Consider the television of the 1990s. There were sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends on during that period of time and both sitcoms were enormously successful on a scale that no modern sitcoms really seem to have the ability to match. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is another good example of a sitcom from that period of time that was hilarious at the same time that it was thought-provoking. The episode where Will and Carlton get into drug problems is a particularly memorable one and it seems as though the sheer raw emotion mixed with humour that a lot of these sitcoms brought to the table is really lost on sitcoms of the modern era such as King of Queens or Two and a Half Men.

To a large degree, sitcoms in the modern era have been replaced by reality television shows. These shows, while attracting a lot of viewers, at the same time do not really make people confident in the human race because they often cover people that blow up and throw temper tantrums over events that are ultimately insignificant even in the game that they are playing. For this reason, many of us that remember the 90s fondly feel that television has gone downhill since the new millennium started.

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I can clearly remember years ago, being up at 3am (I must have still been in university) and this show came on. I’d never heard of it before and it was apparently a rerun of the first episode that had been aired earlier that day. So it was a family sitting around a table having breakfast. Pretty normal, up until it was revealed that the father of the family was naked, reading a newspaper at the table, while the mother was shaving his back with a hair trimmer. So I came to fall in love with Malcolm In The Middle. I think it’s most winning point, apart from the fabulously chaotic sense of humour and the chaos theory narratives, has to be the fact that they have made misery funny, especially in latest episodes I’ve seen, where both the parents are now unemployed.

One night, quite a few years ago now, my brother called me into his room to see something hilarious. I stared at the screen for several minutes, afraid to laugh, scared that what I was watching was true, terrified that somewhere out there, this man is a real person. It was David Brent, series 1 episode 1 of The Office. Apart from picking up where Larry Sanders had left off all those years ago, this comedy of cringe became all the more enjoyable as it went on. And it reached its pinnacle for me when the relationship between Dawn and Tim is finally resolved. I cannot possibly say whether or not they get together at the end of the series, because there may be someone, in a cave presumably, that has not seen it yet, but what I can say is that I cried.

Arrested Development has the essence of the show’s humour right in its title. Puns seem to run through this sitcom so often, it is like reading a restoration comedy play or a Terry Pratchett comedy fantasy novel. Each of the characters is inspired and completely unsavable, except perhaps for the kids, which just makes us enjoy the adults’ suffering even more. As the plot takes one improbable twist after the other you cannot possibly guess where it is going.

King of the whole Larry Sanders, Extras, famous people playing themselves sitcom, has to be Curb Your Enthusiasm. Keeping the number of famous people on the show steady, and giving them a chance to actually develop as characters throughout the episodes, this Jewish comedy gem loves to play with political correctness and stereotypes and manages to do so with excellent style. You cannot possibly help but feel sorry for Larry David, playing himself, in situations that he has probably experienced, just as his character says he has done with Seinfeld.

Finally, and although I know most people will never agree with me, my favourite sitcom for the last few years and at the moment, has to be Scrubs. This is why I don’t want to get into a whole conversation about what is the best sitcom. I have friends who are directors and find it completely juvenile and stupid. But I love every second of every episode of the show. Dr. Cox’s insulting monologues, JD’s daydreams, the janitor’s revenge tactics, and of course all the falling over. It seems like an innocent style of comedy that was lost long before Friends ever came on the scene. And the final aspect of the show that makes it stand out so much to me, is the fact that it manages to draw comedy from the most dire of stories, while at the same time not going for cheap emotion. The characters grow from series 1 to series 7, their lives and problems change and they have to deal with it.

That’s just five off the top of my head. Having written this now, more instantly pop into my head like Green Wing, perhaps the most surreal and out there series ever, and Pushing Daisies which is a masterpiece as far as production design and cinematography is concerned, but I cannot keep going on forever or this post will turn into a book. There’s lots of top 5s or top 10s out there, so you can treat it like one of those if you like. All of these series are out there, either available to view online or to buy at Amazon or eBay or at a shop near you. Put an episode on and let it chase your troubles away.

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So when I realised that we wouldn’t be watching the season all together every night this past week, I decided to spend a couple of nights at the office, where we do have Freeview. At least I was at work on time. The season prepared by Channel 4 was an excellent collection of films and documentaries by and about one of the great masters of modern cinema.

Watching Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes I gained new insight into the personality and practices of this magnificent filmmaker. The organisational skills and attention to detail that makes his films not just works of art, but beautifully crafted pieces of work. Viewers forget or perhaps do not know what it takes to organise and execute scenes with massive numbers of extras (Paths of Glory, Spartacus, etc.) or lighting and decorating a set so well that each time the camera cuts to a new shot or follows a character it is like walking through an art gallery (Barry Lyndon, The Shining) or how brilliantly written and intensely researched a script needs to be to tackle serious issues (A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove) and retain the audience’s attention.

Granted, not everyone is a Kubrick fan. I can’t for the life of me see why, but film, like most things in life, is a question of taste. You’re not going to pop Barry Lyndon into the DVD player with your mates after a long day at work so you can relax. Unless you want to fall asleep. To get back to the documentary I was watching, the researcher making the doc went through 900 boxes in which Kubrick had stored research on possible films, thousands of photographs of locations, even fan letters, all categorised by location. And behind every item in the box was a little more insight into how this man’s mind worked. Well, it’s interesting to a Kubrick fan at least.

I’ve been looking into buying the Kubrick collection online, however it is indicative of how respected he is as a director, that a complete collection of his films costs anywhere between $160 and $60. I guess I’ll have to wait a bit longer. There are other special edition collections which include great documentaries and features. The Stanley Kubrick Archives will soon be available again in hard cover, which I think I will invest in.

Worry not if you missed the More 4 season, it’s still going on and you can catch The Killing (one of his earlier films) on Wednesday 23 and The Shining on Friday 25. I haven’t seen The Killing so I will be staying in this Friday. I wonder, am I allowed to eat pizza and drink beer while I watch Kubrick, or is it sacrilege?

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