The demise of the single play slot is a crying shame. The Wednesday Play and Play for Today were great strands, where the likes of Mike Leigh, Alan Bleasedale and Dennis Potter cut their teeth, and directord like Stephen Frears learned their craft. And they were a damn sight cheaper to make than Our Friends in the North or GormanfuckingGhast.

>The demise of the single play slot is a crying shame. The Wednesday Play and Play for Today were great strands, where the likes of Mike Leigh, Alan Bleasedale and Dennis Potter cut their teeth, and directord like Stephen Frears learned their craft. And they were a damn sight cheaper to make than Our Friends in the North or GormanfuckingGhast.

And had very few fucking ex soap actors in them. They were written for the sake of telling a story. Not paying some ex-Easteneders mortgage.

Star-led market forces (also applying to theatre) vs Reithian public service broadcasting ("telling people what they didn't know they knew" - Potter, 1993). Discuss.

This came up in relation to that new Right Size / Kenneth Branagh play in the West End about Morecambe & Wise.

Although I'd love to see it (and have enjoyed The Right Size's stuff before), I can't help feeling it's basically Mama Mia for the Hampstead set. Not really what cutting edge theatre should be about (reheating well loved routines).

"Giving people what they want" vs "Giving people what they didn't know they wanted". It's a big problem in the current state of the media, and the only part of the "it used to be better it did" debate in which I fall firmly in the "yes it did" camp.

More drama should be shot on video. And not ruined by FRV :-) Have you *seen* Grange Hill recently? It doesn't even look like a school any more.

>Not really what cutting edge theatre should be about (reheating well loved routines).

Does it pretend to be cutting-edge theatre? It is on at the West End.

>"Giving people what they want" vs "Giving people what they didn't know they wanted".

The problem is that people treat this as a 'versus' thing, when it shouldn't be. There is, and should be, room for both in all media.

Remember - what some people want *is* to see more of what they didn't knew they wanted.

The "it did used to be better it did" is better described as "I did used to be younger when I forged my tastes, I did".

Mostly, I agree with you. There's a lot of nostalgia masquerading as fact in arguments about "declining standards". But the only part of the "did used to be better it did" argument that really holds water is producers' increasing desire to respond to what people already want (called "Target marketing" or "knowing your market" by wankers earning more money than me), rather than what they don't know they want. (The Reithian theory of entertainment.)

Oliver Postgate's mantra "You've got to make them work. Stretch the buggers" was coined in regard to children, but it applies to adults to. In the interests of hitting markets head on, more and more time is spent ensuring programmes, plays, shows, songs will not break from formula, not surprise or shock. The great stuff is the stuff that breaks through this fine net.

>Remember - what some people want *is* to see more of what they didn't knew they wanted.

If that's what they want, and they know that, then how can it be what they don't know they want?

>Mostly, I agree with you. There's a lot of nostalgia masquerading as fact in arguments about "declining standards".

See the 'Morris' thread above. When TDT and OTH first came on air they were great. So many people thought so that we now have hundreds of sub-Morris types trotting out similar neologisms and animal whimsy. Morris is now one of them. Nobody lost it - Morris was only better because we were younger and hadn't seen anyone like that before. If I was 14 and I saw 'Jam', I would have thought it was spectacular.

>producers' increasing desire to respond to what people already want (called "Target marketing" or "knowing your market" by wankers earning more money than me), rather than what they don't know they want.

Despite what knee-jerkers think, this is the opposite of the advertising industry. We... erm.. I mean *they* are trying to get people to buy things that they don't know they want yet - that's exactly what advertising is supposed to do. Target marketing is about identifying a *likely* audience who aren't buying your product, and telling them that they should. This is the Reithian model in commercial clothes.

The problem with the 'play-it-safe' approach of giving the public more of what they like is that you almost always get it wrong.

>In the interests of hitting markets head on, more and more time is spent ensuring programmes, plays, shows, songs will not break from formula, not surprise or shock.

Which is the opposite of advertising - we have to break from formula to get noticed. Honestly - the constant demonising of ad-men as coke-addled pony-tailed wankers is not only out of date, it is also only about 60% right.

Oh - and Peter O? Shut up.

Okay.

>See the 'Morris' thread above. When TDT and OTH first came on air they were great. So many people thought so that we now have hundreds of sub-Morris types trotting out similar neologisms and animal whimsy. Morris is now one of them. Nobody lost it - Morris was only better because we were younger and hadn't seen anyone like that before.

Nobody's blinded by rose-tinted nostalgia - I can listen to an old Morris GLR show from 1990 (one I'd never heard before) and find myself falling off the sofa in hysterics. This simply doesn't happen anymore.

OTH and TDT were considered great because they *were* great. Aim for the stars, not the fucking Onion.

>When TDT and OTH first came on air they were great. So many people thought so that we now have hundreds of sub-Morris types trotting out similar neologisms and animal whimsy. Morris is now one of them. Nobody lost it - Morris was only better because we were younger and hadn't seen anyone like that before. If I was 14 and I saw 'Jam', I would have thought it was spectacular.

Sorry, but this is utter nonce sense. You cannot compare TDT, OTH and BE to anything we have today - they're on a different planet.

Back then we had Morris turning out quality stuff, and doing it for the fun of it. Today we have Dom Joly selling his formulaic work and positioning himself as a 'comedy genius' by plagiarising Morris.

And Morris' latest work is .not. as good as it was, presumably because he's done his 'media terrorism' stuff to death and is bored of it. Perhaps you are too?

>Sorry, but this is utter nonce sense.

Ah.. a 'quoter' - great.

>You cannot compare TDT, OTH and BE to anything we have today - they're on a different planet.

What a pointless position - this is subjective and not worth arguing with. I tend to agree - TDT, OTH and BE were (and are) great. As Mike said, they're still funny and they were funny then.

>Today we have Dom Joly selling his formulaic work and positioning himself as a 'comedy genius'

I think Dom Joly is rubbish, but I would never accuse him of positioning himself as a 'comedy genius'.

>by plagiarising Morris.

A bit. But also adding some of his own ideas in. That are rubbish.

But then so are the public-bothering bits of Morris' work.

>And Morris' latest work is .not. as good as it was, presumably because he's done his 'media terrorism' stuff to death and is bored of it.

This is where you start talking out of the side of your neck. Morris is doing stuff that is broadly identical to what he was doing in the early 90s - as people have already pointed out elsewhere. But it is no longer fresh - it's been diluted by becoming formulaic and by him using the same tricks he always has.

>Perhaps you are too?

I am. I'm sick to my back teeth of neologisms - they're everywhere and they are no longer very funny. TV Go Home is rife with them - and this is the main reason I don't like it, despite some nice ideas from time to time.

Jam (and Blue Jam) were also formulaic after a short period of invention. BES was also the same jokes and style repeated over an ostensibly different topic. Chris Morris has used up all his jokes, and while they were great jokes at one point, they haven't changed. He has ossified, possibly as a consequence of adulation.

TDT, OTH and BE were mainly fantastic, as were the first two series of Blue Jam. The Radio 1 shows are largely great. But he's still doing the same sort of thing - that's the problem.

I think I'm being very unclear, but I'm trying to show that it's not nostalgia that is the problem.

The format may have been done to death, but the material's still weaker. The point is that too may people are over-forgiving about lacklustre, will-this-do? material. Mainly because they want to break into the industry and have a lot to gain from standards being lowered.

OTH and TDT towered high above comedy fans, saying '*This* is how good comedy can be - either equal it of fuck off'. We need more of that attitude.

>
>>See the 'Morris' thread above. When TDT and OTH first came on air they were great. So many people thought so that we now have hundreds of sub-Morris types trotting out similar neologisms and animal whimsy. Morris is now one of them. Nobody lost it - Morris was only better because we were younger and hadn't seen anyone like that before.
>
>Nobody's blinded by rose-tinted nostalgia - I can listen to an old Morris GLR show from 1990 (one I'd never heard before) and find myself falling off the sofa in hysterics. This simply doesn't happen anymore.
>
>OTH and TDT were considered great because they *were* great. Aim for the stars, not the fucking Onion.

If everything's so fucking shit these days and is never going to be as good as it was in "your day" then why don't you just fucking kill yourself and save the rest of us having to read your self-satisfied whinging, you miserable fucking cunt.

>OTH and TDT towered high above comedy fans, saying '*This* is how good comedy can be - either equal it of fuck off'. We need more of that attitude.

Isn't that what killed it? Isolating it's viewers I mean. Becoming too niche.

1. Nothing "killed it". The people involved (rightly) simply thought they'd taken the idea as far as they could (not that it stopped others trying to pick it up).

2. I don't agree with Mike's comment for the simple reason that whenever I watch my TDT videos I always spot fat, or misconceived or just outright unfunny material. But - as I've said probably 17 times before - there is so much good stuff in there that I can accept that, same with Python, Fry&Laurie... every other great show. None of which have the attitude Mike seems to detect. But that isn't to say they are encouraging chancers to wade in either. The mood is rather that they are trying the best they can, and sometimes it doesn't quite work out, but they keep trying - unlike various lazy shows where they get one good idea out and then complacently fail to keep up with it. Pick your own example.

Writing that has made me think of the "Morris" thread (was it?) in which someone argues that repeated viewings have made the fans more accepting of the old stuff, to the detriment of anything new he might do. It's certainly true that I become less bothered by the flab in TDT each time I see it, but I still say BES was a shoddy piece of goods.

"If everything's so fucking shit these days and is never going to be as good as it was in "your day" then why don't you just fucking kill yourself and save the rest of us having to read your self-satisfied whinging, you miserable fucking cunt."

If you don't like fucking whinging cunts why don't just kill yourself and save us having to read your anonymous attacks on them?

>If everything's so fucking shit these days and is never going to be as good as it was in "your day" then why don't you just fucking kill yourself and save the rest of us having to read your self-satisfied whinging, you miserable fucking cunt.

Because it's my comedy too.
>

>If everything's so fucking shit these days and is never going to be as good as it was in "your day" then why don't you just fucking kill yourself and save the rest of us having to read your self-satisfied whinging, you miserable fucking cunt.

good one! why bother debating comedy at all since it's all so shite. lets just blindly accept whatever we're given and stop worrying about whether it's actually funny or not.

>
>Because it's my comedy too.
>>

Whoever told you that deserves a slap about the mush, the precious sod.

Its not yours or his or hers, its theirs. But of course, you still have every right to moan about it, just don't get too attached to it, if only for the sake of your own health.

>
>not the fucking Onion.

huh?

>>
>>not the fucking Onion.
>
>huh?

I second that "huh." Leave the Onion out of it. It's a news parody, but if you think it's a Morris rip off, maybe it's time to actually read it.

I think the point was that The Onion isn't very funny.

Which is true. It tends to drag a single mediocre idea out across an entire article, and they're too fond of the "mundane situation as headline news" angle.

>>
>>not the fucking Onion.
>
>huh?
>

the point is that this new morris site is an Onion rip off, and not a very good one.

>>>
>>>not the fucking Onion.
>>
>>huh?
>>
>
>the point is that this new morris site is an Onion rip off, and not a very good one.
>
>

Was the onion around in 1993?

Yes the Onion is good but like almost all American comedy there is no personal touch to it, I always get the impression of a huge team of comedy robots sat behind a big oak oval desk telling each other how funny they are then joining together the dots.

Blah, although a lot of comedy I like is constructed in this manor I find it slightly wrong, I'm all for teams of writers getting together and shearing their thoughts but with the onion I get this shitty image of a “friends” like team, only in it for the money.

They started as a tiny local community newspaper in the American backwoods, taking ads from small firms to pay for the paper.

Hardly corporate whores, really.

And it's still a lot of the same guys who started it who do the site now. Existing on the web allows you to puff yourself up to look bigger and swankier than you are, but I don't seriously think The Onion's writers meetings are as money-driven or cynically demographic chasing as the ones at the Friends studio might be.

>They started as a tiny local community newspaper in the American backwoods, taking ads from small firms to pay for the paper.
>
>Hardly corporate whores, really.


If the onion has kept that kind of integrity then all the power to them. What year was their first publication?


>Existing on the web allows you to puff yourself up to look bigger and swankier than you are,

That's why I'm a 49 year old gardener form Axebridge.

The Onion and Morris are mainly unrelated parts of the same movement, one that sprang up simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. Morris' attitude toward the media and his working methods were alraedy in place before the Onion appeared.(Actually, the Onion began in 1988, but the paper as we today know it truly took off in 1995)
The Onion is still probably unaware of Morris' existence. A New Yorker profile of the paper revealed that no one had even heard of Private Eye until recently. Their admitted main influences are Letterman and Monty Python. Anyone who claims that either rips off the other is a raging bullshitter.
On the website: in many ways it seems more like a Morris pastiche than Morris himself, the work of an occasionally inspired fan. Much of the material would indeed work better in TV format--so if this is Morris (and what real proof is there?) all he's done is slap TV ideas onto a website.
I'd still defend BES till my dying day (Even when up against sacred cows like TDT)as a work of craftsmanship equivalent to the four best BEs (and vastly better than the 2 worst) but I'd be dispappinted if he returned to the format again. What Morris needs is a sea-change--an about-face of material, since his apporoach is set anyway.
Nobody expected Cleese would leave Python and later triumph with a sitcom set in a hotel (sounds like a boring concept), and if Morris is to avoid turning into a parody of himself, he needs to make a similar break with what he's done, and strike out into another direction.
I recently saw "Waking Life," and in the midst of the film I wrote on my pad an incredibly stupid and embarassing note: "new genre: dream comedy." The words themselves mean nothing, but what I'm trying to say is that Morris' more reality-disconnected side is perfect for the atmosphere and mood of celluloid, and they're what he might consider next. His media-terrorist role has for now run its course--it's time for the unearthly side to shine in a different, more disciplined medium. I'm not sugesting a two hour version of Blue Jam, rather something in the mode of Bunuel or Lynch.

Note on TDT: I don't mean to suggest BES is superior--it just doesn't have those damned, dry, longeurs. At least when BES had a bad idea, it went by more quickly. This doesn't mean that I think TDt is anything less than magnificent, it's just that my pre-viewing expectations were heightened by what was unmistakably nostalgia of boardmembers. It may have also been that I saw TDT after I'd already seen all the BEs.

>and if Morris is to avoid turning into a parody of himself, he needs to make a similar break with what he's done, and strike out into another direction.

Surely that's what he was doing with Blue Jam? The worry for me with BES is not necessarily its strengths and weaknesses (both have been discussed to death here) but that it represented a step backwards, almost a statement that 'Jam' was a total failure rather than a noble attempt.

>Surely that's what he was doing with Blue >Jam?

I have to admit that I haven't yet seen Blue Jam, though I wait for my video to be converted.Who knows, I might see it and start rabidly defending the damn thing.

>The worry for me with BES is...that it >represented a step backwards, almost a >statement that 'Jam' was a total failure >rather than a noble attempt.

That's a very interesting statement. Most of what I've heard on the board suggested that the series was a dud, and not so much of an honorable experiment. What was the British media's response to the series anyway? I've only come across two reviews--a positive one in New Statesman and positive refernece in "film Comment" that referred to Morris as "the Damien Hirst of British comedy."
And what exactly convinced Morris to return to the Brass Eye format anyway? The day has surely come for somebody to write a lengthy account detailing the gestation, creation and reception of the shows. At the very least they have validity as cultural history.
If Morris has basically exhausted the possibilities of Tv and radio that apply toward his atlent, then I'd say that film is the one place left to go that he's never explored. It's a traditional obligation anyway, it feels appropriate that he should--Peter Cook's talents were more suited to TV than movies, but he still managed to squeeze "Bedazzled" out of the format--surely Morris could pull of at least one movie of equivalent quality. What else is there left to do?
((He's done enough radio anyway.)

yes it probably was better, because there was less of it. and as stephen fry observed when removing olivier pierre's silver cutlery and replacing it with a huge sack of plastic coffee stirrers, 'it may be complete crap, but at least you've got the choice.'

the proliferation of any creative medium means more choice, more competition (etc ad nauseam) but guarantees no greater quality threshold. there you go, one of the paradoxes of the free bloody market. tough shit. telelvision will never be what it was in the 1960s because there were fewer people doing it then. bazalgette is one of the new tv millionaires - i wouldn't expect him to be anything other than an approbator of 21st century television.

as for morris, it's about time this argument (he was better then, a was better than b, yawn) either advanced itself to a decent argument (which probably won't happen, because it's only going to end up as a lot of subjective yeas or neighs) or wound itself up. morris made me laugh when i first heard him on radio one, and he still makes me laugh now. there's my subjective yea.

potter came closer than any other commentator i've read to understanding the decline of television (even though he himself was responsible for some shameless dross towards the end of his career) - see his reith lecture.

let's come back to this argument in ten years' time when bbc1 is a minority channel stuffed full of adverts, like news 24 is already (distressingly, full of adverts for itself, like every other news channel).

there used to be a difference between entertainment and broadcasting...

j xxx

>The worry for me with BES is not necessarily its strengths and weaknesses (both have been discussed to death here) but that it represented a step backwards, almost a statement that 'Jam' was a total failure rather than a noble attempt.

Surely the point with BES is that he had something he wanted to put across that fitted perfectly with the style of Brass Eye, which is why he went back to it.

Something can make you laugh a few times but still be essentially rubbish. There are many funny lines in I'm Alan Partridge, for example. Like I say, it's all about the wider picture.

>potter came closer than any other commentator i've read to understanding the decline of television (even though he himself was responsible for some shameless dross towards the end of his career) - see his reith lecture.

MacTaggart lecture actually. Edinburgh festival, August 1993. Alan Bleasdale and Tony Garnett said much the same thing in subsequent lectures.

>
>>Surely that's what he was doing with Blue >Jam?
>
>I have to admit that I haven't yet seen Blue Jam, though I wait for my video to be converted.Who knows, I might see it and start rabidly defending the damn thing.
>
>>The worry for me with BES is...that it >represented a step backwards, almost a >statement that 'Jam' was a total failure >rather than a noble attempt.
>
>That's a very interesting statement. Most of what I've heard on the board suggested that the series was a dud, and not so much of an honorable experiment. What was the British media's response to the series anyway?

As discussed somewhere on SOTCAA, the general response was uncritically positive - usually rambling about how god-like Morris was and that Jam was the only thing worth watching, ever, etc. To clarify my last point, if Morris's material could be crudely characterised as becoming more challenging and innovative with each 'project', then my concern about BES was that it represented an about-turn in the other direction, an admission of defeat.

>Something can make you laugh a few times but still be essentially rubbish. There are many funny lines in I'm Alan Partridge, for example. Like I say, it's all about the wider picture.

With a few honourable, towering exceptions, most comedy makes me "laugh a couple of times". To me that's what I expect, what it's supposed to do. I'm prepared for there to be perfect, once in a decade, can't-breathe-for-laughing comedy, and also pleasant, a few good-laughs-per-show comedy.

I don't think that's sloppy or an example of intolerably low standards, that's just realistic. It has always been this way. A Fawlty Towers and a Man About The House sharing the schedules. One doesn't negate the other just because it towers above it. They co-exist.

To take the point further, I can't believe even you would say that IAP was unjustifiable, while Man About The House was fine. They're both decent enough shows, with occasional flashes of warmth, wit and invention. IAP came from a team of whom you expected more, but it's still a perfectly good comedy show, with all the requisite laughs. Your standards are incredibly high, which is admirable, but comedy is basically just about making people laugh, and IAP, as you said, did make you laugh. It did its job better than many other programmes. Apart from high expectations dashed or a preciousness felt towards a well-loved character, I can't then see why it's such a SOTCAA bete noire. Perhaps I just don't see your wider picture.

There's enough bad comedy that is not only badly intentioned but lacks even the requisite half-dozen laughs (Coogan's in one now), without encouraging people to be mortally offended by anything that fails to scale the heights of the rare giants.

Comedy should be greater than the sum of its parts though. I can find unfunny bits in Python/TDT/whatever, just like I can find funny bits in IAP. What matters to me is the whole, the feeling/atmos I get from a show. The BES was a classic example of a show being *less* than the sum of its parts.

mike - much as i adore you (and i do, you know that: i wouldn't have lent you the python scripts otherwise) and as much as i adore your site, i feel hidebound to ask you the following (hope you won't mind.)

when you're someone who's written comedy, you get an (in my view - opinions welcome) overall balance of view from thinking the idea through: how did we arrive at that? how many left turns did we make? how original and surprising is this?

brasseye special tackled a soddingly difficult subject with as many twists of the imagination as it could muster. i can appreciate it so much more three dimensionally from having scribbled a smattering of comedy in my time. if you haven't ever written comedy, you do get that, i presume? i'm crediting you with the intelligence i know you have, by the way.

brasseye special looked odd, to my mind, in the most subjective frame of mind i can managed, because it had a semi-blue-jam-like feel: a bit relaxed, a bit leisurely, a bit confident without being showy and arrogant. you must have picked that up, surely? or is it just me?

it didn't look like a brass eye, on the other hand. it looked like a one-off (which, i guess, it was) but it didn't disappoint me because (a) i thought about the stupid fits of giggles the guys would have had writing it - cf 'this is the one thing we didn't want to happen' - arguably the funniest punchline in any brass eye and (b) it made me laugh and surprised me, because it didn't remotely look like any of the others. and i like being surprised. i rely on chris morris, primal scream, ricky jay, bjork, terry gilliam et al to do the same, and i worship them for it.

someone on here has advanced this argument more eloquently than i, i'm sure, so apologies to he/she. blah blah blah.

ps. radiator head child - you consistently make me giggle. not a come on (pervs), not an arslikhan (private eyers), just an observation (my therapist).

pps. apologies, halo - mactaggart. quite right. i stand corrected.

>ps. radiator head child - you consistently make me giggle.

Hazeley, RHC has shaved his beard off, by the way, if that affects your view of the man. Just keeping you up to date.

>With a few honourable, towering exceptions, most comedy makes me "laugh a couple of times". To me that's what I expect, what it's supposed to do. I'm prepared for there to be perfect, once in a decade, can't-breathe-for-laughing comedy, and also pleasant, a few good-laughs-per-show comedy.

Aim for the whites of their sandals.

>I don't think that's sloppy or an example of intolerably low standards, that's just realistic.

It shouldn't be realistic to expect to have one's intelligence insulted by television though.

>It has always been this way. A Fawlty Towers and a Man About The House sharing the schedules. One doesn't negate the other just because it towers above it. They co-exist.

They used to. They existed in a world which allowed for both. Our argument (covered in the 'Elitism' article) is that if bad television is allowed to occupy the middle ground (something for 'everyone') then it really doesn't bode well - things are going to sink even further into the mire.

The best comedy attitude in the world has always reacted to the pap by attempting to out-do it - to ultimately kill rubbish in its tracks. At the moment there are far too many people cynically emulating what's accepted as a 'success' ("American-style sitcom"; "British version of The Onion", etc) as a shortcut. The intentions - and thus the attitude - are flawed from the outset.

But the sub-Bazalgette argument you're presenting really isn't going to influence the people who 'aim for the stars' - it's more likely to assure the talentless or cynical that they're justified in making dross (and allow them to develop their excuses more quickly).

>To take the point further, I can't believe even you would say that IAP was unjustifiable, while Man About The House was fine. They're both decent enough shows, with occasional flashes of warmth, wit and invention. IAP came from a team of whom you expected more, but it's still a perfectly good comedy show, with all the requisite laughs.

No. Had IAP been received by the media / fans simply as a 'decent enough show' then it wouldn't have annoyed us nearly as much. But the fact that everyone decided it was the most fantastic thing ever broadcast (and so much better than anything that team did before) really worried us.

>Your standards are incredibly high, which is admirable

See how I wince at your insincerity.

>but comedy is basically just about making people laugh

*Rinnng*. Comedy cliché. Lose ten points.

>and IAP, as you said, did make you laugh. It did its job better than many other programmes.

*Rinnnngg*. Comedy cliche - "Well, at least it's better than most things on at the moment". What kind of argument is that exactly? It's just desperation. "Cold today innit" / "Well at least it's not pissing down". Doesn't stop it from being cold.

>Apart from high expectations dashed or a preciousness felt towards a well-loved character, I can't then see why it's such a SOTCAA bete noire.

Obviously not. Neither of the above assumptions are correct. Realistic expectations dashed, preciousness felt towards what was possible - and evidently avoided, etc.

>Perhaps I just don't see your wider picture.

Perhaps you should. Seriously. Perhaps you should take another look at stuff like Big Brother and note how it's affecting television as a whole instead of having chummy parties and saying "Well, it's all in fun", making the selfish best of a situation which really isn't very nice. Perhaps you should wonder why Partridge suddenly went from being an attack on media stupidity to a snide media jibe at 'losers' within the industry. Maybe you should stop turning Endemol's corporate excuses into 'considered media overview' and get some reality down your neck. Try it. It's delicious.

>There's enough bad comedy that is not only badly intentioned but lacks even the requisite half-dozen laughs

Stop that. There is no "requisite half-dozen laughs" rule. It really shouldn't happen like that. The only message you get from the above is "Lower Your Standards And You'll Enjoy Shit". And, sadly, that's the same overall message we're getting from the media at the moment.

>(Coogan's in one now)

Is he? Thanks for the tip-off. Perhaps we should put an article about it on the site. :)

>without encouraging people to be mortally offended by anything that fails to scale the heights of the rare giants.

*Rinnnngg*. *Rinnnngg*. *Rinnnngg*. *Cuckoo*. *Rinnnngg*. *Cymbal Crash*. *Birds Tweet*. *Rinnnngg*. *Radiophonic Stomach*, etc.

Once again you're reducing it to mere shows and laffs. We're asking people to look twice at a media which stifles creativity and encourages populist pap in a way it never used to, when everything was more balanced, when there was more room for experimentation, when people didn't panic that "the plebs won't get it". Seriously, can you really not see that? The system is screwed. Even the best comedy writers are having to compromise their material and their personal outlook to stay in work. People like Bazalgette are cashing in on a sorry si

People like Bazalgette are cashing in on a sorry situation. And people like you are latently assisting him by essentially saying "Well, that's the way it is. Make the best of it." That's what's so offensive.

Bazalgette would love all this. It would bring a fond avuncular tear to his self-serving eye.

I know your point of view. I've read and enjoyed the site. I understand your stance, but I don't think you're necessarily right.

There's something about the "it's all going to hell in a handbasket" mentality that sets comedy alarm bells ringing in my mind, just as my comments do to you. "It's all going horribly wrong" is a Casandara warning that's been constantly expressed at every point in history, in theatre, comedy, art, music, with the implication that all greatness is in the past, when people cared more and "poets they studied rules of verse"... and it's never turned out to be true. The art still turns up, gets enjoyed, filtered, rejected, accepted, and joins the canon of greats / failures over time.

I acknowledge the pernicious effects of marketing, branding, stranding, targetting, but I don't think the obstructions to creative output these days are any worse than the (different) obstructions there were in the past. There's always someone (old guard, family values campaigners, target marketeers) telling creatives what they can and can't do. The modern equivalent seems more insidious because it pretends to be on the creatives' side, not a pantomime villain berating them from outside, but it's no different than John Cleese's nemeses saying "They won't understand it in Bognor", or Johnny Speight's producers counting "buggers" and "bloodies" in his scripts.

The patrician, class ridden, nothing-too-offensive, don't shock the plebs mentality that lead to the "Points of Worry" memo sent to Python no longer exists. Hurrah. Notice that the complaints levelled at the shock comedy of the BES came from outside the industry, not within, as would have been the case in the 1970s. The TV industry is more supportive of challenging work these days, while more market driven and timid elsewhere. Swings and roundabouts.

There's stuff made now that wouldn't have been made thirty, twenty years ago. There's stuff now being made that's as good as was being made then, and a lot that's better, and a lot that's worse, naturally. Big deal. No big theories. No big shapes. No big conspiracy. I am - and many other people are - still laughing. (*Ring*) (No, sod off. That's what comedy does. I'll stand by this no matter how much you batter me down with comedy noises.)

I don't like my realistic take on the variable quality of work past and present being misread as my joining the ranks of some half-invented evil television-hating army who want to drag things down to the gutter. It's not what I'm saying. I'm not joining or supporting this polarised view of how we are allowed to enjoy television - either with you or against you. It's cheap.

I stand by your excellent championing of the obscure, the overlooked and the maligned. I'm with you all the way that the more creatives learn from the past, the better their work will be.

But I don't believe your cry of "It's all going downhill", and I don't believe it because it has echoed throughout history, over and over again. Everyone has always been convinced it used to be better it did, from Roman commentators to Enlightenment critics to comedy archivists and critics like yourselves, today.

Realise that you're part of a grand tradition of people cautioning audiences not accept what they see at face value, to ask questions, to compare things to great work of the past. It's something that needs doing, granted. But beyond that, I don't think there's any empirical evidence for TV being "worse" now than it was a few years ago, beyond familiarity with past material, nostalgia, and the occasional old chestnut like "Big Brother" being tossed again and again into the argument as if it's somehow more intrinsically awful than dozens of crappy old 1970s programmes I'm happy never darken my screen these days.

The point at which comedy "died" keeps moving in your articles. After TDT? After Brass Eye? After Bussman and Quantick? Yesterday? Anytime before Dr Terrible and the Brass Eye Special?

If SOTCAA keeps going for ten years, you'll be picking over the bones of contemporary comedy and celebrating the great bits. I'll put money on it. There'll be a Black Books edit spotting page, and it'll be brilliant, and you'll insist it all declined the day Series Four got commissioned.

There is no grand plan to ruin your comedy. I really don't think so. And I don't think I'm going to undergo a Damascan conversion to your point of view just because you accused me of being a Bazalgette lapdog if I didn't.

>There'll be a Black Books edit spotting page, and it'll be brilliant, and you'll insist it all declined the day Series Four got commissioned.

please god no!

We'll agree to disagree then. But I'm the one with the bell. :)

I've got a horn.

It was Derek & Clive's, but they're letting me use it...

*parp*

You can ring my be-e-ell.

Ring my bell.

What do you do if you agree with SOTCAA 100%, and yet still enjoy IAP, LoG, etc?

You annoy Joe. :)

>I've got a horn.

I actually changed my last posting from "I've got the bell" to "I'm the one with the bell" to avoid Derek & Clive-allusions.

Edit-spotting my own postings now.

Unruly Butler smells of wee and has a small willy. Ya boo, vroom thud, etc.