Any recommendations for other funny british comedies then? I used to love Red Dwarf, Allo Allo and Keeping Up Appearances (in moderation).
Spaced, The Peep Show, Father Ted.
BTW, slightly off topic (what isn't?) but does anyone have any idea why a UK series (aka "season") is only 6 or so episodes long? I could understand if there were 3 or 4 series per year, but no one ever does that.
I've always put it down to a number of things:
- more UK comedies have story elements that span episodes and such story arcs seem to naturally fit into half a dozen or so episodes
- there tends to be only one or two writers on UK shows, rather than a team. Churning out 13 or 26 episodes in one go for one or two people is a bit of a challenge
- budget. When you make a series for UK TV you maximum guaranteed target audience is a fifth of what it is in the US, so I think the budgets available to put together a series are less
- we tend to end a show's run when it is sensibly finished, as compared to US shows where new writers are rolled on season after season to drag it out for 10 seasons, I'm looking at you Friends !
I should also say that in the UK we also have plenty of series of shows that have a dozen episodes in them, but they tend to be reality shows and the like that you won't have seen in the US. There are also some shows that churn out two 12 episode series a year, much like the US ones. I tends to be comedies and dramas that only get 6/8 episodes, which are probably the ones that get exported to the rest of the world more.
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