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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think 'Fawlty Towers' just wasn't funny?

97 replies

peggotty · 22/10/2010 21:43

It's always feted as one of the best british sitcoms of all time, but it just wasn't particularly funny was it? It was just John Cleese ranting. And being manic.

In fact, most British sitcoms are shit. Why is this, if we are supposed to have such a wonderful sense of humour? (Or is it just me who has no sense of humour Shock)

OP posts:
Feenie · 22/10/2010 21:44

You are mad and unreasonable. Every single line is excellent comedy. Its scripts are incredibly clever.

scurryfunge · 22/10/2010 21:45

It was a certain type of humour, appropriate to the era in which it was aired. It is dated now but I found it funny in a (British) cringingly embarrassing sort of way.

SJisontheway · 22/10/2010 21:46

YABU - they are classics

ledodgy · 22/10/2010 21:47

John Clees ranting and being manic is funny.

ilove · 22/10/2010 21:47

FT is ab-so-lute-ly bloody brilliant!!!!!!

MaeMobley · 22/10/2010 21:47

I totally agree with the OP. FT makes me cringe.

HEXentricaGallumbits · 22/10/2010 21:47

are you forin?

what is not funny about herds of wildebeast sweeping across the plains? ans WHAT?????

peggotty · 22/10/2010 21:49

Grin not forin, just scottish (same thing when it comes to FT maybe?). THank god for you Mae, I was on my own till you showed up!

OP posts:
Goblinchild · 22/10/2010 21:50

I didn't like it, or Reggie Perrin or Steptoe and Son or Benny Hill.
I do enjoy Monty Python, so it's not Cleese I dislike.

thisisyesterday · 22/10/2010 21:51

i don't like it either. it just irritates me and makes me cringe.

not my kind of humour at all

ilove · 22/10/2010 21:52

Monty Python is just not funny at all!

Trebuchet · 22/10/2010 21:52

On god me me me!! I hate it, its all so bloody inevitable!!! I have to get up and walk around it makes me uncomfortable, in laws obsessively love it.

BitOfFunderthepatio · 22/10/2010 21:53

I bloody loved it. I want to watch it now.

pigletmania · 22/10/2010 21:53

YABVU, classics never die whatever age they are, still find Only Fools and Horses funny and Some MOthers do Ave Em too. Better than some of the crap they chrun out now.

scareprudence · 22/10/2010 21:53

YABU.

DS (8) is staying up late for first night of half term and has just watched it for the first time - the one with the rat and the health inspector. We all laughed. He's now being introduced to Porridge.

(Don't get Steptoe, Benny Hill and Reggie Perrin though)

Hedgeblunder · 22/10/2010 21:54

Yabvvvu, I nearly cried last night when dp sad he hated harry and Paul

sob*

peggotty · 22/10/2010 21:54

Oh thank god there are more FT haters now! What, just WHAT makes it so funny? Please explain it to me - I want to be enlightened
! It's just Cleese being a dick surely?

OP posts:
Goblinchild · 22/10/2010 21:54

Didn't like them either.

HEXentricaGallumbits · 22/10/2010 21:54

some mothers do ave em is shite

peggotty · 22/10/2010 21:55

Oh christ, 'Some Mother's Do Ave Em' - don't even go there!

OP posts:
BitOfFunderthepatio · 22/10/2010 21:59

I used to have a boss exactly like Basil Fawlty. He owned the bookshop, and at Christmas somebody asked him for a copy of A Tale Of Two Cities, then asked if he could wrap it. Boss cleared his throat and said "Certainly sir. Let me see...it was the best of times, it was the worst of times", with an Ali G finger flourish Grin

Sarky git.

fastedwina · 22/10/2010 21:59

'Some Mothers' still has me LMAO!' Started watching the old repeats of 'Dads Army' with the kids( 8yrs and 5yrs)- we all love it! Showed them the Only Fools and Horses 'Batman and Robin' scene the other day and they were in hysterics!

horMOANSnomore · 22/10/2010 22:03

I don't think those 'classic' comedies have endured really. They were amusing in their day, but not appropriate now.

I will admit to still finding some episodes of The Good Life funny though.

SJisontheway · 22/10/2010 22:03

Love Reggie Perrin too - but only the orignal

peggotty · 22/10/2010 22:04

Ok I can appreciate Only Fools, but Dad's Army, please no!!!!

I can appreciate sarky humour, in fact I love it. I think it must be John Cleese that pisses me off. Now, Blackadder, there is an excellent and very sarcastic sitcom. In fact, I quite fancy Rowan Atkinson in his Elizabethan incarnation of Blackadder Blush

OP posts: