The Young Ones changed comedy | Hacker News Reader

The Young Ones changed comedy

theguardian.com

84 pointsmellosouls39 comments

I had just moved into my first shared student house in Headingly, Leeds Uni in 1982 and The Young Ones perfectly captured the feeling. My basement room had snail trails on the floor, extensive damp and while unpacking I found a stolen road sign under the bed.

Luckily we were able to afford a TV and this was our goto TV programme that was watched every week, regardless of which band were performing at the student union that week. Awesome, life-affirming comedy.

When I was at university we put snails in someone's room for a joke when we were all drunk and he was unconscious. Woke up to snail trails all over his room. Wasn't Leeds though :)

I remember watching the show when I was very young and loved the pure anarchy of it.

This documentary is a really great coverage of the young ones, including interviews with all the main cast. Not sure quite how much of it is in overlap with the article, but fun bit of background watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4reFlDsnGM0

I watched it in my teens and had high expectations for student life.

My first place (2012) wasn’t a disappointment, I lived with a hardcore feminist arch-hipster, effervescent gay couple and an overworked everyman grad student.

This was in Canada, and lacked much of the zaniness of the show (of course) but it was still a riot for the wide-eyed 20 year old me.

The Young Ones ran on MTV in 1985. It was hilarious. There's one episode... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi_(The_Young_Ones) which really stands above and beyond.

While Bambi is amazing one of my favorites is Sick where they unintentionally start a massive riot on their street while Madness plays "Our house" in the middle of it all, then cut the song to join in the rioting and violence.

That was a top one. I rather liked "cash". They think Vyvyan is pregnant so they make Neil join the police to make some money.

Ending: https://youtu.be/mhxkY9adDCg?t=146

I can still recite Neil's letter from that episode.

"Open up, it's the pigs."

And if you like The Young Ones, you will probably also like Bottom. The surrealism is toned down somewhat, but the crude slapstick is the same, and Rik and Ade play very similar characters.

In the same vein, I'd also recommend Filthy, Rich, and Catflap. Comedically, it feels very much like a bridge between The Young Ones and Bottom, rightfully so.

And don't forget the film Guest House Paradiso (1999).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202381

Time to share this masterful piece of audience interaction from the Live show:

https://youtu.be/NjQD9zpAcGk

RIP Rik.

That was amazing, thank you for posting!

Rik Mayalls acceptance speech at Exeter University when he was awarded a honorary Doctorate is a reminder of what genuinely beautiful human being he was. https://youtu.be/1jjFEFyI8FU

I remember seeing the first episode when the series started. I can still remember things that made me laugh - top of the list the hamster called Special Patrol Group - the name for the police’s notorious rapid response group at the time. It was so different to the sitcoms that dominated TV comedy in the U.K.

Rik Mayall was also very funny at that time as Kevin Turvey. [1] RIP Rik.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yaG6oiSdHpo

The only thing since the Young Ones that really got that zany vibe just right is Aqua Teen Hungerforce.

In a more general sense, the "main cast made up exclusively of irredeemable characters" trope really blossomed in the subsequent decades. You see it in Seinfeld, It's Always Sunny, etc.

I think it existed before The Young Ones but that's where I first saw it.

Have you watched the Eric Andre show?

In one episode he gets frustrated with the direction of the show and inserts a betamax tape to play a previous episode, sped-up and overlaid with partial opacity atop the ongoing episode.

In another episode the host and one of the members of NSYNC literally jump out of the way of a motorcycle that runs over the host's desk.

Watched it again recently and its aged very badly. At the time it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, but now its not at all. The bands that came on it were maximum nostalgia though.

Purely subjective, of course, but it's lost none of it's hilarity for me!

As a person who hasn't seen the show, do you have an example of a joke that you found funny but no longer has any humor due to a change in you or social groups in general?

In my experience sometimes there are usually a few contributors, like a voice that only represents a moment in time or a style of humor that has fallen out of fashion.

Quite possibly not the sort of thing they're talking about, but there's a slightly notorious scene that was presumably intended to portray the police as racist and stupid, which in theory is probably a much more acceptable message now than then. Except it depicts the cop coming out with a stream of very OTT racial insults, played for laughs, and doesn't fit the current zeitgeist at all.

I always felt like The Young Ones was aimed at people like me, who didn't feel intelligent or cultured enough to appreciate Monty Python.

What about Python felt intelligent to you? I thought it was just a bunch of dudes in dresses being weird for weird's sake

They were all from Oxbridge and the weirdness specifically satirized British culture of the 60s and 70s. It just so happened to be universal enough for an American audience to appreciate “a bunch of dudes in dresses being weird for weird’s sake”

Compare to something like SNL which would be unfunny to a Brit unless they had some specific interest in American culture.

To me, the epitome of Python (outside of the movies) is the series of sketches making fun of upper-class twits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Class_Twit_of_the_Year which is just devastating and I'm american

correct me if I'm wrong but isn't SNL unfunny to most Americans too?

that's just your online bubble where loud complaints that substitute for intelligent discourse go. if you think it's funny you don't have a reason to go online and say only that

The Philosopher's World Cup is a pretty good example.

Link: https://youtu.be/92vV3QGagck

And an homage that I was just reading earlier today: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/35

I'm not saying Python was rocket science, but while it had a lot of broad humor (Ministry of Silly Walks, etc) there were also a lot of subtler jokes.

    I thought it was just a bunch of dudes in dresses 
    being weird for weird's sake

A lot of the jokes might have been misfires for you because of subtlety, cultural differences, references that are completely obscured by time 50 years later, etc.

Or maybe just not your brand of humor! Certainly lots of people think much of Python was funny.

I wasn't implying I didn't find Python funny. Watch documentaries about Python and the members all say they were just trying to come up with the silliest thing they could to make each other laugh

OK. I interpreted "silly for the sake of being silly" as a more derogatory sort of comment. As if you felt Python didn't have much going for it beyond the silliness.

Which is a totally fair opinion to have, of course. You're allowed to feel however you want about it.

A friend with MTV made VHS copies for those of us without cable. So good. And Madness!

Viv… eat the telly

Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar on BBC Radio 4 is exceptionally funny.

9/11 Scene from 'One by One' Rik Mayall's last film release before his sudden death https://youtu.be/MW-oXuJTdjI

For those wondering about this: the towers obviously weren't knocked over by the planes since the collapses started more than a half-hour after the planes collided with them.

The collapses were due to thermal stresses caused by the fire; as each floor heats up it expands, pushing the supporting beams outwards, then when the floor buckles, the beams snap back.

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