hardy can still be hilarious… a remarkable feat.

  4. Where comedy relies on specific cultural reference, or satire, it’s unlikely to have a long life. Sitcom might be seen as “cosy and safe”, but will continue to resonate based on the situation.
    Violence and slapstick will always get a laugh (from Laurel and Hardy to Bottom and Vic & Bob smacking each other in the face with frying pans), and daft pun-based wordplay humour (like Tommy Cooper and Tim Vine).
    The variety based comedy (Morecambe & Wise), or radio stuff (Goons, Hancock, Round The Horne) will raise a smile (as much out of nostalgia, and/or the basis of much that came later) because it gets the audience to listen rather than visualise.

  5. Much of Monty Python seems to me to be lacking including things like Life Of Brian. Some of the original sketches still have it but not many. I guess novelty played a big part plus innovation. People get swept along by the trend. Surrealism doesn’t wear well maybe.

  6. Is it age related, I know that what I would have found funny, I don’t anymore. Although I also like to blame the prevailing comedy culture that disallows mockery unless it’s for politicians.

  8. I have been going through Marx Brothers films with my son because I picked up a 5 dvd box. The set pieces where Groucho is confused and conned by Chico and Harpo are hugely funny and are from sketches they performed skilfully for years on stage.

    He has developed a liking for Rowan Atkinson based initially on Mr Bean but he has picked up on the occasional NTNON sketch and other things. He knows what Blackadder is but hasn’t seen it. I don’t know whether to leave him to it, or watch it with him. I’ll be starting him off with Blackadder II obviously.

    The comedies that have dated badly in my opinion are the ones from the early 2000s where recently married American men with seemingly unlimited funds decide to have a trip, get drunk and stoned and hook up with strippers and so on. It wasn’t that long ago but those films seem from a completely different time.

  9. The Young Ones: still funny but series 2 was better than series 1.
    Fawlty Towers: hasn’t been funny for nearly 30 years
    Python: wasn’t funny apart from selected highlights

    I could go on but comedy is like watching old Top of the Pops, you had to sit through a lot of crap before something good came on.

    • Python was the first cult TV I became aware of, even though we didn’t think of it as a cult. It was, I think, shown on Sunday nights, and was the first thing we’d talk about at skool, where we’d re-enact sketches or simply call out catchphrases. Amazingly enough, this was all very funny, and made funnier by the fact that nobody outside the cult knew what we were on about. No other TV show managed to get a following quite like this, based on reference and in-jokes.

      The decline and fawl of Fawlty Towers is astonishing. Not only pants-wettingly funny, it was held to be the apogee of the sitcom. Now, I find it unbearable, a parade of neuroses and failings not so very far, perhaps, from Cleese in his dotage.

  10. The earliest TV comedy I can remember (on a screen the size of a paperback in a handsome piece of cabinetry with hinged doors) is Bilko, which still has me mildly convulsing whenever I see it again. Probably the earliest Brit TV (I can remember) is Steptoe And Son, which now seems agonisingly bleak, as do a lot of UK sitcoms.

    • The episode of Bilko (or “The Phil Silvers Show”, as I suppose we should call it) where a chimpanzee is accidentally enlisted in the U.S. Army is still hilarious … and deeply seditionary.

      • Bilko was always about bilking the system (bilk – to cheat or deceive). It is truly anarchic, showing the army to be a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings preyed on by a venal, scheming sergeant. Yet they are all, thanks to scripting and casting, essentially loveable (even if far from it in real life). Never once getting remotely serious or pursuing an agenda helps prolong shelf life, too.

        • This. Consistently witty, high quality scripts, great comedic character actors, and an amiable lead who had absolutely razor sharp comic timing make Bilko as watchable and as funny now as it was when first screened nearly 70 odd years ago.

          Plus, Phil Silvers looked a lot like my dad, so you gotta love him.

  12. The comedy I grew up laughing at (The Marx Brothers, Chaplin, Monty Python, Jaques Tati, HasseåTage – Swedish comedians; yes they exist – and films like Bringing Up Baby, Harvey, The Shop Around the Corner…and other comedy classics that I can’t recall at this moment) I still find funny, not all of it, but most.

    The comedy that made me laugh as a teenager is mostly unwatchable today.

  13. I found Spike Milligan’s writing far funnier than his TV, which I just saw as mad, in the sense of “mentally unwell”, which he was, of course. Most Python was also dull student surrealism. I never bothered with “The Mighty Boosh” because it looked like more surrealism. Vic and Bob are funnier when they are character based, and weakest when they play weird. I think surrealist comedy is over, big time. Eddie Izzard, you can collect your cards, too.

  15. I think the default position, alas, is that comedy rarely lasts; many of the things I liked (e.g Phoenix Nights, The Young Ones) now seem underwhelming to me. Even the great Veep looks naive after Trump (remember when politicians tweeting was comedy?)

    Still, deliberate anachronisms like Blackadder 2 and 3 or the Monty Python films work; word play and comic timing give Morecombe and Wise and even The Two Ronnies an advantage. I enjoy the comic acting in Porridge and Rising Damp (whatever the problems); Spaced and Peep Show were the best Gen X sitcoms; Allo Allo is guilty pleasure. Pre-1970s is a bit more of a mystery. I dunno…does Twelfth Night count?

    • I recently watched the first episode of Porridge, which I must have missed first time round. I haven’t laughed so much at a sitcom in a long time. Whether it’s the wordplay or the performances or the timeless setting, it is still very funny indeed.

  16. It will be interesting to see whether Would I Lie to You will stand the test of time. Right now it’s the only thing that actually makes me laugh out loud – I stopped watching the latest episode in Kuala Lumpur airport because people were looking at me.

      • Definitely. Obviously Bob Mortimer’s appearances are required viewing, but some other stars have also been fun: Rylan Clark’s story about being mugged by a fox cracked me up, Su Pollard was interestingly odd a few weeks ago, and David Mitchell and Lee Mack are reliably fun. LM does tend to dominate things (and his sitcom is dreadful), but damn he is quick-witted.

          • I like that WILTO and Taskmaster both go up on YouTube. I got a bit bored of Taskmaster but WILTY is always a fun watch.
            From the last one I saw:

            Lee Mack: Did it hurt (when you tore your trousers on the helter skelter)?
            David Mitchell: Well no, because I don’t have nerve endings in my trousers!
            Lee Mack: I don’t think you have any feelings in your trousers.

  18. You can get an idea of Comedy Shelf Life by looking at the US sitcoms that the streaming giants fight over. The big hitters are Modern Family, Seinfeld, That 70s Show, The Simpsons, The Office, The Big Bang Theory and of course, Friends. The earliest one there is Seinfeld, which started (I think) 1989 or so.

    You don’t tend to see well-regarded shows from the 80s such as The Golden Girls, Taxi, The Cosby Show (may be other reasons for this one) and Roseanne (ditto).

  19. All comedy more than six weeks old is crap. The modern stuff about punching babies and buggering your mum’s corpse is better because it’s edgy. Still not actually funny, but pretending to find it so makes me feel a bit with-it and cool for ten seconds.

  20. Guaranteed laughs.
    Shortly after my wife died Doods & Jolean (formally of this and the previous parish) kindly took me to the cinema to watch Stan & Ollie. I thought the viewing room would be mostly empty but it was quite the opposite, it was packed with people of all ages from children with their parents to old codgers. The place rung with the unifying sound of laughter.

  21. The last time I laughed at the television was only last night on Mastermind as the contestant’s answer to “what was the name used for an uncivilised person in ancient Greece and who couldn’t speak Greek” “Malaka” came the answer.
    Always preferred Ripping Yarns and Rutland Weekend Television to Fawlty Towers. Again I enjoy Ghosts but prefer the American version.

  22. Feel Goliath’s hot, fetid breath stinking up my neck so here’s my (very personal) take on the issue at hand:

    DOES COMEDY HAVE A SHELF LIFE?

    Yes and no.

    Remember watching those silent film compendiums Bob Monkhouse used to put together in the 60s and not finding stuff like Chaplin particularly funny. As I grew up it dawned on me that the reason for this was that the routines Chaplin had been performing in the silent era had been endlessly recycled by other lesser comedians for the next 40 years.

    While probably not a direct steal from Chaplin, Harry Worth’s trademark shop window reflection gag was undoubtedly influenced by him. In a hangover from the musical hall days when comics would have one act that they would perform regional theatre-after-regional, year-after-year, it was also enough for HW to make a reasonably good living into the 1980s.

    While working in the same period as HW and also influenced by silent comedians like Keaton and Lloyd, Eric Sykes was a far more inventive comedian whose work still gets – and merits – the odd recent re-run.

    US vs THE USA

    With one or two exceptions (Third Rock from the Sun), the classic writers’ room school of US sitcom writing in which everyone utters zinger after zinger has never really floated my boat. As the best British sitcoms tend to rely on fewer writers, their vision seems to me to a lot more singular – hence the shorter runs.

    COMEDY THEN VS COMEDY NOW

    Like many people here I find a lot of sitcoms from the 60s, 70s and 80s barely register a smile nowadays. Of those that do, I’d struggle to sit through more than an episode at a time. That said, those Bilko, Hancock and Steptoe and Son boxsets are unlikely ever to get removed from my shelves during one of my occasional culls.

    Interestingly (or perhaps not), I would far rather listen to one of the James, Jacques, Kerr and Williams era Hancock radio shows than his classic (Radio Ham, Missing Page) TV
    Episodes. Happily, most of TH’s career-defining HHH series were all recorded for radio and available on disc, so win-win.

    IF YOU WANT IT TO LAST KEEP IT IN THE PAST

    Set during a war that ended just 23 years earlier and many viewers could still remember vividly, David Perry and Jimmy Croft’s Dad’s Army is the textbook example. While a show’s being accorded ‘gentle’ comedy status is normally a sure sign it’s either twee or unfunny (Last of the Summer Wine is both), such is the quality of the scripts and the acting that DA manages to buck that trend. Although not quite as good, the same writers’ It Ain’t Half Hot Mum ain’t half bad itself. Despite ploughing the same comedic furrow as LOTSW, the Scottish comedy Still Game is a million times funnier.

    While it’s not a nostalgic show a la DA, Dick Clement and Ian La Fresnais’ Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads is itself built around a yearning for the past (“Whatever happened to the people we used to be?”) The WHTTLL episode that is often held to be the show’s very, very best is No Hiding Place in which Terry and Bob do everything they can to avoid hearing the results of a football match. Given people’s habit of including spoilers in posts/newspaper articles, life has turned full circle and the episode is now almost as prescient as it was when it first aired 50 years ago.

    OTHER STUFF

    Laurel and Hardy (who my Mum and Dad saw onstage at Coventry Hippodrome when they were reduced to touring British regional theatre during what proved to be their final tour) remain timeless. As Spike Milligan said of them “The first time I saw Stan and Ollie, I knew they were my friends”.

    US remakes of British sitcoms – Life is too short

    Panel shows – I’m afraid it’s a big “No” from me

  23. Most comedy that made me laugh no longer does , some I laugh in advance coz I know what is going to come next Get Smart for example.
    A few still make me laugh spontaneously – Seinfeld, Norman Gunston, Porridge, some Marx Brothers.

    • I think the physical lolling-out-loud isn’t essential to appreciating comedy. The internet seethes with people allegedly spitting soft beverages over their keyboards, but a mild chuckle is enough to get the funny muscles flexing for me.

  24. Most comedy is, by necessity “of its time” which I’d suggest gives it an automatic sell by date which may not be any longer than the immediate laugh provoked. The stuff that lasts, I reckon, does so accidentally and most comedy that we love gets dull with repetition. So anything at all which sticks is a rare and precious thing. I suspect I’d love old American radio comedy because it’s not a form I know so familiarity hasn’t bred any contempt. Monty Python though…

    • I can recommend Fibber McGee and Molly as an entry drug for “Old Time Radio.” Start here:

      https://archive.org/details/FibberMcGeeandMolly1945

      It was an exceptionally long-running show, and maybe (as with Jack Benny) starting with the earliest and doing it chronologically isn’t the best way. 1945 is a good year to start with either show. Fibber McGee and Molly is based around the most mundane and trivial events in a small town called Wistful Vista (they got me with that one already). There’s a recurring cast of characters with signature catch-phrases, and the musical interludes (unlike Jack Benny) are pretty cool. The show handles the inevitable sponsorship ads extremely well, weaving them knowingly into the script (written by one man over decades). It’s warm without being cloying or sentimental, never falling into cynicism or cheap jibes. Fibber and Molly were married in real life, and what a couple they make. Just gorgeous comfort humour, in no way a guilty pleasure.

  25. Just remembered the sheer brilliance of Bilko – in particular the bizarre episode where Doberman’s sister is introduced to us. The character is clearly, obviously, Doberman in a wig but no one even hints that this might be the case.

    • Would imagine the fact that Doberman’s sister was obviously just Maurice Gosfield in a wig was part of the joke.

      If any of you ever get sent to Coventry, be sure and look up the world’s only Bilko museum on Gosford Street

    • Musselman’s Law if I remember correctly… The uglier the brother, the prettier the sister.

      My favourites were Radio BILKO and the one where they volunteer to be exposed to killer mosquitoes thinking they’re in a song contest. “We’re heading for the last roundup”

      BILKO has aged well.

  26. There’s a low budget TV channel called London Live, which seems to mainly show old films and comedies. I discovered they have been showing, on and off, the Comic Strip shows and Stella Street. I found these funny at the time, but thought they would have dated, but they are both still very funny. Peter Richardson co-wrote and directed a lot of these, and in general was the impresario behind them, but he has never had the same profile as a lot of the people he worked with. Perhaps he didn’t want it. I have only seen him interviewed a couple of times, in a tribute to Rik Mayall for example, and seems he quite reserved, almost shy – quite at odds with his comedy.

    Another one which has stood up well is A bit of Fry and Laurie. The BBC showed a series of it recently, and I still laughed. A lot of the comedy comes from their privileged backgrounds, but in a way that’s why it works: they are mocking what they know. I remembered it as being driven by Stephen Fry, but in fact Hugh Laurie comes across as fully equal, and as he could do the musical stuff as well, he perhaps even has the edge.

    • As you ask…

      I think it’s a disturbing reminder of the disabilities of life – as unfunny and psychologically painful as Fawlty Towers has now become on watching (albeit with less quick witted repartee than FT). Compare and contrast:

      “What about my kumquats?” repeated endlessly like a tiresome siren.
      “I am a doctor. I am a doctor and I want my sausages”. Said once, emphatically.

          • Straight actors delivering comedy scripts.
            Possibly one of the keys to longevity of the comedy – it’s about the character, script and delivery not the person delivering it.
            See also Ronnie Barker in Porridge, Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp, Rodney Bewes and James Bolam in The Likely Lads, Robert Lindsay in Citizen Smith
            (agreed, the last one may not be considered a classic, but it fits the criteria I’m trying to make)

            • CS is a classic in the memory but not when you actually watch it. RL is great though I can’t help thinking that Michael Murray in GBH is just Wolfie later (grown-up doesn’t quite work).

              See also Shelley.

      • A curious response, Sal, but as your post above from years ago outlines that you find Laurel & Hardy tedious perhaps not surprising.
        I genuinely feel for those unable to connect to the genius of L & H, in the same way I can’t help feeling for those deprived of of the sense of taste or smell for instance – it doesn’t impact on me in the slightest but it’s obvious they are missing out on so much.
        As for Fields, I don’t see the dynamic as similar to Fawlty Towers at all, even as a farce like tension that builds is a common factor.
        Fawlty is an arsehole, and it’s his inability to not be an arsehole that always does for him – he consistently creates his own crises, all of which could have been avoided.
        Fields’ character in the sketch is an honest trier who is ultimately just overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control, as he endeavours to do the right thing & accommodate everyone. Thus his situation is pretty universal, & potentially timeless. That’s also the common factor with L & H. They are hopeless, but in almost all of their skits they are honest triers, who are unable or unwilling to give up when clearly overwhelmed. There’s a lot of the human condition encapsulated right there, which is why they endure.

        • A lengthy response, Jim, and fair enough. But ultimately it just comes down to different reactions to the same stimuli, I think. I don’t deny the human condition in Fields or L&H, I just find it frustrating and saddening, rather than comical. I’d hate to be in their situation. Similarly with Fawlty, whose arseholishness is a consequence of his evident snobbery, prejudices, neuroses, cowardice and bullying tendencies. He is truly Fawlty when reduced to hopping around on the carpet, hand wrapped over his head, sobbing. Pitiable.

          • Different responses to the same stimuli is probably as good a stab at defining senses of humour as anything. It’s been said that ‘all comedy is tragedy if you only look deep enough’ & also that life is frequently comic when observed at a distance but tragic when seen close up & I think there’s something in that.

            • It would be boring if we all thought the same, of course. Comedy and tragedy both provoke strong reactions (if they are working) to the unexpected. At base, it’s primitive, it’s probably an evolved survival mechanism, as when crows all caw at something strange – attention! attention!

              Once you are familiar with something, it loses the ability to evoke in the same way. Recalling old jokes (the Pike sketch being a good example), each recall changes the way you remember it, until it becomes about the recalling (that everyone said this to Ian Lavender) and not about the original sketch.

              What makes me smile is an accurate description of something I thought, but hadn’t realised I thought. What really makes me laugh is conflicting ideas brought together in creative ways. ‘Doing’ comedy is now an old idea.

  30. Those BBC shows; were they ever that hilariously funny to begin with?

    Probably not. They were all that was on, at set scheduled times, for years. At their height of popularity there was relatively little choice compared to this age of everything right here right now. They were grabbed and squeezed hard for the laughs they had. Given the paucity of choice then even if most episodes were forgettable the common shared opinion is one of ‘wasn’t that a wonderful bit of classic telly?’

    Rose coloured glasses were deployed more often than not. Didn’t approx 22million viewers tune into the Morecambe and Wise Christmas shows in the U.K. during the 70’s? As much as I truly revere Eric Morecambe as a man with funny bones, half of those shows were daft kids gags and not entirely the comedic jewels they’re remembered as.

    A pal of mine as a kid adored Larry Grayson. He recently trawled YouTube for some old footage and came away rather crestfallen. ‘Dear me. He wasn’t very funny after all, was he?’

    EDIT: I’m not saying there weren’t some wonderfully funny moments and episodes. There were, of course.

  31. Broadly speaking, I still find stuff is funny that I used to love and similarly find unfunny things I always hated. Most of the stuff in the first category have been mentioned – Agony, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Porridge, Morecombe and Wise, Dad’s Army, Bilko, Round the Horne (listened to quite a few of those recently and they sound even more outrageous than in the 60s for some reason), Hancock in his various guises, Blackadder. I will stick up for Fawlty Towers though – we actually recently did the Faulty Towers dining experience and that was very funny too. The Good Life is still funny, as is Yes, Minister. I think what they all have in common, besides good jokes, is exceptional acting.

    Most of the above get repeated or celebrated regularly, but others that were really popular are never seen, and I’m pretty sure not just for cultural reasons like Benny Hill (always hated him) or Mind Your Language. Terry and June (the boss is coming for dinner, how hilarious), Hi Di Hi, Brush Strokes, Citizen Smith were huge ratings successes, but I don’t think they get trotted out much. I have a soft spot for Butterflies though – has that been shown of late?

    • Hi Di Hi gets shown on one of the Sky channels – I watched one recently and it was passable. I think rights and licensing issues might prevent others. In some cases the holders of the DVD rights seem to be able to block TV showings.

  33. And we haven’t even touched on cartoons. Physical violence tends to be the funniest, as attested by the joy my 5 year old gets from watching Tom and Jerry. Already knows it has to be the Fred Quimby ones, the later ones being inferior. Itchy and Scratchy take it a few steps further and that’s funny too, as were the parent programme, The Simpsons, before all the ideas got used up. South Park had some terrific juvenilia also.

    • Good call on the cartoons @retropath2 My kids aged 5, 7 and 9 love the old Tom and Jerrys, the more violent the better. The same applies to Roadrunner. I can’t sell Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck to them. I think they’re put off by the dialogue that they dont quite get.

      They’re too young to try any of the shows mentioned above on but they really enjoyed the Kitten Kong episode of the Goodies and the Goodies and the Beanstalk much to my surprise. There’s more slapstick and silliness than I remember and our youngest loved the theme music too. I tried some Laurel and Hardy on them and our second child pointed out how cruel Hardy was to Laurel as the reason they didn’t like it.

      • We need to talk about the horrifyingly sadistic subtext of Laurel & Hardy; basically an abusive relationship dependent upon the ritual subjugation of a weaker, possibly submissive, partner. There is a disturbing sociological undercurrent to their so-called “comedy” that subconsciously perverts social mores into acceptance of toxic behaviours.

  35. What about the (book)shelf life of comic writing?

    I’d argue that P G Wodehouse is still very amusing.

    And that Dickens’s wonderfully eccentric characters can still bring a smile to the face. I was reading David Copperfield a few months ago and the Micawbers and Uriah Heap, for example, are still wonderful comic creations. Dickens has an ear for the way they speak and an eye for the peculiarities of theirs ways of dressing.

  37. George Formby had the whole country in tears of laughter. Today he makes me smile a little.

    Comedy has a shelf-life and is all the much better for it!

    It’s all about timing! To be in the right place at the right time with right quip.

  40. I always liked this quote by Warren Mitchell about the problem with the way comedy is perceived, “”I had a bloke come up to me one day and say, ‘I love that show of yours Alf, especially when you have a go at the coons.’ I said, ‘Actually, we’re having a go at bastards like you.'” “Where the white women at?” is the funniest line in history, and according to Mel Brooks was written by none other than Richard Pryor.

  41. I still find Fawlty Towers just cracks me up every time. Monty Python less so, although I caught a bit of the Holy Grail on TV the other day and it was hilarious.

    I was too old for The Young Ones, never got Blackadder.

    Curiously I don’t recall finding the Two Ronnies all that funny back in the day but now when a clip comes up it’s invariably utterly brilliant.

        • To KFD or not KFD, that is the question.

          Actually, it’s not the question at all. There’s a new elephant in the room.

          Yes, it’s time to ask: How funny is Shakey?

          The comedies of the Bard of Avon are still being performed all over the world. But are they still amusing?

          Ans we must not forget, they are still being studied in schools. And if there is one thing likely to extract all the laughter and fun out a play, it is having it as a set text and being forced to write essays about hilarious it all is.

          Having said that, I do love Shakespeare’s comedies, particularly A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Tempest. The mixture of poetry, slapstick, complex characters and deft plotting is irresistible.

          Watch these clips and the tell me you would not want to see this production.

          • Perhaps the words aren’t funny but when it’s on stage, it’s another story. My English O’Level was a breeze once I saw The Merchant of Venice performed on stage (David Suchet as Shylock, Sinead Cusack as Portia). The jester character’s funny lines were actually funny too.

            • You are definitely right, BC.
              The Shakespeare authorities at the drama school I attended 100 years ago were adamant that Shakespeare was *not* literature but drama, and would never be grasped if it was only considered on the page.
              It only really comes alive when performed and by those who truly understand it.
              This principle applies doubly so to the comedy within Shakespeare & if it is ‘sold’ well by the actors, it can absolutely be properly funny, with actual laughter experienced by the audience.
              Understandably, generations of school kids resent the Bard & all his works because it’s so consistently badly taught & is an incomprehensible chore that they’re subjected to. The idea that it may have something to say or ( God forbid) be occasionally funny is anathema to most who encountered it via the classroom.

              • A bullseye there @Junglejim.

                Shakespeare was a dramatist not a novelist and would probably be horrified to hear about his plays being studied from reading them by students who never saw a performance.

                Very problematic. How do you teach literature as part of the the school syllabus without squeezing all the joy out of it?

                • “Teaching” Shakespeare is like explaining a joke. Teaching literature is basically taking it apart to see how it works, a dissection class that doesn’t reanimate the frog. The whole idea that a school curriculum can teach you to “love” books at secondary school level is arguable. It cuts the life and soul out of them. It takes a truly exceptional teacher to subvert the system and inspire a love for language rather than a rote “understanding” of what’s behind the magic. Everything spelled is a spell, and grammar is grimoire – words invoke, evoke, summon up something quite apart from paper and ink.

                  When we were being “taught” Dickens, I was reading Jack Kerouac. Different world.

                  • There are exceptional teachers out there. But I fear that these days they are more and more tied down by very inflexible curricula. That’s certainly the impression I get from Swedish schools.

                    Back in my day, an English teacher could go into a class to discuss The Tempest and start riffing on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein or indeed Forbidden Planet from 1956 which was a Tempest reboot.

                    Nowadays, schoolkids doing Shakespeare have access to a whole staffroom full of wonderful teachers.

                    Like (the rather young) Judi Dench.

                    This is one of a series of programmes featuring actors from the RSC.

                    Let’s treat ourselves to some vintage Maggie Smith.

                    Wonderfully witty, quite timeless stuff.

                    “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.”

                  • Nail on head.
                    I despaired when helping my kids with their GCSE & A Level English studies a few years back. The choice of books aside, it was a miserable experience, the demands of the curriculum requiring a soulless dissection of texts & recitation of formulae ( that I was absolutely incapable of doing) evocative of Mr Gradgrind & Mr Mchokemchild (sp?) from Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’.
                    Nothing I could conjure could do more to kill off a lifelong love of reading IMO.
                    So glad I did my studies when you could still BS on set books in exams & get away with a tiny bit of panache over content in your answers.

                    • There’s a big shift (or at least was) between primary and secondary school literary education. Primary school: “listen to this story” or “go to the bookshelves and choose a book”. Secondary school: “follow me through this classic work as I explain it”.

  44. BC is right: on the page, Shakespearean comedy is hard to spot – and often what was funny then has to be explained now. When it’s performed, though, it really comes to life and the comedy is more obvious. The Reduced Shakespeare Company are very good at picking out Shakey’s funniest scenes and then pushing them a bit further.

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