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The Inbetweeners
2008 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Damon Beesley, Iain Morris
Suburban teenage friends Will, Simon, Jay and Neil, students at Rudge Park Comprehensive, attempt to navigate the social scene, attract members of the gentler sex, and saunter amongst the cool crowd. However, despite their best efforts, the four hapless lads usually end up on the side of the nerds.
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2 comments on Hacker News
There are plenty of lazy and derivative British sitcoms, but I wouldn't call The Office a one-off stroke of genius. A great many British sitcoms have similar depth and substance - Gavin and Stacey or The Inbetweeners would be good contemporary examples. Going back further, you have programmes like I'm Alan Partridge, Blackadder, Porridge, The Likely Lads and so on. None of those sitcoms could plausibly have been produced in the US, they're just not sufficiently marketable.
British TV commissioning isn't perfect, but it affords a level of creative freedom that is largely absent in the US, and that is necessary for programmes like The Office to come into being. British commissioners really do think in terms of artistic merit rather than purely commercial value.
American networks are excellent at producing huge international hits, but there's no room in the system for smaller, quirkier productions. The BBC and Channel 4 tend to take a lot of small risks on cheaper productions rather than always swinging for the fences. Success and failure is far less binary when there isn't the pressure to recoup a huge budget. Some of those cheap experiments will be total flops, some will survive as lowbrow primetime filler, some will find a small but loyal audience, a rare few will be huge hits. None of those outcomes are career-ending catastrophes, they're just part of the process. Commissioners expect and allow that level of variance.
My new DVR holds so few shows [...] It holds now about 20 shows, and a few movies, and is basically useless in that it fills up every few days ...
I think the author needs to stop watching so much TV.
Does anyone identify with this piece? It seems largely exaggerated to me. I watched the first 4 episodes of The Inbetweeners, season 3, on demand last night. I have FiOS, and even with its clunky menu navigation, it was easy to find and watch the shows. The alternate is. what, download a 1GB torrent? I don't see how that's easier.
If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.