I dont know about you, but i reckon there has been a distinct lack of
good comedies on TV for about 20 years now. If you take away Seinfeld
and its classic sequenced situation comedy and the better efforts of
one line humour which Charlie Sheen & Jon Cryer have dished up over
the past few years on Two and Half Men there hasn`t been comedy
that actually makes you have a genuine belly laugh since about
when George and Mildred first hit the screens. Maybe not quite
that bad but i am so sick and tired of unfunny american comedy
these days that i just about always tune out before i even put
the telly on. I know a lot of people would tell me to go and
get pay TV if i want a good comedy channel, i probaly would
if i actually watched a lot of TV. Need to get off blogger.
The fact is i dont, i guess i cant really whinge in that case too
much, but it would be great if the commercial TV networks de-
cided to actually air some classic old comedies much more often
which aren`t too try hard for comedy & make you laugh like yes-
teryear. Friends was one of those shows which was said to be a
comedy but really, despite it`s warm & fuzzy characterisations,
was always too cliche and the humour was always forced, espec-
ially if you compared the show alongside that other american
giant of 90`s humour Seinfeld. If you go back to the 1980`s,
you may remember a few other sitcoms from america which
leaves the unfunny and slapstick sitcoms for dead in the
humour stakes - The Cosby Show, Who`s The Boss, Growing
Pains and Diffrent Strokes were all brilliantly amusing
and always had an emotive storyline behind each show,
even though commercial TV doesn`t replay them anymore,
well not in my neck of the woods anyway, at least in
their day they were popular and really entertaining.
One rather quirky oddball sitcom from america which
was screened from 1979 to 1986 and often absolutely
hilarious was BENSON. BENSON was a great comedy be-
cause it was one of the rare times where situation
humour and one line humour featured together on the
same show in equal portions. The show was slightly a
take off on the Fawlty Towers concept, in other words,
it was centred largely around the chaotic dummy spits
between people who worked in a governors mansion as
housekeepers where most of the time there where too
many cooks in the kitchen, or at least too many fingers
in the pot from a verbal perspective. Robert Guillaume
starred as Benson DeBois, rather french sounding for a
black american character. The totally dodo and thick as
a brick Governor Eugene Gatling was played masterfully
by James Noble, truly no one has ever played a better
dipstick in the history of sitcom comedy. A very young
Missy Gold played the role of the Governor`s daughter.
The snappy tom cook Gretchen Kraus was played by Inga
Swenson, and probaly the biggest drip of them all on
the show, which is saying something considering the
intelligence of the Governor, was the unmistakable
and enormously irratating character of Clayton Endi-
cott, played to perfection by the infeminite Rene
Auberjonois. BENSON was a bit like mixing the sit-
uation humour of Fawlty Towers with the one-line
humour of Diffrent Strokes, very unorthodox mix-
ture of diffrent types of humour and characteri-
sations. BENSON was hired by the Governor to be
head of household affairs in the governors man-
sion, the show basically revolves around his in-
furiating runnings in with the bitchy german cook
Gretchen who always knows better and the intellec-
tual black holes he keeps bumping into everytime
he opens his mouth near the silly Governor or the
scatterbrains Endicott. There are a few other bit
players in the series who also shared a room at
Gatling`s ranch as well, but the series mainly
revolved around the antics of these main four
characters. The quote which was played at the
beginning of each show posed the question if
Benson DuBois would one day be governor himself.
Well i guess if Arnold Schwarzenegger can be the
real life governor of California then maybe Robert
Guillaume could have been the real life governor of
Connecticut. If Barack Obama can be president why not?
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