Pet Shop Boys Community

I know this show is ancient news to Britons, but it's off beat and charming enough I'd love to hear thoughts of it. They only just started showing it on cable here recently (Sundance channel) and i got engaged enough to get the first series on DVD from Netflix.

First read of the show in the NY Times when it was newish in the UK , (2004?) that people were appalled at the bad behavior and selfish characters. Having seen it now, it's exactly how they promoted the Simpsons a hundred years ago: the characters misbehave, but they secretly have a heart of gold, and a certain family loyalty that does draw one in.

Watching the first series, I'm wondering who that handsome actor is, romancing Fiona- why, it's James McAvoy, who I believe was nominated for an Oscar for "Atonement".
In real life, he's married to the actress who plays Fiona, the sympathetic big sister of the clan in "Shameless". Which is kind of nice.

Just wondering if anyone else likes the show or hates it. It's very well written, I think.

Never watched it but it seems to me an example of British middle class television producers glamourising scummy chav culture.

I'm a big fan and they have just finished screening series 5 in the UK. Not to be taken too seriously, although I lived in a dodgy Manchester suburb for a good few months and the show is not too far off the mark! There is a good side to Manchester though, but that one would not make such an entertaining series! Just look at Coronation street!

If you are only at the first series then keep watching, it gets better and better!

I prefer the Inbetweeners, which has just started a repeat run on E4. Posh schoolboy, with a MILF mother, leaves a public school to go to an ordinary comp.

Thanks, JSDouvres, glad you like it too, and i think I will keep watching through Netflix, and oddly , Season 4 on DVR- the beginning and near the end, simultaneously. I enjoy the characters and it's well-written for the most part.

Scummy chavs can be sexy, Bateman. BTW seriously, are you in a nursing home yet?
After "never watched it.." I blanked out on the rest of your elderly jabber there, sorry Gramps.

Deschanel wrote:Scummy chavs can be sexy, Bateman. BTW seriously, are you in a nursing home yet?
After "never watched it.." I blanked out on the rest of your elderly jabber there, sorry Gramps.

Haven't you got a dinner date with Gore Vidal and the Kennedys to go to? Yes, chavs are spiffing, aren't they? I'd love to live next door to a sexy chav scumbag who burgled me and smoked crack in my garden because families like the Gallaghers are so much fun in real life. Let's hope you get The Jeremy Kyle show over there soon because that'll really turn you on.

Shameless is one of the best shows on British TV at the moment.
5 series in an I'm still not bored with it.

I agree the Inbetweeners is pretty darn good too!

Patrick Bateman wrote:

Deschanel wrote:Scummy chavs can be sexy, Bateman. BTW seriously, are you in a nursing home yet?
After "never watched it.." I blanked out on the rest of your elderly jabber there, sorry Gramps.

Haven't you got a dinner date with Gore Vidal and the Kennedys to go to? Yes, chavs are spiffing, aren't they? I'd love to live next door to a sexy chav scumbag who burgled me and smoked crack in my garden because families like the Gallaghers are so much fun in real life. Let's hope you get The Jeremy Kyle show over there soon because that'll really turn you on.

I'll grant you that was funny- of course I have a dinner date with Gore and the Kennedys in 1960 way before I was born darling, here's the nurse now with your meds..wait, don't fight her.. security!

And of course I wouldn't let the Gallaghers near my armed Texas compound. Because they're fictional. They're Foreign Fictional Figures of Fun. Why do you hate alliteration- and our troops? !!?!!

Shameless is actually a pretty great TV series, anywhere. It's well written and has "heart", a classic recipe. Deal.

Here's the poet laureate of chav culture himself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/12/television

Shameless is one of the best uk programmes to hit our screens in years, the Gallaghers are no more disfunctional than the Simpsons. I say if you dont like it dont watch it,

Very interesting article, Patrick. Thanks for sharing.

Load of old pony. Part of the middle class media's onslaught on (white) working class culture. I used it in a sociology of the media lesson as an example of misrepresentation and carricature and it worked quite well. Safraz Manzoor has written quite a few articles on this programme and others - Little Britain, jeremy kyle etc, worth hunting down, probably on The Guardian website.

Thanks to Patrick too, for the article.

I believe about 25% of his harrowing stories of yoof, though. Sorry, but it's such a parade of extravagant, theatrical misery, and his continuing tales of his family to this day- let's not forget he's a storyteller. I don't think this Guardian writer employed a fact-checker- it's not The New Yorker, I know- but I really do have doubts. Too many to even bring up, actually. Did you really jump off a 3-story building? Really?!

Those dreaded words- "working on an American version"- ugh. UGH!

Why does every great UK series do this? Money I guess, but it nearly always strips out what was good and specific in the first place. They've already filmed the US version of Kath & Kim from Australia, and advance word is that it's a crime against good comedy. A human-right-to-laugh violation under the Geneva Convention! (Whatever that was, apparently we got rid of it. It was pesky.)

(Ricky Gervais's "Office" was brilliant, high art: the American version is a different beast, but quite good in itself, the exception that proves the rule.)

It works both ways though. I like The Office but think Extras is mostly crap. My problem with Gervais is if you watch the shows that he was influenced by like Seinfeld or The Larry Sanders Show they are so much better. The fourth series of Seinfeld where they are pitching their pilot to NBC is just so far ahead of the game it hurts. Larry David is a god.

Patrick Bateman wrote:It works both ways though. I like The Office but think Extras is mostly crap. My problem with Gervais is if you watch the shows that he was influenced by like Seinfeld or The Larry Sanders Show they are so much better. The fourth series of Seinfeld where they are pitching their pilot to NBC is just so far ahead of the game it hurts. Larry David is a god.

I think thats partially why the US version of The Office bucks the trend and is actually very good and very much an equal of its UK counterpart. I've never really got into Seinfeld, though I feel I should at some point, but Larry Sanders is genius and, in some respects, an underrated and forgotten gem. Its a crime that its yet to be properly released on DVD and thanks to the internet I found decent TV rips of the entire series this year. For the record, Hank Kingsley is one of the great comedy characters.