[JFingleton]

From Matt Lucas himself regarding Little Britain:

'Speaking in October 2017, Lucas stated that if he were to remake Little Britain he would avoid making jokes about transvestites and would not play the role of a black character, saying, "Basically, I wouldn't make that show now. It would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I'd do now... Society has moved on a lot since then and my own views have evolved".'

Basically the risk taking has gone in modern comedy.

[kristianc]

Little Britain just hasn’t aged well. The sketches were always more about repetition than wit, relied on caricature a lot and mistook shock value for satire.

You couldn’t make Little Britain today mostly because it wasn’t very good, and the standards of the time were lower.

You could absolutely remake The Day Today, Brass Eye, Goodness Gracious Me or Peep Show today and they’d be just as good.

[rightbyte]

I think Little Britain kicked downwards.

I really distasted it when it was running.

[kristianc]

I agree, it’s often held up as a “risk taking” show but I don’t think it wasn’t really anything of the sort.

At the moment post 1997 when Britain was starting to change and become more diverse and sure of it itself it reinforced an identify of Britain as it used to think of itself: silly voices, binary identities and oddballs.

It has more in common with Love Thy Neighbour than anything that came after.

[rightbyte]

The contrast to Monthy Python's take is quite stark.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jF-CkMpQtlY&pp=ygUUdmlsbGFnZSB...

[fidotron]

Yeah, that whole era of things like the Jimmy Carr gameshows were honestly a sort of mass nastiness as entertainment.

This business where we're all supposed to be surprised by what Russell Brand was up to despite him being incredibly open about it at the time is the same thing: society wants to blame the highly visible individuals of that era but in truth it was the audience that wanted this stuff that were the problem.

[lmm]

You could barely make Brass Eye in 2001, as their 2001 special proved, never mind today. And you absolutely wouldn't get away with Goodness Gracious Me.

[SkyeCA]

> You could barely make Brass Eye in 2001, as their 2001 special proved,

I still hold that special up as one of the best pieces of satire to ever air on TV, but at the same time I'm shocked it was ever able to be produced and shown since it satirizes the one topic above all others you aren't "allowed" to joke about.

For those interested I highly recommend watching it: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6shgvw

[foldr]

The episode was also made at a time when it was fashionable to hold the view that the country was gripped by a kind of irrational hysteria about child sexual abuse. Monkey Dust's 'pedofinder general', from around the same time period, reflects a similar attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCywGhHQMEw

Decades later this all looks rather naive. The BBC, especially, could hardly make a program satirizing exaggerated concerns about child sexual abuse, given that the Savile scandal proved that many such concerns had in fact been taken nowhere near seriously enough.

[arp242]

Their "Paedogeddon" special would have been highly controversial in any time and was also far beyond what they did before. Do you really think it could have been made in the 70s or 80s?

[rozenmd]

I've seen a few Instagram reels of folks remaking Peep Show for 2025, it works ridiculously well.

[harvey9]

Chris Morris made a career, early on, of getting fired for stuff he did on air. Not many people would risk that.

[barnabos]

It's aged perfectly fine but this infantile and maoist-like philosophy shouldn't.

[thinkingemote]

A lot of comedy back then was about laughing at the absurdities of a shared life.

The absurdities of yesterday have been changed - and there can be no actual normality today when there are no absurdities. Laughing at absurdities was not considered cruel.

With no common shared understanding of what's funny or not. Today we can laugh at cruel people only. The cruel and those who think others are weird are the strange ones.

Comedy used to be "look at us, hahaha" now it's "look at them, heh". Real comedy has truth and the truth is always about ourselves not some external other. But such vulnerability is very risky.

[arp242]

There's an interview with Bob Monkhouse about making TV in the 50s/60s; he wasn't allowed to say "condom" on TV, and would get fined if he said "bloody".

There's as always a "taboo" on some things. Lots of jokes about sex and religion today that would see you completely crucified in the past. Do you think The Thick of It could have been made in the 80s?

I never cared for Little Britain and haven't seen it, so I can't comment on their "jokes about transvestites", but this whining about "PC gone mad!" has been going on for 40+ years. A few decades ago it was about "you can't make fun of the pakis and nig-nogs any more!"

[mgkimsal]

I suspect the same number of people were upset in 2006 as would be upset in 2017. But there wasn't a social media platform for those upset views to be expressed and easily measured.

This idea of "oh everyone is offended these days" is a bit weird to me; the 'these days' part I mean. There was a lot of comedy from the past that was... awkward to me as a kid, or just... felt unnecessarily cruel. But I was in a minority, or at least felt like it, with some of those. And... I don't think I changed, but I now can hear/read about others who share the same sensibilities on comedic topics.

The notion that it's somehow "more" people getting "offended" today just strikes me as odd. It may be that as more folks have a platform to share their views, that influences some folks, but I'm not sure that works on all topics. Certainly... on comedy, I've heard many of complaints about some comics/topics. Rarely has anyone's view of a comedy bit made me change my position. If I found it cringe/bad, I found it cringe/bad.

[StefanBatory]

back in days you'd just be "allowed" to make fun out of minorities with them not being able to fight back. now you aren't, and thus the majorities are "oppressed" and everything is "politically correct".

i'm bi. sometimes I watch old Polish comedies or standups. The amount of "jokes" that are just good old bigotry is stupendous.

so when people say they're tired of "political correctness", I do wonder if they mean - I am no longer allowed to be bigot openly, why can't I kick those who I consider to be below me.

[ipaddr]

People made fun of others and themselves. Now it's only okay to "punch up" which makes things unfunny. It's great you can make fun of religion well only one religion but the rules constrain novel ideas that push outside of those rules to make actual humor. Tell me something I haven't heard before with some truth.

The repeated going back to the well makes everything unfunny. The first time a Polish joke was said was in Poland many Polish watching laughed because their was kernel of truth that made it funny but years later hearing it repeated like it's gospel makes it awful because people have changed but the joke doesn't so it doesn't land as true anymore. Once we start looking why the joke is untrue instead of why it's true the joke is dead.

Saturday night live always tries to go back to a joke that was never really that funny.

[generic92034]

Well, looks like in some countries at least open bigotry and discrimination have a comeback.

[enaaem]

During my childhood it were always the Christian conservatives who try to ban video games or get outraged when they say half a nipple on TV.

[glimshe]

My son is a teenager but loves to watch old politically incorrect comedies like "Airplane". There's no way you could make that movie today... but there's certainly a market for it, cruel or not.

Now that I think about it, it's no more cruel than what most kids watch on YouTube today.

[bryanrasmussen]

Airplane could be made today, the central premise would hold up well, some of the skits in it would have to be dropped or altered. Most things that were made in one period could not be made whole cloth in another period.

[TMWNN]

>Airplane could be made today, the central premise would hold up well, some of the skits in it would have to be dropped or altered.

In other words, not Airplane!.

[bryanrasmussen]

and to say what I said before, hardly any movie that was made in one generation can be made in another. There will always be things that have to be changed. This same thing applies to basically every other work of art - despite the valiant efforts of Pierre Menard.

[ta1243]

The protagonist with Vietnam flashbacks would obviously have to be altered, you couldn't have skits about Ronald Reagan - nobody knows who he is, nor do they know who Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is.

Having the autopilot smoking after being inflated doesn't make sense in a world where barely anyone smokes.

[bryanrasmussen]

autopilot rates Elaine's Social media profile.

[sellmesoap]

There is an airplane movie from this year! No idea if it can hold up to the old ones and I don't have time to watch movies these days: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34956433/

[OJFord]

You think they'd do the jive bit (or an equivalent)? Closest I'd expect would be gen whatever slang with the yeeting sigmas to Ohio etc.

[AngryData]

There are tons of dialects and accents and group slang that the joke could be done with. Doing basic generational slang would likely flop, but you could easily use something like a thick accent from Texas like Boomhower in King of the Hill, or a Louisiana Creole accent, or some deep Appalacian accent, or some Spanglish.

[bee_rider]

I think either way it would be unfunny because

1) jive isn’t something many people have encountered nowadays and

2) “internet slang is incomprehensible” is an overdone joke.

[OJFord]

1 is why I said or an equivalent - you could do the same with pidgin or any creole or, I don't know if this is a PC way to say it, but any kind of 'hood' or 'ghetto' type slang. The joke is just person is 'fluent' in an unlikely dialect/way of speaking. If cockney rhyming slang were more prevalent you could do that, with you know a black American or Asian person or whatever being the unlikely fluent one.

2 is is not really the point, sure it could flop, my point was just that I couldn't imagine it going further than that, not that that would be funny.

[nkrisc]

It's been a few years since I watched Airplane, and while I absolutely love it, I recall it being rather tame even by modern standards. I can think of a few gags that might not land as well today, but I don't think it was mean-spirited.

[lmm]

"Oh, stewardess! I speak jive" would absolutely get you cancelled today. I don't think it's mean-spirited either but that's not enough to save you these days.

[anton-c]

Black man uses heavy black slang isn't an offensive joke. They sound cool.

When I watched it recently the joke that kinda flops is the heavily stereotyped gay man. Whether it is offensive I have no idea. Its not flattering.

[lmm]

> Black man uses heavy black slang isn't an offensive joke. They sound cool.

Sure, the old white woman using heavy black slang is where the joke comes in.

[veridies]

In Blindspotting (2018), a white protagonist is shown as being able to fluently speak an incomprehensibly dense version of AAVE, and it’s revealed later he has no idea what he’s saying (despite communicating effectively). I’ve never seen anyone criticize that joke.

[anton-c]

The first time without her is funny though too

I don't get it does that make her a racist or something? She tries to help.

The joke is: their slang is so heavy its another language.

Personally make fun of zoomers all the time for this.

[nemomarx]

change jive to aave and I think the joke works pretty similar now? just needs modern slang

[teamonkey]

There’s a sequel to Naked Gun coming out soon, starring Liam Neeson. Whether it’ll be any good or do well at the box office is a different question.

[isaacremuant]

You could absolutely make airplane today. It just depends who does it and some people may attack it but who the hell cares.

[gosub100]

not in Hollywood, is what I think the poster meant, due to the political sickness that has infected them as of late.

[foldr]

Airplane is mostly physical humor and dumb wordplay. 90% of the jokes would be fine as-is. There are a few you'd have to update, but that's hardly surprising for a movie released 35 years ago. You could have said the same in 1980 about most comedies made in 1945.

[gosub100]

the scene of the arabs walking into the airport with RPGs and machine guns wouldn't make the cut.

[foldr]

Are you talking about this scene from Airplane 2? I don't remember a scene with 'Arabs' going through security in the first one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meFJCeUWDyY

[foldr]

Little Britain was always crap and completely mainstream and non-edgy. It's a series of one joke sketches based on familiar stereotypes. I don't want to 'cancel' it, and the occasional sketch gets a titter out of me. But to hold it up as an example of edgy, groundbreaking comedy is quite absurd. You can find oodles of much edgier and funnier shows on British TV today.

[krisoft]

> Basically the risk taking has gone in modern comedy.

As if the only kind of risk you could take is punching down at trans and black people.

[Ar-Curunir]

That’s what you got from the quote? Not the part about being cruel?

[JFingleton]

Yes i did... The risk of being cruel, and other things.

[croes]

Cruel against whom?

Cruelty against the already marginalized is an easy target.

Kicking downwards is easy.

[cam_l]

Yeah, none of that was what was funny about little Britain... and I think you missed the point.