Has Television quality declined?

A couple that are deemed racist now, but apart from the few classics there were of course some rubbish 70s sitcoms.


The problem with comparing a decades worth of telly with today is that it's not really a fair comparison. The 70s were when a lot of our classic sitcoms were made, but that probably amounts to about 10 absolute timeless classics over as many years

I actually think when it comes to drama, we're in a bit of a golden age. America and the UK are producing some great and popular dramas right now. Shows like Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Broadchurch and American stuff like Game of Thrones and Mad Men have got to be some of the most popular dramas in history.

Comedy is certainly lacking though. The one plus of the early 2000s which was a horrible era for TV in general was that we started to get the 'Mock the Week' generation of comedians appearing on TV and standup comedy really started to become a big thing again. We also got some great sitcoms like 'Black Books', 'Spaced' and dare i say it 'The Office' Now these hot comedians are the mainstream and have been for some while now, to the point where these same comedians are now appearing on shows like Have I Got News for You. So where are the new wave of comedians or the new wave of comedy? We haven't had anything properly new in that area since the early 2000s i feel.

Light entertainment is certainly ok for now. I say ok because while there are popular shows about, they tend to be shows that have been on for a long time like the X-Factor, Strictly and BGT, or remakes like Catchphrase. There's nothing totally new in that area. Hopefully the new Sunday Night at the London Palladium will help boost that area of TV. Although that's a remake too.

I wouldn't say TV is in the best possible state, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. I would certainly say the quality has risen in the last few years.

People have rose tinted specs when it comes to past TV. Mainly because they repeat the gems often on Gold and the like, so we automatically assume that everything that came out of earlier eras of TV was better. Yet if Gold actually replayed ALL the sitcoms and dramas from the 60s,70s, 80s etc, you'd see that 90% of it was average or crap just like TV is now. It's only the gems and for some reason the truely terrible stuff that gets remembered

Am i the only one here who found Miranda and Mrs Brown's Boys unfunny?

I find Mrs Browns Boys excruciating to watch, but I like Miranda. Not love, but like.

I found Mrs. Brown's Boys funny at first but I got tired of it quite quickly.

You did better than me, I just don't 'get it'.

A lot of the humour is based around breaking the fourth wall, and the outtakes and slip-ups from the actors that are deliberately left in. That started to grate on me after a while. I can see why people find it funny though (and why it draws big audiences even on repeats).

It's a comedy about a dysfunctional, large Irish family headed by a domineering matriarch whose hypocrisy and naïveté lead to various comic situations. All of this is within a cobbled together structure that pushes the bounds of believability; with a cross-dressing man playing the sexually female matriarch, osmosing through the fourth wall in every episode, and even pointing out where suspending belief is beyond ridiculous. The fact that belief can be suspended is played on all the time. It transposes the idiosyncrasies and necessities of the stage onto television in order to produce a unique experience for television.

It works as a comedy for some on the surface, and others as a meta-comedy. Disliking one or both of those aspects (for critics, it's usually the former) is what leads to people disliking it in general usually.

The sell out tours of the stages shows seem to say different, mind you there were plenty of people who TV throw onto the dump and still made a good living.

on a technical level, many studio based productions have changed like for example on lets say for example for Coronation street, in the 70s, 80s and 90s the lighting was much brighter but these days they can lower the lighting to very dark levels to be more realistic like real life, sports broadcasting has come leaps and bounds mainly thanks to Sky Sports, but it also raised the production standards of the BBC and ITV as well.

I think one huge change is that DVD and Blu-ray, as well as high quality video recording in prosumer DSLR/Mirrorless cameras mean that viewers are able to watch better quality pictures from other sources than they receive from broadcast TV.

Until the 90s, broadcast TV off-air was the highest quality picture available to most. That's a major change.

There's been a huge change in that people at home can now shoot and edit their own content, to similar quality levels that broadcasters meet. Just look at some of the stuff on Vimeo.

Technically - production standards for mainstream drama, sitcom, factual content have increased - as cameras and sound technology have improved, editing is now more straightforward, grading is available and HD and 4K have totally replaced SD.

On the other hand with the explosion of the number of channels we've seen in the last 20 years, there are channels out there with standard far lower than the BBC or IBA would have accepted in the 80s.

While I agree with you on most points, I'd say the quality of current affairs on mainstream television is nowhere near what it was in years gone by. When you compare the likes of Tonight with World In Action or modern Panorama to it's past then there is no comparison when it comes to actual content. Better presentation etc cannot hide that.

I'm not saying this as someone over 50, I've just had my 34th Birthday.