10 posts tagged “sitcom”

I see from an ad that Will Smith is in a comedic movie called Hancock. With all these Americans remaking British shows, I guess it’s a big-screen version of the TV programme. It’s great Will is in the title role, but who takes Sid James’s place?

For my American friends sick of hearing from the British on how ABC will mess up the remake of Life on Mars in the US or how NBC destroyed The Office, it’s payback time.
   The British are remaking Bewitched.
   No, no, not Will Ferrell. Not even Lisa Hartman. The British. A pilot in anticipation of a series has been commissioned by the BBC and, from what I understand, filmed.
   Despite the failures of the remakes of Married with Children and Who’s the Boss?, Sony is letting the Brits have another go.
   Sheridan Smith is in the Elizabeth Montgomery role.
   Let abuse hurl eastward across the Atlantic for the sake of fairness and balance.

NBC has announced its new schedule for 2008 and, Journeyman fans, our fave is gone.
   In its place is an American remake of Australian sitcom Kath & Kim.
   You poor, poor bastards.
   Well, let me rephrase that. I like Kath & Kim but I only think it works in Australia. And as the first Aussie sitcom I can think of to get the American remake treatment, I just can’t see Molly Shannon and Selma Blair pull off, ‘Look at me. Look at me.’
   Maybe I am wrong as the Americans managed to make more episodes of Three’s Company and The Office than the original British producers could thanks to larger budgets, and keep them reasonably funny in their own way.
   I just get visions of Joey-style writing and direction rather than anything inspired like Flight of the Conchords or Extras.
   What the heck, here’s a YouTube video. Can this work as an American sitcom, in a Trailer Park Boys vein? What accent will Shannon and Blair adopt?

   For a country that puts out good, original sitcoms like My Name Is Earl, Americans are creative enough to come up with their own ideas—though having said that, I hope Kath & Kim creators Jane Turner and Gina Riley make a ****load of money from the adaptation, which they will also executive-produce.
   On the plus side, Knight Rider is back. Great! No story arcs or all that complicated plotting that US shows are known for of late. Just a good ol’ fashioned American TV show with plenty of cheese and a talking car. Let’s hope Val Kilmer comes back as KITT.

OK, so driving and shooting pics do not mix but be grateful I wasn’t using my 35 mm for these (which I have done before in a number of countries).

   Have an old ambulance? Not a ghostbuster? If you are an under-floor insulator called Garry, then you might find a converted ambulance to make a good van. I loved this thanks to the business name: Man about the House.
   I never found out if Garry looked like Richard O’Sullivan, but this was a nice throwback to the 1970s’ sitcom of the same name—which Americans might know as Three’s Company (the remake of a British series by Cooke and Mortimer).
   Much nicer in terms of retro transportation was this: ’66 Ford Mustang GT fastback. Even if you know nothing about cars, you must find this cool on some level. And it was in such beautiful condition across from the Basin Reserve in Wellington, New Zealand. Props to the owner—this was the most beautiful thing I saw that whole day.

Here’s another series finalé, this time from 1990. Newhart, starring Bob Newhart, ends with perhaps the most inventive finishing minutes—at least till I see Life on Mars next week!
   Let’s see: he thinks it’s 1990 but in fact … Come to think of it, maybe Life on Mars is going to end like this!

This is one of the best speeches in Yes, Minister. It’s the one where the Hon Jim Hacker MP becomes PM, from the episode, ‘Party Games’.
   The context: Jim Hacker’s party has a leadership change in the wings, and Sir Humphrey Appleby and his civil service cronies want a malleable candidate. Therefore, Hacker becomes their favoured candidate.
   In the meantime, the EEC in Bruxelles wants to change the name of the British sausage, and Hacker sees a way to seize the public imagination.
   This episode remains very true of politics today: find trivia, and use them to enhance one’s public profile. Antony Jay (later Sir Antony), who co-created and co-wrote the episode, actually did write ministerial speeches, including some for PM John Major. I believe Mr Jay came up with the ‘classless society’ speech.
   Starring the late Paul Eddington, the late Nigel Hawthorne (later Sir Nigel), and Derek Fowlds, with Ludovic Kennedy (also later knighted) as himself. The acting is superb.

Do folks remember how in the original Happy Days (regardless of whether you count the one where Harold Gould was Howard Cunningham or Tom Bosley) the Cunninghams had three kids? Charles, Richard and Joan?
   Chuck went off to college and was never seen from again, so by the time Joanie married Chachi, Howard’s wedding speech spoke of how he had raised two kids.
   Long-time Happy Days watchers like me were going, ‘Howie, three kids! Where’s Chuck?’ At least explain his fate in that final episode! After all, even Richie came back for it so both Ron Howard and Ted McGinley were there together.
   Twenty-three years later, I figured out why he might not have been mentioned by Howard. Remember, this was pre-Civil Rights 1960s (the 1950s having finished by the end of the 1979 season). (a) Chuck was gay and disowned. (b) Chuck married an African American woman and was disowned. (c) Chuck met a dude called Charles Manson.
   Now you know.

Here’s one going well back, and before you think I am really old, I caught these on re-runs. But I was reminded of it because we used the above title in Lucire’s 2007 media kit.
   That Girl was a nice little sitcom about Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas—who younger readers will remember as Rachel Green’s Mom off Friends) going to New York to make it big. It was more innocent then, and the X-rated Midnight Cowboy hadn’t been released.
   I know shows often rejig things after a few seasons, and That Girl was no exception. But why did so many shows do this just because it was a new decade?
   I guess each time we head into a new decade, there is a sense we must cast off all of the old. Anything ’60s, by 1970, was old hat. Out with the thin ties, in with the really wide ones. Sideburns. Long hair. And the really big ’70 Chrysler New Yorker. Decade rush, as I would like to call it, probably killed this show, just as it killed Get Smart, Bewitched and The Beverly Hillbillies. (Also what killed it was that Ann and Donald finally tied the knot, and the tension was over.)
   Mission: Impossible went from dealing to Ruritanian enemies to hoods and finks at home. But as far as sitcoms went, you could only really change three things: hair, clothes, and theme song.
   Thus, the nice instrumental that accompanied Marlo Thomas running through New York and the tidy, inoffensive Futura typography gave way to a typically turn-of-the-decade chorus singing lyrics penned by the series’ creators, Persky and Denoff (who used to write for The Dick van Dyke Show). Note in the later scene how Marlo Thomas’s and the late Ted Bessell’s hair are very 1970, but the titles are still very 1960s, song excepting.

 

And here’s That (Family) Guy for a whole new generation:

Vegas’s opening sequence may have been lengthy by modern standards, but how about one around the same length but for a half-hour timeslot show? The Bob Newhart Show was another classic, and I was always impressed that a guy called Lorenzo Music came up with the theme …er … music. Say, wasn’t he the voice of Garfield?
   It showed that Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM (Mary Tyler Moore?) Productions didn’t only make a sitcom with Mary Tyler Moore. (Any sentences with more mentions of Ms Moore and annoying alliteration?) Again, note the music—I am unsure which shows these days have a memorable theme. You can’t hum The Theme from Lost (heck, is there one?) but you can hum this one, so much so that a few bars of it were even used on the final episode of the later Newhart show.

   From my point of view, the modernist graphics (Bob walking in the rectangles going across the screen), 1970s architecture and the use of a heavy, seriffed typeface (Cooper Black) are interesting, and show a simplicity that still, in my mind, works more clearly than the swish, three-dimensional, effects-laden styles of the early 21st century.

Don’t ask me why I put this up. After my last post, I got into a retro mood. I watched this show because it was on, and for no other reason, though later in the series I developed a crush on Valerie Bertinelli. Just can’t get the theme out of my mind.