comedies

[miriam_e]

I'm looking for some good comedies to watch -- movies or TV shows (I don't have TV reception out here, but that doesn't matter).

Not long ago I watched an outrageously funny series called Misfits which was utterly unlike anything else I've ever seen.

Currently I'm re-reading (for the umpteenth time) the series of Runaways comicbooks. Begun, and for several volumes written by, Brian K Vaughan, the brilliant writer of Y the Last Man, and staff writer for the TV show Lost.

One volume of Runaways consisting of several issues was written by the even more brilliant Joss Whedon. I just finished re-reading that amazing sequence. God, I love his writing!

Next I re-embark on the two volumes by Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise, Echo, Rachel Rising), which I'm looking forward to.

At the moment I've been eating my breakfast and dinner watching mostly The Ben Heck Show which is fun and informative. You can download it from:
http://revision3.com/tbhs/episodes
Ben Heck is a hardware hacker, in the true and original sense of the word -- not the smear that mainstream media have made it. He has fun making cool things and does so with a nice, geeky, self-deprecating sense of humor (for example in episode 6 he's playing a computer game and he says "Yeah! I just hit hour 150! How am I still single?").

This year I'm hoping to participate in NaNoWriMo once again and have a (hopefully) somewhat comedic story idea. If I can feed my funnybone maybe I can keep my reservoir of chuckles topped up and use them to good effect in the writing. (Also I'm getting a little sick of seeing so much of what is wrong with the world, just now: religious bullies who shoot young girls in the head for wanting to learn; the politics of greed; lying assholes in big energy; the war machine murdering civilians; big media trying to treat us as the criminals that they are; and on and on...)

See? I need more laughs.
Anybody got any ideas?

Comments

Utopia

[tp69.wordpress.com]

You could try "Utopia" on the ABC using iView.

Re: Utopia

[miriam_e]

Ah, yes. I've been watching and enjoying it. Mostly it rewards me with a lot of chuckles, though a few are a little worrying. The episode on a construction project being held up because of an endangered grass annoyed me a bit too much to be very enjoyable. "It's just grass!" displayed a very common attitude that life has little or no value to many people. It made a joke of seeing the complex relationships between interdependant living things. I'm sure coastal developers see the seaweed and say, "It's just seaweed!" and don't realise it supports endangered dugongs and a host of other creatures.

I don't have TV (reception here is impossible) and my internet is too slow to watch streaming video. Luckily I have a way to set the computer to download the shows I want to watch overnight so I can watch the files later.

But, yes, mostly I've been enjoying the show. They are a very talented bunch of writers and comedians. Thank you for the recommendation.

I've also been re-watching the delightful old "Jeeves and Wooster" series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The episodes are taken from the wonderful stories by P G Wodehouse. Many of the books can be found as free downloads on Project Gutenberg and elsewhere on the net and are a great read.

Looking at my post that elicited your reply, I'd forgotten about Ben Heck's shows (actually more vlogs than shows). I must download more of them. There must be lots more posted that I haven't seen yet. I love his sense of humor and all the cool information he imparts.

Thanks heaps for the comment! :)