h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If it has to slap you in the face and say "Hey, look at me, I'm being funny now," then it isn't comedy. And if you need to be a loyal fan to know that SNL is funny, then it isn't. It *has* produced some great comedy in it's time. But it's degenerated to the point that it's insulting to watch anymore. And for every good comedians that emerges, an equally obnoxious "comedian" emerges even louder. Just because it has launched careers does not mean that those careers deserved to be launched.

Maybe the problem is not that we don't have any true humour over here, but that our stupid humor is so loud it's overwhelming. And all we get imported is the good stuff from overseas.

Please don't underestimate the American appreciation of true humour-with-a-"u". Don't judge the entire population by what you see on tv. All that proves is that our television execs don't understand humour; not that everyone in the country is deficient.

Just because Alanis doesn't understand the meaning of irony does not mean that it is lost on all of us.

Charlie Chaplin was a pom too!!!

Hey!!! I like this place....people here don't think Seinfeld is funny!!! Gotta agree with that....Besides, if he was, is he American?? With a name like Seinfeld I would expect him to be Jewish!

I agree with the point about janeane Garafolo being funny but I still think her best movie was MatchMaker when she went to Ireland!

I like Janeane Garafolo alot but I do not think she is your typical American comedienne. She has a lot more wit than the standard offerings from the US and her movies never quite fit into the commercial mould. Maybe thats why i like her so much

I AM a fan of SNL. A true fan. I enjoyed the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players very much. I stayed with the show until it became the Piscopo/Murphy program. It was amusing at points back then, but after that it just fell apart.

I have tried to get back into it since. Repeatedly. I really wanted to enjoy the newer seasons.

Comedy Central plays all the later seasons. They don't have the rights to the classics and that's a shame. I tune in now and then because there's nothing else on, but only Mike Myers is dependable.

I can't stand Adam Sandler's purposefully two dimensional roles. I almost threw my tv across the room when Ted Danson got on there with some unremarkable female and they had this scene where they kept sheep or goats or something in an apartment. It was so pathetic. The cheerleader thing with the tall guy and short girl.. I can't remember her name but she's actually funny when she's not SCREAMING every OTHER word that COMES out of HER mouth! Ick! When she plays stuff straight it comes off much better. The two women who had the fake singing act were blatant ripoffs of Bill Murray's famous and classic nightclub routine. A slap in the face to true fans of the series.

I did enjoy when Phil Hartman would do Bill Clinton, and there were a couple other remarkable moments with him, but much of the time he seemed to have been given less than he deserved. Dana Carvey's impersonations were impeccable, but when he wasn't impersonating Perot or Bush, he was a real boor. And "makin copies!" made me wanna wretch. Why was that funny? "Steverino!" Seemed purposefully designed to make phrases to put on T-shirts, not a way to make people laugh.

Coneheads. "CHEEBUHGAH! CHEEBUGAH!" The dueling Brandos! "Nevermind!" The metric alphabet. Roseanne Rosanna Dana. The bassomatic. John Belushi doing Joe Cocker. "Jane you ignorant slut!" Now THAT was comedy!

I will openly praise one moment in Chris Farley's performances. There was one episode I saw where Paul McCartney was the guest, and there was a scene where Chris Farley interviewed Paul.. "you remember the time when you sang that song...? Man that was AWESOME man!" One of Farley's finest moments was when he interviewed Paul. He had me in stitches. The nervousness coupled with his restrained energy bursting out of the seams. His obvious undying devotion to Paul's work coupled with a self-defeating understanding of the humor behind it. He shined that day.

I'm a fan of SNL. I know when it works and when it doesn't. The light is much dimmer than it used to be. It still has it's moments but in the classic days they had so many more hits than misses. They used to be hungry for laughs. They just don't seem hungry anymore.

Animations: Roll on the floor stuff. One recurring cartoon called "The Ambiguously Gay Duo" features two superheroes, Ace and Gary. All the 60's superhero cartoons are made fun of, since they all wore tights, and few of them had girlfriends. The other recurring one is called "Fun With Real Audio," in which they take real audio tracks and play them along with some absurd animation. The best one would have to be the one that accompanied audio from the Clinton-Dole debate

Impersonations: The most consistent feature of the show. Norm MacDonald's impersonation of Bob Dole is priceless, especially the one where Dole himself appeared in a cameo. Some new dude does an excellent Clinton, too. He does it better than Phil Hartman ever did.

The Delicious Dish: recurring skit about an NPR radio show that is soooo boring, it's funny. (The radio show, not the skit.)

The Ladies' Man: Tim Meadows plays a smooth-talking moron.

The Cheerleaders: I do agree, however, that the girl does scream a bit too much. But she is playing an overexciteable, teenage nerd, so it is in character.

The Roxbury: Already a major motion picture

Goth Talk: Recurring skit showcases the absurdity of the goth scene

That's just the stuff i can come up with off the top of my head.

I saw that one Delicious Dish about the woods, where the guest ate the godfather, Karl, to his son. I thought I'd die laughing.

Who the HELL is Samuel Clemens?????? Must be good......

The USA doesn`t have Red Dwarf. I think thats very sad

The USA wouldn't get Red Dwarf. After all they didnt like Men Behaving Badly, although thats not even half as good.

Who is Samuel Clemens? You're joking, right?

He's so popular we have an entire SUBDIVISION devoted to hem in Lexington, Ky. No, really! It's called Clemens Heights. I call it "Mark Twain Land".

There was talk after the first two series of remaking it for a US audience. Pray you don't get it now as the last series was so shit they repeated it after only four months to check that there really was a reason for the viewing figures going down for each episode. MBB started off reasonable, became good but became extremely tired and knackered by the end of the penultimate series and terrible for the last series. The occasional specials that have been released since then are even worse. You don't want this to be imported either.
All we in the UK can see of US comedy are the sitcoms; these have been almost completely crap since Dream On was discontinued. Twin Peaks wasn't primarily comedy but when it went for the laughs it usually succeeded. The infrequent friday night post-pub C5 comedy import spots sometimes feature sketch shows or some sort of spoof discussion programme thing - one joke out of every seven almost works but even these sorts of things work to the sitcom model, where each "punchline" is followed by a hefty blast of canned laughter. Most people that end up watching these tend to sit in front of the TV with their mouth wrinkled and their forehead furrowed - they're trying to work out whether it's not funny or that the jokes are based on something American of which they have no experience, thus denying them the full impact of the punchline. We don't get SNL except when our programmers are feeling exceptionally rich and lazy or one of those clips-from-around-the-world programmes is on. All we tend to see are british performers telling magazine interviewers that they played a few shows in the US to be met with nothing but puzzled silence. The films that are turning up featuring comedy "personalities" including Sandler et al tend to be very much in the Seinfeld mould - a big close-up on the face of the star and a large, expectant silence after each point that the scriptwriter has underlined with a big red pen. If US network brass wish to buy stuff from the BBC (ITV doesn't do comedy) they ought to try stuff that they'd usually ignore or remake. Only half of the funny bits in stuff like the Royle Family are UK-culture based - the rest is accessible to all. (15-year-old gets sent to corner shop to get his parents some fags. Asks if he can has some; told "no, you can't smoke until you're old enough to buy your own.) What british programmes are you getting over there at the moment? Are they re-made or not? What time are they aired at?

Aaaaaahhhhhh...the penny drops.....

Excuse me? Americans have plenty of humor, it's humour that needs a bit imported.

I don`t know who Samuel Clemens is either.

People who don't know who Samuel Clemens is, READ: Mark Twain. Okay? He wrote The Prince in the Pauper, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, etc. etc. lots of famous works, and the best, which is Letters from the Earth.

And to Wingpig on imported comedy shows: A-ha! I can answer that, I love the stuff- I think the shows that we get are already cancelled in the UK, and most of them only come on Public Television in the middle of the night, but some of them are so funny I watch them anyway... The ones that air on PBS aren't redone... I don't think I know any that are, but I may just be unaware... we get One Foot in the Grave, Are You Being Served? Waiting for God (that one's pretty funny), the Thin Blue Line (I love Rowin Atkinson), and Mr. Bean (I like TBlueL better), Fawlty Towers (of course) and I'm sure there are more I don't remember right now... and then on Comedy Central (a cable channel that just shows comedy shows) there's lots of Rowin Atkinson's live shows, there's the old Who's Line is it Anyway?, Fawlty Towers again, Benny Hill (if you're in the obnoxious mood), all the Monty Python movies at least 5 times a month, and there's a questionable cartoon-type show, I don't know if it's from the UK or they just have Brits doing the voices, I forgot the name as I don't watch it much... oh! oh! There's Absolutely Fabulous, although they just showed the finale (I'm sure they'll run it again), and from Canada there's Kids in the Hall.

*big breath*

And that's what we get here in San Diego, at least.

Just wanted to say that I am an American and I have personally watched several episodes of Red Dwarf in this country, so I guess sometimes we do "get" REd dwarf, even if some don't "GET" red dwarf.

Ok I sat here and read this whole thread and tried to remain objective throughout as I am one of those Americans who enjoys much of the British humour. But I do not think that America has done nothing to add to humor or humour as the case may be. I know there are many who frown upon Hollywood, and TV bigwigs in America, etc., but then again if there had never been a "Hollywood" lifestyle to begin with, or Americans with the foresight to realize that tv and movies could be a big deal, then no one would have the ability to view this humour or humor at all. I think things tend to be overgeneralized as well. I do not base my total opinions on Brits based on the tv shows I view here, nor on the small percentage of them that I met while in the Caribbean, if I did I would assume that all Brits who are on "holiday" like to sit in the sun and turn unhealthy and unnatural colors while drinking constantly and getting louder and louder by the moment. If this is how Brits are then, hey great, however I think maybe that is not true. You have to look at the total picture, for every movie based on a story from another country that Americans produce, there are two that aren't. If you want a prime example watch "Citizen Kane". As for television, I agree that Seinfeld is NOT funny, never was,never will be. But there again, some of the times I find myself laughing out loud is when watching "I Love Lucy" or "The Dick Van Dyke show", both American. AS for modern classics, "Just Shoot Me", "Will &Grace", "Cheers", "Night Court", and HBO's "Sex in the City" are all prime examples of american thought and humor. The fact of the matter is it doesn't matter if anyone else thinks these are HUMOUR examples or even funny. I think they are all brilliant and I feel no need to compare them to the British shows I find funny, because that is like trying to compare kumquats to avacados or some such silliness. So go ahead, pick on the Americans, but remember, Disney, AMERICAN, is the one who is finally helping the HHGG movie to happen and for that I think the Americans deserve some respect........unless it sucks and then, hey, say whatever you like. Sorry this is soooooo long and stupid but I needed to voice my opinion. Go back to ignoring me now.....