Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Maybe we should make a "top ten" list of british and canadian comics:unsure::lol:


Something else we love to do....:o:unsure:

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Lets not and say we did. :sneaky::D

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

... did I mention, I'm also married to a Canadian? :D

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Top ten Canadian comedians. Wouldn't that be all of them with some places left over?

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Depends, are you counting all those now based in the US with lucrative movie contracts, generally mistaken for americans...

Arent there at least ten is you add together the past and present casts of 22minutes and AirFarce.

Now, Im not defending those shows as particulary funny, but there certainly plenty of people in the business to chose from, ranging from Red Green, through Ron James, Colin Mochre, Rick Mercer, Mike Myers, Jim Carrie, Russel Peters, Dan Ackroyd and John Candy etc etc to Wayne and Shuster if you are of a certain generation

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Was that your top ten?

Face it, the funniest Canadians on TV are terence and philip.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

John Candy in "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Uncle Buck" .... real funny movies from the late, great JC!!!

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Do Canadians find British humour funny?

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

My wife (Canadian) finds most of 'straight' British humour funny, but once you delve into the sarcastic satire, I think it's hard for any Canadian to know if it's humour or insult (slam or pompous cheek!) to some degree.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I was in general agreement with you at times on your list until you got to the last two who I find/found not very funny at all....Canadian cornball humour at its best/worst.

What is the name of that comedian who is of indian background but grew up in Newfoundland..he is quite funny.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

No, Im just pointing out the idiocy of trying to rank and compare these things, and your statement implying that there are hardly ten "funny" Canadians to rank.

Besides, Wikipedia has a much longer list of Canadian comedians...there was a link to it the last time Canadian comedians came up here.

If people want to believe that all Canadians have no sense of humour, then that's their loss. Frankly I would rather take my chances being trapped in a lift with ANY canadian (including politicians!) over Roy Chubby Brown...

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Sean Majumbdar I believe.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

A great deal of British humour is based on sarcastic put downs a la Mrs Bucket.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Plenty of britcoms make to to cable TV here...presumably its not just Xpats who watch them...

My wife thinks some british comedians are funny anyway...

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

From the start I knew this thread would polarise into people complaining about over generalizations and brit comedy being overly sarcastic :p

Despite my sneering, I'm actually sure there must be very funny Canadian comedians out there, maybe even one or two funny TV shows that are actually worth watching. However, for sheer breadth and depth, UK comedy from the 70's till the present day is just not possible to beat. No other country, not Canada, not America, or anywhere else comes even close to matching it. Pretty much everyone on BE knows this, it's not even worth debating.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

There's a joke there somewhere about Brits and pigeons. Too bad I'm not funny enough to make one up. ;)

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I like self deprecating humour also, but I'm not very good at it.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Yay. You can't beat a bit of Terry and June.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

You are not really being fair, taking the best of forty years of TV comedy in the UK and comparing it to a year or so viewing in Canada.

Was Monty Python a 70s show? I think it started in the 60s. Yes, this was innovative and sometimes very funny, but not always so. Other than that there is nothing of the 70s that stands out in my memory apart from Faulty Towers. In the 80s and 90s mainstream TV comedy was various successors to the Morecome and Wise show, and the awful twee "family" sitcoms that make it to the low budget channels over here: May to September, There's no place like home, Waiting for God and so on.

Sure, there was some very funny and innovative stuff going on in BBC2 land as well. The Young Ones still makes me laugh, as does Absolutely Fabulous. The first series of 'allo 'allo (it started on BBC2 after the watershed) was also good. They bastardized it for prime time BBC1. I enjoyed some of the sketch based shows but Harry Enfield is the only one that comes to mind now. Despite myself, I laughed a lot at the first three series of Only Fools and Horses.

I liked Have I got News for You (I still think Paul Merton is one of the funniest comedians I have seen) and They Think it's All Over.

In 30 years, that is about it, and there was an awful lot of dross to get through for these gems.


Comedy is derived from culture. I don't think the "let's all laugh at the lower classes" (which is 90% of British comedy) works very well in North America. We get all the references and the North Americans don't. Similarly, we don't "get" a lot of North American comedy. The Simpsons aside, I've not found any TV shows that make me laugh much.

However, there is a lot of good stand up comedy.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Family Guy is pretty good. Its interesting that Americans seem to only be able to laugh at themselves when its in cartoon form.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I should watch a bit more of that. The trouble is I get enough "when are you going to grow up?" looks watching the Simpsons. Adding another cartoon might be pushing my luck.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

This DOES seem to be true. Although The Daily Show and The Colbert Report do a pretty good job too....but you need a pretty good sense of irony to enjoy the latter. :lol:

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I do. It's one of the main things I miss about the UK. As for my compatriots, I fear most Canadians would go for Mr Bean over Blackadder.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I never said all UK comedy was good. And I agree it's probably not fair comparing the rich heritage of british comedy with what canada has to offer - which is kind of my point. Canadian TV comedy is always going to be lacking when you compare it to british TV comedy over whatever period you wish. A lot of this is going to be down to the simple fact that the BBC is by far the best broadcaster in the world and to a certain extent drags up the quality of the output from the commercial channels in the UK.

Anyway some examples of the periods you consider to be lacking (and this is off the top of my head rather than googled).

70's comedies - rising damp, porridge, some mothers do ave em, reggie perin
80's comedies - young ones (tho that is v dated), only fools and horses, black adder

American comedy that I would think of as classic would be frasier, or married with children. I don't know of any canadian classic comedy, but I am happy to be educated.

As for animation, southpark is the best of the cartoon american comedies - (that, the simpsons and jon stewert are the only things I bother to PVR - everything else I watch is on iplayer or channel 4 on demand).

(Family guy would be good if they got rid of peter griffin - I found that his voice just got really grating after about 10 episodes and I can't bear to listen to it anymore).

Edit to add: I should also say that the rest of the world loves crap british comedy. Mr Bean is v popular, as is benny hill. My philipino barber always wants to talk to me about how funny on the buses is:huh:

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Well, are we talking about the sense of humor of the average citizen or of "famous comedians"?

As for comedy shows, Monty Python is probably the best. Mr bean and Benny Hill were funny for one scene and after that it gets old. Could someone could direct me to some good recent Brit comedy on youtube or another site.

Some "Canadian" comedy shows I like that are a bit older are The kids in the hall and 4 on the floor. More recent examples are Puppets who kill, just for laughs, Jon Lajoie on youtube. Red Green, Trailer park boys, Rick Mercer and Tom Green all have their moments. I would also recommend looking outside of the gubmint owned cbc for comedy.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Have to admit that I did quite like puppets who kill when i've watched it.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Recent? Sitcom wise there is The IT Crowd, Black Books, Peep Show (Mitchell and Web are v funny).

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Best British comedian - Peter Kay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaiW-DEy7y8

I wonder if a lot of his very northern stuff goes over some brits' heads:

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

The family weddings clip is quite funny.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I was at a fair the other day and had a Young Ones Book for sale. Never expecting for one minute to sell it. A Canadadian, about 60, came up to me, raved about the young ones and then introduced me to his son who also raved about them. Said it was the funniest British show they had seen.
No I didn't disagree or agree, just found it odd that they liked it. Must have had some english blood in them somewhere. They are the only people I have ever met who even knew the show.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

went into the local today, and after we'd looked at the menu the lovely waitress asked if we had any questions.

so i asked her what the capital of peru was ? :lol:

she thought i was serious.... so she pipped up with, oh i'm no good at tv quizes i'm much better at family feud, so i then asked her in family feud style to name the top 5 cities in peru.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I'm sure he is funny, but I honestly had a hard time understanding his accent. I would catch most words and then miss a couple. So if he was talking directly to me I would probably nod and smile.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

I used to love the young ones and used had them on VHS and watched them endlessly when I was younger. Watched one recently on you tube and wondered what the fuss was about - found it silly.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

See we are entering another realm - northerns have a way better sense of humour than southerns, not surprising since they 'don't do peas'

Here's more - let me know when you have had enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJr9ekTf0xc

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Ok - one more then:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6liAimpfH3k

:thumbsup:

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Brilliant! Those bring back some good memories, including my wedding in Lancashire. If my wife watched them I'm sure a bout of homesickness would occur.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Funny you should say that ... that was how I was feeling. :(

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Yeah - pretty much what I thought last time I watched an episode. Very much of it's time. 'bottom', which has the same heritage as the young ones didn't date anywhere near as quickly and remains really funny today - despite being nearly two decades old (think it was early 90's). 'sprout o mexican' still makes me laugh anyway.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

Bottom?? I left the UK in 1989 so I may not have seen it. I only watched red dwarf in the last 5 years- I know sad....

Will You Tube bottom, I may just not recognize the title.

Re: Canadians' Sense of Humour?
 

(Ignore the dutch subtitles)