An Introduction from JT Williams, Creative Director:
A few months ago, I realized we were giving our intern a lot of shit for not knowing about anything cool that happened before she was born; specifically any movie, TV show, or song made before 1990. I told her if she ever got fed up with the constant berating—perhaps for never having seen “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or having no idea who Bjork is—the safeword is “cheeseburger.” Surprisingly, she has yet to use it.
However, I use it regularly, albeit for a much different reason: when I am surrounded by my team randomly quoting obscure lines from obscure British television shows. I have never seen, nor have any interest in seeing, any of these shows—which makes it doubly irritating. So in hopes of providing them an outlet to express their Anglophilia (and more importantly, without my having to listen to it), I present to you: ±radical32′s Favorite Britcoms.
Suzy Vowels Recommends:
The Inbetweeners
(3 Series, E4, 2008-2010)
The Inbetweeners follows four boys in a London suburb awkwardly bumbling through high school. The series starts out with Will (AKA “Briefcase Wanker”) our uptight protagonist and narrator, leaving his posh boarding school for a public one. Not wanting to associate with the other nerdy overachievers, he latches on to his classmate Simon and his friends, Jay and Neil. While they are not quite nerdy, they are certainly not cool (they’re “inbetweeners,” get it?). Simon is under the spell of a fruitless crush on the girl next door, Jay would be a petri dish of STDs if he wasn’t a pathological liar about having sex, and Neil embodies the unencumbered bliss of pure ignorance. Every attempt to try something “cool” or rebel against oppressors of adolescents ends in a hilarious disaster—whether it’s getting caught by their parents, caught in a dumb lie, or caught, quite literally, with their pants down.
What’s great about this series is that it captures how awkward and uncool many of us felt when we were in high school. Whereas the show “Skins” creates a phantasmagoria of teen drama and sex had by the stereotypical cool kids, “Inbetweeners” never loses sight of how ridiculous it is to be a teenager. Most of us were inbetweeners—not the most popular kids but not the scum of the earth either. We didn’t always get into the cool kids’ parties (unless we crashed it), and we were often no where near as smooth as we’d like to be with the opposite sex. This show does not pity these characters or their sticky situations, but treats them as the funny stories to be told many years later.
Plus it’s loaded with useful new terms like “bumder” and “bus wanker.”
Best Series: Series 1
Brian Smallbeck Recommends:
The IT Crowd
(4 Series, Channel 4, 2006-present)
Although the multi-camera situation comedy is a format as old as television itself, hardcore Nerd-centric comedy is a relatively new avenue for mainstream entertainment. “The Big Bang Theory” is probably the best-known example, and it manages it pretty well by overstuffing every episode with enough heavily-researched in-jokes to keep the average otaku happy.
Across the puddle, the Brits have “The IT Crowd.” The series follows two IT professionals (the nerds) and their “Relationship Manager” (the normal human / obligatory female), employed by the fictional Reynholm Industries, whose workforce is described as “a lot of sexy people not doing much work and having affairs.”
“IT Crowd” is a bit of an aberration in the sub-sub-subgenre. While it has Nerds, Nerd-culture references and Nerd-bewildering social situations, it’s also a surreal, absurdist comedy. And while its jaunts from reality can miss the mark (The Aunt Irma riots come to mind), they can also obliterate it (Street Countdown. Need I say more?). Whatever it first set out to be, it has succeeded in transcending the confines of both Nerd and workplace comedy, and the traditional sitcom itself.
As far as Britcoms go, “IT Crowd” is surprisingly accessible. Other than the occasional cultural deviation (“pants” actually means “underwear?”), digesting all of the in-jokes and out-jokes should be no problem for an American. In fact, the U.S. remake was a shot-for-shot facsimile of the British pilot.
Best Series: Start with Series 2, and go from there.
Chris Tures Recommends:
Pulling
(2 series, BBC 3, 2006-2008)
On “Sex in the City”—wait wait, just keep reading—we follow a bunch of charming well-to-dos, wrapped up in a New York City fantasyland of dating whimsy and adorable misadventures. “Pulling” is what “Sex in the City” is like for the regular, glamorless folks. The focus lies primarily on three painfully average 30-year-old women navigating a disappointing world in which every new day invites the opportunity to sink to a new low.
The humor is dark, raunchy and raw—often veering dangerously close to home for those of us with * ah-hem * friends struggling with behaviors they should have outgrown in their late 20s. Blindly self-absorbed Donna (personal assistant), raging party monster Karen (kindergarden teacher) and hapless Louise (waitress) live in a lousy flat, work dead-end jobs, and continually find themselves in the company of lackluster men. The more they try to get what they want (love, a good time, basic human dignity, etc), the worse they make their respective situations.
We’ve been there too. We survived. We get it. It’s well written, brilliantly casted and criminally short (only twelve 24 minute episodes). It takes a few episodes to get used to the humor they’re finding in some pretty heavy stuff. It’s not as LOL-loaded or quotable as “The Inbetweeners” or “The IT Crowd,” but the misadventures are plausible and the laughs are rooted in the earth tilled by most single 30-year-olds.
Dating in your 30s is shit—but not hopeless. And “Pulling” celebrates it brilliantly.
Best Series: Series 2
4 Responses to ±radical32’s Favorite Britcoms
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nick says:
BUS WANKERS!
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ashley says:
who here has been personally traumatized by Jt Williams?
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ashley – i haven’t. i think i traumatize him.
I know it’s lame to comment on your own blog, but CHEESEBURGER!
Everybody further expressed their anglophilia by editing my intro to make it less angry and more proper… pff… less angry and more proper… how unpatriotic.