Britainology 33: Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em

for this now 2 1/2 year old how the fuck did this get made request, I would submit for your consideration Cop Rock (1990) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Rock

Are You Being Served? reruns were ALWAYS playing on YTV late at night and, being a Canadian teen at the time, I didn't understand a single goddamn thing about it, so if Milo could explain what was going on there, that would be great.

So that's who CWC meant when he said he wasn't being racist because Archie Bunker also said it (a slur/stereotype)

Nate mentions early on that if their had been an American equivalent of Dad's Army it would have gotten remade. There are sort of 2 American equivalents of Dad's Army Hogan's Hero's ans McHale's Navy and arguably the only reason we didn't get a Hogan's Hero's movie in the 90s is Bob Crane's death (eventually giving us Auto Focus).

Talking about a comedic character that the audience laughed at for not necessarily the right reasons; have you thought about doing Pub Landlord Al Murray as a kind of English Guy? A toff playing a Pub Landlord who working class brits agreed with and middle class brits laughed at. Who now is mostly known because he is super into WW1 and WW2 history stuff. Cursed British vibes galore.

Very belatedly, I was reminded of the Two Ronnie’s episode, The Worm That Turned. “a spoof piece of dystopian fiction set in 2012 in which women rule Britain. Male and female gender roles are completely reversed, even down to men having women's names and vice versa. Men are housekeepers and wear women's clothes, and law and order is managed by female guards in boots and hot pants.”

noel's house party needs an episode, i NEED Nate's take on Mr Blobby, PLEASE. If you are going to skip this suggestion at least read the Wikipedia entry first and tell me this, "the most important show on the BBC", doesn't deserve an episode

Would do unspeakable things for a Britainology on the Craig Charles era of Robot Wars

I've been dieing for a Blake's 7 episode, it's a late 70's early 80's dystopian space opera with no budget which is both grim and gritty and has wonderfully ridiculous costumes.

I was also a fan of Red Dwarf. Still love It. It lead me to the Brittas Empire. I watched the first Episode on PBS when I was a teenager, and thought it was hilarious. It never caught on in the US, as far as I know, and I never saw it again on PBS. I recently rewatched the whole series, and I have to say it’s a pretty wild critique of Neoliberalism ten years into its existence. It has bits about technocratic management that were jokes at the time, that just seem accurate now. The running gag is that the means testing is so onerous that the Fitness Center dosent actually serve the public. I think it’s well in Trash Future’s wheel house.

Another 70s offshoot could be about the so-called children’s show “Children Of The Stones,” with a possible sidetrack into the then-popular interest in the occult. Nate could get revenge by making Milo watch anything from the Hooterville universe: “Green Acres,” “Petticoat Junction,” or “The Beverly Hillbillies.” A lot could be said about the changing TV sitcom demographics from the 60s to the 70s.

Growing up in Wisconsin in the 90's there were always Red Dwarf and Mr. Bean episodes playing on public TV and I was always baffled at both--also the Canadian show Red Green was always in the mix too, maybe get an Upper-Midwestology with Riley going? I'd love to see any or all of those looked at!

The mention of "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" suggests a possibly fruitful but certainly brain destroying Britainology topic might be Britain's inexplicable obsession with novelty singles. There's the obvious insanity like Bob the Builder and The Teletubbies hitting #1 in the charts, or people losing their minds for The Young Ones doing backup vocals on an old Cliff Richard song - but Brits seem to have a taste for stupid music bullshit even when it isn't connected to a popular TV show. Take Joe Dolce's "Shaddap You Face", a song whose entire joke is 'Italian-Americans talk funny' which was #1 on the brit charts for 3 whole fucking weeks in 1981. Or Clive Dunn from Dad's Army topping the charts with a cutesy song about the horrors of growing old. Or the time Morris Minor & The Majors hit #4 with a Beastie Boys parody song making fun of stuttering. Fucking nightmarish

So, fun fact: they actually DID try to make an American version of Dad's Army. It was called "The Rear Guard" and they basically changed it to be a State Defense Force unit in New York/New Jersey. They made one pilot episode and I don't think it EVER aired because test audiences hated it intensely. The only clip I can find of it on YouTube is linked below. The pilot was based off the famous "Don't tell 'em Pike" episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gIAFLJS83A

Okay, hear me out: Sister Wendy, the horniest nun to ever walk an art gallery. I feel like that was the BBC in partnership with PBS. You either are slightly blessed/cursed to know of her or feel like someone is fucking with you. And I kind of feel the same way about “As Time Goes By”. I never laughed during it, but I recognized the humor.

All the talk of noncing and terrible pop music made me realise that Top of the Pops is ripe for a Britainology. There was a great documentary that’s a good way in called Top of the Pops: The True Story. Combine that with a couple of Friday night repeats on BBC Four and you’ve got some top quality content to mine.

Also an episode about British noncing would be terrifying but possibly really good? You'd need to get the right guest on for it though I think.

Would be awesome to hear a show about YA TV shows like Byker Grove or Grange Hill.

Would you guys ever consider doing a “Russia-ology”? I’d love to hear Milo explain things like Chechnya or the 1999 Apartment bombings.

Fun fact, the DJ from the Warriors went on to play the Chief on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

I recommend the show Bullseye. Not a comedy show, but I think it could be very informative (and you might find it funny nonetheless), particularly for seeing what was going on in the background, during the era of Thatcherism. If you can, try to watch an episode where the contestants lose the final round. It’s so bleak!

Johnny Knoxville walking up to a group of black guys with the grizzly bear armour on, each slur louder than the last.

Also, my suggestion is the woeful Ben Elton/Rowan Atkinson gentle police sitcom The Thin Blue Line. Featuring Love thy Neighbor's Rudolph Walker, Game of Thrones' Mark Addy, and awful subsequent TERF James Dreyfus.

Having watched it all again recently, would have to respectfully disagree to Blackadder Goes Forth being the best of the series. It's quite a clever move to move its broad satire of class and nobility to the first world war, which reflects that world more than any subsequent world event; but at that point the satire's very broad and the jokes are stretched out to the point of becoming formulaic (which I think, to be fair, they play with). If you watch Baldrick from series 1-4, you see a beaten down and uneducated but quite knowing and cynical figure just become stupid to the point of brain damage; he's just a walking punchline by the end, which is a shame because he's the only member of the cast who's meant to be working class in Goes Forth. George and Melchett are idiots on high positions because they're posh, that's basically it, you never see a point where their naivete and jingoism directly cause chaos (Melchett only really repeats orders from above, George doesn't really have any authority despite being a lieutenant). Darling and Blackadder himself are more successful because there's the element of their positions affording them a certain safety, and using them to their advantage by either keeping them in the general's favour or escaping the frontlines altogether. Granted the culmination of all that in the final episode is very effective, but I don't know if it really justifies the series overall. And the ending, while effective, is a bit sentimental. I just think series 2-3 had a lot more to say about the British way of jostling for position in high society to escape the gutter, whereas Forth feels like the formula wearing thin.

In Norway in the eighties and nineties it was impossible to avoid the British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo. It's a show about the french resistance in France during WWII, entirely British cast just doing accents. I haven't seen it in 15 years, but i remember it being actually funny. Hope you guys check it out, Norwegians will love it. I have no idea if anyone else has seen it.

Also, good to know that one of Milo's friend's parents is Kendo Nagasaki.

In terms of cursed British comedies, what about It Ain't Half Hot Mum? Also, if you want to watch a bunch of weird, 70's engineers and scientists do assault courses in sweaters, there's always The Krypton Factor.

This would be more Scot-ology, and hence inscrutable to Milo, but 2000s Scottish sitcom "Gary Tank Commander", a show where the entire premis is "what if a guy in the army was camp?"

I had a friend in primary who was really into old comedies like Dad's Army and Some Mothers Do Ave Em and even as an 8 year old I knew this was truly cursed

This may be the wrong venue/time to suggest it, but would love to see a Britainology on Video Nasties and the BBFC

You could do a watch of the extremely cursed American remakes of Peep Show and The Inbetweeners, (or just 00s comedy in general)

My favourite was the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and this was very formative on my entire attitude to work and life in general.

Surprised these Oxbridge poshos don't know The Warriors is clearly based on Xenophon's Anabasis. :)

There's also the entire genre of genteel class-conscious romcom -- The Good Life, To The Manor Born, A Fine Romance -- that I'm assuming wouldn't have made it in the US because it would have been too culturally alien for any of the comedy to land.

Suggestion for British shows from the past that are a weird time capsule … Men Behaving Badly.

PBS ran reruns of Are You Being Served for most of my childhood and I was obsessed partly because I didn't understand half the jokes and thought it was "exotic". Ah, memories.

Yes, Till Death us do part started in the mid 60s and Alf Garnet was portrayed as an anachronism. Despite claims the show challenged his attitude, it actually encouraged and popularised a bunch of slurs.

To correct/add to the boys cross-cultural discussion of 70s racist TV dads: the Alf Garnett show was Til Death Us Part; Love Thy Neighbour featured a different racist dad. Archie Bunker was actually based on Alf Garnet. In the early 80s there was an equivalent Australian show, Kingswood Country, featuring a whitebread racist dad and his slurs against his Greek son-in-law.

here in America, The Mario Bros Super Show, starring pro wrestler Captain Lou Albano as a live-action Mario, is the longest leash Nintendo has ever given anything

There's a horrible British game show called Endurance UK from 1997. It's based on a Japanese game show called Za Gamen (which basically tortured it's contestants) and was hosted by 2 dudes doing yellowface with engrish accents. I remember seeing it on the comedy channel in Aus as a kid and thinking it was bit much (even though Australia was and is still super racist).

Warsaw Pact Absolutely Fabulous depicts two women who frankly don't drink enough, marking them as outsiders in their society.

My nomination for English show you should watch is Ripping Yarns. It’s the Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam spin-off and it much more absurd, dry, and lots of the eps actively take the piss of different British guys/institutions.

My impression of old British wrestling was they were really into large immobile guys, some of the main stars were Big Daddy and Giant haydtacks. They weren't necessarily all that athletic mostly just large guys who didnt do that many moves they mostly just pushed and sat on the other guy.

Spitting image episode when?

Nick at Night used to take over Nickelodeon on New Years and play the best episodes of tv from the 50, 60, and 70s. One year they had a bunch of Abe Lincoln impersonators do short skit from the episodes. So there was Abe Lincoln trying to light a lighter as a gamble for fingers from an Alfred Hitchcock episode.

Also, I refer Nate to "Rising Damp".

I think a US sitcom that really could have been a British show was "Soap"; with an openly gay character and another character in search of a sex change.

"The Prisoner".. If it wasn't such a great series.. Maybe watch "The Persuaders!" and get Alice aboard.

I think Taxi is about right in that it was very popular at the time, but people in my age (same as Milo) likely don’t know about it. The only way I do is by way of Andy Kaufman. I think Kaufman’s character was supposed to be funny mostly by talking strange so I guess more connections there.

Don't gavage Nate please.

came for inscrutable british sitcoms; stayed for USAF pilot doing Seinfeld this is your captain speaking over mouth hum

For some reason this show was one of the few the Australian ABC more or less tracked faithfully so I saw it all as a kid. The theme is burnt into my brain by its sheer restraint. Its unique physical farce left me gasping every week:, of course I understood nothing but the physical comedy. You couldn't repeat it today, no wonder Michael Crawford wanted a second career after that! I forgot about the Australian angle, but don't remember specific episodes, it must have been pretty weak.

Wait, could we do a Claude Levi Strauss on the legend of Del Boy across Europe?

yes. fuck yes

you will at some point be incapable of escaping the black hole like pull of Fawlty Towers