I never saw this much-admired series at the time
(and have never seen it since). It always sounded like the sort of cult
television-fanboy thing that I wouldn't enjoy very much to me. Everyone has
some similar instinctive prejudices about the programmes that we don't watch.
Because no one can watch everything, everybody has some sort of instinctive
"don't need to see that" filter. So it’s interesting to discover what
I was missing out on.
The central premise from which the comedy seems to stem is through applying the principles of culty popular culture to everyday life. Because I haven't seen most of the things that are being referenced, I always feel that I'm getting these sorts of jokes at one remove and they work at an intellectual, rather than empathetic level. Its also a bit of a jolt when you see something from the turn of the century after watching a lot of earlier television - the average shot length is much shorter and scenes are now shown from any number of perspectives and distances, making the thing feel more assembled and less free-flowing. I can also tell that there are a lot of gags and details that are designed to reward multiple viewing, which is fair enough if you're committed to watching something a lot of times, but perhaps detracts from the initial viewing experience.
What is interesting is how precisely of its time the setting is, and how it reflects something of the lives and concerns of people of around my age and background, living in the very last years before the Internet much affected how we did things. Urban life with little funds, but precariously cushioned against actual poverty, these people in the last throes of youth have spent a lot of time in their teens and twenties sitting around and watching videos together. There's something smart about their frame of reference, but there's also a lack of any broader social-political-historical-cultural context to their worldview, which feels a bit hollow to me.
The central premise from which the comedy seems to stem is through applying the principles of culty popular culture to everyday life. Because I haven't seen most of the things that are being referenced, I always feel that I'm getting these sorts of jokes at one remove and they work at an intellectual, rather than empathetic level. Its also a bit of a jolt when you see something from the turn of the century after watching a lot of earlier television - the average shot length is much shorter and scenes are now shown from any number of perspectives and distances, making the thing feel more assembled and less free-flowing. I can also tell that there are a lot of gags and details that are designed to reward multiple viewing, which is fair enough if you're committed to watching something a lot of times, but perhaps detracts from the initial viewing experience.
What is interesting is how precisely of its time the setting is, and how it reflects something of the lives and concerns of people of around my age and background, living in the very last years before the Internet much affected how we did things. Urban life with little funds, but precariously cushioned against actual poverty, these people in the last throes of youth have spent a lot of time in their teens and twenties sitting around and watching videos together. There's something smart about their frame of reference, but there's also a lack of any broader social-political-historical-cultural context to their worldview, which feels a bit hollow to me.
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