Tag Archives: sitcom

Two IT guys and an attractive woman walk into a bar… she must be a work colleague. Graham Linehan’s The IT Crowd is all about stereotypes. The humour is almost entirely derived from stereotypes of computer geeks as well as ...

BBC shows have such short seasons that I often feel as though I blink and miss shows entirely. I had never so much as heard of Bluestone 42 when I stumbled across it on Netflix. What’s this? A military sitcom ...

I’ve always loved a good sitcom. And while the traditional set-up of the genre allows for plenty of scope for great comedy, I am thoroughly enjoying the inversion of tropes and exploration of variations on the structure that modern television ...

Why is it that when I watch older television sitcoms, I often find a more enlightened view on social constructs than appear on those currently airing? Seems to me that the late 80’s/early 90s was far more progressive than we ...

Watching – and thoroughly enjoying –  The Grinder has prompted me to think about sitcoms and their use of ‘gimmicks’ as both a set-up for an entire series as well as for singular jokes. The Grinder is built around the gimmick of lampooning tropes ...

Other than seeing the odd episode on TV, my working knowledge of the cult classic series that ran for 9 seasons from 1968 to 1977 is very limited. My impression of it was fun, silly, with a bit of that ...

Fans of The Golden Girls are proud of the show’s boundary breaking premise. Even now, pitching a primetime series featuring an entirely female regular cast all over the age of 50 would be laughable. And yet, the series was an ...

I have been less than impressed by The Big Bang Theory since its fourth season (I wrote an article about it jumping the shark two years ago, you can read it here), but the season 9 premiere has stooped to ...

Community first aired back in 2009 on NBC. The sitcom quickly drew a very loyal audience, though the audience never grew to the size the studio hoped for. When I came to Community, it was already mid-way through its second ...

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was originally developed by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock for NBC. When NBC realised they didn’t really have anywhere to put the series within their current line-up, they allowed the show’s creators to shop around for a ...