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.

This is the one I came here to say!

Nowadays it's all been replaced by the flat uniform tasteful grey/ white kitchen and bathroom interiors you see on Homes Under The Hammer.

Comedy? It was a fly on the wall documentary shurely?

I was thinking the other day that the UK Office has aged well - in particular, Finchy has gone from being a retrograde boor to a premonition.

Embarrassing Bodies was seriously weird as well. People who were too coy to speak to their trusted GP behind a closed door, but were happy to go on national TV and tell millions of strangers.

The episode that always sticks in my mind is the man who went because he was really worried about the constant unpleasant smell from his nether regions. Dr Christian examined him and his diagnosis was that the man needed to, as he so eloquently and tactfully phrased it, "revisit your wiping technique"! Imagine being a grown adult and having to be told by a doctor in front of the country that you need to wipe your arse properly, otherwise it will stink!!

She can be an incredibly witty writer but has always massively overshared and had a number of view changes to fit with the zeitgeist. I was not surprised when Shrill the tv series bore so little resemblance to the characters of the book written only a few years earlier.

Adult Braces has however generated many hours of gobsmacked podcasts, some of which are just as funny as the Love Actually review!

Another horror from the past which would be absolutely shocking today was that show where young children- primary age - (mainly girls) were made up and given sexy costumes to cavort around in. Oh - what what is called..? "Pop something or other".

It was a paedophile's wildest dream. What in the name of God were they thinking?

Mini Pops.

Infamously with an 8 year old doing Like a Virgin

Also for a series made as recently as the 90s and particularly popular with liberal fandom it is interesting to watch series 1 and play “spot the minority”. Its set in public school in Santa Barbara in a non flashy area but good luck spotting even an extra who isn’t white and beautiful in one of the more diverse parts of the US. I think it was series two before there was a black actor in a bit part - a stereotyped Baptist minister vampire. It was a damned sight whiter than any part of California I worked in.

And of course whilst all the pupils are dressed pretty much as you would expect school students Buffy alone is in the skin tight skimpy outfits alongside peers in jumpers, sweatshirts and jeans. The 16 year old /much older man was, as you say, creepy. Even for its time.

B5 was a lot better for its time than most other series in this respect, X files did better than average as well.

On The Buses is dire, but what's rather puzzling is that the main writers (Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney) had previously created The Rag Trade, which had loads of strong female characters!

Quite a lot of early 2000s comedy had aged less well than some earlier stuff, partly because of the anti-PC backlash that seemed to be a product of the Loaded era. Two Pints... is particularly depressing - most of the male characters are sex-obsessed morons, and the girls seem to just accept it (and even welcome it to a degree).

One Foot In The Grave has aged well. There's a underlying quiet sadness to Victor and Margaret, but it never gets in the way of the comedy.

One Foot In The Grave has aged well. There's a underlying quiet sadness to Victor and Margaret, but it never gets in the way of the comedy.

Related, and arguably the thing that distinguishes British comedy from US sitcom is that underlying sorrow

https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishTV/comments/1scouo7/what_is_a_sad_or_heartbreaking_moment_in_a_sitcom/

'Harry and Pauls' piss take of On the Buses.

Tracy Ullman in a kick up the 80s said what we were all thinking.

A lot of the comedies that I think have aged really well have already been mentioned:
Yes Minister, Yes Prime Minister
Outnumbered
Fawlty Towers
Mitchell and Webb
Black Adder
The Royle Family
The Office
I'm Alan Partridge
Father Ted
The Thick of It
Porridge
Spaced

I don't think anyone's mentioned Extras or Marion and Geoff but I think they're still funny and very watchable.

I got sidetracked by the reddit thread that was quoted earlier and googled the Mitchell and Webb Sherlock Holmes sketch which was mentioned. I don't remember it but think it's brilliant.

I'm not sure about Frasier. It's very witty but he's also pretty sleazy and there was some slut shaming of Ros which I never liked.

Allo, Allo has been mentioned but I thought that was bloody awful and very unfunny at the time. I did like Secret Army, the series that it was a pastiche of.

A drama that I think holds up really well is Tenko. I loved watching it with my mum when it first came out and then, a couple of decades later, I rewatched it with my own dd and she loved it too.

I'm currently watching Clocking Off. It's 25 years old and the phones and computers are dated but nothing else is. I didn't see it first time round and am absolutely loving it.
It has a similar feel to The Street (ensemble cast, ongoing storylines but focusing on different characters each episode) which was made a few years later and which I enjoyed at the time.
Once I've finished bingeing Clocking Off, I'm going to see if The Street is available anywhere and hope that's also held up well.

Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues are wonderful. The original ones from the 80s were so well done that I didn't bother with the 2020 remake. That seemed utterly pointless.

Different tangent but early noughties ITV i think:

Ladette to Lady
Peckham finishing school for girls

Voyeueristic broken britain type programmes that would not fly now

ETA - i did watch and enjoy them though 🙈 Catriona are you on here?! 😂

And snog, marry, avoid!!

People with extreme or quirky looks and fashion senses subjected to public scrutiny before being "transformed" in the makeover pod and returned to their families 😂

Re hotter than my daughter
Bloody awful.

Yes! They did the fashion equivalent of painting everything magnolia.

I'd forgotten about Sherlock, the Jeremy Brett version. Once we had a course which was actually held in the Sherlock set at Granada, in the sitting room of 21B, at the end of the of Baker Street set there was the back of the Coronation Street set.

Wasn’t there a show where a fake doctor analysed people’s poo? You are what you eat.

Annoying git Gillian Mckeith

Yes! She would bellow “Your shit stinks!” at some poor soul who agreed to go on the show.

And referred to every woman's boobs as bangers. "Lets get those bangers out" used to be his catchphrase and made me shudder as much then as it does now.

Also around that time The X Factor was mahoosive and has aged really badly. Particularly the clips of Simon Cowell openly, gleefully trashing women over their looks and weight. It's such uncomfortable viewing.

And lol at Gillian McKeith. Who initially tried to claim she was DR Gillian and even had a book published using that title. Then had to admit after some newspapers did some digging IIRC that the only diploma she had was one she printed off herself from the internet. She was as much a doctor as Dr Fox or Pepper!

And that programme where 2 cleaning experts went into people's seriously squalid homes and cleaned them. It was absolutely stomach-churning, and although the person got a clean home out of it, again, if was borderline dodgy and exploitative because clearly some of the people had mental health issues of some sort. Even back then, when we weren't so aware of things like hoarding etc, I used to feel queasy about the effect the show would have on the individuals whose disgusting homes had been given such exposure on TV. I don't think they'd do it now...some of those people could not have been aware of what TV exposure would mean.

But it was gross! The women would urge the person to sniff all kinds of things - including faeces - and react.

Amazing that you have to be a doctor to be able to realise that fact!