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'The IT Crowd' UK Sit-com
Nigsy writes "The Register reports that
"A new sitcom - set among IT workers in the dingy basement of a glamorous company - is due to arrive on the UK's Channel 4 next month. The IT Crowd, written by Graham Linehan (the scribe behind Father Ted, Black Books), will debut on the internet on 27 January, a week before its terrestrial broadcast on Friday, 3 February at 9.30pm."" Here's hoping that they have a consultant on the show to make it technically accurate.
The high-rise towers of Renham Industries are full of go-getters, success stories, and winners... apart from in the basement. While their beautiful colleagues work upstairs in fantastic surroundings, the I.T. department - Jen, Roy and Moss - lurk below ground, scorned by their co-workers as geeky losers.
"Geeky losers"? Oh dear...
<clickety clickety>
Let's just see how geeky you think the IT department is after I format your drive, toss the backup, and submit your 'candid holiday snaps' to a few dozen gay singles websites, along with your name, address, work number, and personal cell number, shall we?
Oh, hold on...
<clickety clickety>
Now the Boss' home page has been set to one of the raunchier gay singles websites, proudly displaying your picture as 'twink of the week', and stating that your interests include latex, flash photography, and small mammals. That ought to spice up the water-cooler gossip.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Black Books and Father Ted are the funniest sitcoms in recent memory...dunno if BB has had any airings in the US yet but if not, go to your favourite torrent site^H^H online DVD store and watch some. I promise it will be the funniest thing you'll ever watch. Father Ted is equally funny.
Hopefully this will be just as good.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
"There was a name we had for users... what was it again?"
"A shower of bastards!"
If past performance is any indication, it should be spot on. Father Ted was the most accurate depiction to date of the priest's life.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls... sorry, no girls allowed.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Here's hoping that they have a consultant on the show to make it technically accurate.
Why does it have to be techically accurate? If that's their only goal, it probably won't be very funny. I'd rather that it have accurate insights into the way the two distinct mindsets (tech and non-tech) perceive and interact with one another in the workplace. Now that's a potential comedy goldmine.
It's a recipe for wackyness when a linux vs. bsd flamewar breaks out and the flamboyantly gay sidekick has a date with two men on the same night at the same time! Bronson Pinchot guest stars.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Just out of interest, did you complain that Father Ted didn't accurately reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I think you got "geeky" confused with "fired".
Show nothing but the tops of the character's heads as they sit in their cubicles. That would be technically accurate.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Isn't that fairly accurate? It seems that way from behind this keyboard...
Father Ted is a classic. Black Books is a classic.
Neither really conform to stereotypes of what priests or bookshop workers are like; in fact, the character's job is often a little bit at odds with what they're like. If this is carried over to this show, maybe we'll get a comedy that features some highly eccentric geeks whose actual paid work is secondary to their real love. This is kinda true for many geeks I know; their off-duty coding is far more important to them than their on-duty coding.
Just like the movie "Hackers". Oh, wait . . .
If it's accurate, it probably won't be funny to the vast majority of people, and it will tank. We'll see. Perhaps it'll be great, and accurate.
On a side note, at my old company, the IT-ish guys were treated pretty well, and were the "social elite." Of course, we are comparing IT guys vs programmers here.
If they're going to make the show 'politically correct' by including a girl on the IT staff, wheres the jive-talking, good natured black guy?!
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Sign on a nuclear containment building:
WARNING: Radiation area. Prefaded genes only.
Said the sweet young lady, "Oh, I see how astronomers figure out the distance of the stars and their sizes and temperatures and all that. What really gets me is how they find out what their names are."
Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
The First Rule of System Programing:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
--- Courtesy of http://www.randomjoke.com/topic/nerd.php?13492 ---
Who could forget this one?
Nerd Season
A truck driver, hauling a tractor-trailer load of computers, stops for a beer. As he approaches the bar, he sees a big sign on the door that says, "COMPUTER NERDS NOT ALLOWED - ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!" He enters and sits down.
The bartender comes over to him, sniffs, and says that he smells kind of nerdy. He then asks him what he does for a living. The truck driver explains to him that he drives a truck, and the smell is just from the computers he is hauling. The bartender serves him a beer and says, "OK, truck drivers aren't nerds."
As he is sipping his beer, a skinny guy walks in wearing a pair of glasses with tape around the middle, a pocket protector with twelve kinds of pens and pencils, and a belt that is at least a foot too long. The bartender, without saying a word, pulls out a shotgun and blows the guy away. The truck driver asks him why he did that.
The bartender replied, "Don't worry. The computer nerds are in season because they are overpopulating Silicon Valley. You don't even need a license."
So the truck driver finishes his beer, gets back in his truck, and heads for the freeway. Suddenly, he veers to avoid an accident, and the load shifts. The back door breaks open and computers spill out all over the road. He jumps out and sees a crowd already forming, snatching up all of the computers. The scavengers are comprised of engineers, accountants and programmers - computer geeks. Each of them wearing the nerdiest clothes he has ever seen.
He can't let them steal his whole load. So remembering what happened in the bar, he pulls out his gun and starts blasting away, killing several of them instantly. A highway patrol officer comes zooming up and jumps out of the car screaming at him to stop.
The truck driver said, "What's wrong? I thought computer nerds were in season."
"Well, sure," says the patrolman, "But you can't bait 'em!"
I was in the VIP lounge last week en route to Seattle. Whilst in the lounge, I noticed Bill Gates sitting on the chesterfield enjoying a cognac.I was meeting with a very important client who was also flying to Seattle with me but she was running a bit late. Being a forward type of guy, I approached Mr Gates and introduced myself. I explained to him that I was conducting some very important business and how I would appreciate it if he could throw a quick "Hello Phil" at me when I was with my client. He agreed. Ten minutes later while I was conversing with my client, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Bill Gates. I turned around and looked up at him. He said, "Hi Phil, what's happening?" To which I replied "Bug off Gates, I'm in a meeting"
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I remember how WKRP in Cincinnati was a favorite tv sit-com in the late 70s and early 80s among those of us working in radio because it had good characters and funny situations. We could overlook that none of the djs ever used headphones, their casual approach to cueing up the next record, the unrealistic l'aissez faire style of the program director, the occasional lack of music director, an AM station looking to rock music as a viable format change (pop music's move to FM was well established at that point), the station's too much wattage for its position on the dial, there never being any powering down and up at sunset and sunrise, that the news announcer and dj shared the same microphone and studio, that full-time operation of the station was possible with an air staff of two, that Les Nessman wasn't jettisoned along with the elevator music recordings, and other compromises of authenticity or verisimilitude.
Perhaps you're referring to Dweebs.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
If technically accurate, the characters will be males reading Slashdot, downloading pr0n, virus-scanning Windows boxes, eating pizza, and quarrelling intensely about Perl and Python.
I predict low ratings.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I found theese here:
http://ma.tthew-cox.us/jokes/top_geek_breakup.php
Top 11 Geek Breakup Lines
11.
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? F
Relationship failed.
10. Now that Half Life 2 is out, I need to refocus my priorities.
09. You have been unsubscribed from my dating list. Please click this link to confirm.
08. I need a lover who understands that 20 hours a day on the Internet is normal.
07. I don't think we should date any more, but we can still be on each other's buddy lists.
06. I'd like a true beauty so I don't have to spend so much time photoshopping your ugly face out of our photos.
05. It's like in X-Men number 135, where Cyclops and Jean Grey (as The Phoenix)...
04. Let's face it. You love Intel, and I'm an AMD man. It's not going to work out.
03. What do you mean your EULA says that once I've removed the shrink wrap I can't return it?
02. After you e-mailed me your full-body shot, I realized I was looking for someone more feminine.
01. So long and thanks for all the fish.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Yes, because technical accuracy is what makes comedy funny. I find the technical accuracy of Dilbert hilarious. Oh wait, there is nothing technical in Dilbert at all, and yet it's still funny. I wonder how he manages that?
Canonical Anonymous Coward
Can a sig be more clever than it's creator?
Channel 4 ? - Check !
Broadcast after 9pm ? - Check !
Full Frontal Nudidy probability = 97.34132%
grep! as! link! perl!
Check out that cleavage, man! Don't you like boobies? Tsssss....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
ratings ?
;-)
Just curious
I think he was playing into the stereotype.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
"That's the great thing about Catholicism. It's so vague and nobody really knows what it's all about."
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
I first got a mail from Graham Linehan back in August of last year (he'd been given my details by Cory Doctorow - okay, not much more namedropping, I promise) and I jumped at the chance to help out - Father Ted and Big Train are two of my favourite-ever TV comedies.
He sent the scripts and I eventually sent a couple of notes back with a couple of minor corrections, but I really didn't need to do much at all; the humour in the show comes from really good character comedy, and the IT aspect is (quite rightly, IMHO) just a sideline thing. Roy and Moss bear slightly more resemblance to real-world sysadmins than Ted and Dougal do to real-world priests, but only slightly. As with Ted, the joy is in exggerating the silliness of the situations.
It was in building the set that the fun really started, and I need to get Sean to participate in the thread here as I recommended him for the job of gathering as much fun techie crap as possible as well as looking after the on-set PCs. Having visited the set once, I can tell you he did a fantastic job. There are so many wonderful little references and rare bits of kit lurking in the messes (British geeks in particular are in for a treat). Plus, thanks to Danny, there are EFF stickers everywhere.
Make sure to tape/TiVo/torrent it - it's a great show, fun and silly, with lots of easter-egg treats for geeks.
I think you got "geeky" confused with "fired".
I dare you to find an evidence trail leading to him. Who do you think built the systems that log everything?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
As I explain down here.
(Karma whore? Me? But of course.)
> and stating that your interests include latex...
My first thought was "What's wrong with LaTeX?". That's bad, isn't it...
The web/internet side of it all was usually painfully inaccurate or pantomimed (and timeless romantic dialogue like "Thanks for showing me how to rocket jump - I really owned that level" didn't help), but there were some genuinely good moments in there too. There was a memorable scene where they all arrive in dribs and drabs the morning after the office party, only to find that they've all got an email with a video attachment from the office cctv camera that shows two of the characters having sex the previous night. The sequence of shots around the office as people logged in, reacted to what they saw, then carefully looked around at the others to see if they'd seen it yet was a wonderful piece of acting and directing, and had me cringing and giggling at the same time (rather like The Office).
And I don't think James Lance was in it - possibly you're confusing him with David Walliams, who was, and did play a similar slimy character to the one in Absolute Power (although probably much less of a moral sewer).
They did, it was mind bogglingly bad, and made about half a season.