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I will get slaughtered for this but I prefer "Freinds" to "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm"

We should never sit and watch TV together.

Friends is shit in my eyes. I actually liked it for the first couple of years when the characters actually seemed like real human beings. At some point they got rid of the things that made those people amusing and turned them into heavily made up gag machines. That, plus the soapy tendencies of the relationships turned me off of it.

It was relatively crap for the first two seasons. The characters weren't defined enough: Joey kept making clever remarks a la Chandler and everyone spoke in the same "like, hello?" tone of voice. When they were more defined they were indeed gag machines. But what tremendous gags.

For me Friends and seinfeld are the same kind of supercelebrity comedy shite, with friends being slightly more annoying. I've never seen the point of the larry seanders show, and curb your enthusiasm is just basically a cunt does comedy of embarassment based on a cunt goes around being a cunt to cunts. I have no patience for american comedies written by teams of scriptwriters. It's like comedy eastenders or something.

That said, I will admit to liking Bones.

Strangely, Liq, I didn't think that an evening of us together fighting over the remote would go that well anyway.

AIATL, as I say, I am no great fan of Seinfeld or especially CYE but there are very few Britsh sitcoms that come anywhere close to American ones. Even ho-hum ones like "The Big Bang Theory" piss all over "My Family" or "The Royle Family" whereas it is only with "The Office", "Gavin & Stacey", "Nighty Night" etc that the UK has raised its game.

When "Cheers", "The Golden Girls" early "Roseanne", "Frasier" etc were being aired, there was nothing at all here that could be talked about being in the same league here

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For me Friends and seinfeld are the same kind of supercelebrity comedy shite. . .

AIATL, what does "supercelebrity comedy shite" mean? It sounds like you're saying that it's comedy based solely on the celebrity of the actors, but, at the time these shows started, none of the actors were famous at all. Seinfeld was the most famous, and I would be surprised if 1 out of 100 people had ever heard of him before he had the show.

While I have no issue with your cunt cunting cunt cunt description of CYE, it is written solely by Larry David, though mainly improvised on camera, so I'm not sure why it leads into your point about teams of screenwriters.

Agree about "Bones", though I'm not sure why I like it as much as I do.

I don't particularly like Seinfeld but my mate begs to differ. I've started to think that he only watches to seem superior to the people he works with, he tries this attitude with me sometimes too.

He also raves about Curb Your Enthusiasm so I tried it. I didn't find that particularly funny either.

I don't seem to find much of the comedy based around embarrassed silences very enjoyable, am I thick or something?

I've always liked Seinfeld, but I wonder how American-specific (or, even narrower, Northeast US-specific, or, narrowest, Northeast Jewish-specific) it's type of humor is.

CYE is difficult for me to watch. It takes cringe humor to an extreme that I usually find more uncomfortable than funny. Every now and then it really works, but usually it leaves me shielding my eyes and covering my ears as if it was a horror movie.

Kowalski, I don't think your "thick" for not finding this stuff funny (or, if you are, I'm equally thick). I don't think humor is all that susceptible to intellectualizing, and those that attempt to intellectualize humor are often missing the point.

Seinfeld was absolutely astonishingly superb, you mad people. What I find oddest about people's objections is that it didn't fall into the cookie-cutter US wise-cracking sitcom pattern at all. The comedy was driven by the characters and the excruciating situations that their failings got them into. In that respect, it was more like Fawlty Towers than it was like Friends.

Whatever lunatic Seinfeld backlash there is, it is cool-to-be-contrarian revisionist nonsense. Seinfeld was indeed superb.

It redefined the TV comedy genre. Certainly there'd be no Arrested Development or 30 Rock, two of the sharpest comedies of the '00s, without Seinfeld.

Friends was excellent, too. Here the prejudice against it was based on the celebrity status of its stars. Yet, before the series started, the only main cast member I had seen before was the Cox woman, in the Springsteen video for Dancing In The Dark. The celebrity came off the back of the show's popularity, which in turn was based on the smart scripts and fine perfir,mances by the cast (and the many great walk-ons. Roommate Eddy was brilliant) which justified all the hype.

Proper revisionism of Friends would require an acknowledgment that it was indeed an extraordinarily good TV series.

Oh, and the first season of The O.C. was great. The second season was OK,. The third terrible.

What's the view here on Desperate Housewives? I watch it every week, and enjoy it mostly. Yet I know I don't really like it. It's the canned viennas of TV shows. And I am trying to discern where the "satire" its producers speak of is located. In the sardonically pontificating voiceovers by suicide woman (all of which start: "Yes!...")?

Ugly Betty has more satire and more interesting characters than DH. Wilhelmina's assistant Mark in particular. His physical comedy is quite remarkable.

AIATL, what does "supercelebrity comedy shite" mean? It sounds like you're saying that it's comedy based solely on the celebrity of the actors, but, at the time these shows started, none of the actors were famous at all.

It doesn't matter what they were like when they started. I'm talking about comedies with Smug cunts playing hopelessly unappealing characters, that have somehow reached megastar status and get paid around $1,000,000 an episode for the 5th, 6th and 7th series of a comedy that disappeared up its own arse after maybe two series max. I just associate Larry david with seinfeld. I don't find him funny. just really annoying, like a less human, less likeable ricky gervais.

Friends was excellent, too. Here the prejudice against it was based on the celebrity status of its stars.

no, it's that it was absolutely ubiquitous for the guts of a decade, with everyone telling me how absolutely great it was. The problem with it was that it just wasn't funny. Everything was Chandler, you're so sardonically funny. Ross, you're such a new man loser dweeb. Moron, you're a cunto moron. I'm not even going to mention how fucking irritating the women in that show were. (though I did like that phoebe in the opposite of sex) Maybe if the central characters didn't make me go rooting around for my hunting knife then I might have found some of their cracks funny.

CYE is brilliant, but it depends a lot on you knowing the characters, series 5 referencing series 2, etc, so you can't really watch it casually.

One other HBO show I love is Entourage. Absolute comedy genius.

I tried watching Ugly Betty once but it felt like being trapped in a small room with violently swirly wallpaper being shouted at by a lunatic.

I've seen more Ugly Betty than I'd care to (my better half loves it) and I'd agree with ex-G, Mark's physical comedy is the funniest bit of it. He and Wilhelmina are an excellent double act.

There's no TV I feel embarrassed watching. The only shows I make a real effort to watch are The Big Bang Theory (it's just plain funny; not especially clever or inventive, but a great example of consistently funny sitcom writing), Reaper (which just about captures the Whedon style of Buffy or Firefly, and has the excellent Ray Wise [Laura Palmer's dad] as the devil) and to a lesser degree Doctor Who, My Name Is Earl (same comment as The Big Bang Theory) and from next week Peep Show.

Gavin & Stacey I've watched, but only for the James Corden/Ruth Jones/Rob Brydon bits. The rest don't crack a smile on my face.

I realized reading this thread that there aren't many scripted shows that are "must watches" for me--enough to be in my Season Pass.

Just the Office (US). I have it set for My Name Is Earl, but I didn't get into it this year. I watched 30 Rock at the beginning, before it really started clicking, and I haven't watched it since even though I know it's supposed to be really good. My favorite scripted show is Friday Night Lights, but I don't think that's coming back.

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He also raves about Curb Your Enthusiasm so I tried it. I didn't find that particularly funny either.

I realised my problem with CYE isn't particularly the writing - at the end of the day, the guy co-wrote Seinfeld, he is a good comedy writer - it is the acting, the improvisation and specifically, the timing which is all awry.

I am not being contrarian about this, I just am not a big fan. I sat through three episodes at the start and they didn't make me laugh or make me want to carry on watching it. Indeed, I gave it more of a chance than I normally would so I was hardly being contrary