anc6368
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2021–2025
4:19 · 4.2M views · Nov 12, 2012
A short clip of Stephen Fry explaining the differences between American and British comedy. He attributes them to cultural attitudes such as optimism versus pessimism.
HN commenters cite it as an insightful short explanation of why US and UK comedy differ.
4 comments from Hacker News
You must be a fan of American comedy then. Stephen Fry explains the difference here: this video Actually very insightful, and explains why I have never been fond of the cool guy that gets all the girls US comedy loves to represent.
I really like Stephen Fry's take on the difference between American and British comedy: this video (YouTube)
That doesn't ring true to me at all. I'm more inclined to agree with Stephen Fry [1], who explains that it's ultimately a matter of optimism versus pessimism. The great American comics are people like John Belushi, the wisecracking charmer who gets the girl in the end, while the British comedian prefers to play the failure; British comedy comes from strife and tragedy and embarrassment and loss of dignity, which is why most British comedy focuses on lower/middle class people and their relationship with the hierarchy: Basil Fawlty (John Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers), Blackadder, David Brent (The Office), and so on. The types of comedic personalities you tend to see in American culture are the likes of Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, featuring people who may be average, but generally don't start as failures, and if they do (or if they have an unfortunate fall from grace in the middle of the story), the central theme isn't the inevitability of their failure, but an optimistic path towards self-betterment and reclaiming control over their own destiny. The US also doesn't have the kind of history of tensions between the classes that Britain has (even though wealth inequality is objectively worse, and the system is simply not recognized as being a class system among ordinary people). The American style of comedy goes hand in hand with the idea of the American dream, that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough. The most "British" American comedy I've seen in recent times was
> although as usual the US version stunk I haven't watched the US version but I am reminded of Stephen Fry's explanation of the differences between US and UK comedians[0]. Taskmaster needs contestants willing to embarrass themselves. [0] this video