What Went Wrong With Arrested Development?

There’s not a lot of love going around for the latest – and most likely final – season of Arrested Development on NetFlix.

The reviews are mostly scathing (one prominent example calls it a “lumbering zombie”) and it seems as though NetFlix themselves can’t be bothered to – or are ashamed to – promote it themselves, as I had to actually seek out the episodes on the day of release rather than have them presented to me as they would have been in the past.

On the latter point, that could be down to the now infamous interview with the cast last year that painted many of them in a terrible light, or it could just be that they’ve realised that it’s just not the show it once was.

It’s not very good.

As an indication of the lack of effort put into Season 5B, there isn’t even a poster for it

I mean…there are some funny moments, but they few and far between and I’d be lying if I said I could even remember what they were now that I’m writing this review. What I can tell you though is that out of the eight episodes released on March 15th I know I didn’t laugh even once during four of them. Could you imagine saying that about any episode of Arrested Development from seasons 1-3? Of course not. It’s not an exaggeration to say that those episodes were among the greatest examples of television comedy we’ve ever seen?

The plot throughout the season felt lacklustre and out of touch, and the ending – without spoiling it for you – ended things on a rather grim note.

So what’s happened to make these episodes so comparatively terrible? Why has it come to this sad end?

Here’s what I think are the main issues..

They Couldn’t Let Go Of Season 4

The first reason for the decline is that the writers just couldn’t let go of Season 4.

Season 4 was what it was; it had to contend with the cast being unable to all shoot together as much as they’d have liked and so everyone went off and had their own storylines. There was the building of the wall, Fake Block, Cinco de Cuatro, Tobias’s relationship with Debrie, George’s testosterone problems and Michael and George Michael’s run-ins with the Howard family.

And while they weren’t great, they were necessary to make that season work.

The problem is that when Season 5 came along, they didn’t just start afresh, and instead these storylines were kept on and trampled into the ground.

Look at the Fake Block plot in particular.

In Season 4 – told as it was in a non-linear style –  it worked pretty well. It used the narrative style to build to the clever punchline that it wasn’t this ground breaking privacy software, but rather a musical woodblock app. That was a smart piece of comedy. But when we are 6 years and 16 episodes further along and it’s still rumbling on after its natural conclusion, it’s just not funny anymore. It’s like they couldn’t think of anything else for George Michael to do.

The show became so tangled up in the web of converging old threads of plots that almost half of some of the episodes were devoted to Ron Howard recapping.

Had the writers just decided to start afresh with new plots, I reckon Season 5 would have been much better.

The World Has Moved On But Arrested Development Has Stood Still

There are two examples of this that are wildly different but unfortunately amount to the same problem.

The first is the wall.

It’s easy to forget that the idea of a wall between the US and Mexico was used in Arrested Development years before Donald Trump decided to make it the serious, contentious it is today. There’s no question though that having play a prominent part in episodes released in 2019 makes it look at best like a lazy parody of what’s going on in the world today, and at worst like the writers are completely out of touch.

They probably should have quietly dropped that storyline before Season 5 started.

And speaking of being out of touch, the second example is them basing much of Season 5 on Making of a Murderer, a show that was massively on trend in 2015/16 but has long since departed from the limelight.

If these episodes had been released within a few months of them being written – and they most likely were written when that show was hot – I think people would have thought it was clever. As it stands, I just watched it thinking “What it the point?”.

Some Characters Have Lost Their Way

What made Arrested Development so good was the characters, and how they interacted with each other.

At the heart of the show was Michael, the only sensible one among them and – as the opening credits says – the one son who can keep them all together. Yet as Season 4 progressed and turned into Season 5, Michael became as flawed as the rest of them. He became arrogant and stupid, and not in the least bit sympathetic.

Without that, Arrested Development doesn’t really work like it’s supposed to.

It’s not just Michael though…

George Sr went from being the funniest character in the show to a guy who would stand around in the background, barely able to assert himself into any scene. He also become interchangeable with Oscar, who was his polar opposite in Seasons 1-3 to great comic effect.

And while Maeby became an interesting character that evolved from who she was as a kid, George Michael – much like the actor playing him – just turned into this awkward looking adult who didn’t suit the storylines he was in.

Some Characters Have Stayed Exactly The Same

Yes, I think it’s fair to complain about some characters evolving badly and others not evolving at all.

I’ve never really found Tobias funny, but whatever humour there was in the character, it departed in 2004 or 2005. I can buy a guy who is so deluded in his pursuit of being an actor that he could spend a couple of years in mid-life crisis mode, but for him to still be where he is at this point is just tiresome and it goes beyond being unfunny to being completely unrealistic to the point of irritation. Not one scene involving Tobias in Season 5 was funny. Instead, it was just embarrassing, and anyway, without Lindsay in the show, what’s the point of Tobias even being there?

Meanwhile, though they are still funny, G.O.B. and Oscar doing the same things and never learning from any mistakes gets a bit old. The final episode involves a scene that is a rip-off of the classic fake funeral from season 2, and much less funny as a result.

The only character who has stayed the same and made it work is Lucille, but even she was stuck in this rut of playing out the same type of stuff as she used to do, but to less comic effect.

The Episodes Looked and Seemed Rough

It might seem like a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but these last episodes looked rough and unfinished. There were countless examples of poor lip-syncing with the actors trying to dub over their lines in post production, there were quite a few dodgy shots where we can only see the back of actors heads during dialogue and the over all narrative suffers a little bit as a result of Portia De Rossi only appearing in one single scene right at the very end.

And speaking of right at the very end, if it was intended as the last episode – and considering how badly it has reviewed I would say that’s likely – for Michael and George Michael to disappear six minutes before the end without any final lines of note seemed really off-key with the show’s history.

The Show Has Just Run Out of Steam

Lastly, and most importantly, I think the show has just run out of steam.

We’ve seen it time and time again with so many comedies. Very few comedic successes end on a high, with commercial pressures to keep churning out more to satisfy demand, and it looks like Arrested Development is no exception.

Unlike shows like How I Met Your Mother though, it didn’t get so bad to the point that it sullied the entire legacy the show had built.

Instead, I think Arrested Development looks like it has gone out with a whimper. It wasn’t offensively bad, but it just felt like there was nowhere left to go, and they had resorted to bringing back old characters and reusing old set pieces without making the effort to try anything new.

And as a result it couldn’t and didn’t live up to its promise.

A real shame.

Stuart Reviews Stuff 2013 Entertainment Awards

2013 was a transitional year for media.

Plenty of terrific TV shows came to an end, while the gaming industry moved on to its next generation.

But what came out on top and what failed to cut the mustard?

Here’s my take on 2013.

Films

At the cinema in 2013, I saw the following films…

The Impossible, Django Unchained, Lincoln, Flight, Hitchcock, Wreck-It Ralph, Side Effects, Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Behind the Candelabra, Rush, Thor: Dark World, Gravity, Captain Phillips, Saving Mr Banks

A wonderful cinematic experience

and Frozen.

Surprisingly enough that means I got value out of my Unlimited Card. Huzzah!

What’s not surprising though is the seasonal pattern of good films to bad. From January to March you get good films, then in the spring and summer months there’s nothing but big budget dross, and then things improve again around October.

I suppose that’s just the nature of the industry though.

But what came out on top?

Well for a long time it looked like Side Effects would take the prize, but it was knocked off the no.1 spot late on by…

Best Film: Gravity

Both in terms of story and visualisation, Gravity was superb. Sometimes a film can be a work of art, and this is exactly that.

The only thing that will go against it is that I doubt it’ll seem have as impressive when watching it home on your own TV.

Runner Up: Side Effects

While the likes of Captain Phillips and Saving Mr Banks ran it close, I thought Side Effects was the best story of the year. I went in not knowing what to expect and was pleasantly surprised by what I described as a “Modern Day Hitchcock film”.

Worst Film: Man of Steel

I’ve had many a debate with friends and acquaintances over this, but I just thought it was garbage. Utter dross. Who wants to watch two blokes no-selling each other for an hour in yet another “epic” fight scene where a city gets destroyed? Big fucking whoop.

Runner Up: Lincoln

Over long and ultra dull.

Biggest Surprise: Frozen

I went to Frozen on a whim one afternoon in December and was taken aback by how good it was. A strong music score, beautiful animation and a fun plot.

Biggest Disappointment: Hitchcock

It should have been so much better.

Television

To give awards for television shows is a bit of an odd one for me.

I tend to wait until a show has already started and has achieved some critical success before giving it a go.

So while this year, two of my favourite “new” shows have been Luther and New Girl, neither are actually new.

On a similar note, this year I also got into plenty of other old shows thanks to NetFlix. So while the likes of Cracker, Forbrydelsen, Californication and Suits aren’t new, these are the types of show that have commanded my attention.

In terms of actual new TV, I gave the first episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D a go and was seriously underwhelmed, while I’ve put the good-on-the-face-of-it Sleepy Hollow on the back-burner until it has enough episodes for me to have a binge watch.

Really, the only standout show that debuted this year that I can think of right now is House of Cards, which was excellent. Well…that and the preposterous Under the Dome.

So here are some alternative TV Awards…

The “Ruined A Sure Thing” Award goes to Arrested Development.

Like any true fan, I watched the Arrested Development NetFlix season with hopeful optimism. I wanted to love it, and in my review I was quite complimentary, though still had reservations. It’s been almost a year now since it was released

and in retrospect I can say it was a bit of a cock-up. Arrested Development’s biggest strength was the interaction between the members of the Bluth Family, and that’s the thing they decided to strip away from the new episodes. Sure, there

Aaaaah!!! It’s The Eighth Doctor!!!!!!!

were still plenty of amusing moments, but it could have seen so, so much better.

The “Damp Squib” Award goes to the final season of Dexter

I mean…come on. I still liked it, but compared to the drama of other seasons, this was crap. The season was filled with pointless storylines that went nowhere – such as Masuka’s daughter and Quinn’s attempts to become sergeant – and Dexter’s own fate just felt like a cop-out, or as Dundonians would say, a “Wet pump”.

The “So Bad It’s Amazing” Award goes to Revenge.

Revenge is over the top, dodgily acted, ridiculously plotted and just sort of crap, but I love it.

The “What The Hell Am I Watching Here?!” Award goes to the Doctor Who episode “The Crimson Horror”

Doctor Who fans are a positive bunch…well…they used to be. It’s not often I’ll watch an episode of Doctor Who and hate it – it’s my favourite TV show after all – but The Crimson Horror was just insultingly bad.

The “Now That’s How You Do A Final Season” Award goes to Breaking Bad

Everything about the final season of Breaking Bad was spot on. Having Walter & Hank face off at the end of the first episode was a masterstroke, and it just ramped up and up until the exhilarating finale. Dexter writers, take note!

The Funniest Television Moment of the Year goes to The Dead Daughter Argument from Big Brother

Just watch. Honest to God…

Coolest Television Moment of the Year goes to Night of the Doctor

Because it’s a new Paul McGann Doctor Who episode in 2013. Superb.

The “Just Fucking End” Award goes to How I Met Your Mother

Drawing out an entire season of that shit over the course of three days in the characters lives just feels like the writers are kicking us in the nuts for fun now.

Worst Television Character goes to Luke from Modern Family

The boy stumbles over his lines in every scene and drags down an otherwise good show. The runner-up to that, by the way, would be Raj from The Big Bang Theory, who hasn’t had an even half-way decent storyline for a few years now.

Best TV Theme goes to New Girl

Got to love a catchy and cheery tune.

The “I Don’t See How They Can Come Back From This” Award goes to The Newsroom

It’s not that the writers have written themselves into a corner in terms of a character dying or something like that, but the last episode of Newsroom’s second season neatly wrapped up every storyline. Where does the show go from here?

And finally, the Best Television Moment of 2013 goes to the return of 9 missing Doctor Who episodes. #Omnirumour

Obviously. And there’s a great chance things could get even better on that score in 2014. Fantastic.

Video Games

Like I said in my intro, 2013 was a transitional year for the gaming industry. The old veteran consoles – the Xbox 360 and PS3 – made way for the Xbox One and PS4. Meanwhile, Nintendo suffered from poor market share due to the initially threadbare title selection for the Wii U.

Late in the year, I took the plunge and bought both a Wii U and a PS4, which surprised me. But Microsoft really cocked up their Xbox One launch with all that nonsense about licenses for games etc. I think they backtracked, but it was too late; I’d already made my mind up.

2013 was also another year for cheap gaming in the Steam Sales. So it’s inevitable that I’m now in a position where I have a huge backlog of games that I’ve bought but just haven’t had the time to play.

Unsurprisingly, for the most part my gaming was the standard mix of FIFA, Call of Duty Multiplayer and Football Manager, but there have been other games that have grabbed my attention too, both in a good and bad way.

Easily 2013’s best game

Best Game of 2013 goes to Super Mario 3D World

When they are on form, no other video game developers in the land can touch Nintendo. I mean, do they ever do a bad game?

Super Mario 3D World is superb and has rightly won game of the year awards from most reviewers. It’s sleek, looks great and is just a joy to play.

But I’d still prefer it if it was structured like Mario 64…

Worst Game of 2013 goes to Bioshock Infinite

I’m sorry, but I just cannot get on board with the hype. The ultimate in style over substance, this felt like a game that wanted to give the impression it was open world, but really wasn’t. Poor on all scores for me.

Biggest Gaming Disappointment goes to Halo 4

Though this came out in 2012, I played it in 2013 and instantly regretted the purchase. The Halo franchise is the proverbial dead horse being flogged. They ended it nicely in Halo 3, then brought it back again with the same tiresome villains and visuals.

Console of the Year goes to the Wii U

Like I said above, when it came out there weren’t too many games available for the Wii U. It’s a little bit cumbersome and it doesn’t have the graphical prowess of a PS4 or Xbox One, but right now, the Wii U has a killer lineup of solid – mostly Nintendo made – titles that any gamer could enjoy.

Get Involved In The Debate

Stuart Reviews Stuff is a free entertainment blog. If you enjoyed this or any other article on the site, please consider taking a moment to Like the official Facebook page. You can do that by clicking like on the side panel, or visiting the site here

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Arrested Development Season 4 Review: Could It Live Up To The Hype?

Having finished Number 1 in the Stuart Reviews Stuff Top 30 Sitcoms of All Time, it would be fair to say that I was really looking forward to seeing the new season of Arrested Development on NetFlix.

With an amended format (each episode would focus on an individual character’s story with other members of the Bluth family making small cameos), double length episodes and a mass release (all 15 parts were released in one go) it would be interesting to see if the show would be as good as it once was, or if us fans had built it up too much for it to be able to match our expectations.

So how was it?

Arrested Development Season 4 Review: Could It Live Up To The Hype?

Diving straight in, I’d have to say that my overall impression of the Season 4 of Arrested Development was that it was good but not great.

Some episodes, particularly both of Gob’s and Tobias’s first were as funny as any episode from the series’ original run. They were excellent.

The way the Tobias one culminated in him getting accidentally arrested as a Sex Offender because of the way he phrased his meeting with Maeby was superb, and in the Gob episode, the whole Entourage theme was fantastic.

Definitely though those two were the comedy highlights.

Beyond that, I had some issues with it.

Writing For Replay Value 

For one thing, I felt a problem with Arrested Development Season 4 was that it was written in a way to make the viewer appreciate each episode more on the second or third viewing than on the initial one.

The problem with that was that while you ultimately appreciate it for being so clever by the time you’ve finished them all and viewed them again, watching it the first time around, some of the episodes – particularly the early ones – fell a bit flat.

While a lot of the jokes and set-ups in the first George or Lindsay episodes made sense later on, at the time I couldn’t help but find them underwhelming or just miss them all together on initial viewing. And that’s certainly something that was echoed by other fans of the show online.

Maybe they should have gone for proper laughs in every episode rather than sacrificing some just so you could then say “Ah, now I get it” later on.

Going back to the Tobias and Gob episodes, the funniest moments were the ones that were part of the individual episodes rather than the overall story arc.

If each of the 15 episodes was written like that, it would have been a classic season.

One Too Many Cameos

The nods to the past were good, but I did find that some characters were so obviously written in just for the sake of getting them in.

I wouldn’t have been unhappy if Andy Richter wasn’t in it at all, and while cameos from the likes of Carl Weathers, Bob Loblaw, Warden Gentles, Tony Wonder, Gene Parmesan, Lucille Two and Kitty were good, perhaps a bit too much time was given to some of them. The Annyong cameo on the other hand was superb, as was the running joke of how old Steve Holt looked.

And you won’t hear me say anything bad about Barry Zuckercorn. I think he should have had his own episode!

But where was Wayne Jarvis?

The Lack of a Punchy Conclusion

For me though, the biggest problem was the way the season limped over the finish line.

As I said earlier, it seemed to be written in a way to be clever about how everything ties together.

Ten episodes in, this all seemed to be going well. The way that each episode brought another reason for why there was an empty seat at Lucille’s trial was brilliantly done, while many of the gags formed earlier on were brought together.

And then it all seemed to be thrown away.

To me that was down to both the sequencing of episodes and some characters just not being strong enough to support two or even one on their own.

I don’t think Buster – having barely appeared up to that point – was strong enough to have his own episode (or if he was going to get one it shouldn’t have been the penultimate one), and I certainly don’t think George Michael justified two, especially considering the punchline to his own story-arc (that Faceblock wasn’t what everyone thought it was) happened in his first one.

It’s not that these episodes were bad, and indeed George Michael’s first in particular was very good, but as a continuation of the overall story, it halted the momentum.

To me it should have finished either on a third Michael episode (he is the main character after all) or on a group one.

But because it didn’t, any notion of everything coming to a head on Cinco de Quattro faded away.

So while the final George Michael episode wrapped up the storyline of Rebel Alley well enough, plenty of other ones felt incomplete.

• Why was George becoming more and more feminine, while Oscar had become more manly? Considering the Shaman wasn’t real, that made no sense.
• What happened to Lucille 2 and Herbert Love?
• What was the deal with Sally Sitwell and her attempts to take over Lucille 2’s campaign?
• How did the Mexican Wall storyline conclude?
• What about FaceBlock?

There’s probably more questions like that to be answered, and though I’m sure they’ve been deliberately left open only to be picked up again if they ever make a fifth season or a movie, it would have been nice for everything to tie up in case they don’t.

And moreover, I think it’s clear that as clever as it was, we’d all – if we’re honest – prefer the show to come back with the main characters all interacting with each other again rather than with the likes of Tobias’s junkie girlfriend, Lindsay’s Face-blind boyfriend, Tony Wonder, Ron Howard or Lucille 2.

Random Observations

• What the hell has happened to Portia de Rossi? She almost looks like a different person, and yet when I googled “Portia de Rossi Plastic Surgery” the other day, the first hit was a report from earlier this year with her saying she’d age gracefully. When I went back today to double check that, it was gone from the first page of Google hits to be replaced by articles reacting to her new appearance on Season 4.
• And yet she looks more like herself when she cuts her hair. When her hair was long, she looked like Calista Flockhart.
• Another cast member who looks weird is Michael Cera, who appears to have grown out of his own face. Cera – while still retaining a sense of youthfulness that fellow youngster Alia Shawkat struggles with – just looks weird. It’s not a surprise he hasn’t starred in many films lately.
• I wonder if the whole Faceblock thing was based on people thinking he looks a bit like Jesse Eisenberg.
• Like I said above, there was too much Ron Howard. I felt that was a bit gratuitous.
• My mum is a big fan of the show, but she’s told me she’s really not enjoying it so far. Her thoughts kinda echo mine in that she thinks it’s being too clever for its own good.
• If I was to rank the episodes in order, I’d go with the following (from best to worst): Gob 1, Gob 2, Tobias 1, George Michael 1, Michael 1, Maeby, Lindsay 1, Lindsay 2, Lucille, Tobias 2, Michael 2, George Michael 2, Buster, George 2, George 1
• And that really surprises me because George is such a great character in the original series, but the way they sort of turned him into Oscar just wasn’t all that amusing to me.
• Because of the lack of main character interaction, it’s a pity there was no chicken dancing, although I liked that George Michael nearly showed us his.
• And I thought it was also very clever that he had no idea who Lucille 2 was.
• While I thought that Kristen Wig captured the character and mannerisms of a young Lucille Bluth very well, Seth Rogan decided the best way to play George would be to play him as Seth Rogan, just like every other part Seth Rogan has ever had. Arsehole.
• Finally, where was Franklin?!

Arrested Development Season 4 Review: Final Thoughts

The word I’ve used most in this review is ‘Clever’.

And it was, but maybe they tried to be too clever for their own good.

While I appreciate what they’ve tried to do, and enjoyed it for the most part, Arrested Development Season 4 just wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.

Maybe it could never have lived up to the hype, but with an odd choice of episode order and a final episode that didn’t do enough to wrap up the numerous storylines on the go, I felt a little disappointed.

At some points it was as funny as it was in it’s prime, but I think they got lost in – and there’s that word again – being clever rather than funny.

It could be that on second viewing I’ll see it in a whole new light and will have to return to this review and re-evaluate.

But I shouldn’t have to.

Needless to say though, I welcome them making more.

Get Involved In The Debate

Stuart Reviews Stuff is a free entertainment blog. If you enjoyed this or any other article on the site, please consider taking a moment to Like the official Facebook page. You can do that by clicking like on the side panel, or visiting the site here

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Stuart’s Top 30 Sitcoms of All Time: Part 6 (#05 – #01)

So we’ve reached the final five of my Top 30 Sitcoms of All Time.

The key to cracking the top five is consistency. 

These sitcoms are the ones that – as far as I’m concerned – are quality all the way through.

Well…almost.

5. Blackadder

I must hold my hands up and say I haven’t seen the first season of Blackadder in a long, long time, but for me, Blackadder is a three season affair anyway.

From Blackadder 2 to Blackadder Goes Forth, the quality of cast and scripts is excellent.

It even manages to make repetition work, with the multiple appearances of the likes of “Bob” and Lord Flashheart.

People still talk about bringing Blackadder back, but I think that would ruin it.

Best Episode: Goodbyeeee

Could it be anything else?

The final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth might not be the funniest one, but it was the best written and acted. As Blackadder and his fellow troops are at last told they’ll be going over the top, it becomes more of a poignant drama about the realities of life in the trenches in World War One.

And after so many “Cunning Plans” that never worked, you got the feeling that Baldrick’s last one – the only one he didn’t have time to explain – was going to be one that would work (that Blackadder should step on the giant splinter to avoid combat).

The ending is as sad a moment as you’ll ever find in a comedy. 

Superb.

4. The Big Bang Theory

I get the feeling this will cause some level of incredulity among readers, but I think the Big Bang Theory is more than deserving of a place in the top 5.

It remains consistently “laugh out loud” funny every week, it has strong characters played by mostly good actors (I’ve never been fond of Raj) and it does what so few sitcoms do – it allows room for character development.

Compare an episode from the first season to the latest one and you’ll see the likes of Sheldon, Howard, Leonard and Penny have all changed over the years.

With my love of everything from Doctor Who to Nintendo gaming, I can’t deny I find the humour somewhat relateable as well, even if that is slightly worrying.

I would say the Big Bang Theory works best though when it focuses on the relationship between Sheldon and Penny. They are absolute polar opposites and yet often find common ground.

It’s great stuff.

Best Episode: The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis

In terms of a specific episode of BBT being considerably funnier than the rest, I think it’s difficult to pick one.

So I’ve picked the episode where Sheldon isn’t quite sure what he should buy Penny for Christmas because he doesn’t know how much she’s spent on him. So he buys multiple gifts with the plan of giving her the price appropriate one and returning the rest. When he finds out what his gift from her is, he gives her them all and – in a touching moment of character progression – a hug.

Awwww.

3. Fawlty Towers

I think Fawlty Towers would end up being a Top 5 on most peoples’ lists.

It’s the ultimate example of a show that kept it short in terms of the amount of episodes, but retained the highest standard throughout.

Having said that, and what drops it down to #3 is that there are plenty of other series’ where the quality remains examplary for more than 12 episodes.

Best Episode: The Builders

For a lot of people, the best one is The Germans, but I think the dynamic of Fawlty Towers is at its very best in The Builders.

It’s the one where Basil doesn’t want to hire the more expensive builders and instead brings in the less than competent Irishman, O’Reilly to do the job.

The scene where Cybil attacks them both with her handbag remains one of my favourite sitcom moments.

2. One Foot In The Grave

In terms of British Comedy, it doesn’t get any better than One Foot In The Grave.

I read a comment on a forum recently from someone who said that it’s a show built around one joke. What nonsense. 

One Foot In The Grave is possibly the most deeply written sitcom there’s ever been.

Everything links up, comments made offhand at the start of episodes are really seeds planted for jokes to blossom at the end, and there’s just so much going on in every half hour.

I don’t believe any other comedy on this list could have done what this series did – had an episode with one single character for the whole 30 minutes and be funny.

You’ve just got to take your hat off to the ability of David Renwick.

Built around one joke? Presumably that criticism is directed at the “I Don’t Believe” style punchline, but again that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

People assume it’s a show about a miserable git, but it’s not. In almost every instance, Victor is the innocent party, and it’s often the case that it’s his wife who is the difficult one.

Slyly, One Foot In The Grave manages to be more chaotic than shows that supposedly thrive on that, like The Young Ones, and furthermore, in amongst the comedy, it manages to sneak in quite a lot of serious drama too.

The only bad thing about One Foot In The Grave was the final episode, which was dreadful. They did not need to kill off Victor.

Best Episode: The Worst Horror Of All

The Mini in the skip, the Mattress in the mini, Victor’s new job, the trip to the BBC with the wrong guy and of course the visit of Ronnie and Mildred.

One Foot In The Grave doesn’t get any better.

1. Arrested Development

I think I could watch Arrested Development from beginning to end three or four times a year.

It’s that good.

Unlike many of the sitcoms on this list, you can’t just watch a random episode and expect to get it – you really have to start with the first episode and go all the way through.

The amount of linked jokes, the depth of the characters, the addition of a narrator…everything you could want from a comedy you’d get in Arrested Development.

If I was to criticise if for one thing, I found the storyline with Rita pretty tiresome.

The show returns to NetFlix later this month and I just hope they can do it justice.

Best Episode: Amigos

It’s difficult to pick one in particular, and I had considered the likes of Good Grief, Pier Pressure and Making A Stand, but Amigos wins for me because there’s so much going on.

Gene Parseman, Ice, the trip to Mexico, Gob’s insecurities about friendship, Michael’s dislike of Anne.

It’s brilliant, but then they almost all are.

So There We Have It…

So that’s the countdown.

The Stuart Reviews Stuff Top 30 Sitcoms of All Time are…

30. Only Fools & Horses
29. Scrubs
28. Black Books
27. The Goodies
26. The Office (UK)
25. The Office (US) (Which retrospectively should be a lot higher than I originally ranked it)
24. Futurama
23. Modern Family
22. Parks & Recreation
21. Outnumbered
20. Family Guy
19. Gavin & Stacey
18. How I Met Your Mother
17. Coupling
16. Community
15. Red Dwarf
14. Still Game
13. Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads
12. The Inbetweeners
11. The Simpsons
10. Peepshow 
09. Dad
08. The Thick of It
07. Men Behaving Badly
06. Dad’s Army
05. Blackadder
04. The Big Bang Theory
03. Fawlty Towers
02. One Foot In The Grave
01. Arrested Development

So dear reader, in your opinions what have I missed? What have I got wrong? What’s too high? What’s too low?

Let me know.

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15 Under-Appreciated TV Shows You Need To Watch: Part Two

All the way back on November 3, I wrote the first of what was supposed to be three quick-fire articles about TV shows. For whatever reason, I just didn’t get round to doing it and I’m sure someone somewhere has been clicking refresh on the homepage now for more than two months.

Well wait no more, because Part Two is here.

This article will focus on American comedy shows. Now, none of these shows are considered poor, but the sense of Under-appreciation comes the way they are either not on TV in the UK on any major TV station or have fallen foul of the dreaded ratings system in the USA.

As anyone who follows American TV knows, quality comes in at a distant second to ratings and even if it’s one of the best shows on TV and has a strong ‘cult’ following, if it has been put in the wrong timeslot or just doesn’t have the backing of its network, then it just won’t succeed. And the first entry of this article may be one of the most famous examples of that there is.

Arrested Development (US TV, 2003-2006)

Some of you will be reading this and thinking ‘Arrested Development shouldn’t be on this list! I love it and so do my friends’.

Well maybe you’re right, but there are still a load of people I know who haven’t heard of it, have heard of it but haven’t seen it, or have seen it but only in an isolated episode out of sequence and haven’t seen ”what the fuss is all about”.

If you fall into any of these categories, if you haven’t bothered to give the odd sounding show a chance in its graveyard time slot on BBC2 or if you are an American reader who never bothered to watch it when it was on there, then you should.

Why? Because it’s probably the cleverest comedy of all time.

Superbly written and – just as importantly – wonderfully performed, this comedy is the vehicle that properly launched the careers of guys like Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, who you’ll have seen in every second comedy film to come out of Hollywood in the last 5 years.

To quote Wikipedia, the show’s storyline centers on the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy, habitually dysfunctional family, and is presented in a continuous format, incorporating hand-held camera work, narration, archival photos, and historical footage.

The key there is the continuous format.

If you’ve only seen one random episode then you probably didn’t get into it that much because you weren’t up on what was going on (which may well be why the show failed when it was on TV).

To truly appreciate Arrested Development you have to watch it from the very start and in order. Only then will you appreciate its greatness. Only then will the phrase ‘No touching’ mean something to you. Only then will you correct people that they aren’t magic tricks, but rather illusions. And only then will you crack up the moment you hear Europe’s The Final Countdown.

Community (US TV, 2009 – Present)

Currently being ‘rested’ in the US TV schedules, Community is another comedy that is sadly falling victim to the same problems that befell Arrested Development. It has been shunted in place of a more popular but – in my opinion at least – greatly inferior comedy. In the UK, the show is or was shown on Viva, whatever that is.

Set in a Californian Community College, the show is about the various misadventures of a diverse college Study Group made up of seven wildly different people from varying walks of life.

But the key to Community’s greatness is in how self-aware it is as a comedy. It plays up and references every sitcom stereotype going and borrowing from genres as diverse as Glee tribute episodes to zombie infestations. It even managed to do an episode where everyone was turned into clay and still worked. The character of Abed, a man who has trouble distinguishing between real life and TV is a stroke of genius as it helps to make the whole thing possible.

It also has a great theme tune.

I can imagine that Community might be too ‘meta’ for some. It’s the type of thing you’ll either love or hate. Then again though, if everyone appreciated it then it wouldn’t be on this list.

Like all American TV shows, you really have to give it a few episodes to settle in, but it’s worth the investment.

And once you’ve seen it, you can then join in the fight to save Community from the axe.

Parks & Recreation (2009-Present)

Parks & Recreation doesn’t even get shown on a minor channel in the UK – it’s never been broadcast over here at all.

And that’s a pity because not only is it a great show but it’s also doing pretty well across the pond.

Imagine a show like The Office, but set in the Parks & Recreation Department of a local council in a small US town and you have an idea of what this is about.

The show has some well-rounded, likeable characters and always provides a good laugh. As the lead, Amy Poehler is a worthy comic actress in her role as Leslie Knoppe and she is ably assisted by a stellar supporting cast.

A word of warning though; should you decide to give this show a try, you have to put up with an absolutely lousy (but thankfully short) first series. It tried to be exactly like the Office, down to Leslie Knoppe’s character being like a lite version of Steve Carrell’s office manager, but it failed miserably. There’s not a laugh in it. But the show survived to be commissioned for a second season, by which time it was played almost completely differently and become…well…funny.

Bearing that in mind, it’s a great show and you should give it a chance.

Chuck (2007-2012)

Not so much a straight up comedy, but rather a comedy drama about a man who works in the American equivalent of Currys and doubles up as a Secret Agent thanks to an accident leaving the entire CIA and NSA database in his brain.

Chuck has done what Arrested Development failed to do and survived on US Network television for years thanks to vociferous fan support. It manages to be humorous (if at times a bit silly) and yet also brings the excitement of a spy show. This week the show comes to its end in the US (in the UK it is shown on – of all channels – Living TV) and it’s fair to say that it is bowing out at the right time.

It’s another show with a good cast, and also notably a very strong guest cast ranging from the likes of Timothy Dalton and Scott Bakula to Rachel Bilson and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin.

Always entertaining, Chuck is a show that isn’t well-known in the UK but is worth your time.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005-Present)

Another show that isn’t shown in the UK (though it has apparently been shown on Virgin On Demand), Always Sunny differs from many other comedies in that the cast strive to be as unlikable as possible. Only on It’s Always Sunny would you have an actor deliberately put on weight between series in protest of the fact that generally people start to look far more polished and ‘Hollywood’ the longer a successful series goes.

Make no mistake, the small cast of It’s Always Sunny are not supposed to be likeable people, and yet because of that, they are – Mac especially,

A bit like Parks & Rec, this series only truly gets going from Season 2 when Danny DeVito joins the cast, but from then on it generally goes from strength to strength.

Yes, there are flaws like an over-reliance on the same guest cast (in my opinion) and a dreadful episode in the most recent season, but the show is almost up to 100 episodes, and by that point, other – more popular – comedies like Family Guy had lost the ability to make us laugh at all.

Next Time

On the final instalment of the 15  Under-Appreciated TV Shows You Need To Watch I bring my focus back to the UK for one of the all time classic television dramas that is largely unknown to my generation, two dramas from the pen of the same man, an unlikely choice and a show that you may have difficulty remembering was even on TV.