Wideo Wednesday: What I've Been Watching This Week

Black Books (2000) is a British sit-com that takes place with a little group of friends(?) centered around a book store. In the first episode, Bernard Black (Dylan Murphy), who runs a shabby little bookshop in London, is struggling with his Income Tax; Manny (Bill Bailey) needs The Little Book of Calm for his frantic job, and Fran (Tamsin Greig) tries to figure out the function of an odd little tchotchke she ordered for her grotty shop next door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj5_EVbRk_4 Black Books Episode One

And I’ve been watching a lot of Pink Panther cartoons. Perhaps because I haven’t seen them for a long enough time now. Looking back at them with a more technical eye, you can really see Friz Freleng recycling his comedic premises from his days doing Looney Tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59lKdaXX6Eo Pink Panther

The Dick Van Dyke Show is one of those classic sit-coms (like Leave It to Beaver) that everybody knows but which I and my family never seemed to watch. Perhaps it was the milieu (hard to identify with sophisticated if goofy comedy writers) or perhaps it was never shown much in our area (rural Texas).  As such I have no warm, fuzzy memories attached to it. But there is a definite Sixties vibe that I found oddly compelling, and I’m catching up on it now. Somehow it recalls my childhood days before I went into First Grade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHXG25zKhCI Dick Van Dyke Episode One

 For some reason we never had the same prejudices against Family Affair.  Maybe we were hypnotized by its kaleidoscopic opening. The times, they were a-changing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfgz-PGZra8

Family Affair Opening