"Wait a minute, that's your big secret? Alcohol? ... But isn't that just a temporary solution?"
"It's only temporary if you stop drinking."
-- Two And A Half Men.
...Written by bitter writer Chuck Lorre*. I like it a lot, but still miss his earlier show, Dharma and Greg, for which Jenna Elfman deservedly won an Emmy.
* His writing is not bitter. Except for his "vanity cards", which are inserted in a split second after each show. He is relentlessly bitter about his life. Although it may actually mainly be an attempt at humor. Of course he surely would not make the jokes like that if there were no truth at all to it.
Oooh, you gotta love Wikipedia, I just found out that while season 2 of D&G has not been released in the US, it has been in much of the rest of the world, and I'm getting it. The same thing happened recently, I thought season 2 of People Like Us did not exist, but it had actually been released in Australia, so on to eBay Australia I went, and got it. God bless the Internet and Wikipedia.
A couple of films we wanted we ended up with things like Spanish and French editions since neither US or UK release exists. Thankfully we have a hacked DVD player.
ReplyDeleteWhy, when the studio is not interested targeted regional releases, don't they use Region 0?
The Sweeney and Cosmos are the only things I've gotten region 0. You'd think things like Postman Pat, where there is an ex-pat market, but not international appeal, would come that way too.
Anyway, we tried reading the end credits to D&G and a few of his other shows, but the TV(too fast)/VCR(too shaky on pause) did not make them legible. Now I can read them at my leisure.
I don't get why D&G was not the runaway hit like that other one (whose name escapes me, but is on perennial re-run and features a gay (Will) and a lesbian(Grace?) who are almost intimate in NY, with a man-eating, bossy shrimp and a flamer(Jack?), on a par with Thin Blue Lines Goodey, as their co-dependent, dysfunctional "friends", with all the latent aggression and pithiness of Seinfeld, and smut on a par with Are You Being Served).
Or is it that everyone accepts New York as harsh, fast and caring, but no one really gets that SF was the home of the Haight Ashbury/Berkeley hippy movements and is now a sharp buisness city, and the two have merged into a liberal city of coexisting dichotomies?
[ on a side note, I was watching an old "Comic Strip Presents..." the other day, and it's cast included Anthoney Head (Buffy), Emma Thompson (Mrs Brannagh), Dawn French (Vicar of Dibley) and Jennifer Saunders (Ab Fab).
Surely that must arouse your curiosity. The episode was "Slags", a near future SF parody.]
Thanks. CSP did not catch my attention all that much, but I'll have to give it another chance.
ReplyDeleteI like Will And Grace, but I agree that Dharma And Greg, while wide respected and loved, should have found a much wider audience. I love it.
The regions? I wish I knew. It seems like corporate ornaryness and control-freakiness just shooting themselves in the foot.
I watched one of the newer better CSP's (GLC) in front of my wife, and it didn't really catch her eye. We later watched "Gino- Full Story and Pics". Again, nothing special. Then we watched "Five Go Mad..." since she had read a bunch of Enid Blyton books to our kids (something not every American does) she really caught the humour of the show.
ReplyDeleteWe just finished the first season of Robin Hood, Keith Allen playing the Sheriff, and a Cracker movie, with Robbie Coltraine being other than Hagrid. THEN we watched a CSP, this time I went for a really daft spoof of "The Professionals", (not totally unlike the Sweeney), and so "The Bullshitters" staring Keith Allen and Robbie Coltraine had more reason for her to watch it, and she really got into it.
There are some good, and some bad CSP's. If you enjoyed Hot Fuzz, then maybe "The Supergrass" would be a good intro to CSP. If you loved Hitchcocks Rebecca, then maybe "Consuela". If you like Kate Bush then I believe the episode is "Spaghetti Hoops", and if you like Sergie Leone films, the "A Fistful of Travellers Checks".
Of course, I was there when it was new and daring and so was I. I still can't take much Young Ones, and never got into "Filthy Rich and Catflap".
To quote "Not the nine O'Clock News"
"These boys died for us and died often". Though that was about Python, it equally applies to CSP. Not everything they did worked.
The show tried new directions, 30 minute parodies instead of recurring sit-com or quickie sketches. The humour was vulgar, sexual, political and social.
Remember it was the advent of the 4th TV channel, and we were coming out of the dark times. There was avoid left by the Goodies, and these guys filled it.