Greetings! I’m just back from a week in Wales, where I’ve been doing all the things one does in Wales: leaning on fences, chewing bits of straw, tracking mud everywhere, trying not to laugh too loudly at people’s accents, etc. It wasn’t a holiday as such – we were doing some work from the company head office in Presteigne and taking care of my father-in-law’s dogs while he was on holiday in Brittany, the lucky sod. And actually I’m really glad to be back. We have a super-king sized bed at home and I find I’ve become accustomed to sleeping in my own postal district. All week I kept waking up in the middle of the night teetering on the edge of the mattress and having to shove SiC back into his own territory. He does sprawl, bless him.
Other than that…we watched a lot of South Park. That show seems to have gotten exponentially funnier over the last few seasons. The episode with all the people from the future coming back in time to find work? Who were a not-so-subtle analogy for Mexicans? Genius. So brilliant there should be a parade in its honour.
Also we watched a lot of QI and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. For my American readers, these are shows that belong to a genre only found in the UK: I’ve heard them called ‘quizcoms’, but that word is gay and I won’t ever use it again. Basically, they’re programs that are ostensibly quiz shows but are really an excuse for a panel of clever people to sit around and be funny for half an hour. There’s usually a theme (QI is general trivia, but Never Mind the Buzzcocks is about popular music, Have I Got News For You is about current events, etc). The host asks questions, and the panelists come up with amusing answers. The answers don’t have to be right – they just have to be funny. Then there’s general witty banter, and somewhere along the line the right answer is mentioned by someone, and points are awarded in a haphazard way that has very little to do with who actually answered the question correctly, which nobody really cares about anyway.
SiC was surprised to find that these shows simply don’t exist in North America. This is odd, since they’re often mind-bogglingly funny and America usually never misses a chance to rip off a good programme idea from the UK (The Office being the most recent example. What is wrong with just watching the British version? Jokes about Slough over too many people’s heads? Lucy Davis not skinny enough? I ask you). I think this genre of show is just too unstructured for American audiences. They did do an American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway, but they had to explain at the beginning of each episode that it wasn’t really a competition and the points were only awarded as a bit of a joke. I love this. I guess the lowest common denominator in America can’t wrap their minds around the idea that it’s like a game show, but there’s no free car at the end.
I also don’t think Americans put as much of a premium on wit as the Brits do. I can’t imagine that many Americans would see the point of filming a bunch of people just making amusing conversation for half an hour. In England it is very important to be funny, whereas in American it’s very important to, I don’t know, have a big car or something.
I’m awfully cheeky now that I’m safely away from the 49th parallel, huh. At least y’all have South Park. But you’re missing out terribly on QI, because Stephen Fry is fabulous on every imaginable level and Alan Davies is just huggable. For those without recourse to BBC America, go see for yourself.