In the US: Mondays, 9.30pm ET/PT, CBS
What’s the lowest form of wit or comedy? Some say sarcasm, but clearly they haven’t read anything by Charlie Brooker. Maybe it’s any studio-based comedy about ‘friends’ or work colleagues where the dialogue consists solely of people making increasingly unpleasant remarks about each other in an attempt to get a laugh. That’s pretty low down the list, I would have thought.
But, no, the answer is obvious. Farce is the lowest form of comedy. It consists entirely of utterly implausible situations and ridiculous coincidences and elicits laughs purely through embarrassment.
And Brits are to blame for it. It’s our fault. Can I just say sorry to the rest of the world for that?
Sorry.
If we’d kept it to ourselves, maybe we wouldn’t have so much to answer for. But now we’re exporting it to the world. The Worst Week of My Life was a pretty dreadful BBC1 farce starring the normally talented Ben Miller and Sarah Alexander. The Beeb/Hat Trick sold the format to Germany – twice – and now CBS in the US has remade it as Worst Week.
And it’s absolutely dreadful. Should I apologise for that, too?
