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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

This sitcom is just not funny

389 replies

TheRebel · 14/03/2018 14:55

So I’ve been off work sick for nearly 2 weeks and I’ve watched everything good on TV. Now I’m trawling through looking for anything to watch and I decided to give the BBC sitcom “Mum” a go, it’s supposed to be BAFTA award winning but it’s just awful. Every episode seems to be the various members of this woman’s family come to her house, look down on her and say horrible things to her and she gives them the side eye and says “ok” and looks a bit sad.

OP posts:
eddielizzard · 14/03/2018 16:09

i LOVE mum! watched it back to back when i discovered it. the slow burn love between michael and mum is beautifully done.

The80sweregreat · 14/03/2018 16:13

It’s all horses for courses isn’t it? I find monty python films etc awful - lots don’t. Hated Bottom and the Young ones - don’t see why friends is so well liked - yet so many fans who would think I’m mad!

Heartofglass12345 · 14/03/2018 16:15

The young offenders is on iplayer, its great 😊

raglansleeve · 14/03/2018 16:22

We love Mum in this house, but agree it’s not really a sitcom. The episode in the first series when Kelly’s mother is so awful to her is heartbreaking.

Other favourites are Detectorists, Two Doors Down (Beth, played by Arabella Weir is a little like Lesley Manville’s character in Mum).

We were disappointed with the John Cleese/Alison Steadman one though.

Wishfulthinking18 · 14/03/2018 16:22

It’s more observational humour where you chuckle to yourself rather than belly laughs so if you’re looking for the latter, it’s not going to work.

I find it immensely touching and beautifully written.

ToffeeUp · 14/03/2018 16:22

I think Mum is brilliant.

The Young Offenders is very funny, I also like 2 Doors Down.

The80sweregreat · 14/03/2018 16:23

People just do nothing was also good, not my demographic at all strangely enough but made me smile.

GingerMcGrey · 14/03/2018 16:34

I haven't tried Mum yet but I really didn't like Motherland. It was recommended as a hilarious take on motherhood and playground politics but I couldn't make it through the first episode.

silveradodreams · 14/03/2018 16:35

agreed - Motherland was terrible.

Housewife2010 · 14/03/2018 16:36

On The Buses is on ITV3 every weekday afternoon. After 40 years it's still funny.

MrsJayy · 14/03/2018 16:37

Motherland was like an AIBU thread on here Grin

LemonadeWithACherry · 14/03/2018 16:37

Mum, This Country, Father Ted and Him and Her are all wonderful.

I am judging some of you so hard right now HmmGrin

RunningjustasfastasIcan99 · 14/03/2018 16:38

another fan of mum. 2 doors down is similar but superior IMHO

PinkyBlunder · 14/03/2018 16:40

Motherland was absolutely ducking hilarious. And scary. It was like watching myself on TV.

sircoconut · 14/03/2018 16:41

I love Mum. The characters are fantastic.

mum11970 · 14/03/2018 16:41

Saw the title and thought whatever it was it couldn’t be as bad as the crap sitcom ‘Mum’ I saw for the first (and last) time last week. Thank God I’m not the only one who couldn’t even raise a smile at it, never mind a laugh.

ImTheMary · 14/03/2018 16:41

Oh, god! I did not expect this thread to be about Mum! I am not a sitcom fan at all, but I think Mum is really beautifully done! The characters are great and the relationship between her and Michael is so lovely.

Agree that you need to watch from Episode 1 of Series 1. I like the way each episode fast forwards a few months so you see the changes in the seasons, the house, the relationships. I really do love it.

The bit in "August", Series 1 where everything stopped while they all discuss the possible source of a burning smell ("Could he a bonfire. In the middle of summer?! Aah, no, a barbecue") was just brilliant!

TheJoyOfSox · 14/03/2018 16:42

Now I like it, but it’s subjective. My DH on the other hand shouts at the telly “fucking tell her” to the friend who obviously fancies her and “stop babying them” to mum when she is picking up after her gormless son and his gf.

I think people could appreciate it a bit more if it wasn’t billed as a comedy. There is very little humour in it, but watching her car crash of a day can make me feel better sometimes.

PattiStanger · 14/03/2018 16:42

I haven't seen any of the second series but in the first one I found her so annoyingly drippy, I don't know any one even vaguely like her in real life.

TheRebel · 14/03/2018 16:44

Motherland was another one where I watched all of the episodes waiting for it to get good, I think it could have been funny if they’d got rid of the main one and replaced her with Philomena Cunk.

The80sWereGreat you don’t know how happy you’ve made me when you say you don’t like Monty Python, I thought I was the only one! It’s like some evil secret that you can’t say out loud because people are horrified that you could not like Monty Python.

Agreed that Frankie and Grace on Netflix is excellent, especially the balshie (sp?) daughter Grin

OP posts:
Elendon · 14/03/2018 16:45

I don't find Mum funny either. I find it terribly depressing.

Someone of her age with an adult child should not be in a situation where the barbecue revolves around three men talking about the best way to have sex.

Laugh? It's just a cringe fest of horrible stereotypes.

Now, I really must use the toilet.

KellyBailey · 14/03/2018 16:48

I love Derry Girls, I'm so glad it's been commissioned for a second series.

My "don't get it" sitcom is Mrs Browns Boys. Load of bollocks.

Bugjune · 14/03/2018 16:55

Humour with a big dollop of pathos. I love it.

TinklyLittleLaugh · 14/03/2018 17:05

I just don't think it's very funny. Yes the acting is good but the script is terrible. The young people are such stereotypes; thick and insensitive, not even remotely believable. Similarly the brother and his girlfriend; I don't believe in their relationship for a second.

CuboidalSlipshoddy · 14/03/2018 17:07

Theodore Sturgeon coined his law while editing a pulp science fiction magazine, but it is true more generally: "90% of everything is crap".

It's doubly true of BBC Sitcoms (95% is crap? 99% is crap?) because they commission mostly from their mates. The worst offender is Ben Elton: he hasn't written anything even remotely funny since Blackadder, but utter tosh by him is green-lighted on the basis of his name. But in the case of Mum (I haven't bothered to watch it, because of Sturgeon's law) it's yet another exhibit in the "why bother looking for writers more widely than the Cambridge Footlights, it worked for Python" catalogue. To take a concrete example of that tendency, John Cleese has never written a funny sitcom: Fawlty Towers is funny, but that's because Connie Booth wrote most of it. And yet even today, he's able to get commissioned by the BBC.

American networks produce serviceable comedy which is, at least, vaguely funny, because they have large writers rooms, and ruthlessly prune both shows and people when they don't deliver. The BBC in its "golden age" produced serviceable comedy because they had writers who had honed their craft writing for musical hall, or sketch shows. Galton and Simpson, say, or Norden and Muir, or Barry Cryer, or Eddie Braben, or the endless list of people who wrote for The Two Ronnies.

Now, since Monty Python, the BBC has been taken over by Cambridge graduates (note: that list of people who wrote The Two Ronnies and Morecombe and Wise and Hancock were all not Oxbridge graduates) who only employ other Cambridge graduates. It's at its worst at 6.30 on Radio 4, which is almost exclusively unfunny sub-Footlights detritus (has The News Quiz or The Now Show been funny in decades?) but the BBC1 and BBC2 schedules are full of it as well.