I love where I'm from. I wouldn't choose to live anywhere else in the world, because nowhere else in the world seems able to 'get' British humour and I'd miss it terribly. Not that I myself am a purveyor of said humour in any way, shape or form, but I just wouldn't be the same person without rich, regular doses of it from other quarters. (That said, I think a nation's sense of humour is embedded within it and it's very hard for outsiders to 'get' it. My Russian teacher is forever telling me Russian stories and jokes, and they make about as much sense to me as Rab C. Nesbitt reading the morning news. But then I suppose that could just be down to her sense of humour; she could be telling me the equivalent of jokes told by the Russian version of Michael McIntyre).
Still, why is it that we Brits are considered masters of comedic irony, yet we've never come up with anything close to the absolute genius that is 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'? I watched an episode of 'Lead Balloon' last night and all I can say is, if that's supposed to be the British 'Curb' (as it's often touted to be) then if we really were involved in a War in Humour, we're losing. In 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Larry David manages to make misanthropy seem appealing in an endearing sort of way that just shouldn't be possible, pairing this with story ideas that are so original and funny that you can only blink along in sheer awe ('The Survivor' episode springs immediately to mind for that). In 'Lead Balloon', the normally funny Jack Dee manages to make misanthropy look like what it actually is; mean-spirited and dislikable. That is something anybody can do, and as a result his character is just a grumpy old man in boringly everyday situations, with whom it's impossible to empathise or like.
(I must admit, I've admired Larry David ever since I read about him walking out of a stand-up gig early in his career after simply looking at the audience and deciding "...nah!" Now there is someone utterly after my own heart).
On the other hand, the Americans are famous in my eyes for introducing a great concept, then stringing it out endlessly...on and on and on until all the humour has been squeezed out of it like juice from a mouldy old lemon. Take 'Frasier', a fantastic comedy that went stale after about Season Six. Over here we seem more capable of introducing a great concept and then stopping it at exactly the right time. 'The Office' is a great example of this. I saw the first season of the American 'Office' and it was quite good... but they must be on their twelfth season by now and all I can think is - how on Earth can they keep on coming up with new ideas for that?
I guess American audiences get attached to their characters and are happy to put up with seeing them in all manner of mundane situations...as long as they still do get to check in with them every week and see what they're up to. We're a lot more brutal in that regard. I think one of the reasons Basil Fawlty and David Brent are much loved and admired characters over here is precisely because we didn't get to see them too often. Our affection seems to be reserved for people who don't require too much of it.
I think British comedy is tinged with a lot more 'reality' than the American. Take 'Scrubs' and 'Getting On'; both comedies about hospital life; both funny; both dealing with death but in 'Scrubs' the deaths seem a bit cartoonish, and as though the beautiful people who are dying really are going to a better place and with a heartwarming, uplifting moral at the end of every episode. 'Getting On' depicts old, lined, ugly people dying lonely and horrible deaths on wards in which people poo on the chairs. Perhaps those two analogies sums up the differing levels of humour on each side of the Atlantic; both funny, but in very different ways.
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