Great Moments in WTF Television



  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I%27m_Home!

    Heil Honey I'm Home! was a controversial British television sitcom, produced in 1990, which was cancelled after one episode aired.

    The show centres on fictionalised versions of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who live next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein. The show's plot is centred on Hitler's inability to get along with his neighbours. A caption at the beginning of the episode presented the series as a "lost sitcom from the 50s, recently re-discovered". The show spoofed elements of 1950s and 1960s American sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy, including the corny title, light plots and dialogue, and unwarranted applause whenever a character appeared on screen.

    The plot of episode 1 involved Adolf telling Eva of the impending arrival of Neville Chamberlain, and begging her not to tell the Goldensteins. Of course, Eva lets it slip to Rosa that Chamberlain ("the most important man in Europe!") is coming round and Rosa tells Arny. They then crash the dinner party the Hitlers have prepared for Chamberlain.



  • Without seeing the episode, I can't say whether it's a case of genuinely bad TV, or just "too soon".



  • Couldn't be "too soon" - Hogan's Heroes made light of Nazis back in the '50s, and was quite successful...



  • Man I was thinking about crazy sitcoms the other day.

    But mostly just ones with ridiculous premises, like The Flying Nun or My Mother The Car. (Both of those sitcoms are exactly what the title implies. A nun who can fly. And a car possessed by his mother.)

    BTW, the American answer to this was the short-lived sitcom by the makers of South Park about George Bush living in a typical suburban house, That's My Bush! It went over about as well as you'd expect.



  •  That's My Bush was shamefully bad.



  • @dhromed said:

     That's My Bush was shamefully bad.

    And they needed a tv show to realize that?



  • @serguey123 said:

    @dhromed said:

     That's My Bush was shamefully bad.

    And they needed a tv show to realize that?

    The shocking thing is that it actually went to air. Meaning, it passed through like 5 producers hands, all of whom said, "this is pretty good, put it on the schedule". (Like with WTF software, the shocking thing isn't that the huge bugs are in the software-- all software has huge bugs from time to time-- the shocking thing is that someone took a look at the software with the huge bugs and said, "that's good enough to release to the public.")

    I'm guessing it's just because Matt and Trey were riding-high on South Park and could "do no wrong" in the industry. But everybody makes a stinker from time to time. Except Hitchcock. And Kubrick.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Kubrick
     

    Oh, I thought Kubrick made nothing but stinkers.


  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Kubrick
    Oh, I thought Kubrick made nothing but stinkers.

    Obvious troll is obvious.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'm guessing it's just because Matt and Trey were riding-high on South Park and could "do no wrong" in the industry.
    Same thing with My Mother the Car (voted second worst television show of all time by TV Guide).  It was created by a guy who had also done a bunch of very successful TV shows (The Munsters, Get Smart, Rocky and Bullwinkle).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @dhromed said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    Kubrick
    Oh, I thought Kubrick made nothing but stinkers.

    Obvious troll is obvious.

     

    I just don't like Kubrick's stuff. What I've seen in any case.



  • I dunno, sounds pretty amusing to me. Too bad political correctness always gets in the way.



  • @dhromed said:

    I just don't like Kubrick's stuff. What I've seen in any case.
     

    Ah, see, there's your problem.  Try taking the disc out of the case.



  • Great Moments in WTF Television or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Heil Honey I'm Home!

    @dhromed said:

    I just don't like Kubrick's stuff. What I've seen in any case.

    I could maybe understand not liking 2001: A Space Odyssey (due to pacing), and possibly A Clockwork Orange (due to violence). But my brain can't comprehend a person who doesn't like The Shining or Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

    On another note, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and X" is an awesome meme and we should bring it back.



  •  I present to you all the greatest claymation insanity ever.  [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejb8xDYZ65Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejb8xDYZ65Y[/url] 



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @dhromed said:
    I just don't like Kubrick's stuff. What I've seen in any case.

    I could maybe understand not liking 2001: A Space Odyssey (due to pacing), and possibly A Clockwork Orange (due to violence). But my brain can't comprehend a person who doesn't like The Shining or Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

    On another note, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and X" is an awesome meme and we should bring it back.

    I used to be a worrier like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I could maybe understand not liking 2001: A Space Odyssey (due to pacing), and possibly A Clockwork Orange (due to violence).
     

    ...or Eyes Wide Shut (due to the involvement of Tom Cruise and his second wife).



  • @da Doctah said:

    ...or Eyes Wide Shut (due to the involvement of Tom Cruise and his second wife).

    Eyes Wide Shut is not a Kubrick movie.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @da Doctah said:
    ...or Eyes Wide Shut (due to the involvement of Tom Cruise and his second wife).

    Eyes Wide Shut is not a Kubrick movie.

     

    Directed by Stanley Kubrick.

    Produced by Stanley Kubrick.

    Written by Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael.

    What do you have to do for it to be your movie, make the sandwiches for the craft services table?



  • I don't care what the credits say, Kubrick didn't have the final thumbs-up, the final, "ok let's recut this and make it work", and so it's not his movie. Hell, one of the most important parts of making a movie is the editing, and he had virtually no input into that at all.

    Maybe he would have approved of it, maybe not. Since he died, we'll never know.



  •  Hmmm...

    (from Wikipedia:)

    Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother-in-law and executive producer, reported that Kubrick was "very happy" with the film and considered it to be his "greatest contribution to the art of cinema"

    R. Lee Ermey, an actor in Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket, claimed that Kubrick phoned him two weeks before his death to express his despondency over Eyes Wide Shut. "He told me it was a piece of shit", Ermey said in Radar magazine, "and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to "have him for lunch". He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him — exactly the words he used."

     So.. this IS one of Kubrick's films, but the level of involvement and whether or not he was pleased with the results are debatable.

    I've not actually seen the film meself - it is worth it? IMDB gives it 7.2



  • @Cassidy said:

    So.. this IS one of Kubrick's films, but the level of involvement and whether or not he was pleased with the results are debatable.

    If he didn't sign off on the final edit before it hit theaters (and he didn't), it's not his film. You're welcome to your opinion, but mine's correct so you should adopt it.

    @Cassidy said:

    I've not actually seen the film meself - it is worth it?

    I haven't seen it either.



  • Re: Great Moments in WTF Television

    @blakeyrat said:

    You're welcome to your opinion, but mine's correct so you should adopt it.

    It wasn't my opinion, it was just my interpretation of seeing Kubrick listed as both director and co-writer on the IMDB page, as well as seeing his level of involvement mentioned repeatedly on that film's Wikipedia entry.

    But you're right: your opinion trumps both those, so I'll maintain that Eyes Wide Shut is NOT a Kubrick film because "that's Blakey's opinion". Adoption complete!

    nb: I recall you mentioned somewhere you're a netflix customer. You planning to watch this (non-Kubrick) film at all? I've an interest in it now, mainly for curiosity value.



  • @Cassidy said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    You're welcome to your opinion, but mine's correct so you should adopt it.

    It wasn't my opinion, it was just my interpretation of seeing Kubrick listed as both director and co-writer on the IMDB page, as well as seeing his level of involvement mentioned repeatedly on that film's Wikipedia entry.

    But you're right: your opinion trumps both those, so I'll maintain that Eyes Wide Shut is NOT a Kubrick film because "that's Blakey's opinion". Adoption complete!

    You must be either new or clueless



  • @serguey123 said:

    You must be either new or clueless

     

    Not necessarily mutually exclusive, are they?



  • @Cassidy said:

    nb: I recall you mentioned somewhere you're a netflix customer. You planning to watch this (non-Kubrick) film at all? I've an interest in it now, mainly for curiosity value.

    I only do streaming, because I'm cheap. If it were on streaming, I might give it a go.



  • Be interested in a review (and others here) if you do get to see it.

    I've just managed to source a DVD off a work colleague, but it may be a few days until I catch up with her to borrow it. I rate Cruise as an actor, but that's only after seeing him in "The Last Samurai"



  • @Spectre said:

    I dunno, sounds pretty amusing to me. Too bad political correctness always gets in the way.

    This really isn't a political correctness issue; the show was abysmal.

    I heard about it a while ago, and was intrigued by the ludicrous idea. Found it on YouTube, watched it, and was disappointed.


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