I think there is a lot of truth in that. It led to the death of patriotism (which is now considered embarrassing outside of sport), national purpose, institutions, empire, and coincided with the decline of heavy industry (which only happened much more recently in the US).

EDIT: Saying that, there is still a strong positive national identity. We're just too embarrassed to express it strongly (see patriotism), because of our fall from grace.

Totally agree, WW1 is really the root cause of all of Britains problems.

Victory wasn't worth the cost. It would've been better to give the entire empire to the Germans to maintain peace. It'd be lost anyway in a short amount of time. Even forcing King George and Kaiser Wilhelm to marry would've been better for them than German Republicanism and the British Royals becoming Kardashians with crowns.

A large portion of the UK hasn't really accepted or internalized the fact that the British Empire is no longer a thing, and they're not the most powerful nation in the world, nor anywhere close to it.

(...And yes, that does sound like what it looks like is coming for the US, though it's not quite there yet.)

A more recent show to compare would be the UK vs the USA version of Ghosts. I like both shows but it is interesting how in the USA version all the main Ghosts are basically good people while the UK Ghosts have more serious flaws. And in the UK version, money is a constant problem while in the USA version it isn't nearly as big of a problem.

I'm not sure it's generally true that funny English characters aren't sympathetic.

> I would also say that the Always Sunny gang really aren't sympathetic either, but it's a para-social trick of having spent so much time "together" with them over so many episodes.

I'd say they're charismatic and funny, but irredeemably bad people. It was refreshing that the show didn't shy away from that; in lots of comedies, the characters are basically psychopathic if taken literally, yet we're still supposed to like them and to see them as having hearts of gold if they make the occasional nice gesture. Always Sunny just leaned hard into portraying them as terrible people who were only 'likable' in the shallow sense needed to make the show fun to watch rather than an ordeal.

But I think the creators eventually lost sight of that -- I remember the big serious episode they did with Mac's dance, and I just find it baffling because in order to buy into the emotion we were evidently supposed to feel, we needed to take the characters seriously. And as soon as we take the characters seriously we are (or should be) overwhelmingly aware that we're watching people who have proven over the previous umpteen years to be irredeemable sociopaths, which kind of takes the edge off the heartwarming pride story.

Yeah, the conceit of Seinfeld was that the characters were crappy, but you liked them because they were funny. But they didn't actually lean into that as hard as, say, the finale would suggest. All of the characters have something sympathetic that you can like about them, even if you can buy the thesis that they are unsympathetic broadly.

The genius of IASIP is to just lean all the way into this trope. The characters are never sympathetic and never redeem themselves. It's almost an experiment in whether you can make people feel sympathetic toward awful (but entertaining) characters just through long familiarity with them. (Yes.)

It would be disturbing to find out people sympathize with the IASIP characters.

As I just commented above, I do think The Office fundamentally maintained this foundation of comedic failure, but I also think it wouldn't have worked as well for American audiences (and indeed, wasn't working as well in the first season because of this) if not for the much larger emphasis on the likable-character love story with Jim and Pam. Maybe the upshot is that you can have a British edge in American comedy, as long as you sand it down a bit with some other element.

I see a similar kind of dynamic in Parks and Recreation, which is maybe a more culturally native take on the same kind of show, where Leslie is also ultimately a comedic failure, but with the edge sanded down by a certain amount of (mostly fruitless) competence and especially a seemingly inexhaustible well of enthusiasm and optimism that can't help but infect most of the people around her.

> That Red Dwarf pilot was actually fine except for the bizarre choice of making Lister a hunk

I doubt the character of Ace Rimmer [what a guy!] would have translated at all.

Jim is the hero of the US version of the Office

He doesn't succeed so much at work but he does in his personal life

Robert California and Dwight were the clear heroes of the American version of the office.

> Versus the focus on escapism in even the most grim US television

Interesting observation, thank you! Lot to noodle on there :-)

I think there's something to this. But I'd also say the reason it feels so dead is because consumed media has shattered into a million pieces. With the death of broadcast TV and somewhat the death of movies, it's actually getting increasingly harder to find shows with common consumption.

The reason "Bring me a shrubbery" is funny and why people endlessly quoted Holy Grail is because almost everyone in the US watched Monte python at one point or another. Part of what made people do those quotes is the fact that regardless audience, you know you'll get a laugh because they too know the context for the phrase.

I don't think there's a single piece of media like that. Not at least in the last 10 years. I mean, funnily, I think you've nailed Skibidi as a rare exception, at least for the younger generations.

If you are saying sketch shows like "Thank God You're Here" "Fast & Loose" and "Who's Line is it Anyway" are being killed off by short/low budget replacements on TikTok, we must be living in different worlds.

I haven't seen anything like them on TikTok and I'm on there enough to have noticed. Maybe you're talking about the dumb alien short videos of them telling a joke to each other and snickering, that doesn't compare.

> I would suggest that something like "Skibidi Toilet" is just this generation's badger-badger-mushroom

Beyond the first minute or two, I'd not class Skibidi Toilet as any kind of humor. It's a serialized silent (late-era-style silent with synced foley but no dialog) sci-fi action war epic told without intertitles.

- A Bit of Fry and Laurie

with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry

Can we fit in 'Not the nine O'clock news'?

And what about 'Spitting Image'?

> The Goon Show

I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Harry Secombe just a couple years before he died. He was quite surprised to run into an American who knew who he was. Most American's only know Peter Sellers.

I was looking for I Think You Should Leave, which I think is great. But it might be the exception that proves the rule, at least for newish shows in the US.

Key and Peele and Chappelle's Show were also this kind of show, but are pretty old now.

I feel like Jam/Blue Jam was about the zenith of British surreal and nihilistic comedy.