Where's Rodney?

[lanky316]

55 minutes ago, Astro Hollywood said:

292 episodes, and all. 292!

I've got this weird fascination with shows (particularly sitcoms) that had loads of episodes, but made zero cultural impact. Most of people's comic vocabulary is taken from quotes of your Partridges, Father Teds, Seinfelds, Simpsons, etc, so it's amazing to me when something has 100s of episodes, and nobody can remember a fucking thing that happened.

I hadn't thought of it until this post but it's amazing when you think of long runners and realise how little is memorable in some ways yet the programs stick around. Birds of a Feather is a great example and I never would have thought it had so many episodes despite being aware of it being around for years it just "happened" essentially. I was shocked to discover it actually won a best comedy award in 2016 (TV Choice Awards but still...) yet you'd never see it come up on a "top 50 sitcoms" list or comedy moments clip show. It was just there.

This topic inspired me to look into longest running scripted TV shows and I've just realised Two and a Half Men had 262 episodes and all I can really remember of it is the insanity of Charlie Sheen becoming seen more but next to nothing of the actual program. On the Chucklevision scale ITV's Mike and Angelo had 123 episodes almost as many hours as Birds of a Feather and doesn't even have a "to me, to you" cultural impact.

A lot of American shows seem to go on forever without making any real impact or impressions over here but with the generally shorter length of our "seasons", the idea that shows can go on for so long and barely exist in the national psyche is surprising. 

[Carbomb]

4 hours ago, Astro Hollywood said:

And The Upper Hand? It absolutely boggles my mind that there's almost 50 hours of that. The amount of people involved in making a TV show which ran for 6 years; writers, actors, producers, prop people and set-builders, technical crew; audiences who took evenings out of their lives 95 times to sit and watch it; and it's a cultural black hole. When I wrote about Plaza Patrol, the most amazing thing to me was how it'd basically fallen into a void. Cannon and Ball were getting 10s of millions of viewers in the 80s, but by the 90s, they did a sitcom that left so little impact, there's about a dozen legitimate Google hits for it in 2019.

When I think about it, I'm not entirely sure Who's The Boss? had all that much cultural impact in and of itself. It gave us Alyssa Milano, but she could've been in anything and blokes our age would've tuned in.

[Onyx2]

5 hours ago, Astro Hollywood said:

The Upper Hand

Birds of a Feather, I can recall characters, actors, theme tune but nothing as you describe like a line or scene that sticks in the mind. 

But The Upper Hand, zero. I don't even have a mental postcard for it. Who's in it? What's the premise? What's the song? Nothing. Not a speck of culture. I couldn't even tell you what decade it aired in. 

[Carbomb]

22 minutes ago, Onyx2 said:

But The Upper Hand, zero. I don't even have a mental postcard for it. Who's in it? What's the premise? What's the song?

A few good guesses, but that wasn't the title of the original US series

[Thunderplex]

It was a UK version of Who’s the Boss wasn’t it?

One that springs to mind was Small Wonder.  A sitcom about a robot raised as a girl.  Fucking diabolical.

[PowerButchi]

Joe McGann pkayed a former Spurs player who was a housejeeper. I remember that much. 

 

Evwn more forgettable is Married for Life starring Russ Abbot as Al Bundy. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

10 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

Joe McGann pkayed a former Spurs player who was a housejeeper. I remember that much. 

 

Evwn more forgettable is Married for Life starring Russ Abbot as Al Bundy. 

I think that was a one and done. And rightfully so it was bloody awful 

[TheBurningRed]

14 hours ago, Astro Hollywood said:

Quote a line? From Birds of a Feather

I can give you a really random and obscure quote. During an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks from the Amstell era, he did a bonus round of bird noises for Bill Oddie. And one of them was a quote from Linda Robson’s character for joke - “That’s Daryls rum and raisin”. He played it twice and for some reason it got stuck in my head. And whenever someone mentions Birds of a Feather, I instantly think of that quote. 

I wish I could remember things that matter and not a line from an episode I’ve never actually seen. 

[BomberPat]

There are 120 episodes of My Family. 51 episodes of My Hero. Couldn't tell you a sodding thing that happened in any of them.

As for Heil Honey, I'm Home - it's a two minute sketch idea dragged out to an attempt at a series. The inherent joke of "'50s sitcom with Hitler" is absurd enough to be funny, but not for a full length episode, let alone a series. It's an interesting curio of a time when satellite TV was seeing channels compete to be edgier and more shocking, but also when Nazis felt like something we are at a comfortable enough distance from that they could be routinely used as figures of fun on comedy shows.

[Astro Hollywood]

44 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

There are 120 episodes of My Family. 51 episodes of My Hero. Couldn't tell you a sodding thing that happened in any of them.

So inherently forgettable, I literally forgot they existed. 120, fuck me. My Family ran for 11 years! Although, if I'm remembering right, there were more episodes because they employed the American technique of big writing teams, rather than just 'Roy Clarke writing all 295 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine by himself'. All that sticks in my mind is how detested it was by critics and viewers, never winning either over, and how it was the punchline about shit trad sitcoms for its entire run, like Mrs Brown's Boys is now. Robert Lindsay was always kicking off about it in interviews "the trendy media lot might not think it's 'cool,' but the viewing figures don't lie," and all that.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Astro Hollywood

[Chest Rockwell]

Man, when you stop and think about it for even a second just the name My Family is as ludicrously generic as you could possibly get.

[Gus Mears]

I'd take the wallpaper paste dullness of My Family over My Hero, which is one of the worst programmes I have ever seen. Ardal O'Hanlon is an atrocious actor at the best of times, but combine that with a bad concept and bad writing and you're doomed. 

[chokeout]

'As Time Goes By' ran for 13 years! A show thats entire premise was that Geoffrey Palmer had a face like a grumpy bollock

Edited August 28, 2019 by chokeout

[Hannibal Scorch]

8 minutes ago, chokeout said:

'As Time Goes By' ran for 13 years! A show thats entire premise was that Geoffrey Palmer had a face like a grumpy bollock

As show descriptions go, that's gotta be up there with the best.

2 point 4children lasted 8 series and The Britas Empire 7. I bet neither hold up, and I remember almost nothing of 2 point 4 children.

2 Pints of Larger and a Packet of Crisps has had 9 series and another special is due at the end of the year. That was shit as well 

[Astro Hollywood]

1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

2 point 4children lasted 8 series and The Britas Empire 7. I bet neither hold up, and I remember almost nothing of 2 point 4 children.

I dunno, I liked 2point4 Children at the time (though I was a kid who liked any and all comedy, no matter how bad and not-for-me it was - "Cor, Never The Twain's about to start, get it on, mam! Thank goodness it doesn't clash with Fresh Fields!"), and it's got better credentials of cast and writers then the other stuff we're shitting on here.

I bet the Brittas Empire totally holds up in a Keeping Up Appearances way, where it's obviously dumb and "oh no, my trousers have fallen down just as the vicar's come in" trad British sitcom way, but fun all the same. You've at least got Colin's pus, the babies in the drawers, and customers being killed most weeks.