The comedies

I just abhor English comedies. Sorry. I end up watching american sitcoms.

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Whatever floats your boat. I adore British comedy. It's a bit hit and miss now but the greatest British comedy I've seen for years is Peep Show. Also don't forget Big Train and Spaced! Awesome viewing.

I have trouble watching American comedies now. I used to love Friends but started watching it again and am finding it hard to spot what I found so funny. American humour is too obvious and spelt out for you. It's kind of insulting.

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What is defined as English comedy?

I assume you mean British comedy? And what do you not like about it?

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Ohhh forgot, there's also Blackadder... that's a brilliant British comedy. And also there's the programme that spawned my username...

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Just going back to this...

What about them makes you abhor them? Thats a strong word, its almost like loathing, proper hate. You would typically abhor, say, child abuse, not use that word to say you simply dislike comedy.

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Agreed...

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There's a big difference in the way TV shows are put together in the US and the UK. In the US they use lots of teams to develop the ideas and characters, then big teams of writers will put the scripts together, and during a series dozens of different writers may be involved (each working on just a couple of episodes).

In the UK there's usually a core creative talent that's left to do it all on their own, and I find that UK comedies often run out of steam during the series, with a couple of cracking episodes to start followed by 3 or 4 filler episodes to make up the balance.

Off the top of my head, here's a bunch of great British comedies:

The Mighty Boosh
The IT Crowd (& Father Ted, tho' technically Irish)
Peep Show
Pulling
Not Going Out
Absolutely Fabulous
The Office
Red Dwarf

Any others?

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