Humor and Humour

Let's face it, humor and humour are two different things. Although the Americans and the British can understand many of each other's jokes, there are areas of comedy where one nation will stare at the other in blank incomprehension. Yet both have specialties (specialities) in which they excel and there is some sharing of television comedy shows between the two nations.

A few British TV shows make it all the way across the Atlantic without amendment; Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Benny Hill Show spring to mind. And both of these examples are interesting in that they represent the adolescent side of Brit humor, the sort of surreal jokes that schoolboys or university students make in their wilder moments.

Does this mean that the Americans are only able to appreciate a simpler, zany sort of humor? I think not for, when we look at American comedies, we find a degree of sophistication that destroys that theory. It is much more that the slapstick element in the two shows mentioned is a common language between many cultures, a comedic language that is easily understood by almost everyone. Why, even Mr Bean (cringe) succeeded in America.

Notice that generally American shows can be imported into Britain without editing and that there are far more of them than those that make the crossing in the other direction. I can think of several straight away: WKRV, Taxi, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends. The list is almost endless and they are all sitcoms, a genre that the Brits still mistakenly imagine that they do best.

The British sitcom is an awful creature, rarely funny and unremittingly depressing. Just occasionally, a Brit sitcom will sneak into America under the auspices of PBS. Keeping Up Appearances is one that I've seen over here; it has a small American following but I merely find it irritating and embarrassing, probably because it's just too close to the truth to be funny.

The fact is that Americans do sitcom far better than the Brits. There is a surrealistic quality to their best offerings that ought to be present in British sitcoms but never is. We fill our sitcoms with the old guard of acting and give them lines to read that we think are sophisticated but turn out to be merely obvious. Surrealism we leave to Monty Python.

So the Brits do not find it necessary to change American sitcoms in any way; we happily accept and understand them. It's the game shows that we decide need to be changed to suit our market and there are any number of British copies of American inventions in this genre.

The Americans, however, have the good sense to leave Brit game shows very much alone (can you imagine an American Pot Black?) but will sometimes take a British comedy show and attempt to produce an American version. A while ago I saw an attempt to Americanize Fawlty Towers and it was, frankly, awful. Some producer had failed to realize that the essential ingredient to the show was always going to be John Cleese.

On rare occasions, this type of American import has some measure of success. Archie Bunker of All In The Family is an example, although I doubt many Americans realize that he is a copy of Alf Garnet from Till Death Do Us Part. Yet so much is lost in the translation; Archie falls way short of the abrasive, unrelenting, cutting sharpness of Alf. And this illustrates the reason for America wanting to copy some Brit shows rather than allow them air time in the States: sometimes British humor is just too harsh and vicious for general consumption.

I suppose that the differences in the two nations' sense of humor has come about partly through development over the last two centuries but also because America has had the injection of so many different nationalities, each with its own brand of humor.

Some years ago a friend of mine married a lady from Sweden and went to live there. On one of his return visits to England he confessed to me that he did not understand the Swedish sense of humor. Apparently they would find quite ordinary events hilarious but, when he tried English jokes on them, he'd be met with blank stares. Of course, as an Englishman, my natural response was amazement that the Swedes had a sense of humor at all, but the story does show that the Americans and British are not so far apart in their understanding of comedy. In just some areas there is a lack of comprehension.

As an instance of this, I find no equivalent in America of the British love of wordplay. This is something so natural to the Brits that it often occurs in the course of ordinary conversation. Certain words seem to be catalysts for it; "chicken" is probably the most likely to start off a rapid exchange of silly sentences:

"He had chickens in the back garden, you know."

"Really? And no-one sent him up before the beak?"

"Nah, that would have been a poultry thing to do."

"Well I wasn't going to lay down the law about it."

"Eggzactly. Not something to brood over at all."

"Yes, if a feller wants to feather his nest, why try to coop him up?"

"Flocked if I know..."

That sort of conversation just doesn't happen in the States. I've tried to start them but people just look at me as if I'm weird. And I suppose it is a strange way to get a laugh, to build an impromptu competition for the snappiest pun.

I just miss it sometimes, that's all...