Hacker Cinema
Keeping Up Appearances
1990 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Roy Clarke
A snobbish housewife is determined to climb the social ladder, in spite of her family's working class connections and the constant chagrin of her long suffering husband.
1 negative6 neutralfrom 7 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
'Murican sitcoms seem primarily to be written for lowest common denominator with laugh track and all. Occasionally, you get a show written at a smarter level where most people totally miss the comedy, but they tend to last 1-2 seasons at most because of it. So I have a rule on streaming content that if it is a network sitcom with lots of seasons, I'm not going to watch it.
*Just to mention, I grew up on BBC in America on my local PBS station with shows like Red Dwarf, Black Adder, Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances, Father Ted, etc. That probably explains my dislike for sitcoms
Some American comedy (Parks and Rec, Brooklyn 99, Cheers, Community, etc) is amazing. Most of it is crap (2 1/2 Men, Big Bang, 90% of SNL, 100% of "middle aged dude with a family and a wife that's way too good looking" sitcoms).
Some British comedy (Fawlty Towers, Black Books, Fleabag) is amazing. Most of it is crap (Mr Bean, Keeping Up Appearances, One Foot in the grave).
There are some terrible British bands, and some great French cars.
Generalising about culture is pointless.
Not from the UK, but I grew up watching the British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances". Reading this reminded me a lot of the main character on the show who was constantly doing things like that to try to signal her class. I always wondered how true that was in the UK.
In case anyone else was confused about the reference, it appears to be to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Keeping_Up_Appearances_characters#Onslow from the British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances", written for the BBC but also airing in the US on PBS.
[scrolls up, notices username isn't "mr_bucket" or similar]
OK, now I'm confused — I've seen plenty of Keeping Up Appearances episodes and I've made a few friends over things that look like social networks if you squint at them hard enough. What am I missing?
A British sitcom called Keeping Up Appearances about a middle class woman from a working class family, and the many ways in which she tried to pretend she was something she wasn't.
I guess that's the reference, in that so many people on social media are pretending to lead exciting happy lives when in reality they are quite ordinary and boring.
It's a reference to an early 90s British sitcom (that I never thought I'd see on HN)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances