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IT Crowd (UK) Coming Back For Season 4
sammyF70 writes "Every geek's favourite non-sci-fi show (the original UK one, not the abysmally bad German and US remakes) is coming back for a fourth season! According to the IMDB's message board, it should be on the air 'Juneish.' While you wait, you can check out what kind of vintage hardware will be on the show this time, and remember: if you illegally download movies, you will face the consequences!"
I can confirm that this was (is? Jesus - let it go) a crap comedy, and yes I'm talking about the UK version. Cheap, lazy, easy jokes, of the sort that plagued my childhood every saturday evening.
a) Though it's case-by-case, I've liked more sit-coms than it's smart to admit. British ones, esp.
b) As I just wrote in another comment, laugh tracks are obnoxious, but eh, I overlook them generally. When I was small, I thought that they were all recorded from the "live studio audience," but that's just what they *want* you to think.
c) There's a lot of workplace humor in The IT Crowd that rings true (slightly exaggerated if at all - like managers who don't actually understand the thing they're supposed to "manage," and huge, often willful communication gaps between departments), but I also like the more over-the-top absurdities, like the soul-searching goth (Mason? might have the name wrong) who lives in the back room.
d) All that said, I wish they worked in more wacky sketch-like stuff like the piracy ad linked in the post.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
As I understand it, MASH was broadcast in the UK without a laughter track. I vaguely remember there being complaints when they accidentally showed it with one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
good god mash had a laugh track? i only ever saw it without. I imagine the whole thing seems a lot more undignified and lowbrow with a laugh track - like watching "happy days goes to vietnam" or something. On the other hand, the bbc once aired the addams family without the laugh track and every single joke hung in the air like a bad fart. It was extremely uncomfortable to watch.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
It seems more appealing to people who like to pretend they're not geeks, watch lots of TV, and laugh at "real geeks" for being socially inept.
Yeah, exactly. It also annoys me the "real geeks" in TBBT don't behave like real geeks at all. For example, in the first episode of TBBT the geeks boast about how many friends they have on MySpace. WTF? That's something a highschool girl would do. A real geek wouldn't be on MySpace in the first place, because they don't like giving up their privacy like that and would tell people who try to lure them into the web 2.0 social networking hype to get off their lawn.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
As an IT worker, I found the show more depressing than funny. Too many similarities with my life and theirs.
You mean, like this?
IT Crowd is more centered on life at the office than TBBT, and is fairly indiscriminating about who it pokes fun at. Sometimes it's the geeks, and sometimes it's the rest ( see the "Jen, this is the internet" episode). I guess whether you find it funny or not depends a lot about whether you ever worked in such an environment or not. I did, and I love the show for its over the top depiction of stuff that I did experience (or did ).
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
What I am starting to notice is that when I talk about IT, I am talking about programmers, developers.
That's interesting, because the very last thing I would think of when confronted with "IT" is programmers and developers. When I hear "IT" I think of mindless middle-management and bureaucracy. It's such a meaningless term. It could mean anything from an abacus lubricator to a librarian.
Why would a programmer want to be associated with such a term? Programming has much more in common with mathematics and writing. After all, it is the mastery of languages and numbers. It deserves a much higher station than "IT."
IT is basic janitorial work.
... and then they built the supercollider.
If you watched a small portion, then that explains it. It's a sitcom, a situation comedy. The cheap-shot jokes are there to keep things moving while the situation is being set-up. It's meant to converge in a catastrophic or embarrassing situation. Maybe it's not your thing, but it's the same sort of thing as Fawlty Towers which had silly lines but a great comic climax.