And Now For Something Completely Different - What Cartoons / Shows do we share? (1 Viewer)

Just wondering what US and Great Britain TV shows and cartoons (Not Movies) we have in common? A TV / Show or Cartoon like a song is something that provides common experiences. Amazing I can't remember my password, but if a 30 year old TV show comes on "I remember this one".

For example: on my first trip to Australia, the people there just loved the TV Series "Dallas". Of course, they seemed to believe that in a way, all of us Yanks lived that way. We know that Hollywood can create our concept of Outer Space in some basement.

Here are a few shows from the BBC that I have enjoyed and seen every episode maybe more than once. They probably define my concept of life in Great Britain :
Red Dwarf
Black Adder (all of them)
Mr Bean
Are You Being Served?
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Monty Python
Humans (series)
Dr Who (about the first half)
The Prisoner

Please throw back some shows that create some level of mental model about the US.

Rx,

My problem in answering this is that I know most of the shows I watched were intended as escapist fare not to be taken seriously as anything but a diversion from everyday life. As such, the image they presented was not one I thought would be long-term pleasurable to actually live through.

Having offered a disclaimer, I will now answer the question but of course I will offer my usual off-center take on what the shows portray.

Some older shows such as the Perry Mason series were fun enough but convoluted enough to give the impression that everyone in the USA (except Perry M and company) were conniving, dishonest folks.

Gunsmoke and Rawhide were two Western dramas that offered the cowboy image that is our heritage, but they exaggerated it to glorify the violence sometimes.

Hill Street Blues - a police procedural drama with more sex (relationships forming and dissolving), incompetence (the SWAT team leader), and violence in each episode than most cops ever really see in a month.

Sanford and Son - sit-com about a father-son junk/salvage business, loosely modeled after the UK series Steptoe and Son. It portrayed people as conniving, hateful, and unreliable.

All In the Family - sit-com about bigotry. Yes, it pulled bigotry down to the level of reductio ad absurdam but too many people didn't catch onto that fact.

Hee-Haw - comedy-oriented variety show. It offered the impression that the folks in the USA liked or perhaps even idolized stupidity. I still cringe at some of the jokes.

Same vein: Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In

More recent:

Swamp People - slice of reality in South Louisiana (and other parts of the state). It shows people in primitive conditions, which isn't so good. But I hope that some folks at least recognize the strong family values inherent in some of the hunters.

Other recent reality shows don't attract me because I just don't care about the Pawn business or Storage Locker reclamation business or the Engine Rebuilding business or the custom Sword-making business or the Gunsmithing business.

The modern shows that sadden me are ones like Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo with a petulant, spoiled child as the star and an adult body around a mentally undeveloped woman as the child's mother. So what does she do to protect her child? Date a child molester. Then there is 19 and Counting - again with a child molester. Not to mention the revelation about those healthy sandwich shots and how their spokesperson was involved in child porn. It gives the wrong idea about us.

Our family only watches a few shows, (not sure how much is staged in the reality shows). Survivor (like the completions the most, do not care about camp politics), Amazing Race, Blue Bloods (interesting drama), Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Sometimes, you are not too sure who the good guys are). Been watching Under the Dome this summer, kinda of a strange show.

Wallace and Gromit are great examples of UK cartoons / Claymation's. Many hours cracking up with my then young daughter.

Interesting that Rx and Doc both admit that American TV shows can give a false impression of American thinking / life.
It's easy to dismiss this if you are American but not so easy to dismiss, if a) one has never been there and b) it is pounded out on the telly day after day. Like those Aussies thinking all in USA was like Dallas.

I did some posts years ago about "things we see about the USA in TV and films", like all restaurants have red gingham cloths.
There is always a big space outside any building you visit to place the car.
Nobody pays the bill properly in a restaurant, they just throw a few notes on the table and walk out.
Diners are old railway carriages.
Aliens always visit small towns in the desert, not central of a city where CNN can film it live.

Surprisingly, many turned out to be true.
Col

ColinEssex said:

Interesting that Rx and Doc both admit that American TV shows can give a false impression of American thinking / life.
It's easy to dismiss this if you are American but not so easy to dismiss, if a) one has never been there and b) it is pounded out on the telly day after day. Like those Aussies thinking all in USA was like Dallas.

I did some posts years ago about "things we see about the USA in TV and films", like all restaurants have red gingham cloths.
There is always a big space outside any building you visit to place the car.
Nobody pays the bill properly in a restaurant, they just throw a few notes on the table and walk out.
Diners are old railway carriages.
Aliens always visit small towns in the desert, not central of a city where CNN can film it live.

Surprisingly, many turned out to be true.
Col

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and which ones were 100% true?

I'm amazed that anybody watching fiction on TV thinks it is an exact replica of the real world, although I must add in fairness to Col that a Londoner I met at Uni , who had been all over Europe but barely north of the Thames thought all northern cities were as depicted in Coronation Street.

Brian

No mention of Futurama!!

Brianwarnock said:

and which ones were 100% true?

I'm amazed that anybody watching fiction on TV thinks it is an exact replica of the real world, although I must add in fairness to Col that a Londoner I met at Uni , who had been all over Europe but barely north of the Thames thought all northern cities were as depicted in Coronation Street.

Brian

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I can't remember now Bri, I posted about 100 odd different things but I remember Tess and Cindy going through them and commenting. It'll be on the watercooler forum about 8 years ago I did it. It was quite fun actually, the yanks loved it.

I once went to Grimsby for an interview, it smelled of fish. But we all know that anything north of the Watford gap is a bit sparse on fresh veg and salad and people live on deep fried Mars bars and chips cooked in dripping.
Actually, I heard that the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea were going to hold a rock concert to raise money for the people of the North of England.

Col

2 of my favorites from yesteryear that have not been mentioned:
The Honeymooners
created by, produced by, and starring, the inimitable Jackie Gleason. One of TV's original sitcoms - it portrayed 2 working class couples, in their daily lives. It illustrated the comical side of such human frailties as envy, jealousy, pride, anger, foolishness, greed, and deceit, as well as such human virtues as loyalty, friendship, and forgiveness. The overall tone was optimistic - despite the desperate circumstances that can arise from our own doing, somehow, things always work out.
Bear in mind, this was one of the very first TV series of all time, and to this day, it remains one of my most favorite shows. It was largely ad-libbed on the spot. There are only 30 something episodes, many available on YouTube, complete.


The Twilight Zone
Needing no introduction, the classic series produced and written by Rod Serling stands as a stunning body of work. Also one of the original TV series, it also dealt with many of the very same themes I mentioned above in The Honeymooners, except with the Twilight Zone, it was not the comical side (although not without humor) but with TZ it was more the ironic and tragic side of things. There in the Twilight Zone, things definitely do NOT always turn out ok.

Strange that now that I've described them, I realize that they both dealt with the same classic themes but in totally different ways. Each one always had some sort of a moral - the consequences of our frailties.

In all the intervening years, there have been some very fine TV series - both from the US and the UK - but these two series stand out for me as the very finest of their kind, as well as the very first.

ColinEssex said:

I once went to Grimsby for an interview, it smelled of fish. But we all know that anything north of the Watford gap is a bit sparse on fresh veg and salad and people live on deep fried Mars bars and chips cooked in dripping.
Actually, I heard that the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea were going to hold a rock concert to raise money for the people of the North of England.

Col

Click to expand...

Your news is out of date, the concert raised enough to buy us all new flat caps with enough left to send over several loads of food for our starving whippets.

Brian

Libre said:

2 of my favorites from yesteryear that have not been mentioned:
The Honeymooners
created by, produced by, and starring, the inimitable Jackie Gleason. One of TV's original sitcoms - it portrayed 2 working class couples, in their daily lives. It illustrated the comical side of such human frailties as envy, jealousy, pride, anger, foolishness, greed, and deceit, as well as such human virtues as loyalty, friendship, and forgiveness. The overall tone was optimistic - despite the desperate circumstances that can arise from our own doing, somehow, things always work out.
Bear in mind, this was one of the very first TV series of all time, and to this day, it remains one of my most favorite shows. It was largely ad-libbed on the spot. There are only 30 something episodes, many available on YouTube, complete.


The Twilight Zone
Needing no introduction, the classic series produced and written by Rod Serling stands as a stunning body of work. Also one of the original TV series, it also dealt with many of the very same themes I mentioned above in The Honeymooners, except with the Twilight Zone, it was not the comical side (although not without humor) but with TZ it was more the ironic and tragic side of things. There in the Twilight Zone, things definitely do NOT always turn out ok.

Strange that now that I've described them, I realize that they both dealt with the same classic themes but in totally different ways. Each one always had some sort of a moral - the consequences of our frailties.

In all the intervening years, there have been some very fine TV series - both from the US and the UK - but these two series stand out for me as the very finest of their kind, as well as the very first.

Click to expand...

The Honeymooners: I was interesting (when I got a lot older to realize it). Alice was a very strong female character for a early sitcom. She did not put up with Ralph's antics.

The Twilight Zone: They did a good job of making you not sure of your own reality. You never were sure how a episode would end.

Col

all restaurants have red gingham cloths.

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Not true. Some of them have diversified to blue gingham.

There is always a big space outside any building you visit to place the car.

Click to expand...

In downtown areas of moderate to large cities, not true any longer because parking lots represent businesses that can cough up a few dollars to the tax coffers. In smaller cities and towns, the guys who film those things pay a little extra and get the city police to gently guide folks to not park in front of the cameras.

Nobody pays the bill properly in a restaurant, they just throw a few notes on the table and walk out.

Click to expand...

That only works in neighborhood restaurants where the person doing it is a regular customer and all the wait-staff know him/her.

Diners are old railway carriages.

Click to expand...

Only the good diners. But after all, someone has to buy up the excess railway cars now that other modes of transportation are more popular.

Aliens always visit small towns in the desert, not central of a city where CNN can film it live.

Click to expand...

They figure that anyone dumb enough to live downtown in large cities isn't smart enough to be worth consideration. They are looking for intelligent lite, not hive colonies.

I really do think people stereotype geographic and cultural ideals based off of serial TV Shows (and cartoons) more so than movies. The TV show brings one back into the group. As if the TV series Cheers - return - everyone knows Your name.
Really? If you head to a bar so often that everyone literally does know you name, it probably includes the COP (Constable On Patrol) too.

We watch MASH and think this sums up the Korean War (wait, past tense... isn't it still going on?). OK, then we watch Faulty Towers and think this represents the country inn staff?

Not really, but the theme does create some icon that defines our mental model.
Benny Hill, now there is a series close to my heart.
I actually bought the first license to that to air publicly on a single UHF station in Oklahoma. I ran it at 10:00 PM against the three major broadcast news. It took 15% of a state-wide audience. I was the only advertiser. Yes, I was one of those who appeared in my own commercials. The UHF station got so much hate mail ( I am very serious). They loved it. It proved they actually had people watching on the new UHF channel.

My commercials emulated Benny Hill. But, alas, we were not British. As one hate mail explained, We all know British are silly, the American is just rude.
Its OK, the sales at my little store boomed, so the money eased the pain of the critics.

In the early '70s a friend of mine told me how his dad was transferred from the London office in the late '60's to the Dallas, Texas office. All of his classmates felt so sorry for him. As he landed in the airport, he fully expected to see horses and wagons.

We know, actually realize that TV isn't real.
Yet, the series The Rockford Files had the poor detective living in a trailer house on the beach in Los Angles. I visited that site where they pulled the trailer to the beach to park or other Hollywood props. Think it was about $20.00 in today's money to park and walk the six blocks.

The_Doc_Man said:

Only the good diners. But after all, someone has to buy up the excess railway cars now that other modes of transportation are more popular.

Click to expand...

There is actually a very good restaurant (Fairhaven Fish-n-Chips: http://www.yelp.com/biz/fairhaven-fish-and-chips-bellingham) in downtown Bellingham, Washington that is built in a re-purposed bus. I think there's enough seating for 4 inside the place and 6 more outside. The fish and chips were really quite good whenever I ate there.

I think it's Virginia that has a similar restaurant but focused on hot dogs instead.

Rx_ said:

Just wondering what US and Great Britain TV shows and cartoons (Not Movies) we have in common? A TV / Show or Cartoon like a song is something that provides common experiences. Amazing I can't remember my password, but if a 30 year old TV show comes on "I remember this one".

For example: on my first trip to Australia, the people there just loved the TV Series "Dallas". Of course, they seemed to believe that in a way, all of us Yanks lived that way. We know that Hollywood can create our concept of Outer Space in some basement.

Here are a few shows from the BBC that I have enjoyed and seen every episode maybe more than once. They probably define my concept of life in Great Britain :
Red Dwarf
Black Adder (all of them)
Mr Bean
Are You Being Served?
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Monty Python
Humans (series)
Dr Who (about the first half)
The Prisoner

Please throw back some shows that create some level of mental model about the US.

Click to expand...

Man v Food

I'm a huge Doctor Who fan. Can't wait for the new episode this weekend.

Rx_

Craig, one of the main actors of Red Dwarf has just quit Coronation Street to start work on a new series.

I have the theme tune from Benny Hill as the ring tone on my phone. This caused an amusing incident recently. Going walking I and two ladies had just boarded a train when the phone started ringing and is saw that it was from a missing member so we rapidly exited the train , me following the two ladies with phone still ringing, it caused a respectably dressed gent to crackup with laughter.



Brian

Its a very nerdy british comedy show, but if you like that kind of thing and can get it, I'd recommend, Dave Gorman's - Modern Life is Goodish.

For non British readers, how would you pronounce this place ...

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/

My first instinct is "Lowburrow", but the way you chaps do your pronunciation, it's probably closer to "Luff-brew", isn't it?

Here's an interesting exercise in pronunciation for those of you in the UK:

Puyallup

Also, Sault Ste Marie

Frothingslosh said:

My first instinct is "Lowburrow", but the way you chaps do your pronunciation, it's probably closer to "Luff-brew", isn't it?

Here's an interesting exercise in pronunciation for those of you in the UK:

Puyallup

Also, Sault Ste Marie

Click to expand...

Perhaps you could give us a guide as to how they are pronounced.

My guesses are

Poo allup

and

|Soo Saint Maree