The Emperor's New Sitcom

The Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy has released its list of the best and worst 20 sitcoms ever produced. In a change from the usual format for these guides, they've named Sergeant Bilko as the number 1, which is an interesting choice, but explainable, as is most of the best list. Except for one programme, which I'll get back to in a minute, the top 20 probably all deserve to be there, and the order's pretty subjective. As for the worst 20, that's probably even more subjective than the best list, and a lot depends on someone having actually watched a bad show (and not blocked it from their memory afterwards) which only had an audience of about 3 people before it was dropped after two episodes. I think I can remember about three of them.

Anyway, back to the best 20 list, and the one that really shouldn't be in there. I'm not sure it should be in the worst 20, but it's definitely the most overrated sitcom of all time, and perhaps the biggest bunch of Emperor's New Clothes in TV history. What am I talking about? Seinfeld. I'm going to spell this out for you very slowly now - Seinfeld. Is. Not. Funny. At all. I could try and go into a detailed analysis of why, but that would involve actually watching an entire episode of it, which would probably sap my will to live. Jerry Seinfeld is just a hack comic ('hey, isn't airline food terrible!' and other great comic insights) who got lucky - very lucky - and for some reason the TV critics of the world decided that foisting him on us would be their own joke against a world that hates and fears them. Or something like that, anyway.

Maybe that's the explanation - sometime in the early 90s, Jerry Seinfeld got the rules of the International TV Critics Union changed to say that anyone who disses his programm would be instantly expelled and never allowed to review TV, or even work, again. Hence, they all had to write huge hymns of praise to the show on a regular basis, even though they recognised it was appalling dreck, the sort of tv programme that normally requires the participation of a minor ITV region to perpetrate. There was a simple reason why the BBC always used to show Seinfeld so damn late - because it wasn't funny, and they were only showing it all because the TV critics had sworn to destroy them if they didn't show it at all.

I'm quite sure that there'll be comments saying how wrong I am, how watching Jerry Seinfeld doing his Baddiel-esque 'comedic' ruminations is funny, but I don't care. You're wrong, you've been deluded by the magical powers of television into forgetting that Seinfeld is just a piece of shit. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm an atheist but the success of programmes like that do make me wonder about whether deals with the devil really exost. It'd explain a lot.