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Elegy for the colour-bleedy late-night American sitcom

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I’ve been thinking very hard about the US network TV sitcoms that were all over our four-channel screens in the 1980s, mostly on ITV (not ITV1, not ITV8+1 – just ITV) consigned to the night-owl slot. Many of them were funny. Best remembered for the triumvirate of one-word titles –Soap, Cheers, Taxi – there was one to enjoy (well, mostly) practically every night around midnight, like Mork & Mindy, WKRP in Cincinnati, Police Squad, Barney Miller and its short-lived spinoff Fish (starring Abe “That Cadaverous-Looking Bloke Who Played Tessio in The Godfather” Vigoda). Most of these shows were shot on video, which after the disastrous NTSC-to-PAL transfer process made them look as bleedy as a “magic painting” in an old Rupert annual.

But at some point around the end of the ‘80s they seemed to just stop. Or at least they stopped being funny and I tuned them out. Apart from Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld – and, I suppose, maybe one episode out of every six of Big Bang Theory, The Wonder Years, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Golden Girls – I can’t think of any in recent decades that have been anywhere near as entertaining as those I’ve listed from the ‘80s.

Wha’ happen? Did they carry on but the UK channels stopped buying them in? Did Americans stop being funny? Or am I just being old again?

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Comments

  1. When I was a child I never understood why US TV programmes nearly looked kind of blurry. I honestly thought they had different eyes. Now it turns out there was a technical reason why their shows had that weird smeariness.

    I was just thinking about Taxi the other day. It was brilliant. We were spoiled. And that Bob James music was soooo cool.

  2. Seems odd now that so many great shows were hidden away as hip curios most people wouldn’t be interested in. There was something a bit exotic about US tv, even things like Kojak and Star Trek. The look of them, all the credits. The music. Special guest star. Seinfeld was ridiculously late. That kind of show did become more mainstream I guess. Frasier obviously and Friends. Channel 4. Ellen was a good sitcom when it started with it’s bookshop setting.

  3. To everything there is a time and a season, as Pete Seeger so tellingly put it. I’m watching the first season of Cheers again (again), and when it’s great it’s peerlessly great.

    Two later cop shows, Bakersfield and Angie Tribeca, were eighties-funny, but ratings bombs.

    Apparently Millennials deem Friends “problematic” – they love an “issue” more than a laugh – and I imagine that, like the movies, getting a TV show made is a process of ticking boxes rather than inspiration. Comedy is a funny business.

  4. ITV seemed to stop buying them in around the early 80s. Newer ones tended to go to Channel 4 in the 6pm slot (Wonder Years, Roseanne etc).
    BBC2 had Third Rock From The Sun for a while – amusing, but got lost in the schedules.

    ITV briefly started to re-make American Sitcoms for a British audience – She’s The Boss being one example
    (and the only one I can think of right now)

    Of the grainy ones – Happy Days (once at 5:30 on Sundays, and later shown every morning when TVAM were on strike or was starting later) and Mork & Mindy were favourites.
    One I never got though was Soap – was it really any good?

    • Soap was, to me, absolutely superb, brilliant…

      … but it was also so incredibly… full-on, relentless, intense…like being force-fed the highest-quality maple syrup. I felt like a fwah-gwah comedy goose. A little went a long way.

      I would never have missed it for the world, though. Perfect, uproarious, post-pub viewing with like-minded mates. ‘Burt’ (if I remember the character’s name correctly?) was a fantastic creation.

      I should dig it out on YouTube.

        • ‘Burt’ was played by Richard Mulligan, an absolutely delicious performance.

          As has already been said, the cast altogether was remarkable. They must have worked incredibly hard, as the pace of each episode (over several series) was exhausting, but I hope they had as much fun making it as I did watching it.

  5. A tangent here. When I was about 11 or so in the mid 70’s three of us were press ganged into helping the school caretaker clear up the school hall after a prize giving do, or some such. He was a nice sort and as a mark of gratitude the next day he brought in a substantial pile of American comics for us to share out

    I was quite taken with them but more with the cultural divide that existed between the US and semi rural Northumberland at that time. A few of them had tv listings in the back. There were dozens and dozens of telly channels! All stuffed with cartoons. An endless cornucopia of teenage entertainment. We had Jackanory and The Wombles and my Dad didn’t like Star Trek so it Wasn’t Allowed. Oh, to be in America.

    I wish I’d kept those comics.

      • F-Troop now…when I did the Greyhound bus thing in 1966 I went on the Universal Studios tour in Hollywood. Among the treats line up for us wide-eyed rubes was to meet the cast of F-Troop on set – Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, Melody Patterson and Ken Berry. I hadn’t heard of any of them of course, or ever watched F-Troop either as far as I remember. This was a bit of a come-down for someone who’d been hoping to meet, I don’t know, Shirley Maclaine or Burt Lancaster, but that’s showbiz I guess. I got their autographs anyway.

  8. I have DVD box sets of all the classics mentioned above – Cheers, Frasier, The Wonder Years, Roseanne and M*A*S*H. All of them stand up to repeat viewings and I am currently working my way through M*A*S*H for the umpteenth time. While the show increasingly became a vehicle for Alan Alda, much of its strength lay in the depth of characters that didn’t always play it for laughs – the late David Ogden Stiers as Charles Winchester in particular was a brilliantly nuanced comic creation.

  9. There have been a few I enjoyed, like Community and My name Is Earl, but they are getting on a bit now.
    There seems to be a lot of love for Parks & Recreation and Modern Family, though I’ve not seen them.

    Good call on Barney Miller. It was criminal how that got hidden in the schedules.

    • The first few seasons of Community are aces. Also mighty fine: The Good Place, Silicon Valley and The Last Man On Earth. I do think, in this century, the Britcoms, such as Peep Show have just been better.
      Much of the sitcom energy has gone elsewhere. In the U.S. you have dramedy (some of my biggest laughs in recent decades have been during adventure shows like Chuck and I’m not sure anymore what category the brilliant Barry fits into), while in the U.K. a lot goes on sketch shows or panel game shows.
      Growing up, I used to be confused by all those “first name” U.S. shows, where Roseanne is the name of both the actor and the character and the role she plays is just her famous persona shoehorned into a situation.
      I remember they tried this over this side with David Baddiel and Al Murray’s pub landlord with (*cough*) limited success.
      Not one I watch, but I guess Miranda is one example of this formula working in the U.K.
      In contrast, the Americans have just remade a dozen British shows and they’ve nearly all been disasters apart from The Office..

  11. Like every comedy show ever (including UK ones like Monty Python, Morecambe & Wise etc etc ) none of those American shows have truly stood the test of time. I absolutely adored Soap, Mash, Frasier etc etc but if I ever stumble across an episode it’s like meeting an old friend from Uni – “Remember that time when we…?” Hilarious at the time but now? Nope and nope.
    There are so many great comedy series out there now but I guarantee in twenty years time you’ll be going ” Yeah ok daddio but have you seen Gary Meets Enrico, it’s fab!”

    • Strangely enough, I’m with you on this one, Lodes. Channel Four still shows many USA sitcoms in that 7am to 9am slot in the morning, and over the past year or so showed the entire run of Cheers. There were some laughs, but much of it is strained and unfunny. I chuckled more at Frasier, but even then it seemed nowhere near as funny as it did back in the day.

      • The biggest laughs in Frasier always revolved around the character of Niles, and it’s the excellent David Hyde Pierce’s comedic timing and phrasing that have kept that show consistently watchable.

        • There is an excellent hour long documentary on the making of Frasier and they were discussing how the show came into being.

          The producers of Cheers were hearing all these different pitches about possible spinoffs and this bloke came in and told them his idea about Frasier moving to Seattle to become a radio host and he had a brother and a father and the father had a physical therapist etc.

          One of the producesr had heard a million suggestions and wasn’t very interested in this one and he idly asked, “Who do you see playing the brother?” and the fella replied, “David Hyde Pierce” and a lightbulb went off in the producers head and he banged the desk and yelled, “That’s brilliant!” and he suddenly became excited.

          So if it wasn’t for the potential casting of David Hyde Pierce the show may never have been.

  13. I think the quality of TV can be measured against the quality of The Simpsons. It was once razor sharp and now is plain shite. On Simpsons’s forums people debate when the series went into decline but very few (if any) suggest the show is as good as it was.

    The concensus view is the “Jump the Shark” moment was the episode Principal Skinner is revealed to be an imposter. That was from Season 9 in 1997. We’re now in Season 33 or something ridiculous. It’s had a twenty five year decline!

    My favourite line from the show is an example of what they don’t do anymore…

    Homer turns on the TV and when he realises what’s on he says, “Aah the Luftwaffe, the Washington Generals of the History Channel.”

    To understand that one line you have to know a lot of different things…

    1/ The Luftwaffe were the German Airforce in WW2
    2/ The Germans lost WW2
    3/ The History Channel is full of documentaries about WW2
    4/ WW2 had many battles which means a lot of different documentaries
    5/ The Washington Generals are the team the Harlem Globetrotters always play
    6/ The Harlem Globetrotters always win, so the Generals always lose, therefore the comparison to the Luftwaffe.

    Your average ten year old may not know any of those things. In the olden days they didn’t care, now they do.

    The problem with TV now is everyone has to be included.

    • That’s a terrific example. My favourite line – or one I can remember right now – is the immortal “Beer! The cause of – and solution to – most of life’s problems.” The fall from grace is catastrophic. I watched a recent example and it was like seeing a world where humour exists only as signals (“this is a joke”) without actually being funny.

      The biggest TV laughs I’ve had recently come from Justified, where the context (not a sitcom) only makes the jokes funnier. Raylan half-heartedly calling out “stop, U.S. Marshall” after dropping an evildoer with a shovel; the godlike Dewey Crowe (surely the greatest comic creation since YOUR FAVOURITE HERE) musing “people think I’m stupid … but … [long, thoughtful pause] … I’m not.”

      • The missus and I have laughed out loud many times at series 1 and early series 2 of Brooklyn 99 recently (and not always at the same jokes, either). I’m half tempted to jump to series 7 to see if they kept it up, and spare ourselves the slow grind through a failing series.

      • Based on your recommendation we’ve started Justified. Looks good after 3 eps but I do hope every episode is not neatly wrapped up by the end, that could get boring fast. Long story arcs are where it’s at now, you know.

        Olyphant is much better suited to the light comedy in this role than he was to his turn in Deadwood, where I could not think of anything but Ned Flanders when he was on.

        • Three episodes is like the pre-credit sequence, dude. How the episodes are woven seamlessly into a very long (six seasons) narrative is a masterclass in everything. You have to wait to see how what goes around, comes around (especially the AMC Gremlin).

        • Justified follows the Hill Street Blues structure pretty closely, with each episode having its own self-contained story, another arc that may last for two or three episodes, character and subplot arcs that last a whole season, and other multi-season arcs that develop over the course of the whole show. It’s TV designed for the pre-streaming/bingeing era, in other words – no big deal if you happen to miss the occasional episode.

      • My favourite Simpsons line is “Trying is the first step toward failure”. I haven’t watched The Simpsons in decades.

        The biggest TV laughs I’ve had recently where the context (not a sitcom) only makes the jokes funnier came from Gary Oldman in the Saucecraft-lauded Slow Horses. “Another day dawns on M.I.Fucking useless.” “In the old days you’d be on your third stomach pump by now.” “If you’d meant to kill him, he’d still be alive.” “Oh God, it’s like trying to explain Norway to a dog.”

      • I’m off work at the moment and have been gorging on the Justified episodes due to a recommendation from a friend. It’s excellent, and as you say, funny, with plenty of dry TV references. Starting season six today!

    • As well as that, even the dumb Simpsons jokes used to be funnier. My favourite ever SImpsons moment is (and this is quit hard to describe, but if you have seen it you will know it) when Homer gets banned from the pub and then a guy called “Mr Incognito” or something like that, who is basically just Homer in a moustache and top hat, turns up at the pub. That’s funny enough, but the twist is that it is a genuine guy and not Homer at all… then the further twist is when Homer notices they look exactly alike, but then suddenly loses interest and goes off on another tangent.

      Like dissecting the proverbial frog, this now just sounds lame and unfunny when I describe it. But it’s funny, I guarantee it.

      ….

      In fact… what am I doing trying to describe it?? This is the internet! Here’s the clip:

    • One of my favourite Simpson lines:
      Homer put in a prison cell with a prisoner playing harmonica.
      Homer: “What are you in here for?”
      Prisoner: “Atmosphere.”

      Might have been the Michael Jackson episode.

      • ‘But Marge, I swear to you I never thought you’d find out.’

        And probably my favourite, Burns weeps as Smithers washes his hair.:

        Smithers: What’s wrong sir, did I get some in your eye? The Shampoo specifically said, “No more tears!”
        Mr. Burns: Ah, a lovely promise but one beyond the powers of a mere shampoo

        • The story of Brexit can be illustrated by Mo’s immortal rallying cry at the end of the asteroid episode: “Let’s go and burn down the Observatory so that this can never happen again!”

  14. US sitcoms have done pretty well over the last 20 years or so, although they have maybe been dominated by fewer, more successful titles. The main three, The Office, Big Bang Theory and Modern Family, are all strong shows, in particular the last.

    I think it’s notable that each of these got to about 10 or 11 seasons before retiring, whereas in the past, even popular shows like M.A.S.H. and Taxi only made it to 6 or 7. So I think the shows have been out there, just that there have been fewer of them being really successful.

  15. Married With Children was considered credible at the time, but I haven’t felt like revisiting it.

    There was also a trend to stick lower-grade, grainy US sitcoms on daytime, like ALF (the puppet) , and Grounded for Life (Irish-Americans in New York).

  16. Randomly came across this list this morning, seem to be appropriate to the discussion:

    https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/best-tv-shows-of-all-time-1234598313/

    As a child growing up in the 70s and early 80s a ton of my US culture references came though US tv shows generally, but sitcoms specifically. A lot of the references took years to be clarified, things that US audiences would take for granted, but were mysterious and alien to me at the time, foods, sport, etc. I don’t think this fascination with the country has ever diminished.

  17. There is some whip smart US comedies still. Brooklyn 99, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Community are excellent. Superstore was a lot of fun. Parks and Rec was brilliant.

    If I scroll through an internet list of the best sitcoms, what is evident is the spread of the great ones is pretty even across the decades and the mix of US ones versus UK is pretty much the same.

    Worryingly, I found one list (Rotten Tomatoes top 200 comedy series) that had ‘Allo ‘Allo at 13. Two places above Frasier. Which proves that lists are shit I suppose.

  18. No mention here (that I can see) of The Larry Sanders Show, which was great. There used to be a double billing with that and Seinfeld on late-night BBC2, which was unmissable.

    • The Gary Shandling Show was pretty damn excellent, too. Consciously breaking the Fourth Wall, deliberately using shoddy sets (he took a flight in a balsa wood plane), direct-to-audience Shakespearian asides …

    • I bought the complete Larry Sanders shows on DVD and it is still very good. Very funny and all of the main characters, Larry, Hank and Artie, and their relationships are fully formed from the start. I’ve never watched any real American late night chat shows, but I don’t think you need to. It’s about office politics as much as anything else. And I think the idea of celebrities playing versions of themselves, which Extras and Curb your Enthusiasm picked up among others, started here.

      I also saw the two part documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, which was interesting in its own right. I didn’t realise the high regard that Shandling was held in by his fellow American comedians, almost like Peter Cook here, as a great innovator. Odd also that some of the stories behind the show – Shandling splitting up with his real life girlfriend, Linda Doucett, who played Darlene, and then sacking her from the show, and his falling out with his manager over financial and business issues, which led to a court case, could have been storylines in the show.

  19. Regrettably, what has probably passed are the days when a sitcom would be watched by the majority of the available US TV audience. The likes of Cheers, Seinfeld and even Friends enjoyed a cultural ubiquity that will probably never be repeated, or at least not while retaining a comparable level of quality.

    Nonetheless, there have been some really strong sitcoms in the last 20 years: 30 Rock, Malcolm In The Middle, Community, The IT Crowd, Peep Show, Partridge, Veep, Rick & Morty, The Thick Of It, Curb, Ted Lasso, Parks & Rec, Arrested Development, IASIP, etc.

    Some of the sensibilities have changed, and the joy of discovering them either late night or early morning on Channel 4 no longer seems to exist in quite the same way, but they’re undoubtedly funny (or at least large numbers of people continue to find them funny/entertaining).

    Do they hit Cheers/Seinfeld/The Simpsons levels? Probably not in most cases, although I think 30 Rock can make a case for getting close at times, and – for me – Malcolm In The Middle has brought comparable levels of joy. I’m also never entirely convinced that, taken pound for pound, Cheers is really as funny as Seinfeld or The Simpsons. I just think it compensates in other ways – certainly one of the greatest TV shows ever made.

  20. I think some of you people must pay interns to watch this shit for you. There are, after all, only 24 hours in a day, every day of every week. I sometimes manage to spend perhaps an hour a day in front of the idiot lantern; if I tried to catch up on small percentage of the stuff you all froth about, I’d have to live to be at least 230 years old (checks workings; make that 250 years old). You must all have square eyes.

  21. The Afterword follows the Hill Street Blues structure pretty closely, with each post having its own self-contained story, another arc that may last for two or three posts, character and subplot arcs that last a whole page, and other multi-season arcs that develop over the course of the whole site. It’s designed for the pre-streaming/bingeing era, in other words – no big deal if you happen to miss the occasional post.

  22. Soap was, to me, absolutely superb, brilliant…

    … but it was also so incredibly… full-on, relentless, intense…like being force-fed the highest-quality maple syrup. I felt like a fwah-gwah comedy goose. A little went a long way.

    I would never have missed it for the world, though. Perfect, uproarious, post-pub viewing with like-minded mates. ‘Burt’ (if I remember the character’s name correctly?) was a fantastic creation.

    I should dig it out on YouTube.

  23. As mentioned above, I think the nature of TV humour changed completely with the death of laugh tracks and live filming audiences. Humour became more complex, for better or worse. Look at the many examples of shows with their laugh tracks removed to see how utterly alien they become.

    I think Moonlighting in the 80s was the forerunner of the modern comedy, with fast, snappy dialogue, fourth-wall breaks and an expectation for audiences to keep up. Then the first 7 or 8 seasons of the Simpsons set the template that is still the norm.

  24. But what about the terrible ones?

    The Dave Thomas show. Who? Exactly – and for good reason. By some distance, less funny than Kelly Monteith. I know!
    We Got it Made! was about a rich family with a live-in housekeeper who was always up to something (unfunny).
    Billy! The Billy Connolly sitcom. How they managed to turn one of the funniest people that has ever lived into something so mediocre….is something I find extraordinary. See also the Peter Cook one.
    The Johnny Carson Show. Heeeere’s nothing special! Terrible, terrible over-long sketches and although likeable he was about as quick-witted as a leaking corpse.

    There were lots more.

  25. All this way and no mention of Chico and The Man, shown on BBC2 in the 70s. It made me laugh at the age of 11 approximately but I remember it also had a hint of pathos so it made me feel a little sad too

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