I'm not exactly an Anglophile, but I'm certainly a Televanglophile-BBCAmerica
Written: Aug 20 '01
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Pros: Several shows by people who know a lot more about TV than we do.
Cons: Lots of news bits and really weird commercials.
The Bottom Line: Television as it was meant to be. Well, television as it was meant for me anyway.
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| Vormancian's Full Review: BBC America |
It was a little over a year ago that I was first able to watch BBCAmerica. The new cable I subscribed to offered it, and I couldn’t wait to see it. I have long been a fan of many shows I saw on the sheet that gave me some idea of what I was going to get by adding BBCAmerica. I was in hog heaven, and for weeks my television hardly left the channel.
When I moved across the country, the channel was no longer available to me.
Finally, Cox has added the channel, and I am not only getting the shows I have been missing for a year, there are several new shows that are wrapping their grubby, little mitts around me. Between my wife's interest in several shows (including Changing Rooms), and my interest in virtually everything else, the television is back to a virtually one-channel instrument.
So I thought I would put together a guide of BBCAmerica to give you an idea of what you might be missing.
Absolutely Fabulous
An outrageous comedy which has made a major name for itself here in America. If there’s anything on BBC you already know about it’s probably this, so I won’t go into much detail. The show stars Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as fashion-crazed, middle-aged throwbacks who are not simply stuck in any one decade, but have all the worst bits of every decade they have lived through stuck to them. Despite the fact that they are hopelessly lost in their own world created from the scraps of their past, they are obsessed with keeping up with the current trends. Their crazy, self-centered lifestyle make for some of the funniest television entertainment available.
The show has won more awards than it knows what to do with, including British Academy of Film awards, and International Emmys.
Ballykissangel
While I haven’t completely fallen for this show yet, it has a certain charm which leads me to believe that I eventually will. An English priest in a small Irish village shows us a world of heartwarmingly real characters where the storylines have much more to do with learning about the characters than viewers of American television are likely to be used to.
Black Adder
Black Adder, the masterpiece series starring Rowan Atkinson, is on BBCAmerica just about every time you turn around. The series is the comically tragic story of the line of Black Adder, and in each series we see another century’s hopeless man in the line, all of whom seem to get ahead by falling further behind, and have an incredible knack for landing in the most vicious circumstances.
We start with Black Adder the first, Edmund Duke of Edinburgh in 1485. In the second series, which takes place in the late 1500s, Blackadder comes to us again as Lord Edmund who is forever trying to get ahead, mostly by taking advantage of the Queen (try not to read too much into that). The third series jumps us ahead to the late 1700s, and jumps Blackadder rather down the ladder of society. He is now the servant (butler/Mr.Belvedere) to the Prince Regent. In the fourth series, Blackadder Goes Forth, we find ourselves in the midst of WWI, and Captain Blackadder finds himself right on the front lines.
Throughout the series, Black Adder is accompanied by Baldrick, whose family line apparently follows along as servants of Adders and inventors of ever more (actually less) cunning plans. In any given episode, Baldrick has at least four cunning (read utterly idiotic) plans, and as Blackadder says, Baldrick wouldn't know a cunning plan if it was painted blue, dancing on top of a piano, singing 'Cunning Plans Are Here Again'.
Brilliant!
In the tradition of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, we get Brilliant!, a sketch comedy by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. This show is a bit off the wall, and at times is rather over the top. As the creators themselves say, they wanted to shift the idea of sketch comedy, and take some of the formula out of the formula. This show isn’t for everyone, and I can’t say that I am an absolute fan of it, but there are some good laughs to be had.
British Men Behaving Badly
There was a short-lived show in America called Men Behaving Badly based on this show. I liked that show and was sorry to see it go, but it had nothing on the original.
Starring Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey this show is simply about men acting, more or less, like men. Hilarious comedy about what men get up to, and what they think about (and then, what they really think about).
Changing Rooms
This show is mostly entertaining in so far as it is ridiculous (at least to me). The premise of the show is that two neighbors redecorate each other’s houses, completely. Each set of neighbors has a professional interior decorator (laughing at whom is worth the price of admission) and a professional Bob Villa type at their disposal. They are also given a budget to buy new things, which I believe is $1,000.
Then we see them looking around their neighbors house, and having a little chat with the decorator about what they want to do.
We then get to watch them as they proceed to ruin their neighbor’s house. There is no telling what sort of things these people might get up to, and it can be a joy to watch. On recent shows we have seen one wall of a room covered completely in moss, the painting (yes, painting... with paint) of a couch and loveseat, and the installation of an ‘entertainment center’ which was actually nothing but wooden boxes screwed to the wall.
I’m not sure what the actual point of the show is supposed to be (I assume that we are supposed to be shown these really stunning things we can do to our homes for rather little money), but it works out for me, because there isn’t much on television to compare to watching these people at the ‘unveiling’ of their new home.
Coupling
This show is a sort of British version of Friends, only with a little more guts. I’m a fan of Friends, but it has a certain feel to it that takes the edge of the comedy, and takes a bit away from its potential. You wouldn’t be too surprised if Richie Cunnigham trotted into view on Friends. Coupling has no such problems.
In this show, we have six friends who have all been friends for quite awhile and are somewhere in their thirties. The group consists of those who have been involved with each other, want to be involved with each other, or simply want to be involved with someone. Thus, this is the show that Friends is becoming. The focus here is more heavily centered around relationships than is Friends, and no subject is safe from discussion when these people get together. Marvelous actors and great writing fill this show to overflowing.
East Enders
Apparently, the BBC can make something almost worthwhile out of even the garbage that is the soap opera. This show can hardly be classified as anything else, but it is a far different creature from the soap operas in America. Imagine a soap opera with real people (well, mostly real). Not everyone here is a doctor or otherwise fabulously wealthy, people have real problems, and a good deal of the action focuses on a pub and its clientele.
I can’t say I love this show, but it is a good effort, has characters you could actually care about, and according to the BBCAmerica website this show draws UK audiences of 20 million.
Father Ted
Easily the best new find for me, this show delves into the lives of three priests and a housekeeper on Craggy Island in Ireland. Father Ted is in charge of things, and ‘helping’ him along are Father Dougal and Father Jack. Father Ted winds up the busiest (and somehow the laziest) priest in recorded history. His busyness comes from having to deal with his sidekicks, and the surprisingly bizarre events that manage to crop up on his small island.
Father Ted is rather a ‘fatherly’ figure who doesn’t really want a whole lot to do with the more stickly bits of religion. Father Dougal is something like Gilligan, only likeable, and is confounded by the most elementary things, not only of religion, but of life in general. In many ways a child, Dougal seems as surprised as anyone that he is a priest. Father Jack is an alcoholic, to say the least, and doesn’t add much to the dialogue of the show, other than to say, ‘Drink!’, ‘Girls!’, and something better left out here.
Amazingly witty, most of what is funniest about the show is what it does when it is least trying to be funny. My wife and I have both missed lines of the show to our laughter.
Saunders and French
Sketch comedy from two of the BBCs funniest women. Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous) and Dawn French (The Vicar of Dibley) come together to form their own ideas about sketch comedy. This is, I’m led to understand, the show that gave Absolutely Fabulous its success.
Strangely, this is the sort of sketch comedy show that isn’t likely to make you laugh (if I’m any judge). The sketches aren’t exactly funny in the way that you might think. They are more a sort of humorous. In order to explain, The Far Side by Gary Larson comes to mind. When seeing a Far Side ‘comic’, it would be very rare that you would be caused to laugh out loud, but they are very funny nevertheless. This is the sort of comedy found in the show Saunders and French. It’s kind of a ‘dry’ funny.
Not the best show on the air at BBCAmerica, but it is definitely worth watching.
Jonathan Creek
A truly bizarre show. Jonathan Creek is an illusionist, at least, sort of. He is the brains behind a magician, coming up with his tricks. Maggy Magellan puts him to work solving crimes with her. The two team up, and investigate the most unsolvable of cases. BBCAmerica proclaims this show a comedy-thriller, and although I’m not sure that it is exactly thrilling, that is a pretty good description.
Reminiscent of the long-forgotten Bill Bixby show The Magician, we get a new twist on the rash of crime shows, where we get a taste of the mystical along with our murder.
The cases we see are far more interesting than what you'll find in most detective shows, and while I am anything but a fan of the genre in general, this one has started to reel me in.
Keeping Up Appearances
Perhaps not the focal point of the crown that is the BBC, this is certainly one of the gems lingering about the thing. The show centers around Hyacinth Bucket, and one of the running gags of the show is that people are constantly pronouncing it bucket, and of course, it should be pronounced bouquet. La Dee Da.
Hyacinth has little in her life apart from making sure that she knows everything about her neighbors, and that her neighbors know exactly what she wants them to know about her. She is interested only in avoiding the ‘common’ and making sure that everyone knows just how uncommonly uncommon she is.
When she buys new furniture, she lays out cones in the road and a marker proclaiming that a furniture delivery is imminent so that her neighbors will know. When her plan to draw her neighbor to the window (to witness said furniture delivery) misfires, she asks the delivery van to drive around the block again so she can make another attempt.
Unfortunately for Hyacinth, much of her family is as common as could be, and her husband has no interest in aiding Hyacinth’s bids to further entreat themselves into the world of ‘society’.
The League of Gentlemen
I’ve seen The League of Gentlemen on Comedy Central and on the BBC, and this show is simply beyond me. A sketch comedy show that seems to be a mix of The Kids in the Hall, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and a severe acid trip. This one takes bizarre to new levels, and tests the absolute limits of what can be considered comedic. Too much for me, this show does have a large following. Be very aware that this is not a show for everyone.
Red Dwarf
This show based on an absolutely hilarious book gets a lot of airtime on BBCAmerica. It follows life on a spaceship, on which everyone has died except Lister, and Lister was in suspended animation travelling space for so long, that the probability that humans still exist anywhere in the universe is virtually nil.
Among the best of ‘British’ comedies, we are forced into the life of Lister and what serve as his companions.
Rimmer, the perfect example of the ‘by the book’ stick-in-the-mud, Rimmer isn’t actually there at all, he is a hologram.
Cat, who is the lone survivor of the cats that lived on for years in a hold of the ship, evolved, created a civilization, and then died out (I told you Lister was asleep a long time). A curious fellow (ha ha), Cat has inherited all the characteristics of cats, and now exists as the humanish last of his breed.
Holly is the computer that controls the spaceship, Red Dwarf, and after millions of years getting on by himself, he has gone a bit odd, but he’s staggeringly smart.
There is also, a bit later in the series, the character of Kris Kochanski. She’s from another dimension, and can also be found here at epinions. Oddly enough.
The Vicar of Dibley
Dawn French, the other half of Saunders and French, stars in this show as The Vicar of Dibley. A wonderful look at a different idea of life in the clergy, French is a somewhat more laid back vicar, although she has the best of intentions.
Something of a more reserved Father Ted, The Vicar of Dibley is a cleverly funny, yet not too ambitious comedy that deals with French’s attempts at being taken seriously while avoiding being serious at all costs. The show is written by Richard Curtis who co-wrote the Blackadder series.
And that, as they say, is that. If you get BBCAmerica, I highly recommend that you check out virtually everything that comes on, especially these shows (there are some news bits and so on as well, but you can skip those). If you don’t get it, I highly recommend calling your cable company (or whoever) and screaming at them in a very high-pitched, whiny voice.
There are, of course, many other programs on the channel, but I only wanted to go on for nearly ever, and not actually ever, and besides many of the other shows are hardly worth any review from me (Monty Python’s Flying Circus is on quite a bit, but what am I going to say about it, especially in a little clip amongst all these other shows?).
Cheers!
Recommended:
Yes
Average Program Rating: TV 14 -- parents strongly cautioned
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Epinions.com ID:
Vormancian
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Member: Marc Eastman
Location: Bangor,ME
Reviews written: 328
Trusted by: 351 members
About Me:
Evangeline Sylvan Betty Eastman. AKA "Cricket" 9/12/06
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