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May. 25th, 2006 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberWhile I'm at the LJ-thing I think I'll take a moment and do a post I've been meaning to do for a while-- Britcom recs for my west-coast friends (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slyviolet, this means you!).
Ever since I got my fancy DVD player I've been amassing a sizable collection of UK-only shows. Further, I'm glad to say that there hasn't really been a single disapointment yet. In fact, the only britcoms I've gotten that I've really not enjoyed were the region 1 disks I rented from Netflix's "Best British Comedies" list. Go figure.
Anyway, I've discovered some shows that I absolutely must take a moment to gush about. Even if you can't get them legally (insert griping about the stupidity of regional encoding here) if you're a britcom fan and don't live near enough for me to inflict them on you personally do yourself a favor and take a look.
First up: Green Wing. I got this show because it has Tasmin Grieg (Fran from Black Books) and Mark Heap (Brian from Spaced-- his character is my new icon. Be afraid) and it happened to be being released on the same day as the first season of "A bit of Fry and Laurie", which I was pre-ordering at the time. It has since developed its own mini-cult following here as the majority of the house and a few SOs have gotten thoroughly hooked and are now collectively fiending for the second season (which I'm making eeeeleeegal VCds of now. Mwa-haha!). I think I can honestly say that Green Wing has taken its place as my new favorite series. Yes, I think I like it even more than Spaced.
The really strange thing about this is that there are so many reasons why I shouldn't like Green Wing, let alone love it. Zel recently showed me the movie "Four Rooms" and, aside from some really excellent music by Combustible Edison, I pretty much hated it. I explained afterward that the movie was hard to watch because it felt like two hours of just watching awful, irresponsible and mean people be awful, irresponsible and mean to one another. In general I just don't enjoy that sort of thing. And yet, a large portion of Green Wing involves just that. At least half of the audience reaction to a given show is not laughter so much as "Oh no. Oh, <character> did not just do that. Ooooooh no". What's different about Green Wing is that, although all of the characters are disfunctional to varying degrees, they are, aszebediah put it, somehow "charmingly disfuctional". This is in part due to the fact that while there are a couple of truly awful characters and a couple of just-plain-nuts characters, they generally have enough humanity to them for the viewer to still care about them. And because the characterization is done so well that connection tends to develop pretty quickly. We found ourselves cheering when the characters we liked got ahead and talking to the screen (well, I did, anyway) when they didn't, saying "no, no! don't go out with him! he's a jerk!". In a strange way it's almost a comedy soap opera. The show manages to be surreal while still remaining just grounded enough for the viewer to empathize.
Some other notable things about Green Wing: The show is almost 100% character-driven. By which I mean on a per-episode basis there really is not so much a plot as a premise. Each episode consists of a series of scenes that are built around largely improvised interactions within the episode's premise. The show therefore lives or dies by the chemistry of its cast and wow, does it live. I have never seen a cast just work together so well (it turns out they spent months of workshopping before the series filmed to develop it). Add in good music and some really innovative camera work and you have a show with a very distictive feel... even when that feel is somewhat slimy and uncomfortable.
So yeah, I've now turned what was supposed to be one bullet in a list of show recommendations into a multi-paragraph gush. Find it. Try it. I think it's a darn good show. And then I will be one step closer to my goal of introducing the phrase "you ate the coffee" (to describe any act of pointless macho hubris) into the American vernacular. Go me.
Ugh. I should be getting to bed now. I guess I'll do the rest later. That will at least give me time to watch some of the new stuff I've gotten. At long last I'm close to finishing downloads of a couple of highly recommended series that never got released on DVD, even in the UK. One is Asylum, which is the show Simon Peg and Jessica Stevenson met on and which also has Holly from Red Dwarf. Woo! Saw the first episode yesterday and it was fantastic. Hopefully the rest will d/l tonight. The other series is Hippies, which has Simon Pegg (yes, I'm a fanboy. deal with it) and Julian Rhind-Tutt who plays Mac, one of my favorite Green Wing characters. Can't wait to see that one.
Ok. Going away now.
For real.
No, really.
G'nite.
Next time: Look Around You, The Mighty Boosh and others.
Update: Green Wing Series Two DVD release date is official: 9/4/06. Plus IT crowd in October and another show I've heard good things about, Darkplace, in July. Sigh. Crack would be cheaper.
slyviolet, this means you!).Ever since I got my fancy DVD player I've been amassing a sizable collection of UK-only shows. Further, I'm glad to say that there hasn't really been a single disapointment yet. In fact, the only britcoms I've gotten that I've really not enjoyed were the region 1 disks I rented from Netflix's "Best British Comedies" list. Go figure.
Anyway, I've discovered some shows that I absolutely must take a moment to gush about. Even if you can't get them legally (insert griping about the stupidity of regional encoding here) if you're a britcom fan and don't live near enough for me to inflict them on you personally do yourself a favor and take a look.
First up: Green Wing. I got this show because it has Tasmin Grieg (Fran from Black Books) and Mark Heap (Brian from Spaced-- his character is my new icon. Be afraid) and it happened to be being released on the same day as the first season of "A bit of Fry and Laurie", which I was pre-ordering at the time. It has since developed its own mini-cult following here as the majority of the house and a few SOs have gotten thoroughly hooked and are now collectively fiending for the second season (which I'm making eeeeleeegal VCds of now. Mwa-haha!). I think I can honestly say that Green Wing has taken its place as my new favorite series. Yes, I think I like it even more than Spaced.
The really strange thing about this is that there are so many reasons why I shouldn't like Green Wing, let alone love it. Zel recently showed me the movie "Four Rooms" and, aside from some really excellent music by Combustible Edison, I pretty much hated it. I explained afterward that the movie was hard to watch because it felt like two hours of just watching awful, irresponsible and mean people be awful, irresponsible and mean to one another. In general I just don't enjoy that sort of thing. And yet, a large portion of Green Wing involves just that. At least half of the audience reaction to a given show is not laughter so much as "Oh no. Oh, <character> did not just do that. Ooooooh no". What's different about Green Wing is that, although all of the characters are disfunctional to varying degrees, they are, as
zebediah put it, somehow "charmingly disfuctional". This is in part due to the fact that while there are a couple of truly awful characters and a couple of just-plain-nuts characters, they generally have enough humanity to them for the viewer to still care about them. And because the characterization is done so well that connection tends to develop pretty quickly. We found ourselves cheering when the characters we liked got ahead and talking to the screen (well, I did, anyway) when they didn't, saying "no, no! don't go out with him! he's a jerk!". In a strange way it's almost a comedy soap opera. The show manages to be surreal while still remaining just grounded enough for the viewer to empathize.Some other notable things about Green Wing: The show is almost 100% character-driven. By which I mean on a per-episode basis there really is not so much a plot as a premise. Each episode consists of a series of scenes that are built around largely improvised interactions within the episode's premise. The show therefore lives or dies by the chemistry of its cast and wow, does it live. I have never seen a cast just work together so well (it turns out they spent months of workshopping before the series filmed to develop it). Add in good music and some really innovative camera work and you have a show with a very distictive feel... even when that feel is somewhat slimy and uncomfortable.
So yeah, I've now turned what was supposed to be one bullet in a list of show recommendations into a multi-paragraph gush. Find it. Try it. I think it's a darn good show. And then I will be one step closer to my goal of introducing the phrase "you ate the coffee" (to describe any act of pointless macho hubris) into the American vernacular. Go me.
Ugh. I should be getting to bed now. I guess I'll do the rest later. That will at least give me time to watch some of the new stuff I've gotten. At long last I'm close to finishing downloads of a couple of highly recommended series that never got released on DVD, even in the UK. One is Asylum, which is the show Simon Peg and Jessica Stevenson met on and which also has Holly from Red Dwarf. Woo! Saw the first episode yesterday and it was fantastic. Hopefully the rest will d/l tonight. The other series is Hippies, which has Simon Pegg (yes, I'm a fanboy. deal with it) and Julian Rhind-Tutt who plays Mac, one of my favorite Green Wing characters. Can't wait to see that one.
Ok. Going away now.
For real.
No, really.
G'nite.
Next time: Look Around You, The Mighty Boosh and others.
Update: Green Wing Series Two DVD release date is official: 9/4/06. Plus IT crowd in October and another show I've heard good things about, Darkplace, in July. Sigh. Crack would be cheaper.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-26 05:47 pm (UTC)Plus, the BBC gets to reference "The Professionals" (which I have never seen but am vaguely aware of) in costuming the leads, which is fun.
It is available on DVD, but if you want to check out the first ep drop me a line at my livejournal e-mail address.
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Date: 2006-05-29 12:56 am (UTC)look around you! little mouse!!! hee!