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.

Brilliant. What a take-down

Maybe because the women were very attractive biological females?
That seems to be a crime in some quarters nowadays!!

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.

Sybil also spent a lot of time supporting her friend with her personal/marital problems. She was actually a lovely woman.

I never liked it....not keen on Monty Python either. I did like Marty Feldman and Antony Newley in Gurney Slade.

not a comedy but am watching programs made by Jack Hargreaves about country life as he remembers it....of course its double history now because the programs themselves were made between 1960 and 1986

Im like that but about Metroland by John Betjeman. At one point he mentions some event at a station "in 29" and stuff about the 90s and you have to remember he's talking about the 1890s and 1929

@almondflakeOh Dr Beeching was brilliant. But never seen it repeated, it’s set in the 50’s.

Whilst I think John Cleese is clearly very clever and inventive I now suspect there's more than a bit of him in Basil Fawlty!!

I mean...he's been married many, many times for a start.

Horrifying?

That seems extreme.

So people think we are meant to take everything that is said in a comedy as if it is a righteous thing to say? Very often the opposite is true.

It wasn't sophisticated stuff, but horrifying is way over the top.

I’ve always loved Richard Briers. It makes me feel so much better knowing he hated Tom as well. It always sat off with me that he had played this role.

Tbh this made Endeavour unwatchable for me. Of course he's younger and presumably less cynical, which is fine, but frankly he was a totally different person. And they retconned some significant elements of his story too, iirc.

Why bother making a new show about an old character if you don't want to do a show about that character?

It's being repeated on one of the more obscure satellite channels (That's TV) that half the time shows old 80s videos.

I'd never seen Nearest and Dearest when it was on. One of those oddball Granada things with people you'd never find on the BBC or the South (alright. Apart from steptoe). I find it strangely watchable. Again they're talking about being born in like 1916 and stuff in The War and you realise they mean ww1

I noticed it on only yesterday in the Sky Guide. I think it was on That's TV (or possibly That's TV 2).

X-posted!

Yes, I am really having a hard time understanding how some posters can watch anything!

Like the post complaining about Desperate Housewives and the mother obsessed with her daughter being fat. You are supposed to think it's appalling when she makes her run behind the car!

Do people not understand that not every person depicted in a tv show is meant to be a good person, or a good example? How can you have any story where there is no one like that?

Or is it that we aren't supposed to be able to laugh at the awful people?

It's still very good, the comparisons with today's occupant of 1600 only show how appalling the orangeman is.

In many of the examples mentioned on this thread they're old programmes being judged by today's extremist values, if that kind of thinking were applied to all drama there would be little left.

Only the British? I once read something about all countries having regions they mock, it was certainly the case when we were in Germany!

Surely there are baddies (or at least multi-faceted not-especially-goodies) in most TV programmes and films, though? Somebody has to play them! David Tennant played Dennis Nilsen, yet in real-life, David hasn't even killed one person himself!

I feel sorry for soap actors who play villains and dingbats abuse them in the street as though they actually are that fictional character. Still, it must be annoying even if you play a well-loved goodie, having people calling after you using the character's name and coming out with the same well-intentioned but tiresome banter.

If British people were to dislike people from another country, especially further east, then they would be 'judged' as 'racist' by the self appointed judges on MN! I can think of plenty of nations whose people I dislike!

Granada made some of the best TV shown on ITV, The Jewel In The Crown was another Granada masterpiece that I never tire of watching.

Agreed. They were the tops in the 80s. Brideshead Revisited was superb and then they topped that with The Jewel in the Crown.

And they made that brilliant, unsurpassable version of Sherlock Holmes too.

They set a new standard in TV production, which the BBC at the time couldn't emulate.

I have to agree about Granada. I can’t watch any other Sherlock Holmes. Or Poirot.

I do like Richard Curtis because I think his heart is in the right place, but...

he's an upper middle class, Oxbridge-educated man who (while obviously talented) has lots of connections in the media world. HIs partner is the tiresome Emma Freud, also a super-privileged upper middle class woman whose family are already famous and who has many media connections even before her career started.

These people breeze through life never having to consider money or how to get a job and live in a lovely, pretty world of a nice London house, holiday homes, famous/creative/fashionable media-folk friends etc etc etc.

I don't mind all this as long as such people don't imagine they live, or reflect in their work, the way the world is for most of the rest of us!

Differentforgirls · Yesterday 10:16
Might be the reason why people all over the world dislike British people.

Speak only for yourself, not 'people all over the world'.

What a stupid remark.

I suspect part of the reason that Frasier was so great is that most of the men in it, apart from Kelsey Grammer, were gay. Even Bulldog!