Man, This Really Looks Godawful...

[Lord Jim]

I've been seeing some promo ads for a new sitcom on CBS called The Neighborhood...

You can read some of the reviews here:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7942794/re ... ef_=tt_urv

From what I've seen, the basic premise of this show is that an insipidly stereotypical white family moves into a black neighborhood and interacts with an African-American next door neighbor who is a stereotypically unlikable, loud-mouthed bigot...(Inexplicably they seem to keep wanting to get this very unappealing character to like them, when "go fuck yourself" would appear to be the more appropriate response to his attitude...)

That might have constituted "cutting edge" comedy in 1971, but why anyone would think that would be remotely funny (let alone the slightest bit original or clever) in 2018 has me completely bewildered...

I really don't see hilarity ensuing...

I wonder if Cedric The Entertainer's character refers to his neighbors as "honkys" ...Then Max Greenfield's character could retort by calling him a "jive turkey"...

That would be roll-on-the-floor hilarious...

[Gob]

I wonder where they got the inspiration from?

[RayThom]

LJ, you are correct, sir. It's every bit as bad as you say. "All In The Stereotypical Racist Family"

After about 10 minutes of viewing it the other night I had to change the channel. I can't imagine this show lasting more than one season, however, it's reaching out to the "least common denominator" target audience and that almost always gives bad shows legs.

Thank God for PBS.

[Lord Jim]

I wonder where they got the inspiration from?

One of the IMDB reviewers also made that point...

This is basically an exact copy of the very racist, love thy neighbour, a 1970s UK sitcom. In that, a lovely black couple move into a white area next to a racist white guy and his wife. This is the other way around but basically the same thing...

At least Love Thy Neighbour has the excuse that it was made during the early 70s...

The Neighborhood doesn't have that excuse...

[ex-khobar Andy]

I'm embarrassed by the first three minutes of the 'Love Thy Neighbour' episode Gob posted - it lasted seven series in the UK. I have no recollection of it but I didn't spend a great deal of time in front of the telly in those days except for things like the nightly summary of the Watergate hearings and, of course, Monty Python.


Edited to make a correction.

[Joe Guy]

What's the African American family's names? DeArchie and Edithiqua Bunker with Gloria and BeatsHead?

[rubato]

Who stole it from, who got it from, who adapted it from &c.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 52976.html

Will they give us anything new? That is probably not the right question to ask, especially when it comes to Shakespeare, who was, among other things, a Master of Reinvention (a title for another exhibition if it hasn’t been taken?). Retelling stories was central to Shakespeare’s craft. Modern-day concerns – did he “borrow” his ideas from his contemporaries – didn’t bother them half as much as it does us (except for Ben Jonson and his charges against Shakespeare’s “mouldy” tales).

Academics have long appreciated the difference between our ideas of originality and those in Shakespeare’s age. Originality then meant perfecting the art of retelling stories. It was all about how creative a magpie a writer could be. Stories didn’t belong to A or B; they were part of a line of inheritance and reinvention. Audiences knew the plots of most of Shakespeare’s plays – The Tempest is the only storyline source that has not been traced back to another – and they waited to see what kinks and surprises he placed where.

Perhaps this is a far truer notion of originality than our own, with its insistence on the – illusion? – that storylines and characters are invented by certain writers and thus owned by them alone. Professor Gordon McMullan, director of the London Shakespeare Centre at King’s College, reminded me of this distinction as I quizzed him, in my modern-world way, about what, exactly, would be “new” in an exhibition in the East Wing of Somerset House, London, By Me William Shakespeare: A Life in Writing, which opened this week.

“With almost no exception, he got his stories from elsewhere and reworked them in his own way. The point was, everyone did this. The concept of originality, like genius, was invented at the end of the 18th century.”

In fact, says Professor McMullan, what Shakespeare did can be compared to the music industry’s use of sampling about 20 years ago, “when they’d take a Seventies rhythm and add a contemporary beat. That’s what Shakespeare was doing!” So, Shakespeare as the original DJ. Another exhibition idea perhaps, if – again – that has not already been done....

If the original was shit it can now bask in the reflected glory of the better version. And never be a scintilla better than it actually was.


yrs,rubato