Comment by workmandan
1 day ago
Stephen Fry made the same remarks in a Q&A session some years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2AbqTBxao
As a Brit I can't agree more with both, I find American humour so hard to relate to but I guess it's just a culture thing
His point of high church vs. Protestantism is a good one. We in the US practice a kind of competitive Protestantism designed--at least partly, if not mostly--to make the adherents feel good about themselves. There is a distinct difference between submission and proselytizing.
There is also something to the state of empire as well. The British empire had been in steady decline for a very long time before Adams or Fry started making people laugh, whereas the American empire has been ascending quickly since WWII. This sort of gestalt is hard to ignore and will certainly influence things. For example, would a 'Blackadder' sell as well in 1890? This is around the same time 'King Solomon's Mines' was selling briskly, and Haggard's story is instantly recognizable by any modern Hollywood writer.
On some level Americans are British people time-displaced by a couple of generations.
"On some level Americans are British people time-displaced by a couple of generations."
At a certain level I don't think the UK ever recovered from WW1.
I think there is a lot of truth in that. It led to the death of patriotism (which is now considered embarrassing outside of sport), national purpose, institutions, empire, and coincided with the decline of heavy industry (which only happened much more recently in the US).
EDIT: Saying that, there is still a strong positive national identity. We're just too embarrassed to express it strongly (see patriotism), because of our fall from grace.
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Totally agree, WW1 is really the root cause of all of Britains problems.
Victory wasn't worth the cost. It would've been better to give the entire empire to the Germans to maintain peace. It'd be lost anyway in a short amount of time. Even forcing King George and Kaiser Wilhelm to marry would've been better for them than German Republicanism and the British Royals becoming Kardashians with crowns.
and that's a very good thing. I only recognise our nation from 1945 onwards, establishment of the welfare state, the idea the government cares for its people. The idea that victims matter. While it wasn't just overnight and was many years in the making, there was this element of cruelty, a survival of the fittest, seen in the victim blaming of street urchins with rickets in the early 20th century.
In 1966 there was an industrial disaster where a school was submerged in coal waste and 116 children died. The coal company offered £50 per child as compensation. There was a national outcry that marks the change in attitude and the compensation was increased tenfold to £500 (quite a lot back then). Did we see this in Flint with the polluted water, or in Ohio when that train derailed with all the chemicals?
There's something about having absolutely everything in the world and then pissing it all away in an enormous own goal of world wars that is extremely humbling and I'd like to think that plays a key part in the British psyche and I think its for the better.
My grandparents were the war generation I knew, having lived through the blitz, and all they wanted was to sit in the garden and have a nice cup of tea. They didn't want to be the best or were looking externally for validation. Just a nice sit down and a chin wag and I think that's a positive way to be, as opposed to what I imagine was the driving force of the Imperial era in always wanting more and trying to prove how "great" our nation should be. We proved how great we are in two of the most destructive wars in the world's history where the entirity of Europe lost. We suck.
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A large portion of the UK hasn't really accepted or internalized the fact that the British Empire is no longer a thing, and they're not the most powerful nation in the world, nor anywhere close to it.
(...And yes, that does sound like what it looks like is coming for the US, though it's not quite there yet.)
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In Japanese culture the failed hero is also revered, but in a solemn rather than comedic way.
Minamoto no Yoshitsune, Kusunoki Masashige, The Standing Death of Benkei, Saigo Takamori (the last samurai), the Kamikaze pilots, even Yukio Mishima...
What's interesting is that unlike the British fatalism, Japanese failed heroes are driven by duty and honor and tradition above all (even at the cost of themselves). To an outsider they are foolishly stubborn and unwilling to accept an imperfect or changing world. But in Japan that is something to be admired.
Many of those are not failed heroes. They are heroes who found success by dying honorably. "Death before dishonor" is something now known only to the criminal classes in the West, but was the norm for any feudal society (ie, Japan before being conquered by the US).
I find more modern American humour much easier to relate to, probably because it has veered more in this direction. A show like Always Sunny seems incredibly British-compatible because it's about terrible people getting their comeuppance, yet still being sympathetic despite their failings.
To go full British, you need characters like David Brent, who aren't sympathetic. They have no redeeming heartfelt goodbye. No-one is sad when they're gone, life moves on.
I would also say that the Always Sunny gang really aren't sympathetic either, but it's a para-social trick of having spent so much time "together" with them over so many episodes.
I suspect a new viewer coming to watch the latest series of IASIP would not see them as sympathetic. That's quite different to The Office (US), where a new viewer skipping to later seasons would not have the same opinions as a new viewer watching season 1, where Scott was much closer to a Brent type character, before he was redeemed and made more pitiable than awful over the seasons.
A more recent show to compare would be the UK vs the USA version of Ghosts. I like both shows but it is interesting how in the USA version all the main Ghosts are basically good people while the UK Ghosts have more serious flaws. And in the UK version, money is a constant problem while in the USA version it isn't nearly as big of a problem.
I'm not sure it's generally true that funny English characters aren't sympathetic.
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> I would also say that the Always Sunny gang really aren't sympathetic either, but it's a para-social trick of having spent so much time "together" with them over so many episodes.
I'd say they're charismatic and funny, but irredeemably bad people. It was refreshing that the show didn't shy away from that; in lots of comedies, the characters are basically psychopathic if taken literally, yet we're still supposed to like them and to see them as having hearts of gold if they make the occasional nice gesture. Always Sunny just leaned hard into portraying them as terrible people who were only 'likable' in the shallow sense needed to make the show fun to watch rather than an ordeal.
But I think the creators eventually lost sight of that -- I remember the big serious episode they did with Mac's dance, and I just find it baffling because in order to buy into the emotion we were evidently supposed to feel, we needed to take the characters seriously. And as soon as we take the characters seriously we are (or should be) overwhelmingly aware that we're watching people who have proven over the previous umpteen years to be irredeemable sociopaths, which kind of takes the edge off the heartwarming pride story.
I only watched the first few seasons of IASIP, but I don’t remember them being sympathetic characters at all. The whole concept, and what made it funny, I thought, is that they really are all terrible people who just drag each other down.
Yeah, the conceit of Seinfeld was that the characters were crappy, but you liked them because they were funny. But they didn't actually lean into that as hard as, say, the finale would suggest. All of the characters have something sympathetic that you can like about them, even if you can buy the thesis that they are unsympathetic broadly.
The genius of IASIP is to just lean all the way into this trope. The characters are never sympathetic and never redeem themselves. It's almost an experiment in whether you can make people feel sympathetic toward awful (but entertaining) characters just through long familiarity with them. (Yes.)
It would be disturbing to find out people sympathize with the IASIP characters.
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Yeah this does seem right. Maybe as our own empire has been collapsing, our culture has been edging toward the brits'.
No, nationalism and patriotism started to be embarrassing to the educated classes in the US after the USSR collapsed. We had "won", and slavish obedience and loyalty are really not consistent with the values of liberalism and democracy, and empire is quite uncomfortable if you believe in human rights and self-determination, etc. Our society has been changing because it's running into the contradictions of a culture designed to foster the unity necessary to win wars and dominate the world and an idealism that says all humanity is equal and freedom and self-determination are inherently good.
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Another great example of this is British SF, especially 20th century Doctor Who and Blake's 7, vs American SF such as Star Wars/Trek. The British version can be much bleaker. And of course Red Dwarf, which doesn't translate at all into American. (There was a single pilot episode)
Edit: someone downthread mentioned Limmy's Show and Absolutely, to which I would add Burnistoun. Scottish humor is even more grimly fatalist than English.
> The British version can be much bleaker.
I think this one is a miss. TOS is inspired by _british_ naval history. Loss, fear, and failure are central to the show. In this era of TV, leading characters still had large flaws. Kirk is frozen by choice, Spock believes himself superior, Bones is a bigoted luddite. We as viewers get to see the pain this causes and their efforts to improve. It's wholly different than modern US television including all other ST media. Meanwhile, 70s Dr. Who is packed with automatic weapons fire and explosions and the formula has always been the Doctor knows best. (I am a huge fan of all the mentioned shows.)
For a good, modern example we can look at Ghosts (suddenly renamed "Ghosts UK" on my streaming services) and Ghosts US. The adaptation is agonizing. They stripped the important aspects of the story but kept a boy scout, toy soldier, and an interracial marriage. I found that telling.
I'd argue that DS9 was pretty stand-outish as well.
Worf continues to grapple with honor and restoring his family name, but he's too stubborn and proud to "debase" himself to defeat his political opponents.
Sisko refuses to accept that his fate is preordained, leading to one disaster after another every time he tries to go his own way. His loyalties are also split because of his status as Emissary, straining his relationship with both sides - not to mention the cultural issues.
Odo's pride is his constant downfall, and despite arguing that he's an island unto himself, he's miserably lonely and constantly pining.
Kira can't get over the trauma of her past, and although she does mellow out as the series goes on, when she gets triggered she goes on a rampage.
Dax's past hosts leave her in constant conflict, and she's usually trying desperately to appear in control, even when it's obvious she is not. In Jadzia it's particularly bad due to her issues with Curzon and Joran.
Nog is desperate for adult approval, and is in constant search of ways to gain respect, sometimes to disastrous results.
> And of course Red Dwarf, which doesn't translate at all into American.
The American version is Futurama (agreeing with your point and with the cultural differences discussed throughout this thread.)
> Scottish humor is even more grimly fatalist than English.
Typified by Rab C Nesbitt. "An alcoholic Glaswegian who seeks unemployment as a lifestyle choice".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rab_C._Nesbitt
The American version of Shameless is in some ways bleaker than the original British version though.
Tbf, Star Trek TOS was also a sci fi show with an FX budget of two shoelaces and a pack of gum, and had to be carrier by great actors and writing, which it absolutely was. It's still my favourite Star Trek to this day.
I think the problem with how the US makes shows is that once something get successful, it gets a budget, which means the writing needs to appeal to a broader audience, which makes the whole thing blander.
I might be ignorant of US television pop culture, but I think, at least before the 90s, the UK produced much more memorable scifi shows (and even in the 90s, a lot of those US shows were secretly Canadian)
Does the Office have heroes? It turned out to translate very well into American.
That Red Dwarf pilot was actually fine except for the bizarre choice of making Lister a hunk. Rimmer was fine, Holly was great.
I think there is a divide, but it isn't the Atlantic ocean.
As I just commented above, I do think The Office fundamentally maintained this foundation of comedic failure, but I also think it wouldn't have worked as well for American audiences (and indeed, wasn't working as well in the first season because of this) if not for the much larger emphasis on the likable-character love story with Jim and Pam. Maybe the upshot is that you can have a British edge in American comedy, as long as you sand it down a bit with some other element.
I see a similar kind of dynamic in Parks and Recreation, which is maybe a more culturally native take on the same kind of show, where Leslie is also ultimately a comedic failure, but with the edge sanded down by a certain amount of (mostly fruitless) competence and especially a seemingly inexhaustible well of enthusiasm and optimism that can't help but infect most of the people around her.
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> That Red Dwarf pilot was actually fine except for the bizarre choice of making Lister a hunk
I doubt the character of Ace Rimmer [what a guy!] would have translated at all.
Jim is the hero of the US version of the Office
He doesn't succeed so much at work but he does in his personal life
Robert California and Dwight were the clear heroes of the American version of the office.
"Greetings"
The ending to Blake's 7 doesn't get any bleaker.
Red Dwarf was hilarious. Highly recommend the books, as they contain a lot of jokes that wouldn't translate to screen easily and would resonate with anyone who enjoys humour in the vein of Adams.
Also mustn't forget Derry Girls. Uncle Colm is a classic.
“So I says to the taller fella, I says… although there weren’t more than an inch between ‘em…”
Star Wars is not scifi. Star Trek has nothing to do with SW.
don't worry lots of americans can't stand the american humor either
a lot of stuff here keeps existing because of the weird ouroboros of it being popular so people make more of it so it stays popular. but if other things were made and thrust on the mainstream instead they could easily be popular also.
Yes, definitely a culture thing. I had a very difficult time finding most British humor funny when I was younger, but my personality combination of loving humor and comedy and also being incredibly interested in people, drove me to want to understand why British humor was funny when most of the time it just seemed so absurd.
It was a multi-decade path so it's very difficult to identify progression points, but slowly through exposure I began to "get it" and now I adore British comedy and humor. I still adore American comedy and humor as well, but the more exposure to the culture I got, the more I understood it.
Obviously that's just anecdotal, but I personally find it strong evidence that the humor divide is indeed cultural. The more similar cultures are to begin with, the easier the leap is.
To me the most exciting part of this is that it means there are thousands of other cultures on this planet that have humor that I have not unlocked yet. Someday I hope to!
Edit: for a very fascinating example of differences, I love comparing the UK version of the office to the US version of the office. To many Americans, David Brent mostly just came off mean and an asshole, even a poisonous one, whereas Michael Scott comes off as eccentric and clueless and unable to read the room, but overall a mostly good guy. That perception makes David Brent kind of hateable whereas Michael Scott kind of lovable.
Another fascinating point of comparison is the UK version of ghosts, versus the US version of ghosts. I'll leave comparisons and contrasts on those to others as I haven't watched all of the UK version of ghosts yet. I'd be fascinated to hear what others think of that, and the office for that matter.
It's the opposite for me - the 'you can't change anything, the world sucks, the best you can do is endure and be snarky about it' attitude appealed a lot more to me when I was younger.
I watched both versions of Ghosts, and found them to be quite similar honestly. The US version can be a little more slapstick and a little more goofy, but that's about it.
David Brent is poisonous, and indeed hatable. The point of the British version of the show is not that he's more tolerable or likeable to the British. If anything it's more pointed how awful he is this side of the water, given the preponderance of bosses exactly like this. What makes the show work in the UK (and Ireland), is a greater cultural willingness to see the worst aspects of reality reflected in entertainment. Versus the focus on escapism in even the most grim US television - i.e.: Tony Soprano is a monster, but he also has charisma and glamour. Walter White is dying and becoming more and more amoral, but he also goes from being a dork to a badass. Both characters are utter glamorisations of what their real life counterparts would be like. Along with the surrealism there's a genuine existentialism to the darkest of UK comedy - from early Alan Partridge to Nighty Night. An actual interest in examining the nature of cruelty and suffering.
> Versus the focus on escapism in even the most grim US television
Interesting observation, thank you! Lot to noodle on there :-)
> i.e.: Tony Soprano is a monster, but he also has charisma and glamour. Walter White is dying and becoming more and more amoral, but he also goes from being a dork to a badass. Both characters are utter glamorisations of what their real life counterparts would be like.
I'm not actually disagreeing with you, but I wonder how you think you know this to be true?
As a Brit, I generally prefer American Humour when it comes to comedy. My favourite films are Happy Gilmore and Tropic Thunder. A lot of British Humour is around that everything is crap, it gets tiresome after a while.
Very interesting! Except I noted that he referred to David Brent from The Office, and we have a direct corollary to that character, of course, in Michael Scott from The Office. They really didn't change the formula for American audiences, he's absolutely still a comedic failure. Starting in the second season, he becomes a bit more of a lovable comedic failure, but the basic point of the character stands. And he is beloved by American audiences!
So the exact opposite of David Brent. As the show goes on you don't discover a single thing to make you like him.
This is true of the Michael Scott character in the first season (which follows the same plot points as the British version).
And even in the next few seasons, the core run of the show, he's only a bit more lovable. He's still pretty bad!
But certainly as they went further and further along he became more and more of a lovable doofus, very unlike David Brent.
I also really enjoyed After Life (with Ricky Gervais). I wouldn't call him a hero, but then again maybe I would. So honest, so pissed off, so intelligent.
Sick Note with Rupert Grint, same thing. Brilliant.
I'm currently reading the Bobbiverse series. Sure the guy is sort of a hero. But he is also an antihero forced to do heroic things, while he just wants to geek out and enjoy his coffee while making star trek references.
I'm not British btw.
> I find American humour so hard to relate to but I guess it's just a culture thing
These kind of comments always puzzle me. Hollywood makes stuff for the entire world, not just for a domestic audience.
Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, pretty much any big sitcom you can name is in syndication in most countries around the world, because of how relatable it is.
It's often not sophisticated, and can be quite shallow (See Two and a half men or Big Bang theory), but it being hard to relate to is unlikely to be an issue.
Don't underestimate the power of big media corporations to push a world view. When I was a kid in NZ, British culture was impressed on us via the media. These days, there's more American influence. I don't think that's to do with the inherent quality of those cultures.
Of course not. But I think the US is unique in having it's shows be syndicated to such an extent globally, that isn't true for most other countries even English speaking ones. I assume that feeds back to them having that in mind and trying to please the lowest common denominator.
As an American I'm a huge fan of HHGG and Rowan Atkinson (not just his Bean character). I'm also a huge fan of Conan O'Brien and his Harvard generation's work for The Simpsons. Would be far ahead of Adams' time. Though while I find them _okay_ I never laughed so hard that my face and stomach hurt from laughter when watching Monty Python anything, not even Black Adder. For other American comedy what made me really, really laugh so hard was Kenan & Kel and The Lonely Island's work for SNL.
I've tried to find something as funny as HHGG for so long that I've read P.G. Wodehouse as Adam's main inspiration. Also watched Fry & Laurey. I guess Sacha Cohen as British humour? Since he's Cambridge Highlights alum after all. Found his works extremely hilarious though the parody of racism was disgusting.
Here is Conan's best (natural) performance roasting the Google CEO and gOogLers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7TwqpWiY5s
As an older American, I’ve always found British humor of the Monty Python type hilarious.
Unfortunately, I haven’t found a lot of newer material of this type. I may have to look harder.
What do you mean by "this type"?
The sketch show format has been pretty much entirely killed off by TikTok & Instagram.
It's very hard to do a sketch that hasn't already been done on TikTok with a tiny fraction of the budget.
Absurdist humour still exists everywhere, it's less popular than either Python in the 70's / 80's, or the flash era in the 2000s, but it's still everywhere, but I'd also wager it is not to your taste.
At the risk of offending just about everyone, I would suggest that something like "Skibidi Toilet" is just this generation's badger-badger-mushroom, which in turn was that generations' "Bring me a shrubbery!".
Sketch shows in particular don't work well for TV in this era. Mitchell and Webb tried hard to return with one this year and it just fell flat, the jokes feel telegraphed from a mile-away, taking a minute to get to a punchline in a era when the same jokes are told in a 10 second short.
The downside of the tiktok/insta model, is that the more successful people on Insta end up just re-telling their one good joke over and over. ( Or indeed, re-recording someone else's one good joke. ).
Not that sketch shows didn't also repeat jokes sometimes, but they could at least play around with a punchline in unexpected ways, or have callbacks and nods to earlier sketches in a series. That kind of non-continuity doesn't work when you don't know which tiktoks will go viral, or which order your audience will see them in, as the algorithm dictates all.
I think there's something to this. But I'd also say the reason it feels so dead is because consumed media has shattered into a million pieces. With the death of broadcast TV and somewhat the death of movies, it's actually getting increasingly harder to find shows with common consumption.
The reason "Bring me a shrubbery" is funny and why people endlessly quoted Holy Grail is because almost everyone in the US watched Monte python at one point or another. Part of what made people do those quotes is the fact that regardless audience, you know you'll get a laugh because they too know the context for the phrase.
I don't think there's a single piece of media like that. Not at least in the last 10 years. I mean, funnily, I think you've nailed Skibidi as a rare exception, at least for the younger generations.
If you are saying sketch shows like "Thank God You're Here" "Fast & Loose" and "Who's Line is it Anyway" are being killed off by short/low budget replacements on TikTok, we must be living in different worlds.
I haven't seen anything like them on TikTok and I'm on there enough to have noticed. Maybe you're talking about the dumb alien short videos of them telling a joke to each other and snickering, that doesn't compare.
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> I would suggest that something like "Skibidi Toilet" is just this generation's badger-badger-mushroom
Beyond the first minute or two, I'd not class Skibidi Toilet as any kind of humor. It's a serialized silent (late-era-style silent with synced foley but no dialog) sci-fi action war epic told without intertitles.
As in surreal British sketch comedy? You'd like
- The Goon Show (it's this 1950s radio serial that inspired the Pythons... it's surprising how many tropes the Pythons borrowed from it)
- The Goodies
- The Kenny Everett Television Show
- Absolutely!
- The Mighty Boosh / Unnatural Acts / Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy
- Vic Reeves' Big Night Out / The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer / Bang Bang, It's Reeves and Mortimer
- Big Train
- The League of Gentlemen
- On the Hour / The Day Today / Brass Eye
- Jam / Blue Jam
- The Armando Iannucci Shows
- Limmy's Show
Also, to throw in a US programme, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson was pretty good
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie
with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry
Can we fit in 'Not the nine O'clock news'?
And what about 'Spitting Image'?
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> The Goon Show
I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Harry Secombe just a couple years before he died. He was quite surprised to run into an American who knew who he was. Most American's only know Peter Sellers.
I feel like Jam/Blue Jam was about the zenith of British surreal and nihilistic comedy.
I was looking for I Think You Should Leave, which I think is great. But it might be the exception that proves the rule, at least for newish shows in the US.
Key and Peele and Chappelle's Show were also this kind of show, but are pretty old now.
Also:
- Monkey Dust
- The Fast Show
Thank you!
As a fellow older American who loves Monty Python, the more modern British shows I've enjoyed the most were Green Wing, League of Gentlemen, Peep Show, and Doc Martin. Of those, League of Gentlemen and Green Wing have the most Python-like absurdity, while Doc Martin has the most subtle humor. Peep Show is hilarious, but the most crass humor of those listed, although League of Gentlemen doesn't shy away from crassness either.
If you're a gamer, pick up Thank Goodness You're Here!