Graham Linehan is the writer responsible for Father Ted and much of Big Train, Black books and Brasseye. Fans of any of the above won’t need selling on his latest show The IT Crowd but I firmly believe this show merits more nods at The Buff. It’s a cheaply produced British sitcom that relies on its quality writing and acting over production values. Our main characters are the uber geeky social outcast IT technicians Roy & Moss and Jen their 30 something single boss who really knows nothing about IT but instead spends most of her time trying to ‘bag a normal’. The humour ranges from the cheap and dumb to the quite complex farces that made Fawlty Towers a classic. Still, answering the IT office phone with "Did you try turning it off and on again?" and the concept that "If you type 'google' into google you can break the internets" raise a chuckle from me everytime. Each episode tends to tackle a specific issue or taboo and everytime the farce unfolds in an unpredictable way. The first series is good, the second is great and the 3rd series is yet to be released over here. Though I reckon it’s not quite up to Saxondale standards I hope the IT crowd can join Spaced, Black books, The Office, Alan Partridge and The League of Gentleman as solid Brit comedy recommendations.
2 comments:
This series, in the fine tradition of English tragicomedies both adheres to convention and successfully expands the genre by continually violating the unities of time, place, and action. It glibly mixes high and low born characters, presenting them here in various fantastic situations meant to highlight and reinforce their awkward disconnect from coworkers and, by extension, the rest of the world. Thematically, the IT Crowd serves as a modern treatise on the outsider using comedy to enforce the distinct alienation felt by all three main characters. The series sometimes veers away from tragicomedic and toward Théâtre de l'Absurde as moments of broad-based comedy, nearly Vaudvillian in execution, blends with characters caught in hopeless situations - forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism are regularly integrated with the main story arc in surreal and interesting ways, the end result being an amalgam of the many forms and variations of both comedy and tragedy.
The guy with the big glasses and funny hair is fucking hilarious too.
Thanks for the translation. I'm becoming more and more grateful of my clearly limited level of schooling (I'm not a Doctor after all am I?) It's Mr Pleb to you.
Post a Comment