There are two categories of funny TV shows: smart funny and comedy club funny. Smart funny, whose apex came with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, gets its laughs from characters; comedy club funny, with current examples like The King of Queens, gets its laughs from situations. This is not to say that comedy club funny (which I thought of calling ‘sitcom funny,’ but they’re all sitcoms) can’t be hilarious and entertaining. I don’t miss KofQ, and the brilliant Fawlty Towers is perhaps the apex of this type. But for the long haul, smart funny rules. Discuss?
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Doesn’t “Eva Prawn” border on “smart funny”? And, by the way, if you had ever been to Torquay, you would get the many “in” jokes and reclassify this classic as “smart funny”. So there.