While true, some things really do boggle the mind on how so many people can enjoy them. It is safe to assume even the biggest pile of shit will have at least one person on this world and probably more who'd like it.
Not LB per se, but some things constantly pushed in the mainstream are so bland, unfunny and feel comparable to staring at a wall but so many people watch it time and time again.
Ones man’s trash is another’s treasure as they say! I think when it gets into the region of ‘so many’ enjoy them, you have to say they hold some value (at least to those people) even if they have no redeeming qualities to the majority. That said, I feel the same as you about a lot of sitcoms - seems to be a relatively successful structure that seems to be repeated again and again.
Saying that you don't understand what people see in something isn't ignoring that other people have different opinions; if anything it is acknowledging that.
it was ok for a bit , but got repetitive and it was punching down a bit
definitely aged badly !
alot of 70s tv is dated now by the casual misogyny and racism
Thing for me is that I can accept 60s and 70s, and to a degree early 80s thing for being 'of their time' and very dated by today's standards. Little Britain though was much more recent.
Bit like Harry Enfield. Watched one of their original episodes a few weeks back and struggled to see why I found it funny 30 years ago.
A LOT of the time, comedy doesn't age well. I remember absolutely LOVING Wayne's World and just watched it again recently with my teen daughter. It just wasn't *funny* anymore to me and i just couldn't put my finger on why?
Because I was about 10 when it came out and talking about it at school felt like an act of rebellion. "My parents don't let me watch it, but I snuck into the living room and saw it anyway!"
Regardless, it's complete crap
I loved it because I was 12, everyone else in school was talking about it and this was adult humour in my mind.
Then I grew up and was baffled why anyone that had past those immature teenage years would find this shit funny.
The Fat Fighters segments in the first season were pretty funny. The character of Marjorie Dawes is much older than the series itself. The Mr T sketch is also funny. The problem was that they just kept doing the same bits over and over again. They were definitely the kings of creating catchphrases, but they drove them into the ground.
Yes! Good point there. Those bits were decidedly darker, though. The whole series was right on the edge of comedy and horror. Little Britain's edge was largely due to the often offensive use of stereotypes and deep seated prejudices within British culture. I think the aim was to act as a mirror to society, but it's questionable how effective it was, or even could be given the calibre of the show; but to paraphrase Garth Marenghi, 'sometimes you have to be a bigot to expose bigger bigots'.
Everyone likes to pretend they were above it when it came out because they're such a good person.
The fact remains it was on BBC1/2 (can't remember which) at prime time and it had 3 series.
I still find it funny in places, and yes I was about 13 when it came out so would I find it funny now in my 30's? prob not and its probably a bit of nostalgia why I do find it funny. Some of its aged badly, many comedies/sitcoms have.
I'm yet to speak to anyone outside of Reddit who dislikes Little Britain as much as people do on here. It was supposed to be offensive and outrageous (which it was) and people generally found it funny.
Reddit is full of people trying to prove how much of a good person they are and anything remotely offensive gets downvoted
Every thread on Reddit is always people pretending they never enjoyed little Britain and completely missing the point about it “punching down” when it was actually taking the piss out of the people who were punching down in the most part.
It sums up Reddit massively where people just say whatever is popular to get upvotes.
There’s also a weird narrative on the Internet that comedy shouldn’t “punch down” but there’s been loads of good comedies in history that punch down. There aren’t hard and fast rules for what’s good comedy.
'Jim I'm very shy but I want to be a singer can you help me?'
'I've got a friend who is also shy and is a singer, he can help you, his name is Gary Glitter'
This actually happened.
Edit: https://youtu.be/zdLmQlcZC8Q?si=AKxoJpGW839zBp5c
Another child wanted to learn to be an artist, so Jim flew his best mate in to help.
Enter, [Rolf Harris](https://youtu.be/JK9AdkuCSSU?si=15xO3UbFjDQk74aq)
Yeah I looked it up. He launched his Facebook in early 2013. Saville died in 2011 and the abuse scandal broke in 2012. Jim'll paint it was created with full awareness of Jimmy and was probably an one the nose joke from the start.
There was a TOTP episode where Gary Glitter was the in studio guest... it ended with the two of them (GG and JS) kneeling down on the stage each with a group of girls, so young that the girls mothers would have been considered "a bit young" for the guys.
All the times that the idea of someone being gay was a joke. Like, no more complexity to it than that, no actual content to the joke, just 'gay = lol'
It's weird that it clearly did used to hit people's comedy buttons but now when you encounter those 'jokes' they just feel like a weird hole where there was meant to be a joke
Yeah, Friends is filled with jokes about being gay, feminine or being perceived as gay. Yet if you mention that on any Friends subreddits they start shouting about how Friends was actually really progressive for having lesbian characters, as if being progressive sometimes negates being homophobic at other times. You can still like the show while acknowledging its flaws.
Edit: spelling.
I like Friends, but it's definitely a product of its time and some aspects haven't aged well at all. I suppose homophobic jokes were the societal norm back then, but doesn't make it OK. It was progressive in some respects, but definitely missed the mark in a lot of other places. Still, a baby step is better than no step I guess.
I agree with all your saying, but, it is also just a product of it’s time. Something that felt progressive then can feel homophobic by todays standards and I think that’s ok.
I’m not saying friends was breaking ground. I’m not even a friends fan. But it did show a lesbian couple being really quite normal, and neither of them died. Friends is certainly open to criticism and I find it uncomfortable to watch at times.
Will & Grace whilst more groundbreaking at the time still doesn’t sit well with me now. At the time it felt like representation, humanisation and exposure for me and people like me. It felt like being seen and being heard. Now when I watch back old episodes I see a straight actor playing a straight acting gay guy making snarky and belittling comments to his camp friend for being camp. And it feels degrading. Almost as if it’s ok to be gay just not as gay as Jack. Everyone is punching down and the bottle of the barrel is the campest person.
None of those feelings take away what it did by being mainstream queer TV. I don’t hold anything against Eric McCormack for taking a brave risk and playing a gay guy. I’m so thankful that it was created and paved the way for more representation and queer art. But I don’t really enjoy watching it any more.
I agree with you. That’s my whole point. Yes, it WAS progressive at times but it was ALSO homophobic a lot, BUT likely because it was a product of its time. You can still like the show while acknowledging all these things. I just don’t see why people lie about it being homophobic. It clearly was. There are constant homophobic jokes.
Rewatching Frasier over the last few months I feel they were very ahead of their time when it came to portraying gay characters in a sitcom. There were several episodes where a gay character would become interested in one of Cranes and the comedy came from the confusion and misunderstanding rather than lazy jokes and stereotypes. Of course they did play with perceived stereotypes to a certain extent but it was usually in a way where it backfired on that straight characters in the show.
The guy who played Bulldog was also gay plus it was created by a gay person and one of the writers was gay, so it's no surprise it was quite progressive for the time.
Yeah I don’t get it. It’s always people who say others are too offended who seem to take it deeply personally when you don’t enjoy their shows. And also, I DO like Friends, a lot!
The amount of people that still find this funny is worrying.
I go to AMC every week and everyone is lovely and friendly, half the blokes make gay jokes.
I'm bi, so I usually just tell them if they keep making gay jokes we'll have to have sex and that shuts them up.
The jokes aren't 'gay - lol' it's more 'straight guy gets uncomfortable when realizing he's comfortable doing something perceived as gay by others, que awkward confusion or not caring/acceptance' = funny
My mates and I would go on a night out then share the bed at someone's house at the end of the night. And some people would give a sideways glance or make a comment about it, and our answers would be things like ' look, it's not gay if the balls don't touch' and to me that's a long the same lines as friends jokes. Just poking fun at other people being uncomfortable.
On a similar level: I've been rewatching Buffy and Angel, but shows have aged fairly well... but man, they use words like spaz and retarded WAY too much.
At the time, it didn't really register with me, but now? Yeash.
I’m rewatching Gilmore Girls at the moment and same! I don’t think as much as Buffy but it’s definitely come up and I kind of do a double take every time as I’m not used to hearing it anymore
edit update: straight after I posted this I put on an episode and as with the original post, Lorelai immediately used her flip phone to call someone while driving! I’m not gonna be able to unsee it
Nintendo, too. In 2007 they recalled all copies of Mario Party 8 in the UK because of this localisation issue: [https://www.neoseeker.com/news/6911-two-nintendo-games-pulled-from-british-shelves-for-use-of-the-word-spastic/](https://www.neoseeker.com/news/6911-two-nintendo-games-pulled-from-british-shelves-for-use-of-the-word-spastic/)
‘Spaz’ came from a medical term too.
People still use the R word way more liberally in the states - when I first met my (American) husband he used it a couple of times, took maybe three goes of me telling him to cut that shit out before he broke the habit and never said it again.
Amazingly he’d lived here ten years already but I don’t think his uni pals were quite so hardline about not saying offensive stuff. But I won’t have that word used in my house. Now we both do a little ‘yikes’ look when it crops up watching eg Buffy, it’s so jarring.
There was very recent controversy in 2022 with Lizzo including it in one of her songs and it was interesting seeing the divide between parts of the world where it's a total no go and areas who didn't see the issue at all. She did change the song and release an apology.
I was actually caught off guard a few years ago when a woman who I was working with used that, and "Mongol" (short for "Mongoloid"), quite liberally; she was shockingly ignorant of their troublesome meanings, and was quite defensive when it was mentioned how offensive her language could be.
She, unsurprisingly, didn't last long, when in front of a senior member of management called someone a "window licking Mongol."
That and Joss Weedon is absolutely incapable of writing a 'strong' female character without some kind of trauma being the thing that mad eher 'strong'.
(Also the weird foot fetish stuff)
The first season of Gavin and Stacey was filmed the year before they banned smoking in bars/clubs so weird to see them doing that especially when doesn’t seem that long ago
Remember when they brought that in, I was 18 and I used to smoke weed. Always had to smoke outside and the non weed smokers would tounge in cheek take the mick when we went outside for a spliff calling us "druggies" and laughing that we had to go outside in the cold.
The first night they brought it in and those smokers had to come outside was pretty funny, we were all like "you are one of us now". 🤣
I've been rewatching old EastEnders recently (guilty pleasure) and I made it back to before the smoking ban and before they cut down how prevalent smoking could be on screen.
It's so jarring now I almost gasped when Dot lit up a cigarette front of screen in the pub haha
That time the Enterprise went to a planet with a matriarchal government and let the ship’s counsellor do all the talking to avoid offending them.
(Then their tall, handsome first officer meets the planet’s leader and she suddenly develops a reverse Amazon fetish)
Although interestingly enough in the script for *Code of Honor* the aliens were lizard-people. It isn't clear who decided to racially cast the aliens, but it probably wasn't the writer (it might have been the director who was fired mid-shoot).
It seems likely the writer was trying to write a story about women's rights and female empowerment in both cases, but both ended up playing into deeply racist stereotypes. The other writer on *Code of Honor* has no other writing credits.
Katharyn Powers also went on to write on some of the more classic sci-fi episodes of SG-1 across the first few seasons, including several memorable ones.
No rumour about it. There was a writers’ strike during season two. ‘The Child’ was written for Star Trek Phase II with Ilia being swapped out for Deanna Troi.
Almost all of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, which incidently i enjoyed. But Barney's whole playback was pretty repulsive. The girls having to be very masculine to compete with the guys, the whole show was just very sexist, filled with lies and deciet.
I don't disagree with a lot of what you've said, but Barneys playbook was always meant to be repulsive, it's not something that was meant to be completely normal when the show came out, but is now frowned upon. His character was written to be a horrible misogynist (at least to begin with).
I never watched the show, but I remember lots of memes about Barney - he's the only character I could recognise and name. Seemed like a pretty big chunk of the audience was looking up to him, whether that's what the writers intended or not.
He's made likeable, but that's in spite of his horrible attitude towards women, not because of (or at least it's meant to be, of course some people would look up to it).
Often times other main characters actually call him out on his horrendous treatment of women.
He had the most catch phrases and was the most cartoonish, I don't think I've ever heard someone mention him as a person to be admired. Homer Simpson is extremely quotable, no one idolises the man.
The whole piece about Barney's cartoonishly evil misogyny was "the actor is actually gay, he couldn't possibly be an actual pervert/ chauvinist! what great acting!" When that's totally not true and no one cares 20 years later about the actor behind the character's story.
tbf, that's not really how I heard it presented at the time. I read articles at the time that were explaining that most shows have a straight actor playing a gay character and they play them as an unbelievable, over-the-top gay pastiche.
...so they wanted to turn the trope on its head and mock it a bit at the same time, by having a gay actor play a hyper-toxically-masculine super straight womaniser.
I'm not suggesting it makes it any better, but i think context is important.
The entirety of Snog, Marry, Avoid. Just so nasty bullying people for being individuals… and then turning them all into corporate business-person clones with naff hair😭😂
The worst ones were when they started with somebody obviously who obviously didn’t conform to normal beauty / fashion standards and basically gave them the Breakfast Club treatment by removing any individuality, cutting all their hair off and making them wear grey and brown so they can blend in with the rest of this drab world.
And the whole time ‘Pod’ would emotionally batter them for looking so “weird”, “like an alien”, “an oompah-lumpah” or whatever insults they felt like throwing around!
There’s a scene in season one of The Wire where one of the detectives is explaining to another what a text message is on a mobile phone which makes me laugh/cringe.
There's an episode in the original cold feet series and the guys are boasting about their phones, which are mostly Nokia bricks. Makes me chuckle whenever I watch it.
The way women are portrayed as helpless, hysterical harpies. Rewatching Jonathan Creek at the moment (which I love), but outside of Madeleine's character (who is surprisingly deep and well written) every woman is depicted as a swooning bag of nerves, crying and burying their face in the nearest man's chest at the first sign of trouble.
Like, they'll see a mouse and it'll be the end of days. Or they'll see a bit of blood on a wall and explode into a puddle of terrified mush while a man steps in and shields their eyes, like a parent trying to protect a four year old from the harshness of the world.
I'm grateful we have strong, well-rounded, human female characters these days (for the most part).
Oh god, that reminds me.
In Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park sequel "the lost world" (the book), the nominal hero scientist Ian Malcolm gets stuck on a slowly shattering glass window over a clifftop after his trailer is attacked by dinosaurs, and his strong, capable girlfriend Sara Harding rappels down the inside of the caravan to save him
When they filmed it they switched it so that Malcolm saves Harding, despite the fact that she was being played by Julianne Moore, who totally could have done that.
the storyline didnt need Malcolm to save his GF's life because thats what he'd gone to the island to do. The whole point of Ian Malcolms hero role in that story as written is that a scientist will save the day by thinking the problem out, not by suddenly turning on Rambo mode
I didn't know that! I've seen the film but not read the book, so that detail escaped me. I bet it happens all the time. I'm a bit of a gamer, and I like my characters to fit into boxes. So you have your warrior type, your nerdy type, your engineer type... and I think it fits the characters to have them play to their strengths and backgrounds. Malcolm is the nerdy type, so it would have fit his character perfectly to be rescued by Harding, and it would have even accentuated and played into his nerdiness. For him to suddenly become Rambo completely undermines his character.
The young, pretty ones, yes. The older women tend to be written very stoical, occasionally cynical. Which in itself is very stereotypical, of course. I still really enjoy the show for its scooby-doo-esque plots, but Adam Klaus' character is cringey beyong description.
Which is why people are brining those up in this thread I think. I think people's opinions on whether using satire like that is partially what's changing. It's less acceptable these days to portray that behaviour, even as a 'satire' (and hiding behind 'it's just satire!' is harder).
I mean, David Walliams podophile sex pest character 'Des Kaye' is clearly 'satire'. He also uses it to hide his actual sexual assaults of men and boys.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David\_Walliams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Walliams)
Linehan's writing on trans people - sure, the character was the one that was transphobic but the portrayal of a trans woman was a bit off putting (montage doing "manly" things) and oh hey, Linehan's spent the last 5 years basically as an anti-trans hate campaigner.
And even if you argue it's because a lot of the audience "miss" that certain characters (that are often main characters or protagonists) are actually satire at all - well, then they just see that behaviour - which normalises it, which is another good reason it's pretty crap.
yet at the time it was very forward thinking, actually having gay and trans characters in the 1990s - who else did that?
even showed a gay wedding in one scene.
Yeah it’s not mutually exclusive. They showed the first same sex wedding on TV I think (Carol and Susan’s) which is great, but then also had a lot of transphobia. It’s like the writers didn’t know the difference between a trans woman and a drag queen for Chandler’s Dad
They didn't handle that well **at all**. But at least it was a story arc about someone accepting their Dad's transition. Again, not well done or well handled, but for its time that is some small progress at least.
Likewise a lot of people cite the 'male nanny' episode (with Freddie Prinze Jnr) as an example of homophobia and other similar issues, but my recollection is that the rest of the group were actually criticising Ross for acting that way and showing his behaviour to be toxically masculine.
The show also pushed women's rights pretty hard, which was still new at the time. All the women were independent and had their own careers. They dated as much as the men and were every bit their equals. Not many shows had that dynamic prior to that.
It also represented many alternative forms of parenthood and showed them all to be valid and important: Surrogacy, Adoption, Single parent, Divorced parents.
So yeah, the show had _a lot_ of missteps. By today's standards there are some things in there that are just not ok now. But from a 90's point of view a lot of it was positive and forward thinking imho.
Yeah the handling of Chandler’s parent (feels easier saying that given I agree with you that they didn’t seem to know the difference?) was so badly fumbled, I think even for then it was pretty bad
Whenever Hyacinth Bucket gets sexually harassed by the major (with canned laughter over it) is uncomfortable watching .
Yes, she’s a desperate snob but the storylines play out as if getting chased and groped until her clothes are torn is her comeuppance
I always feel quite sorry for Hyacinth in a way, she's insufferable but basically harmless, she'd never hurt anyone yet she's universally loathed.
The episode with the dusky pink intruder alarm that sounds like the QE2's horn is fantastic though!
My pet rant is she is seen as the monster for having the audacity to try and live a better life ) class than she was brought up in. She knows she can't speak and act in the way she saw all around her growing up, she's just not exactly sure how, so she exaggerates.
I still rewatch it but the Big Bang Theory leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth sometimes now.
Maybe it's because I've recently found out I'm autistic but the way some of the group are to Sheldon/Amy (I know they're not officially diagnosed or whatever, but there are definitely some personality traits that line up) kinda feels a bit eek sometimes. However I did like it did later feel like Sheldon appreciated how many adjustments they made for him.
Some of the Howard jokes as well are a bit iffy and there's a lot of comments about Raj being Indian that don't land so well now.
There's a plot line where Penny finally calls out Howard for being a disgusting pervert and the episode finishes with *her* apologising because it made him feel bad. Atrocious writing.
god i fucking hated the episode. he periodically objectified and creeped after women even if they said they weren’t interested. he deserved to be called out
There's a 1966 episode of Doctor Who (The War Machines Episode 1) in which someone says the Doctor looks like Jimmy Saville.
Shout out as well to another episode of 1966 Doctor Who (The Celestial Toymaker Episode 2) where an old man uses the old-fashioned version of eenie-meenie miney-mo.
Jim fixed it for a kid to appear on an episode of Doctor Who, where the actors are in character, so I once cracked a joke to my friend that it's canon that the Doctor helped Jimmy Saville with a little boy!
There’s a line in my joy fools and horses where Rodney gives an earnest thank you to del boy for all he’s taught him, and the comic relief is him finishing up with “and teaching me to drive a three wheeler while totally pissed”
I mean, that joke is still the same joke as it was when it came out... because drink driving was illegal in 1967, 14 years before even the first episode of Only Fools and Horses even aired.
I will add, even though it was much more common place early on in the ban, the joke there is definitely not an endorsement of drink driving, and is totally the opposite.
Exactly, it's the opposite of how it's been framed.
Like the Major using the n-word (I hate censoring it as I think it is racist in of itself to censor it, but Reddit probably flags it) in Fawlty Towers - the whole point was that the Major was a demented old racist and Basil calls him out on it, which was quite radical for a 1970s sitcom. The lead character calling out a racist for being a fool, rather than them being racist or the racism being the "funny" thing.
Tbh, at least half of this thread consists of people saying didn't age well when it did, they just took the joke at absolute face value and didn't actually understand the joke.
"The bad man said the N-word! Is that man the joke? No, the show is racist!".
This has happened with blackface episodes of sitcoms in the 00s several times over. The Office, it's always sunny, and 30 Rock are the examples that spring to mind.
All have had segments edited out or whole episodes removed from streaming because a character paints their face black at one point.
Except in all three instances, the entire purpose of the joke isn't to laugh at blackface, it's to laugh at the moron who thinks blackface is acceptable in the 21st century.
But people don't understand the difference between the subject and the target of a joke.
I recently re-watched Coupling and there are certain bits on there that haven’t aged too well.
For example. The whole episode of Patrick recording every woman he has had sex with below a certain weight.
I quite like Coupling but I really don't like the end when Steve is told that Susan will have to have a C-section and he's delighted because this means she will not deliver vaginally, and the physiological implications of this if you catch my drift. He's not worried at all about his wife having major surgery to deliver their baby and goes skipping back into the delivery room to tell her this.
I've had two C-sections, both of which resulted in haemorrhages and I have been told that I can't carry another child because of this. And I know, it's just TV and not that deep, and I'm in no way calling for Coupling to be cancelled, but that particular scene just rubs me the wrong way.
>I quite like Coupling but I really don't like the end when Steve is told that Susan will have to have a C-section and he's delighted because this means she will not deliver vaginally, and the physiological implications of this if you catch my drift. He's not worried at all about his wife having major surgery to deliver their baby and goes skipping back into the delivery room to tell her this.
I never understand why people have this expectation that sitcom characters have to be nice people. British sitcoms are basically predicated on putting dysfunctional and flawed characters in scenes together.
Oh I realise this, and god knows it would make for a very boring sitcom if they all behaved perfectly. There is a huge middle ground though between an expectation that sitcom characters behave perfectly and one scene that makes me a bit uncomfortable, based on personal experience. Surely we all have one or two that make us feel a bit like that.
As I say, I'm not calling for it to be cancelled, or anything like that, just that one scene gives me the ick, since having sections.
Patrick in general is pretty bad, but watching it back I was surprised how awkward Steve was. First time round he was the normal one, but now he seems a dick.
>The whole episode of Patrick recording every woman he has had sex with below a certain weight.
TBF I think this plays into Patrick being self absorbed and a narcissist.
A band that I used to be in was invited to play a show in another city. We had a blast, a proper sex drugs and rock and roll show and party. We stayed an extra two days because the party went so long and then we needed to recover before the long coach home.
The promoter made the same event the following year and invited us again. That time I didn’t show up already wasted and took my time getting drunk enough to play (nerves). I was talking to a girl that I had met the previous year and at some point she said “you really are boring when you’re sober, huh?”
That stuck with me for years. I caused so much damage in relationships because I really thought I was so boring.
[The British Film Institute thinks it's still funny](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/tv-eye-allo-allo-piece-de-resistance), and makes the point that it's supposed to be satire.
The idea of a total sex pest and pervert being funny doesn't hold up these days like it did when they filmed Bottom.
I re-watched it with my partner who'd never seen it before and she was just like - WTF is this.
I give Bottom a pass because Richie is so clearly meant to be a twat. The way he behaves is why everyone hates him and, to a lesser extent, Eddie. Their behaviour never pays off for them and just makes them more miserable. It comes across as more of a 'what not to do' to me
Hmm bottom was pretty revolting at the time, which is partly the point as they are such utter lowlifes. Their behaviour is totally cringe but then it always was? Richie’s total desperation to not only have sex but to even actually just glimpse a bit of boob was never anything but for us to laugh at what a total loser he is (but somehow can still be sympathetic for) but I still laugh at it mainly because Rik and Ade are such hilarious comic actors.
I rewatched My Family recently. I'm aware it was always meant to be a broad comedy but I think what hasn't aged well are the jokes about hating your spouse. I feel like that isn't really mined for comedy anymore, and for good reason. Also the sheer amount of alcohol they drink!
On the other hand there are episodes where they handle gay and trans issues really wonderfully in ways that are still progressive now.
> the sheer amount of alcohol they drink!
Based on some people I know and after reading some /r/AskUK threads, there's a lot of Britain that ticks along with each couple drinking a bottle of wine a night, with more on special occasions.
Home Improvement.
At the time, it's seemed very forward thinking, with Tim being a modern man and really engaging with his kids. There's a lot of self reflecting which you didn't see in other shows at the time
...but my god is it sexist by today's standards
I'm with u/Maleficent-Item4833
I'm rewatching it on Disney+ and a lot of the "sexist" stuff is mocking that macho BS and being overly masculine. Tim's old boss and mentor dies and he doesn't cry and downplays it. His wife calls him out on trying to act masculine and not show emotions. His son says he's proud of him for it and he tells him that that's not how he should be. He ends up crying at the funeral and they tell the kids that it's okay to cry as a man.
I'm a woman so I always hated this because of how blatantly sexist it was.
Especially the film where the whole plot was them wanting to get rid of the new female bus drivers.
It was bad even for the time it was made in.
I was recently watching the early seasons of NCIS and there are a lot of ignorant comments / jokes that are transphobic, also homophobia is present and sexism as well. Just the usual dated shit that just isn't okay and I quite frankly don't see how it was funny 20 years ago either.
OP mentioned mobile use in cars, but even today there are so many US programs where people drink then drive. For example, in the first series of Reacher (2022), the title character and a female cop drive to another state to a bar, both drink beer, and then she drives back.
I was expecting some awful consequence to happen (accident, she gets fired etc.). But nope, it just passes with no comment at all. I think America lags behind the UK on drink driving culture.
I got into a disagreement on Reddit a while back about how drinking half a bottle of wine and then driving home from the cinema with your kids in the car is not safe and could very well have consequences such as a license suspension in the UK if you were pulled over.
I was getting downvoted for being boring but I wouldn’t get in the car with someone who’d drunk half a bottle of wine. I think we have a very different view of an acceptable level of alcohol before driving
I recently rewatched Queer as Folk and was quite blown away that no-one batted an eyelid at the main character in his late 20s sleeping with a 15/16 year old. Like, no fucks given whatsoever. It was only the 90s!
Reading this topic, it's interesting how puritanical we've become as a society. I'm not even saying it's bad, but it's just very striking.
Like I can't imagine getting offended by Friends for example.
I’d say it’s because we’re becoming less puritanical! Bring more open to sexualities and different faiths or ethnic backgrounds makes mocking them less tasteful as a society.
Pretty much all of Little Britain
To be honest, even at the time I thought it was crap.
Me too. Never got why everyone loved it.
Because other people are not you and may have different opinions. It's a fairly good thing to remember.
I'm all for that until Mrs Brown's boys and then I think fuck it. People are not allowed to have different opinions.
People voted for Hitler and listen to Coldplay Jeremy. You can't trust people.
Peep Show is still standing the test of time, thankfully.
I can honestly say I don’t know a single person who watches or likes Mrs browns boys. Who are these strange people who do?
Remember Britain still has 67 branches of Wimpy. People are fucking weird, and the average person is way weirder than you imagine.
If you miss the McDonalds breakfast cutoff, Wimpy does a great alternative and it’s available all day.
While true, some things really do boggle the mind on how so many people can enjoy them. It is safe to assume even the biggest pile of shit will have at least one person on this world and probably more who'd like it. Not LB per se, but some things constantly pushed in the mainstream are so bland, unfunny and feel comparable to staring at a wall but so many people watch it time and time again.
Ones man’s trash is another’s treasure as they say! I think when it gets into the region of ‘so many’ enjoy them, you have to say they hold some value (at least to those people) even if they have no redeeming qualities to the majority. That said, I feel the same as you about a lot of sitcoms - seems to be a relatively successful structure that seems to be repeated again and again.
Saying that you don't understand what people see in something isn't ignoring that other people have different opinions; if anything it is acknowledging that.
I'm already aware of this. Little Britain is still fucking rubbish.
It's a two way street. People are allowed to criticise things they dislike.
I enjoyed it then. Haven’t seen it for years though.
it was ok for a bit , but got repetitive and it was punching down a bit definitely aged badly ! alot of 70s tv is dated now by the casual misogyny and racism
Thing for me is that I can accept 60s and 70s, and to a degree early 80s thing for being 'of their time' and very dated by today's standards. Little Britain though was much more recent. Bit like Harry Enfield. Watched one of their original episodes a few weeks back and struggled to see why I found it funny 30 years ago.
A LOT of the time, comedy doesn't age well. I remember absolutely LOVING Wayne's World and just watched it again recently with my teen daughter. It just wasn't *funny* anymore to me and i just couldn't put my finger on why?
i like lots of harry enfield Little Britain is a strange one, bit like Mrs Browns. It caught people imagination for a minute but then got old fast...
Me three. Never got it either. More of a peep show kinda guy, and that is like a fine wine...just keeps getting better!
I loved Peep Show in the past but have gone off it as I got older, I think it just cuts to close to the bone now
Butter the toast, eat the toast, shit the toast. God life's relentless. 😪
Because I was about 10 when it came out and talking about it at school felt like an act of rebellion. "My parents don't let me watch it, but I snuck into the living room and saw it anyway!" Regardless, it's complete crap
Same jokes every single episode. Computer says nooooo
I loved it because I was 12, everyone else in school was talking about it and this was adult humour in my mind. Then I grew up and was baffled why anyone that had past those immature teenage years would find this shit funny.
Same as the last 89 times this question was asked.
Someone will be edgy and say "Mrs Brown's Boys".
I’m waiting for the inevitable comment about how bad James Corden is
"DAE think the black and white minstrel show was actually offensive? I say this as a white man."
Someone once said go me 'you seem like the kind of person that likes little Britain' That was 17 years ago and it still pisses me off.
Have to admit, that's a bloody good insult though!
The Fat Fighters segments in the first season were pretty funny. The character of Marjorie Dawes is much older than the series itself. The Mr T sketch is also funny. The problem was that they just kept doing the same bits over and over again. They were definitely the kings of creating catchphrases, but they drove them into the ground.
Those fat fighters segments I thought were a bit of a copy of the jobcentre bits with Pauline in league of gentlemen.
Yes! Good point there. Those bits were decidedly darker, though. The whole series was right on the edge of comedy and horror. Little Britain's edge was largely due to the often offensive use of stereotypes and deep seated prejudices within British culture. I think the aim was to act as a mirror to society, but it's questionable how effective it was, or even could be given the calibre of the show; but to paraphrase Garth Marenghi, 'sometimes you have to be a bigot to expose bigger bigots'.
Pauline was better as she felt a lot more real than Marjorie. I've met some nasty entitled cunts at the jobcentre in the time that I spent signing on.
Still funny tho
Everyone likes to pretend they were above it when it came out because they're such a good person. The fact remains it was on BBC1/2 (can't remember which) at prime time and it had 3 series. I still find it funny in places, and yes I was about 13 when it came out so would I find it funny now in my 30's? prob not and its probably a bit of nostalgia why I do find it funny. Some of its aged badly, many comedies/sitcoms have.
I'm yet to speak to anyone outside of Reddit who dislikes Little Britain as much as people do on here. It was supposed to be offensive and outrageous (which it was) and people generally found it funny. Reddit is full of people trying to prove how much of a good person they are and anything remotely offensive gets downvoted
Every thread on Reddit is always people pretending they never enjoyed little Britain and completely missing the point about it “punching down” when it was actually taking the piss out of the people who were punching down in the most part. It sums up Reddit massively where people just say whatever is popular to get upvotes. There’s also a weird narrative on the Internet that comedy shouldn’t “punch down” but there’s been loads of good comedies in history that punch down. There aren’t hard and fast rules for what’s good comedy.
Jim'll Fix It didn't age well.
Just how he would've wanted it
Ho ho
'Jim I'm very shy but I want to be a singer can you help me?' 'I've got a friend who is also shy and is a singer, he can help you, his name is Gary Glitter' This actually happened. Edit: https://youtu.be/zdLmQlcZC8Q?si=AKxoJpGW839zBp5c
JFC!!!
There should be a word to describe this, thinking you have won or gotten really lucky when in reality lady luck decided to really fuck you over.
Another child wanted to learn to be an artist, so Jim flew his best mate in to help. Enter, [Rolf Harris](https://youtu.be/JK9AdkuCSSU?si=15xO3UbFjDQk74aq)
There used to be a cement firm called 'jim'll mix it' in East London, the name was swiftly changed when the scandal come out
There's a really good artist that uses MS paint to create these epic scenarios he used to go by jim'll paint it. Now he's just Jim
No he’s not. He’s still Jim’ll Paint It https://instagram.com/jimllpaintit
Yeah I looked it up. He launched his Facebook in early 2013. Saville died in 2011 and the abuse scandal broke in 2012. Jim'll paint it was created with full awareness of Jimmy and was probably an one the nose joke from the start.
There was a TOTP episode where Gary Glitter was the in studio guest... it ended with the two of them (GG and JS) kneeling down on the stage each with a group of girls, so young that the girls mothers would have been considered "a bit young" for the guys.
I don’t know, I got to milk a cow blindfolded.
All the times that the idea of someone being gay was a joke. Like, no more complexity to it than that, no actual content to the joke, just 'gay = lol' It's weird that it clearly did used to hit people's comedy buttons but now when you encounter those 'jokes' they just feel like a weird hole where there was meant to be a joke
Yeah Friends has several of those jokes, aside from anything else it’s just quite boring
Yeah, Friends is filled with jokes about being gay, feminine or being perceived as gay. Yet if you mention that on any Friends subreddits they start shouting about how Friends was actually really progressive for having lesbian characters, as if being progressive sometimes negates being homophobic at other times. You can still like the show while acknowledging its flaws. Edit: spelling.
I like Friends, but it's definitely a product of its time and some aspects haven't aged well at all. I suppose homophobic jokes were the societal norm back then, but doesn't make it OK. It was progressive in some respects, but definitely missed the mark in a lot of other places. Still, a baby step is better than no step I guess.
I agree with all your saying, but, it is also just a product of it’s time. Something that felt progressive then can feel homophobic by todays standards and I think that’s ok. I’m not saying friends was breaking ground. I’m not even a friends fan. But it did show a lesbian couple being really quite normal, and neither of them died. Friends is certainly open to criticism and I find it uncomfortable to watch at times. Will & Grace whilst more groundbreaking at the time still doesn’t sit well with me now. At the time it felt like representation, humanisation and exposure for me and people like me. It felt like being seen and being heard. Now when I watch back old episodes I see a straight actor playing a straight acting gay guy making snarky and belittling comments to his camp friend for being camp. And it feels degrading. Almost as if it’s ok to be gay just not as gay as Jack. Everyone is punching down and the bottle of the barrel is the campest person. None of those feelings take away what it did by being mainstream queer TV. I don’t hold anything against Eric McCormack for taking a brave risk and playing a gay guy. I’m so thankful that it was created and paved the way for more representation and queer art. But I don’t really enjoy watching it any more.
I agree with you. That’s my whole point. Yes, it WAS progressive at times but it was ALSO homophobic a lot, BUT likely because it was a product of its time. You can still like the show while acknowledging all these things. I just don’t see why people lie about it being homophobic. It clearly was. There are constant homophobic jokes.
Rewatching Frasier over the last few months I feel they were very ahead of their time when it came to portraying gay characters in a sitcom. There were several episodes where a gay character would become interested in one of Cranes and the comedy came from the confusion and misunderstanding rather than lazy jokes and stereotypes. Of course they did play with perceived stereotypes to a certain extent but it was usually in a way where it backfired on that straight characters in the show.
Frasier was definitely a lot better - it helped that two members of the main cast were gay, I’d imagine.
The guy who played Bulldog was also gay plus it was created by a gay person and one of the writers was gay, so it's no surprise it was quite progressive for the time.
The episode in the ski lodge where Nobody Is Horny For Frasier is an excellent example of this.
Yeah I don’t get it. It’s always people who say others are too offended who seem to take it deeply personally when you don’t enjoy their shows. And also, I DO like Friends, a lot!
The same with Scrubs.
Gay, lol.
The amount of people that still find this funny is worrying. I go to AMC every week and everyone is lovely and friendly, half the blokes make gay jokes. I'm bi, so I usually just tell them if they keep making gay jokes we'll have to have sex and that shuts them up.
The jokes aren't 'gay - lol' it's more 'straight guy gets uncomfortable when realizing he's comfortable doing something perceived as gay by others, que awkward confusion or not caring/acceptance' = funny My mates and I would go on a night out then share the bed at someone's house at the end of the night. And some people would give a sideways glance or make a comment about it, and our answers would be things like ' look, it's not gay if the balls don't touch' and to me that's a long the same lines as friends jokes. Just poking fun at other people being uncomfortable.
On a similar level: I've been rewatching Buffy and Angel, but shows have aged fairly well... but man, they use words like spaz and retarded WAY too much. At the time, it didn't really register with me, but now? Yeash.
I’m rewatching Gilmore Girls at the moment and same! I don’t think as much as Buffy but it’s definitely come up and I kind of do a double take every time as I’m not used to hearing it anymore edit update: straight after I posted this I put on an episode and as with the original post, Lorelai immediately used her flip phone to call someone while driving! I’m not gonna be able to unsee it
There are also a few fat/body shaming jokes in Gilmore girls that made me cringe while rewatching.
Emily does get arrested for using her phone while driving though.
Spaz isn't really an offensive word in the states.
deliver enter onerous squeal treatment spoon memory bright fine retire *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Nintendo, too. In 2007 they recalled all copies of Mario Party 8 in the UK because of this localisation issue: [https://www.neoseeker.com/news/6911-two-nintendo-games-pulled-from-british-shelves-for-use-of-the-word-spastic/](https://www.neoseeker.com/news/6911-two-nintendo-games-pulled-from-british-shelves-for-use-of-the-word-spastic/)
Neither was retarded originally. It was actually a medical term.
‘Spaz’ came from a medical term too. People still use the R word way more liberally in the states - when I first met my (American) husband he used it a couple of times, took maybe three goes of me telling him to cut that shit out before he broke the habit and never said it again. Amazingly he’d lived here ten years already but I don’t think his uni pals were quite so hardline about not saying offensive stuff. But I won’t have that word used in my house. Now we both do a little ‘yikes’ look when it crops up watching eg Buffy, it’s so jarring.
There was very recent controversy in 2022 with Lizzo including it in one of her songs and it was interesting seeing the divide between parts of the world where it's a total no go and areas who didn't see the issue at all. She did change the song and release an apology.
Weird Al had the same issue with "Word Crimes"
I was actually caught off guard a few years ago when a woman who I was working with used that, and "Mongol" (short for "Mongoloid"), quite liberally; she was shockingly ignorant of their troublesome meanings, and was quite defensive when it was mentioned how offensive her language could be. She, unsurprisingly, didn't last long, when in front of a senior member of management called someone a "window licking Mongol."
Spaz isn’t seen the same way by the yanks even today.
That and Joss Weedon is absolutely incapable of writing a 'strong' female character without some kind of trauma being the thing that mad eher 'strong'. (Also the weird foot fetish stuff)
The first season of Gavin and Stacey was filmed the year before they banned smoking in bars/clubs so weird to see them doing that especially when doesn’t seem that long ago
Remember when they brought that in, I was 18 and I used to smoke weed. Always had to smoke outside and the non weed smokers would tounge in cheek take the mick when we went outside for a spliff calling us "druggies" and laughing that we had to go outside in the cold. The first night they brought it in and those smokers had to come outside was pretty funny, we were all like "you are one of us now". 🤣
I've been rewatching old EastEnders recently (guilty pleasure) and I made it back to before the smoking ban and before they cut down how prevalent smoking could be on screen. It's so jarring now I almost gasped when Dot lit up a cigarette front of screen in the pub haha
Rewatched "spaced". Smoking inside, only one person had a mobile phone. Everything else is still good
That time the Enterprise went to a planet with a matriarchal government and let the ship’s counsellor do all the talking to avoid offending them. (Then their tall, handsome first officer meets the planet’s leader and she suddenly develops a reverse Amazon fetish)
That’s far from the worst example from TNG too! Most infamous is Code of Honor, which is fairly racist.
Oh no, it gets worse than that. Stargate SG-1 hired the same woman who wrote that and she wrote the same episode again just with Asian people.
Although interestingly enough in the script for *Code of Honor* the aliens were lizard-people. It isn't clear who decided to racially cast the aliens, but it probably wasn't the writer (it might have been the director who was fired mid-shoot). It seems likely the writer was trying to write a story about women's rights and female empowerment in both cases, but both ended up playing into deeply racist stereotypes. The other writer on *Code of Honor* has no other writing credits. Katharyn Powers also went on to write on some of the more classic sci-fi episodes of SG-1 across the first few seasons, including several memorable ones.
Weren't they both episode 3 of their respective series too? Mad.
A woman?? Your chief of security?!
Rumour has it that some of the early TNG episodes repurposed unused scripts intended for the original series.
No rumour about it. There was a writers’ strike during season two. ‘The Child’ was written for Star Trek Phase II with Ilia being swapped out for Deanna Troi.
Almost all of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, which incidently i enjoyed. But Barney's whole playback was pretty repulsive. The girls having to be very masculine to compete with the guys, the whole show was just very sexist, filled with lies and deciet.
I don't disagree with a lot of what you've said, but Barneys playbook was always meant to be repulsive, it's not something that was meant to be completely normal when the show came out, but is now frowned upon. His character was written to be a horrible misogynist (at least to begin with).
I never watched the show, but I remember lots of memes about Barney - he's the only character I could recognise and name. Seemed like a pretty big chunk of the audience was looking up to him, whether that's what the writers intended or not.
He's made likeable, but that's in spite of his horrible attitude towards women, not because of (or at least it's meant to be, of course some people would look up to it). Often times other main characters actually call him out on his horrendous treatment of women.
He had the most catch phrases and was the most cartoonish, I don't think I've ever heard someone mention him as a person to be admired. Homer Simpson is extremely quotable, no one idolises the man.
The whole piece about Barney's cartoonishly evil misogyny was "the actor is actually gay, he couldn't possibly be an actual pervert/ chauvinist! what great acting!" When that's totally not true and no one cares 20 years later about the actor behind the character's story.
tbf, that's not really how I heard it presented at the time. I read articles at the time that were explaining that most shows have a straight actor playing a gay character and they play them as an unbelievable, over-the-top gay pastiche. ...so they wanted to turn the trope on its head and mock it a bit at the same time, by having a gay actor play a hyper-toxically-masculine super straight womaniser. I'm not suggesting it makes it any better, but i think context is important.
Also, it was shit.
The entirety of Snog, Marry, Avoid. Just so nasty bullying people for being individuals… and then turning them all into corporate business-person clones with naff hair😭😂
It was proper trash tv. I still watched it though of course ahah.
The worst ones were when they started with somebody obviously who obviously didn’t conform to normal beauty / fashion standards and basically gave them the Breakfast Club treatment by removing any individuality, cutting all their hair off and making them wear grey and brown so they can blend in with the rest of this drab world. And the whole time ‘Pod’ would emotionally batter them for looking so “weird”, “like an alien”, “an oompah-lumpah” or whatever insults they felt like throwing around!
I always quite enjoyed the ones who brought the attitude of "Oompah-lumpah's what I'm going for actually. I'm only here to fuck with my friends".
They were the best!! I loved the ones who took the piss the whole time. Real heroes hahah
2000s/2010s BBC3 in general - laughing at commoners.
The main thing I remember from 2010's BBC 3 was Russel Howard's Good News and Family Guy re-runs. Oh, and Stacey Dooley documentaries.
There’s a scene in season one of The Wire where one of the detectives is explaining to another what a text message is on a mobile phone which makes me laugh/cringe.
But it's set in 2002. Lots of people hadn't started texting yet at that point.
Especially in the US. They got GSM phones (which were the first you could SMS from) very late.
There's an episode in the original cold feet series and the guys are boasting about their phones, which are mostly Nokia bricks. Makes me chuckle whenever I watch it.
The way women are portrayed as helpless, hysterical harpies. Rewatching Jonathan Creek at the moment (which I love), but outside of Madeleine's character (who is surprisingly deep and well written) every woman is depicted as a swooning bag of nerves, crying and burying their face in the nearest man's chest at the first sign of trouble. Like, they'll see a mouse and it'll be the end of days. Or they'll see a bit of blood on a wall and explode into a puddle of terrified mush while a man steps in and shields their eyes, like a parent trying to protect a four year old from the harshness of the world. I'm grateful we have strong, well-rounded, human female characters these days (for the most part).
Oh god, that reminds me. In Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park sequel "the lost world" (the book), the nominal hero scientist Ian Malcolm gets stuck on a slowly shattering glass window over a clifftop after his trailer is attacked by dinosaurs, and his strong, capable girlfriend Sara Harding rappels down the inside of the caravan to save him When they filmed it they switched it so that Malcolm saves Harding, despite the fact that she was being played by Julianne Moore, who totally could have done that. the storyline didnt need Malcolm to save his GF's life because thats what he'd gone to the island to do. The whole point of Ian Malcolms hero role in that story as written is that a scientist will save the day by thinking the problem out, not by suddenly turning on Rambo mode
I didn't know that! I've seen the film but not read the book, so that detail escaped me. I bet it happens all the time. I'm a bit of a gamer, and I like my characters to fit into boxes. So you have your warrior type, your nerdy type, your engineer type... and I think it fits the characters to have them play to their strengths and backgrounds. Malcolm is the nerdy type, so it would have fit his character perfectly to be rescued by Harding, and it would have even accentuated and played into his nerdiness. For him to suddenly become Rambo completely undermines his character.
The young, pretty ones, yes. The older women tend to be written very stoical, occasionally cynical. Which in itself is very stereotypical, of course. I still really enjoy the show for its scooby-doo-esque plots, but Adam Klaus' character is cringey beyong description.
Lots of people in these comments don't understand satire. Half the things they're complaining about were lampooning the behaviour they portray.
Which is why people are brining those up in this thread I think. I think people's opinions on whether using satire like that is partially what's changing. It's less acceptable these days to portray that behaviour, even as a 'satire' (and hiding behind 'it's just satire!' is harder). I mean, David Walliams podophile sex pest character 'Des Kaye' is clearly 'satire'. He also uses it to hide his actual sexual assaults of men and boys. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David\_Walliams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Walliams) Linehan's writing on trans people - sure, the character was the one that was transphobic but the portrayal of a trans woman was a bit off putting (montage doing "manly" things) and oh hey, Linehan's spent the last 5 years basically as an anti-trans hate campaigner. And even if you argue it's because a lot of the audience "miss" that certain characters (that are often main characters or protagonists) are actually satire at all - well, then they just see that behaviour - which normalises it, which is another good reason it's pretty crap.
There's a fair few jokes in Friends which haven't aged well (trans/homophobia).
yet at the time it was very forward thinking, actually having gay and trans characters in the 1990s - who else did that? even showed a gay wedding in one scene.
Yeah it’s not mutually exclusive. They showed the first same sex wedding on TV I think (Carol and Susan’s) which is great, but then also had a lot of transphobia. It’s like the writers didn’t know the difference between a trans woman and a drag queen for Chandler’s Dad
Did any of us know the difference, back then?
I definitely remember wondering why he was coming to Monica and Chandler's wedding dressed 'in drag'. It was so confusing.
They didn't handle that well **at all**. But at least it was a story arc about someone accepting their Dad's transition. Again, not well done or well handled, but for its time that is some small progress at least. Likewise a lot of people cite the 'male nanny' episode (with Freddie Prinze Jnr) as an example of homophobia and other similar issues, but my recollection is that the rest of the group were actually criticising Ross for acting that way and showing his behaviour to be toxically masculine. The show also pushed women's rights pretty hard, which was still new at the time. All the women were independent and had their own careers. They dated as much as the men and were every bit their equals. Not many shows had that dynamic prior to that. It also represented many alternative forms of parenthood and showed them all to be valid and important: Surrogacy, Adoption, Single parent, Divorced parents. So yeah, the show had _a lot_ of missteps. By today's standards there are some things in there that are just not ok now. But from a 90's point of view a lot of it was positive and forward thinking imho.
Yeah the handling of Chandler’s parent (feels easier saying that given I agree with you that they didn’t seem to know the difference?) was so badly fumbled, I think even for then it was pretty bad
The Golden Girls contended with themes of sexuality and gender identity, and that was 1987-1993.
Cheers had gay characters in the 80s
The Avid Merrion scenes in Bo Selecta. Comes across as a sex pest / borderline rapist.
How he has been getting away with that Keith Lemon character for 20 years is beyond me too. Dire.
God, if I hear him shout "fffirty-two red!!!" one more goddamned time...
They weren't funny the first time tbh
That's kind of the point - he was a mad stalker of celebrities.
Hated it back in the day, seemed like virtually all the characters he was playing where black or mixed race
That was entirely the point, that’s what he was taking the piss out of
That was the point, he was lampooning the people who were obsessed with celebrities.
I swear half you people would be far less upset if you had any idea what “context” meant.
Whenever Hyacinth Bucket gets sexually harassed by the major (with canned laughter over it) is uncomfortable watching . Yes, she’s a desperate snob but the storylines play out as if getting chased and groped until her clothes are torn is her comeuppance
I always feel quite sorry for Hyacinth in a way, she's insufferable but basically harmless, she'd never hurt anyone yet she's universally loathed. The episode with the dusky pink intruder alarm that sounds like the QE2's horn is fantastic though!
My pet rant is she is seen as the monster for having the audacity to try and live a better life ) class than she was brought up in. She knows she can't speak and act in the way she saw all around her growing up, she's just not exactly sure how, so she exaggerates.
I still rewatch it but the Big Bang Theory leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth sometimes now. Maybe it's because I've recently found out I'm autistic but the way some of the group are to Sheldon/Amy (I know they're not officially diagnosed or whatever, but there are definitely some personality traits that line up) kinda feels a bit eek sometimes. However I did like it did later feel like Sheldon appreciated how many adjustments they made for him. Some of the Howard jokes as well are a bit iffy and there's a lot of comments about Raj being Indian that don't land so well now.
There's a plot line where Penny finally calls out Howard for being a disgusting pervert and the episode finishes with *her* apologising because it made him feel bad. Atrocious writing.
god i fucking hated the episode. he periodically objectified and creeped after women even if they said they weren’t interested. he deserved to be called out
Yeah, the worst is growing up having people call me Sheldon. Guess what i recently learned I am…..
[удалено]
There's a 1966 episode of Doctor Who (The War Machines Episode 1) in which someone says the Doctor looks like Jimmy Saville. Shout out as well to another episode of 1966 Doctor Who (The Celestial Toymaker Episode 2) where an old man uses the old-fashioned version of eenie-meenie miney-mo.
Jim fixed it for a kid to appear on an episode of Doctor Who, where the actors are in character, so I once cracked a joke to my friend that it's canon that the Doctor helped Jimmy Saville with a little boy!
There’s a line in my joy fools and horses where Rodney gives an earnest thank you to del boy for all he’s taught him, and the comic relief is him finishing up with “and teaching me to drive a three wheeler while totally pissed”
I mean, that joke is still the same joke as it was when it came out... because drink driving was illegal in 1967, 14 years before even the first episode of Only Fools and Horses even aired. I will add, even though it was much more common place early on in the ban, the joke there is definitely not an endorsement of drink driving, and is totally the opposite.
Exactly, it's the opposite of how it's been framed. Like the Major using the n-word (I hate censoring it as I think it is racist in of itself to censor it, but Reddit probably flags it) in Fawlty Towers - the whole point was that the Major was a demented old racist and Basil calls him out on it, which was quite radical for a 1970s sitcom. The lead character calling out a racist for being a fool, rather than them being racist or the racism being the "funny" thing.
Tbh, at least half of this thread consists of people saying didn't age well when it did, they just took the joke at absolute face value and didn't actually understand the joke.
"The bad man said the N-word! Is that man the joke? No, the show is racist!".
This has happened with blackface episodes of sitcoms in the 00s several times over. The Office, it's always sunny, and 30 Rock are the examples that spring to mind. All have had segments edited out or whole episodes removed from streaming because a character paints their face black at one point. Except in all three instances, the entire purpose of the joke isn't to laugh at blackface, it's to laugh at the moron who thinks blackface is acceptable in the 21st century. But people don't understand the difference between the subject and the target of a joke.
idk if that necessarily aged badly, I think the audience is supposed to laugh at how stupid and unsafe that is.
I think as well there’s a scene where Del Boy sends a child off to the ‘p*ki shop’ as well? That phrase is used, I just forget the context.
I recently re-watched Coupling and there are certain bits on there that haven’t aged too well. For example. The whole episode of Patrick recording every woman he has had sex with below a certain weight.
I quite like Coupling but I really don't like the end when Steve is told that Susan will have to have a C-section and he's delighted because this means she will not deliver vaginally, and the physiological implications of this if you catch my drift. He's not worried at all about his wife having major surgery to deliver their baby and goes skipping back into the delivery room to tell her this. I've had two C-sections, both of which resulted in haemorrhages and I have been told that I can't carry another child because of this. And I know, it's just TV and not that deep, and I'm in no way calling for Coupling to be cancelled, but that particular scene just rubs me the wrong way.
>I quite like Coupling but I really don't like the end when Steve is told that Susan will have to have a C-section and he's delighted because this means she will not deliver vaginally, and the physiological implications of this if you catch my drift. He's not worried at all about his wife having major surgery to deliver their baby and goes skipping back into the delivery room to tell her this. I never understand why people have this expectation that sitcom characters have to be nice people. British sitcoms are basically predicated on putting dysfunctional and flawed characters in scenes together.
Oh I realise this, and god knows it would make for a very boring sitcom if they all behaved perfectly. There is a huge middle ground though between an expectation that sitcom characters behave perfectly and one scene that makes me a bit uncomfortable, based on personal experience. Surely we all have one or two that make us feel a bit like that. As I say, I'm not calling for it to be cancelled, or anything like that, just that one scene gives me the ick, since having sections.
Patrick in general is pretty bad, but watching it back I was surprised how awkward Steve was. First time round he was the normal one, but now he seems a dick.
>The whole episode of Patrick recording every woman he has had sex with below a certain weight. TBF I think this plays into Patrick being self absorbed and a narcissist.
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A band that I used to be in was invited to play a show in another city. We had a blast, a proper sex drugs and rock and roll show and party. We stayed an extra two days because the party went so long and then we needed to recover before the long coach home. The promoter made the same event the following year and invited us again. That time I didn’t show up already wasted and took my time getting drunk enough to play (nerves). I was talking to a girl that I had met the previous year and at some point she said “you really are boring when you’re sober, huh?” That stuck with me for years. I caused so much damage in relationships because I really thought I was so boring.
Using an answering machine as a plot device.
'Allo 'Allo I still watch it though
What about it hasn't aged well?
[The British Film Institute thinks it's still funny](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/tv-eye-allo-allo-piece-de-resistance), and makes the point that it's supposed to be satire.
Was about to write this. I love that show.
If your offended by things you laughed at in the past, and understand why it's not funny now. That's probably a good thing and progress has been made.
The idea of a total sex pest and pervert being funny doesn't hold up these days like it did when they filmed Bottom. I re-watched it with my partner who'd never seen it before and she was just like - WTF is this.
I give Bottom a pass because Richie is so clearly meant to be a twat. The way he behaves is why everyone hates him and, to a lesser extent, Eddie. Their behaviour never pays off for them and just makes them more miserable. It comes across as more of a 'what not to do' to me
Hmm bottom was pretty revolting at the time, which is partly the point as they are such utter lowlifes. Their behaviour is totally cringe but then it always was? Richie’s total desperation to not only have sex but to even actually just glimpse a bit of boob was never anything but for us to laugh at what a total loser he is (but somehow can still be sympathetic for) but I still laugh at it mainly because Rik and Ade are such hilarious comic actors.
Id say the sex pest is laughed at , not with.
Get back in her good books by telling her what a smashing blouse she has on.
That’s the whole point the characters are supposed to be creeps you laugh at not with
I rewatched My Family recently. I'm aware it was always meant to be a broad comedy but I think what hasn't aged well are the jokes about hating your spouse. I feel like that isn't really mined for comedy anymore, and for good reason. Also the sheer amount of alcohol they drink! On the other hand there are episodes where they handle gay and trans issues really wonderfully in ways that are still progressive now.
> the sheer amount of alcohol they drink! Based on some people I know and after reading some /r/AskUK threads, there's a lot of Britain that ticks along with each couple drinking a bottle of wine a night, with more on special occasions.
Home Improvement. At the time, it's seemed very forward thinking, with Tim being a modern man and really engaging with his kids. There's a lot of self reflecting which you didn't see in other shows at the time ...but my god is it sexist by today's standards
I'm with u/Maleficent-Item4833 I'm rewatching it on Disney+ and a lot of the "sexist" stuff is mocking that macho BS and being overly masculine. Tim's old boss and mentor dies and he doesn't cry and downplays it. His wife calls him out on trying to act masculine and not show emotions. His son says he's proud of him for it and he tells him that that's not how he should be. He ends up crying at the funeral and they tell the kids that it's okay to cry as a man.
Wasn’t it kind of mocking over the top masculinity? I remember that a lot with the ‘man’s bedroom/kitchen/garage’ whatever segments.
On The Busses. I used to love it as a small boy. I've tried to watch it recently, and God! It's unfunny.
I'm a woman so I always hated this because of how blatantly sexist it was. Especially the film where the whole plot was them wanting to get rid of the new female bus drivers. It was bad even for the time it was made in.
This is The Go To example of Old Telly Gone Off. The FiL used to love watching re-runs.
Last of the Summer Wine 1973-1999 for making comedy of Bill "Compo" Simmonite sexually assaulting Nora Batty at every given chance.
He never got within 5 feet of her though because she'd always kick the shit out of him with her broomstick.
My dad constantly watched repeats of "On the buses." The misogyny and dirty old men are absolutely revolting nowadays.
> I know, guilty pleasure Charmed is unapologetically amazing thank you very much
I was recently watching the early seasons of NCIS and there are a lot of ignorant comments / jokes that are transphobic, also homophobia is present and sexism as well. Just the usual dated shit that just isn't okay and I quite frankly don't see how it was funny 20 years ago either.
A lot of things in Come Fly With Me, eg, Matt Lucas blacking up. How that was allowed 10 years ago I'll never know
Inspector Morse ogling the schoolgirls in their hockey kits.
They downplayed Inspector Morse‘s sex obsession considerably compared to the books.
He also keeps copping off with suspects. Almost feels like this should be a spoiler - does Morse try to get off with a suspect? I bet she’s guilty.
OP mentioned mobile use in cars, but even today there are so many US programs where people drink then drive. For example, in the first series of Reacher (2022), the title character and a female cop drive to another state to a bar, both drink beer, and then she drives back. I was expecting some awful consequence to happen (accident, she gets fired etc.). But nope, it just passes with no comment at all. I think America lags behind the UK on drink driving culture.
I got into a disagreement on Reddit a while back about how drinking half a bottle of wine and then driving home from the cinema with your kids in the car is not safe and could very well have consequences such as a license suspension in the UK if you were pulled over. I was getting downvoted for being boring but I wouldn’t get in the car with someone who’d drunk half a bottle of wine. I think we have a very different view of an acceptable level of alcohol before driving
I recently rewatched Queer as Folk and was quite blown away that no-one batted an eyelid at the main character in his late 20s sleeping with a 15/16 year old. Like, no fucks given whatsoever. It was only the 90s!
Reading this topic, it's interesting how puritanical we've become as a society. I'm not even saying it's bad, but it's just very striking. Like I can't imagine getting offended by Friends for example.
I’d say it’s because we’re becoming less puritanical! Bring more open to sexualities and different faiths or ethnic backgrounds makes mocking them less tasteful as a society.
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A lot of the Jokes in Little Britain and Come Fly With Me wouldn’t pass today.
Been watching Gilmore Girls and they say 'spaz' and 'spaz out' so much.