Telly Watching- Part 2

I may have to watch 'Line of Duty,' which seems to be very popular and has had extremely high viewing figures. All the episodes are on BBC iPlayer, so I should be able to watch this series. There's been around six series so there's a lot of episodes to get through.

As mentioned in the previous post about 'The Repair Shop', 'Money For Nothing' and 'Saved and Remade', it seems that once the BBC gets the 'bug' with certain genres of shows, they seem to think we'll fall over ourselves to see similar formats. So we get endless cookery shows together with antiques, although it seems this area has slowed down somewhat. 'Flog It' was really a rehash of 'Antiques Roadshow' but with the difference in that the items which are valued by the experts are then sold at auction. I often think that people who go on these shows are only interested in the cash value of their items. Surely you have some sort of emotional attachment to antiques, value their historic value. If you inherited an item that was owned by an ancestor who did something heroic or made some ground-breaking invention or had a fascinating life or was just an ordinary person, surely you'd want to keep it and then pass it on to the next generation. I often think that when medals are shown and there's a provenance attached to them, certification of some sort of a letter, that gives the item, in this case, medals, tells the story behind them. Then people turn round and say 'it belonged to uncle Cuthbert, but I don't like it. It's been in the cupboard or drawer for 25 years and we never look at it, so we might as well sell it.' A bit annoying and, frankly, crazy.

There's not a lot of sitcoms on television at the moment. By sitcom I mean in the classic sense, usually set in a house with a sofa, family orientated. Think 'The Good Life.' (Although there is no actual family in this show. Both couples, the Leadbetter's and the Goods, don't have children.) Usually shot in a studio with a live audience. The one I am about to mention is 'My Family,' which I am watching on BBC iPlayer. It must be some 20 years old (or at least the episodes I have reached.) There's nothing particularly brilliant about it, in fact, the actual events in it are somewhat mundane, it's just the performances of the two lead actors, Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker. They could make the Telephone Directory funny. I suppose it's the chemistry between them that makes it work. There's nothing very special about the scripts, in fact, they might be described as very ordinary and mundane. It's the actors, particularly Zoe Wanamaker and Robert Lindsay who make it what it is. If it was cast with other actors I don't reckon it would have the same appeal. 

How do you define a sitcom? Interesting question. Usually, a sitcom can be defined as a short-form drama, on television or radio, with a small cast of characters and with an easily identifiable location, a street, home, or workplace, the characters being a family, workplace, or otherwise connected in some other way.  Traditionally, they run for 30 minutes, but longer episodes have been made, but they are rare. Each episode tying up within the running time (usually 30 minutes.) and not always connected to the next episode, although there may be some connection vaguely hinted at. They rarely continue storylines across episodes. Characters never seem to learn from their mistakes (the same in your average soap.) Good story-telling usually requires that a character goes on a 'journey' and by the end of that story they have changed from how they were at the beginning and as a result, they have learned something. The sitcom, in the traditional sense, performed in a studio with a live audience, seems to be dead. The likes of 'Steptoe and Son', 'Fawlty Towers, 'The Good Life' and 'Keeping Up Appearances' have virtually died. Most modern sitcoms, if the term can still be applied to this form of television, are mostly made on film, or at least, video, without an audience. That may not be such a bad thing, as a cackling audience doesn't always help the show. Except for the actors who can time their lines to the audience's reactions, laughing, clapping, or whatever. There are a handful of sitcoms that are made on location, on film (single camera) which don't have a cackling audience in the background. One such being 'Bloomers' and another, which doesn't really fit the term 'sitcom' and that's 'Car Share.' It could never be made in a studio and the fact it's filmed on location adds to the realism.