Giggles guffaws and geeks.

I've been trying to write this post for ages, I wanted to talk about comedy and which shows tickle my funny bone.

At the moment my chap and I are regularly sitting down to watch two comedies. James Wood's Rev on BBC2 and Graham Linehan's The IT Crowd on channel 4. Both are excellent in very different ways.

Comedy is utterly subjective and what one person finds hilarious someone else will label it bad taste or that it is too bland.  We are not a fan of family situation comedies. My Family has been around about 5 series too long and whilst I adore Zoe Wannamaker and Robert Lindsay that show now makes me want to poke my eyes out with the dull end of a spork.

I could argue that I don't like the show because it's the traditional sit com format that doesn't sit well with me but that really isn't the case. The IT Crowd is very much in that mould and I sit there and PMSL every week. What the IT Crowd does well is it captures IT geek stereotypes quite accurately I'd hazard a guess that because I've got more in common with the IT Crowd and I find these references funnier than comedy derived from family situations where I don't have children.

Rev on the other hand is one of those new breeds of comedy without the audience and the laughter track. I don't discriminate between either type of comedy, in that if it's funny I will watch it. And Rev is. Very very funny. Tom Hollander plays a rural vicar posted in an central london parish with his congregation of nutters, criminals, drug addicts and slightly inapropriate old ladies. There is also a Dean and whilst on paper  it sounds like a rehash of the Vicar of Dibley, it's much more subtle and a lot more viscious with it's humour.

I am also a big fan of the Big Bang Theory again with geek based humour this time with an American flavour. You could compare Jen and Penny because they are the female leads both cast in female non-geek roles to the male geeks. I find this a little frustrating being a female geek as well, we are out there and when it comes to popular culture we're definitely just as nerdy. The Big Bang Theory does come out a little way ahead than The IT Crowd in this stake with the creation of Leslie Winkle who whilst not a series regular she crops up often enough to remind us that women are geeks too. Both shows work on a number of levels whether you get some of the geeky in-jokes and laughing with the characters, or laughing at them.


What tickles your funny bone?