chosehumanity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2010-05-17 10:52 am
chosehumanity) wrote in fandomhigh2010-05-17 10:52 am
Entry tags:
Birth of TV Comedy, Monday First Period
"And this week, we're starting with the actual comedy," Mitchell said, without really seguing much. "Not to disparage anyone's jokes, but I think some of you are dearly in need of some education."
He clapped his hands.
"Let's start at the beginning," he said. "Like most genres in television, the TV comedy was birthed from the radio tradition. In fact, in the old days, some sitcoms on TV ran concurrent with similar shows on the radio, such as Hancock's Half Hour. Sadly, a lot of these series have been lost, such as Pinwright's Progress, which was never recorded in a fashion it could be recovered in."
Mitchell had seen it. Not that he'd brag about it.
"So sadly, we have to look to the sixties for the real material. If you stay in Britain, at least. The 'sitcom', the situational comedy, was always the most prevalent kind of TV comedy. The other two options were stand-up and sketch comedy; the former involved a single person, sometimes two, talking to the audience. The second involved unrelated short bits of comedy, stuffed into a single show. Likemeta for Monty Python, but we'll be getting to that next week. Sitcoms, on the other hand, had a consistent storyline set in a situational background. Like a family, or a business."
He pushed himself up out of his chair. "So much for the boring background," he said, "We're here to watch TV, right? Early fifties, and the sixties. We'll show some examples of British and American sitcoms and see about the differences."
Beat.
"And then I want you all to tell me which part of your life would work the best as a sitcom. Just for the fun of it."
[[wait for the ocd up! ]]
He clapped his hands.
"Let's start at the beginning," he said. "Like most genres in television, the TV comedy was birthed from the radio tradition. In fact, in the old days, some sitcoms on TV ran concurrent with similar shows on the radio, such as Hancock's Half Hour. Sadly, a lot of these series have been lost, such as Pinwright's Progress, which was never recorded in a fashion it could be recovered in."
Mitchell had seen it. Not that he'd brag about it.
"So sadly, we have to look to the sixties for the real material. If you stay in Britain, at least. The 'sitcom', the situational comedy, was always the most prevalent kind of TV comedy. The other two options were stand-up and sketch comedy; the former involved a single person, sometimes two, talking to the audience. The second involved unrelated short bits of comedy, stuffed into a single show. Like
He pushed himself up out of his chair. "So much for the boring background," he said, "We're here to watch TV, right? Early fifties, and the sixties. We'll show some examples of British and American sitcoms and see about the differences."
Beat.
"And then I want you all to tell me which part of your life would work the best as a sitcom. Just for the fun of it."
[[
Re: Talk to the TAs
Her face was impassive as she slouched in her seat, but her hand was fiddling with her necklace.
Re: Talk to the TAs
"What got into you?"
It wasn't the most polite way he had ever asked the question, but he knew Kate well enough by now to have a sense that his best manners were most often wasted on her. Better to be direct.
Re: Talk to the TAs
He was unfortunately very right about how useless politeness was with Kate; she wasn't inclined to give it back, either.
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Re: Talk to the TAs
'Fine' covered 'sounding mildly irritated', right? Not that she was doing so well with her facade anyway.
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Re: Talk to the TAs
She glanced at Jack, briefly, and said, more idly than irritated, "We can have a class on the beach if you clean out the sand from the laptop afterwards."
Nice non-existent segue, there.
Re: Talk to the TAs
The siblings thing was not being proven false, was it?
Re: Talk to the TAs
"Because I don't want to do it," Kate said. "And I pitched the idea to Mitchell." Kind of.
Re: Talk to the TAs
Re: Talk to the TAs
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Re: Talk to the TAs