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Hungry? C4 to create comedy series...about the famine

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    #452
    Billy86
    Closed Accounts Posts: 23,495 ✭✭✭✭Billy86


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    Oh I'd say there would be a sh1t storm. And why would a famine unknown by most english people in ireland be any more or less of a draw than Ethiopia?
    Probably as big a sh*t storm as comedy films, sketches and literature about 9/11, 7/7 bombings, wars that have resulted in the loss of countless lives, the holocaust, slavery, etc. if it ever were to get attention.

    Not sure how you reckon most English people have never heard of the famine though.


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    #453
    MadsL
    Registered Users Posts: 20,299 ✭✭✭✭MadsL


    Karl Stein wrote: »
    What on Earth are you on about? Where have I airbrushed anything?

    Presenting the troubles in a very one sided manner. And massively off-topic by a hundred years anyway.


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    #454
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    Billy86 wrote: »
    Probably as big a sh*t storm as comedy films, sketches and literature about 9/11, 7/7 bombings, wars that have resulted in the loss of countless lives, the holocaust, slavery, etc. if it ever were to get attention.

    Not sure how you reckon most English people have never heard of the famine though.

    I lived there. In fact lived most of my life there. Many don't know that Northern ireland is in the UK.

    If you can point me to comedy shows about the hooicaust or slavery I'll take a look.


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    #455
    MadsL
    Registered Users Posts: 20,299 ✭✭✭✭MadsL


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    I lived there. In fact lived most of my life there. Many don't know that Northern ireland is in the UK.

    If you can point me to comedy shows about the hooicaust or slavery I'll take a look.

    Plenty already on the holocaust.
    I'd submit Django Unchained on slavery...


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    #456
    Jawgap
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,297 ✭✭✭✭Jawgap


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    I lived there. In fact lived most of my life there. Many don't know that Northern ireland is in the UK.

    If you can point me to comedy shows about the hooicaust or slavery I'll take a look.

    I think plenty examples have already been posted in the thread already


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    #457
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,689 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    MadsL wrote: »
    Presenting the troubles in a very one sided manner. And massively off-topic by a hundred years anyway.

    What are you on about?

    I wasn't 'presenting the troubles'. My post was in the course of the discussion. Now If Id have started a thread tiled 'The Troubles: A Presentation' and wrote what I wrote as the OP then you might have a point but I didn't so you don't.

    'Off topic' indeed.


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    #458
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    MadsL wrote: »
    Plenty already on the holocaust.
    I'd submit Django Unchained on slavery...

    Comedies on the holocaust in a shameless style making light of the deaths? Names?

    djanjo unchained isn't a shameless type comedy about feckless slaves, now is it?


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    #459
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    Robsweezie wrote: »
    screw it. if us Irish can dish it out about other cultures we should be able to take it as well.

    What? Where do we produce comedies about anybody else's famines or anything else.

    48 muppets thanked that post.


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    #460
    Billy86
    Closed Accounts Posts: 23,495 ✭✭✭✭Billy86


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    I lived there. In fact lived most of my life there. Many don't know that Northern ireland is in the UK.

    If you can point me to comedy shows about the hooicaust or slavery I'll take a look.
    I've known plenty of English people in my life, lived with some too though never over there - I never met a single one who hadn't heard of the famine.

    Django Unchained had a lot of humour in it, was explicitly about racism, received critical acclaims, and made over $400mn while winning best screenplay and getting nominated for best picture at the Oscars. TV shows like Key and Peele, and Chappelle's Show, have also had sketches on racism that were extremely well received without any "sh*t storm" or network executives having to look for work in McDonalds.

    The comedies on the holocaust and slavery have been named multiple times in this thread already, many, many times.
    AnonoBoy wrote: »
    Ever seen Life is Beautiful?

    I have Jewish friends who laughed and cried at that film despite having lost family members during the Holocaust.
    Ghost Buster wrote: »
    If
    Life is Beautiful
    The Ringer
    Black Adder
    Ding Ding Denny O Reilly
    And
    Horrible Histories
    Comedies about war, plague, genocide, death, famine, mental handicap and revolution can work then why not this.
    ?
    AnonoBoy wrote: »
    Again - setting a comedy during the famine doesn't mean it will be making fun of the famine.

    People can't seem to wrap their heads around that simple fact.

    Blackadder Goes Forth didn't make fun of those who died in the WWI. Life is Beautiful didn't make fun of the victims of the Holocaust.

    It's possible to make a comedy about a tragedy with mocking the victims of that tragedy. It takes a skilled writer but it's doable.
    Billy86 wrote: »
    Can I get a link to that draft of the script you've obviously read?

    EDIT: Oh and for the millionth time on this thread, check out Life is Beautiful. It won the second highest honour at Cannes, best foreign language film at the Oscars and was even nominated for best picture despite not being an English language film... and the Jewish community have a lot of sway in Hollywood.
    Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian tragicomedy comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian book shop owner, who must employ his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. Part of the film came from Benigni's own family history; before Roberto's birth, his father had survived three years of internment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The film was a critical and financial success, winning Benigni the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 71st Academy Awards as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
    Ghost Buster wrote: »
    There are dozens of other angles and perspectives it could take.
    answer this, is Life is beautiful, a comedy about people being starved and killed in a concentration camp something you agree with?
    What ever your answer I recommend expand your grasp of the possibility of comedy and watch it.
    AnonoBoy wrote: »
    Or a funny film about a concentration camp like say.... Life is Beautiful?
    AnonoBoy wrote: »
    It's already been made - Life is Beautiful. Guy won best actor in the Oscars for it.

    Again people are jumping to presume it will be mocking the dead as opposed to possibly just being a comedy set during that time.

    Many would fail to see anything funny about all the millions that died in WWI but yet Blackadder managed to be a brilliant sitcom set during that time.
    Billy86 wrote: »
    Great films, TV shows, etc tend to do that - Life is Beautiful won the second highest prize at Cannes, best foreign language film at the Oscars and was even nominated for best picture (which is very rare for foreign language films). Basing a comedy on something tragic does not automatically mean you are making fun of or mocking the victims of it, I'm not sure why you seem to think it does?
    Billy86 wrote: »
    I am amazed how people seem determined to only view comedy as a means of laughing at people as opposed to with them, or finding the light in terrible situations (as has been pointed out with in Blackadder, MASH and Life is Beautiful, as well as in others like Blazing Saddles which is one of the greatest comedies of all time, and Charlie Chaplin's Thee Great Dictator which is one of the few films from that period to hold up quite well 70 years later), or as a scathing critique of their situation, how it came about and how it was tolerated - as I said previously comedy often functions as criticism (edit) masked as entertainment. The day limits are put on comedy is the day we should all just give up.
    Jawgap wrote: »
    Well, there's already been films involving the Holocaust and comedy......

    Life is Beautiful
    Jacob the Liar

    Then there was Jerry Lewis' film The Clown, although that was never released in its entirety.


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    #461
    Fratton Fred
    Closed Accounts Posts: 26,567 ✭✭✭✭Fratton Fred


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    You seem to have deliberately left out the rest of my post where I explained exactly why criticism of an unseen show is legitimate. Famine can't really be funny.

    Channel 4 are a very successful media company. Hugh Travers is a very good comedy writer.

    Neither of these two parties are idiots, so it is safe to say they aren't going to produce something which is tasteless and blatently offensive.


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    #462
    Billy86
    Closed Accounts Posts: 23,495 ✭✭✭✭Billy86


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    Comedies on the holocaust in a shameless style making light of the deaths? Names?

    djanjo unchained isn't a shameless type comedy about feckless slaves, now is it?
    Yeah, there was no comedy derived from negative depictions of slaves in Django.



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    #463
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    You seem to have deliberately left out the rest of my post where I explained exactly why criticism of an unseen show is legitimate. Famine can't really be funny.

    Yes because the start of it negated everything after it. You have not seen the show. Criticising something you have not seen is stupid. If it does turn out to be stupid I will also criticise it.


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    #464
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,689 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    There's comedy involving black people where once there was 'comedy' at the expense of black people.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45g3YP7JOk


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    #465
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,689 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    Billy86 wrote: »
    Yeah, there was no comedy derived from negative depictions of slaves in Django.

    That's focussing on the class division within the slaves. Afaia the 'house Negroes' thought themselves superior to the 'field Negroes' even though they were both property of their owners.


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    #466
    Amirani
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 12,524 Mod ✭✭✭✭Amirani


    I used to think petitions were great. You know, petitions supporting the rights of minorities, petitions criticising or shaping political debate. But then social media came along and ruined petitions. How the hell can you petition against a tv show? By all means criticise it or choose not to watch it, but don't bleedin' petition against other people being allowed to watch it.


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    #467
    Billy86
    Closed Accounts Posts: 23,495 ✭✭✭✭Billy86


    Karl Stein wrote: »
    That's focussing on the class division within the slaves. Afaia the 'house Negroes' thought themselves superior to the 'field Negroes' even though they were both property of their owners.

    Yes, and that's what it is doing - creating comedy out of slavery.


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    #468
    mal1
    Registered Users Posts: 811 ✭✭✭mal1


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    Oh I'd say there would be a sh1t storm. And why would a famine unknown by most english people in ireland be any more or less of a draw than Ethiopia?

    Perhaps there may be a storm but only because the famine in Africa is in living memory. There are survivors and victims still living today. Not the same with the Irish famine.


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    #469
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    Mardy Bum wrote: »
    Yes because the start of it negated everything after it. You have not seen the show. Criticising something you have not seen is stupid. If it does turn out to be stupid I will also criticise it.

    I haven't obviously criticised the show. I have criticised the idea of getting comedy from dying civilians in a famine. And pointed out that it probably wouldn't work for other famines either.

    A war story can keep people alive ( BlackAdder), in a sanitised french resistance, or a home army far from the fighting peopled with octogenarians under no threat.

    It's probably not going to be so funny to get comedy from Stalingrad or the Bombing of Dresden.

    Either this isn't about the famine as it was or it's a comedy which includes dispossessions, seizing of food from peasants, starvations and people dying in workhouses and on roads built to nowhere.

    I can't see that working but I'm sure most of you have deeper sense of humour.


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    #470
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    Mardy Bum wrote: »
    Yes because the start of it negated everything after it. You have not seen the show. Criticising something you have not seen is stupid. If it does turn out to be stupid I will also criticise it.

    The odds are that famine themed comedy isn't going to be that hot.

    After all the requests I am reminded about Life is Beautiful which is really a dark comedy but hardly a sitcom.

    Also a cinematic master piece which shields it's viewers and protagonists from the realities of Naziism in the knowledge that people watching know the brutal reality. Which just isn't true of the british attitude to the famine.


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    #471
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    mal1 wrote: »
    Perhaps there may be a storm but only because the famine in Africa is in living memory. There are survivors and victims still living today. Not the same with the Irish famine.


    That really isn't the reason and not a justification.


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    #472
    Bootros Bootros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Bootros Bootros


    Furthermore the writer says it will be like "shameless" in famine Ireland. Not black adder. Not life is beautiful where a man shields his sins from the brutal realities.

    Feckless peasants.


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    #473
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    Furthermore the writer says it will be like "shameless" in famine Ireland. Not black adder. Not life is beautiful where a man shields his sins from the brutal realities.

    Feckless peasants.

    Four lions. Watch it. Has the lot; snipers making jokes while shooting people accidentally. suicide bombers blowing up chemists and chip shops, M15 interrogating innocent civilians and threatening them with torture. It is equally as hilarious as it is illuminating.


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    #474
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,689 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    Billy86 wrote: »
    Yes, and that's what it is doing - creating comedy out of slavery.

    I'm not sure that scene was supposed to be particularly funny. It appears to me that it seeks to inform the audience of the hierarchy within the slave system.

    SLJ's character is disgusted that a '******' is on a horse (presumably a very unusual sight at the time) and is even more disgusted that he is being treated as superior to himself and being accommodated in the 'big house'. LDC's character then asserts the hierarchy and puts SLJ back in his place.


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    #475
    skooterblue2
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,816 ✭✭✭skooterblue2


    lertsnim wrote: »
    I can't wait till someone does a comedy series based on the Holocaust.


    Please dont laugh. My grandfather died in a concentration camp.....

    ..... he had a heart attack and fell out of his watch tower.


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    #476
    Jawgap
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,297 ✭✭✭✭Jawgap


    From the Irish Post....for the Irish outrage junkies.......

    Father Ted writer hits out at Channel 4 Famine comedy protestors
    WHILE the controversial premise for a new sitcom called Hungry causing backlash, not everyone is outraged.

    Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan spoke out on social media, expressing his disbelief that there had been so much criticism of a programme that has yet to air.

    “People have been asking me about the C4 famine comedy controversy so I’ll get this over with. Tis dumb. Controversy is dumb, petition is dumb,” he told his 429,000 Twitter followers.

    “Hey, Irish outrage junkies! Get outraged about women having to travel to the UK for medical procedures! THEN move onto comedy programmes,” he added.


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    #477
    whisky_galore
    Registered Users Posts: 16,276 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    I wouldn't mind, but they way some people are so exercised about it, you'd swear they had lived through the Famine.

    GL is right, there are a hell of a lot more serious things wrong with this country to get outraged about.


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    #478
    ThisRegard
    Closed Accounts Posts: 27,833 ✭✭✭✭ThisRegard


    Donkey Oaty wrote: »
    So, how would everyone like it if a professional humourist made a joke about today's Paris shootings?

    Too soon? Shocking? Bad taste?

    What it has done is made me laugh at the irony of some people in the Paris shootings thread talking about how free speech shouldn't be silenced, and on the same page there's a thread looking to have a show not even go into production because of the subject matter.


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    #479
    AnonoBoy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22,559 ✭✭✭✭AnonoBoy


    ThisRegard wrote: »
    What it has done is made me laugh at the irony of some people in the Paris shootings thread talking about how free speech shouldn't be silenced, and on the same page there's a thread looking to have a show not even go into production because of the subject matter.

    Yeah for some it's shouting "free speech" until it's something that they themselves find offensive.

    Like Marge Simpson fighting Itchy and Scratchy but supporting the statue of David. You can't have it both ways.


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    #480
    mal1
    Registered Users Posts: 811 ✭✭✭mal1


    Bootros Bootros wrote: »
    That really isn't the reason and not a justification.

    That response is pointless. There's no reasoning in it.


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    #481
    Allyall
    Registered Users Posts: 10,381 ✭✭✭✭Allyall


    AnonoBoy wrote: »
    Yeah for some it's shouting "free speech" until it's something that they themselves find offensive.

    Like Marge Simpson fighting Itchy and Scratchy but supporting the statue of David. You can't have it both ways.

    Like David Cameron "Britain will never give up free speech"

    Twitter Comments = Prison
    Facebook Comments = Prison
    Trolls may face 2 years in prison under NEW laws
    http://www.prisonplanet.com/freedom-uk-cops-arrest-man-over-joke-tweet.html


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