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.

I often think about how old tv shows couldn't be made today because mobile phones have ruined everything. For example, the recent show, Power about Huw Edwards I found really boring to watch ( despite it's subject matter ) as it was mainly based around text messaging, which is not v interesting to watch!

I still love The Good Life & think it's so well written and beautifully cast that it still stands up well today.
I'm currently watching Vladimir and The Affair and have been quite shocked by the f word count in both series. Do any of you & your families/friendship groups actually speak like that? In The Affair the parents and teen children use the f word when speaking to each other too.

I love Minder for old London. They do things like drive up to the Albert Hall and park right outside. As if!

@AntiqueBabyLoanSmurf 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.
This happened to Mark Savage, who played Gripper Stepson, Grange Hill's most feared bully. He had death threats.

Rowan Atkinson also grumbles about being associated with Mr Bean.

Hell yes. Bulldog being camp as tits irl was a huge revelation. Give that man an Emmy.

Just realised it's ITV4, not Talking Pictures.Doh.

I guess I must have missed those episodes!

Gil Chesterton the restaurant critic was also fab. “Deb can’t make it, she’s on manoeuvres with her reserve unit”.

Ever Decreasing Circles seems to have stood up better than the Good Life in my opinion. It was all a bit beige for me as a teenager when it was first on, but I rewatched it recently and thought it was marvellous. The character of Martin played by Richard Briers is much more likeable (and realistic?).

I agree about Dinnerladies being almost timeless, except the concept of a fully staffed canteen serving freshly cooked food in a factory is long gone! The humour is well timed and, more importantly for me, it's never based on unkindness or belittling.

Here's meta.

Martin (John Maloney. Born in Blackpool) as Seattle beat cop impersonation of Daphne (Jane Leeves), born Ilford doing attempted US version of her Manc accent

God, I loved Butterflies. It's the reason I want a union jack on the roof of my mini.
Always had a secret crush on Geoffrey Palmer and could never see what she saw in that awful Leonard.

Leonard was so lovely. My mum would swoon over him whilst I swooned over Russell.

Yep, exactly. This is a problem with novels and with drama too.

Thing is, if you’re writing fiction about, say, racism, you have you to have racist characters doing racist things in order to give the story something to address. If you’re writing a comedy to ridicule sexism, you have to write sexist characters doing sexist stuff in order to ridicule them.

And yet people complain when they see racism and sexism portrayed.

The question to be asked is: do you want drama and comedy to reflect the way the world is, or the way you’d like it to be?

And if the latter, what should happen in those stories?

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Was brilliant, if a tad coarse.

Ooh - just remembered another genre (not drama) which I'm SO glad has disappeared mostly from our screens: programmes where 'experts' came along, patronised some member of the public into the ground either by dictating and bossing them around as to home decor or their fashion choices, and at the end smugly claimed to have transformed their dreary suburban lives.

Changing Rooms and What Not to Wear, I'm looking at you! Mercifully I think TV companies have learned their lesson about this kind of thing and you wouldn't get Trinny and Susanna types bullying and belittling women in that way nowadays. There was always an arrogance and snobbishness about the way the so-called experts treated their victims, and you got the strong impression that the TV crew had been instructed to make the punters look as stupid as possible.

Good riddance!

Was Changing rooms the one where the teapot collection came crashing to the ground? Its usually features on the TV disaster shows 🤣🤣🤣

Yes, because the "designer" had a brainwave to put books, which are y'know...notoriously heavy on the bottom of the bookshelf containing all the teapots and was hung up by really slim, flimsy wire.

And as the picture shows, all the makeovers were done with mdf. Hope nobody struck a match in any of the made over rooms, although it might have been an improvement.

Exactly Howard gets his arse chewed all the time for being a prick.

Oh God yes - the stapler, glue gun, MDF offcuts and felt played a huge part. It was absolutely excruciating to watch. Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen recently admitted it was very consipiratorial against the punters and said he always gave people 'the rooms they deserved'.

Nice.

I think mostly TV companies are more wary of humiliating members of the public these days.

Ooh and that Gok Wan programme where he kept going around groping women's boobs and making catty comments - which they apparently needn't worry about at all as he was gay, so that made it all OK.

Changing rooms ..wreck each others living rooms with MDF and shite stencilling..way to go Linda Barker
And you just knew she didn't have that pish in her own house

I rewatched super skinny whatever recently- with that awful dr Christian where they locked them in a house and made a fat and thin person switch diets.

eating disorder central marketed as fixing health.

@JustbrotherscarlenaNsoulthis Guy’s commentary on CR is gold.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNRX35ks3/

"But know this, Gil isn't about to stop loving the ladies"

Adam & Joe was taking the piss out of this 25 years ago.