Palin 2012
Matthew Kruk
Hulahoop
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oymjKZPNSBA
It's a good skit but I have to say that I really dislike unnecessary
audience laughter. It was probably not possible here but the
excessive over reaction was a distraction
In the UK when we watched MASH on a Wednesday night at 9pm on BBC 2,
it was brilliant without canned laughter. When I first saw it in the
USA, with a canned laughter track I was aghast
Regards
Ged
Loaf of Bread
The typical American audience needs prompting. The British know how
to laugh when something is funny.
Michael Urban
They stopped using the laugh track, even for American audiences,
after some years in the run of the show. It may be that the BBC
was running one of those later shows (with Winchester in the cast
of characters, but I'm not sure just where the cutoff occurred).
I would actually be mildly surprised if there were separate versions
of the earlier shows re-edited by for UK consumption without the
laugh track.
Alan Sailsbury
Then be mildly surprised. The BBC did indeed run the series without the
laughter track. Except for one episode IIRC where they could only get
the US tape.
Matthew Kruk
news:60cb1f43-aede-406a...@u1g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
Regards
Ged
---
Interesting info about MASH laugh track not there in Britain. Wonder
how many other shows are televised like that.
Alan Sailsbury
Most US comedy imports annoyingly had the canned laughter intact.
Michael Urban
On the other hand, when the laughter is _not_ canned, it
can enhance the performance.
One odd experience I had was visiting France and seeing a rerun of
the US sitcom "Happy Days" dubbed into French (with le Fonzie,
whose dubbing actor was actually very good at re-creating the
character). Because it was dubbed, the entire soundtrack was
overlaid, and so the audience sounds - Happy Days was filmed with
a live audience - were completely gone. I thought that would
improve it, but it did not. I simply hadn't realized how much the
actors played to the studio audience and from their live reactions.
A classic example of live-audience sitcom reaction is the
"I Love Lucy" episode in which Lucy, concealing a bunch of
eggs beneath her jacket, has them all smashed in a dance
move. The smash was timed perfectly - you know it's going to
happen, and the anticipation is _just_ long enough - so it
brought the longest laugh from the audience they ever got... and
you can watch Lucy milk the moment for all it's worth! Would
never have played so well with an in-studio filming session.
[Desi Arnaz, who rarely got enough credit, invented the three-camera
live-studio sitcom technique used in Lucy and many other shows.]
Alan Sailsbury
I've no problem with live audience laughter, just canned. Especially
when it's done really, really badly and it's obvious it's being turned
on and off. A few UK sitcoms have used it too.
pandora
"Loaf of Bread" <john...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e1708127-b2ec-4791...@u1g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
***The British have something to laugh at (really funny shows), unlike
American audiences who just have garbage.
Hulahoop
> In article <e1708127-b2ec-4791-95c6-57342d8ef...@u1g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
Going wildy off topic, IMHO MASH changed when Henry Blake and Trapper
John left. I will have to recheck wiki, or some other equally
reliable source :-) but I wonder if that was when Alan Alda started to
rise to prominence in the production side of things?
I think it changed for the better, it got deeper, it had more pathos
and less in your face comedy, particularly after the departure of
Frank Burns
What was the US audience for the last episode, something huge wasn't
it?
Regards
Ged
"The Great One"
"Loaf of Bread" <john...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:e1708127-b2ec-4791...@u1g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
to laugh when something is funny, like my Gay ass!
--
Fat-ass loaf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You said it !!
--
John C.
Michael Urban
Hulahoop <sween...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>I think it changed for the better, it got deeper, it had more pathos
>and less in your face comedy, particularly after the departure of
>Frank Burns
>
>What was the US audience for the last episode, something huge wasn't
>it?
>
I agree - certainly the episodes that have stuck with me after
many years almost all date from that period.
From Wikipedia:
"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" is a television movie that served as
the 251st and final episode of the M*A*S*H television series.
Closing out the series' eleventh season, the 2-hour episode first
aired on CBS on Monday, February 28, 1983. Written by a large number
of collaborators (including series star Alan Alda), and directed
by Alda, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" surpassed the rating record
which had been set by the Dallas episode that resolved the "Who
Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger from 1980 and, as of 2009, the episode is
still the single most watched television broadcast in American
history.
A little grubbing around finds that figure to be 106 million viewers:
http://telewatcher.com/drama/mash/and-still-1-the-final-episode-of-mash/