Best humour....UK or USA?

Question

I know ill get a slightly one sided collection of answers, but try not to be biased!

Answer 1

I have to say UK but wait a second..... don't get at me for saying this coz I also love Friends, Will and Grace and countless others American imports. It's just that for out and out humour, no one does it like us Brits! Vic n Bob RULE!! Fry & Laurie - 2nd favourite!

Answer 2

I think there's room for both!!

UK humour can be hard work at first- it can take a couple episodes to suss it out before it starts being really funny. Also sometimes it goes a bit too far- I think The Might Boosh, for example, sometimes feels like it's trying too hard to be random and funny. But then UK comedies like Alan Partidge, Fawlty Towers and all of Ali G's personalities are some of the funniest things you'll ever see.

USA humour is under-rated I think. It's not all obvious gag stuff like Adam Sandler films. I think programs like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld and Scrubs are all quite unique in their humour. Friends may be a bit obvious, but most people I know who go on about the superiority of UK humour have a pretty hefty Friends DVD collection so it can't be that bad!

Also plenty of Americans understand sarcasm- and plenty of Britons don't. So we should be more open-minded about that. BBS America is swiftly gaining popularity, and many British comedies have a cult following out there- which might be a lot bigger if BBC was a more widely-available channel. (I don't think it's included in the standard cable packages.)

The beauty of living in the UK is that you get the best of both on television, I know I couldn't live without both!

Answer 3

It's really unsettling when you say something witty, ironic or downright sarcastically funny in front of mixed company and suddenly someone in the groups' face just kind of sets into this indignant, puzzled or unnecessarily affronted kind of way. Then they open their mouth and sure enough they'll be an American. They just don't get that more subtle humour. It's developing slowly, but Seinfeld was only popular with some Americans, and the darkness of Six Feet Under again wasn't appreciated by all Americans either. They prefer a more slapstick, in-your-face, with a clear "this is funny" label kind of humour. It's almost like the more subtle stuff goes over the heads of some Americans - watch Jonathan Ross sometime when he's got some middle of the road American guest on, they haven't a clue when he's being funny or serious. The funniest thing currently coming out of America is Larry David's 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', but here in the UK (and remember this is a much smaller place) we're bursting at the seams with humour, comedians, skit shows etc etc. Thank goodness for the Great British sense of humour.

Answer 4

I'd say UK, but I prefer Scottish humour to English. Older comedies from England, eg. Monty Python, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers etc, were all good. Some of the new ones, eg. Little Britain, make little sense to me as a Scotsman. Give me Chewin' the Fat or Still Game any time.

American homour tends to be quite obvious, and the canned laughter is a little excessive. There also tends to be a recurring theme in some of them. A lot of family unit comedies.

Overall, UK every time.

Answer 5

UK - it has far more things that are actually funny rather than just stupid things that are being laughed at.

Take one example - the radio show on BBC Radio 4 called "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Superb show, utterly silly things going on, most of them totally pointless, TOTALLY British humour. Get someone from the US to listen to it and they'd be totally lost while most people from the UK are rolling around laughing.

The UK seems to have more sophisticated humour than the US.

Answer 6

of course, being british, i'd have to say that the uk sense of humour is by far the best.... we do sarcasm and dry wit sooooooo well, and the americans on the whole don't seem to be too great at that, or understand it very well.... which is why most of our sitcoms don't work over there.... but i'd have 2 say that the usa has been better at creating good sitcoms over the past 10 years or so.... friends, frasier, etc... better than most of the rubbish that's been created in the uk recently anyway.....

Answer 7

Been British I have to say our humour is brilliant and for the most part I don't get the USA humour, but I suppose if I were to live there I would understand it soon enough like they too would get used to ours if they lived here.

Answer 8

UK has humour
USA has what they call humor which is nothing to do with being funny. They are not funny within themselves at all. Just funny to watch for outsiders.

In UK you can find a lot of humour apart from in London where misery reigns.

Answer 9

Probably the UK, I'm afraid

Good old USA dont have the structure to laugh at satire and are very very geared to extremely short attention span issues generally.
US and UK can both laugh at the short one liners from programmes such as happy days, mork and mindy etc, but the humour in a sketch which takes a long time to finally jump out at you is just lost on the US audience.
I dont know if thats a good thing or bad thing though, maybe the US can relax a lot quicker when watching comedy because they dont have to think in order to laugh, but the UK comedies require the brain to be switched on in order to get it.... so maybe even when laughing, the UK person never gets his stress levels down !.

Answer 10

UK humour is very sarcastic so can be offencive if you don't get it but is very funny if you do USA is jus down right funny and everyone can get it so would say in my opinion UK as i like the sarcasm but that's coz i live here i guess

Answer 11

I prefer the UK Comedians, there are some funny sitcoms from USA but to the person that was asking if we "catch his drift", how many of them are absolute pure crap!! There are the odd few that are funny but a lot that just are pure American idiotic "humour"