1. Innuendo or "double-meaning"
2. Black Humour
3. Wordplay
4. Surrealism
This is not only present in a lot of our sitcoms but is present in everyday culture. I think innuendo is more exclusive to our culture as we have a bizarre ability to take an innocent statement and make it mean something different entirely. I quote a scene from Fawlty Towers, one of Britain's favourite sitcoms.
(A couple are dining at a hotel and are chatting about when their next holiday will be. The manager walks in.)
Husband (casually to manager): How often do you and your wife manage it?
Manager: About the usual amount. We're perfectly normal here in Torquay you know!
Husband: Oh really? My wife couldn't see how you could manage it at all...
The implication is that the manager thinks the couple are asking him about his sex life, when in fact they are asking him about his holiday plans. The joke is left entirely to the audience's perception of the line, "How often do you and your wife manage it?" and there is no implicit cue to the audience to find the double-meaning.
Black Humour (i.e jokes about death (especially!), disability and illness) are prevalent in much of society and everyday conversation and while these jokes may seem insensitive or just plain offensive to other cultures, it is all meant in good humour and in seeing the bright side of misfortune. Here is a typical example of this humour in action. The following clip is from the funeral of Graham Chapman, a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python. The eulogy is given by his friend and fellow Monty Python member, John Cleese:
Aye, I find it very different. British comedies are a lot more subtle.
With British comedies, it can be very easy to miss something (e.g. quick flashes to something else, such as a sign on the wall, something which seems completely irrelevant to the current scene etc), whereas with comedies made in the US they go totally the opposite way and make sure that no one misses the joke.
With a lot of US comedies, they don't seem to stop when there's something funny, they need to point it out to the audience (which just kills the joke).
You never miss the joke with a lot of US comedies (not all, of course, but most of them) because they make it so damn obvious (why do they feel the need to do that? anyone with half a brain cell can work out the joke.
I've also noticed the same thing online, with forums etc, and users from the US. They may say something a bit witty, but them ruin it by adding in the words "sarcasm". Why??
Maybe because their slangs are different from Americans? Also, you have to understand the context in which the joke is phrased. Some things Americans find amusing might not be the same for the British
Yes. Majority of Americans won't get majority of british jokes and vice-versa
yes.
British comedy is more clever and subtle....American comedy is more low-brow and slapstick
A few years ago I was at a friend's house and she put on the IT Crowd (we're American and it's a British show). I've become more focused on British culture lately so my opinion might be different now but I remember not finding it funny at all. I didn't know what was so funny that made the laugh tracks play. Did I not get it because British humour is more subtle? I feel like American jokes are a lot more forward, like with family guy, it's all crude and stupid and that's what America likes. Other than The Bean, does Britain have crude comedy like that? Or is all their comedy more sarcastic and subtle?
