Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
My Family is well past its sell-by date, for example. Goodness only knows how it has kept going for so long ... a house full of characters that are still utterly two-dimensional after so many years on-screen is unforgivable, even in a sitcom. And its writers have still not twigged that if you derive all your comedy from making your characters irritating and unsympathetic, you make your entire programme irritating and unengaging.
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I think that My Family is average comedy at best. I also think that the reason it's still going is simply because we have very little home produced comedy on TV now.
The only terrestrial channels I can think of who produce even a little comedy are the BBC and Channel 4. Of those two, only Channel 4 appears to be investing in a lot of new comedy series. The BBC is investing in 1 or 2, but that's it.
ITV and Channel 5, for their part, appear to be investing nothing in comedy at the moment.
ITV have apparently said that when Coronation Street moves back to Wednesdays next year, they are hoping to use the prime-time slot that it's vacating to introduce new comedies, so hopefully that will happen, and hopefully whatever they produce will be funny and successful.
I also hope that if the comedy produced is good, and not successful, that ITV stick with it for more than one series. Some shows do take a series or two to really get the formula right. Look at Only Fools and Horses (the first series wasn't that good, but future series have produced what are arguably some of the funniest storylines in comedy) and Men Behaving Badly, which didn't really take off until they paired up Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey.