Programmes that have aged poorly and programmes that have aged well?

[HaveYouHadYourBreak]

What programmes that you loved have surprised you on rewatching?

I've just finished the first series of This Life and was surprised at how well it has aged for the most part (but so much smoking!). It was refreshing to see people with imperfect teeth and pubic hair and wobbly bums living in a grotty house share past their early 20s. I'm re-living my youth with the music too.

But Coupling! Oof! I remember it being really good but some clips I've seen (like making sex videos without consent and the way women are talked about) demonstrate exactly why I've never seen any re-runs.

Richard Briers didn't like the character, Tom Good, in the Good Life. He said he was selfish and inconsiderate to Barbara.

Now I'm in my late 40s, I really fancy Jerry 😂

nah, it needs more traffic

I hated Mr Bean but loved Blackadder and the Thin blue line 😊

I always wanted Jerry and Barbara to get it on 😉😉🥰

Same here!

Someone sent my kids a clip of Mind Your Language as though it was a meme. They were appalled when I told them that unbelievably, it was real. And is still shown on one of the Sky channels. They were similarly fascinated with Little Britain.

They do adore Love Actually but I get overly wound up that everyone has to speak like Richard Curtis in his films: ‘blue and wibbly’, ‘fuck a doodle doo’.

I love Margo Leadbeater. I think she’s an absolute style icon with her kaftans and matching headbands.

Just adding that they were fascinated at how appalling Little Britain was. It wasn’t clear from my post.

Charlie's Angels was on TV recently. I couldn't believe it had a trigger warning at the start! I enjoyed rewatching it, but that's probably just because it was a nostalgia trip.

My mum (Gen X) loved Charlie's Angels as a little girl & introduced it to me..it was pretty proto-feminist for its time. Why was there a trigger warning??

I was a bit surprised when reading Malala Yousafzai's autobiography to find that she was a big fan of Mind Your Language!

I'm not convinced there's so few good new programs now, but I do think we are a bit low on comedy. I liked Derry Girls though, for one.

Yes, my mother put The Good Life on a while ago and it started with Tom calling Barbara a bitch. Poor Barbara - she didn't deserve him.
I get it wasn't trying to make out Tom was nice- I thunk she had just remembered it as a soft show from when she was a child, I suppose Tom etc went over her head then.

I agree that some things have got better but some worse. I'm Gen Z & I think my generation as a whole are bored & turned off by graphic sexual content after too much porn exposure and sexual stuff in media. I don't mind some sexual content but not the amount we have now, it's not fair on the actors, frankly. Violence ditto.

There are plenty of good shows that don't have that, though.

Richard Herring had a whole comedy thing about Goodnight Sweetheart which was broadly along the lines of all the things he could have done for humanity and the course of history with this weird time portal and he basically just used it to have an affair.

I rewatched At Elmo's Fire at the weekend. I don't think it's aged well at all, especially the men's treatment of the women. But again, it was representative of its time. You can't expect things that were made 40 years ago to portray the values that are considered acceptable today, times have changed but that's no reason to cancel them.

Why? God knows! It was something like, this show contains language and attitudes that may not be acceptable today and some may find offensive. Totally unnecessary IMO, maybe the women were too slim, glamorous and beautiful...?!

Keeping up appearances has aged perfectly. The characters are so well done that you could imagine them just slotting into modern day life.

Except for Rose - I always thought the actress really overdid that role and it was too panto.

I think the movie Double Jeopardy, is great. I think it stands the test of time. I highly recommend (love it when that guy in the library tries to hit on her!).

There definitely wasn't any strict rules re showing couples in bed on TV at the time Faulty Towers was filmed. Robin's Nest and Upstairs Downstairs were filmed in the 70's and both showed unmarried couples in bed together.

Also Morecambe and Wise.

I wonder what people would make of Nighty Night with Julia Davis today?

I absolutely loved it (have it on DVD) although the jokes & humour are really below the belt. Her other works, Human Remains & Hunderby were also brilliant. Her style of comedy probably isn't allowed today as there were jokes on Cancer, disabilities (Rebecca Front was brilliant as the ever polite Cath); facial tics; lesbians, murder, sexual harassment, false rape, etc and of course the monstrous Jill Tyrell, who seemed to have no limits. Even in 2004, some people felt that it was totally inappropriate.

I’ve been down a bit of a Mind Your Language rabbit hole since reading this thread and I’ve found that the show was massively popular in Pakistan and India. It was shown in both those countries for years after its initial run, which is how someone as relatively young as Malala is familiar with it. In India, they liked it so much that they made their own version of it.

I don’t think Friends has aged particularly well, although I expect a lot of people will disagree.

I think the classic series of Doctor Who has aged fairly well, on the whole. And “of their time” moments are a few and far between. There are a some episode, for example, where a white British actor plays a Chinese character, which simply wouldn’t happen today; however, it wasn’t unusual then, and the serial itself, if you can get over that, is really excellent.

Great thread! Some points that occur to me:

• Yes, it's sobering to see that in the past actors who weren't immaculate physical specimens were allowed to exist and work! Dodgy teeth, frizzy hair etc etc. It really reinforces how distorted things have become in recent years.

• When Fawlty Towers was first on, I remember the reception was very much on the side of Basil and against 'nagging, hen-pecking, frumpy, overbearing' Sybil. Also, his bullying of Manuel was largely seen as funny and again, the view was that Basil was justified because Manuel was an idiot. When I re-watched it I was struck by how brilliant Sybil is in keeping everything afloat and pitied her having to deal with the appalling Basil. And I couldn't watch some bits where Basil belittles and bullies Manuel.

• I'm just old enough to have seen a few Till Death Us Do Parts, and I hated it. I know that Johnny Speight intended to satirise Alf Garnett's horrible attitudes, but I think it backfired badly and lots of people actually took it at face value.
• Great to read pps' reassessment of The Good Life! I thought I was the only one who found the Goods insufferable.

They were friends though, rather than a couple.