Sitcom about the famine

Galwayguy35 · 08-01-2016 09:45AM

bruschi wrote: »

the sitcom was about the great famine was it not?

It was.

bruschi · 08-01-2016 09:48AM

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

It was.

sorry, just re read my post there and it should have been clearer.

Lollipops23 · 08-01-2016 10:18AM

I remember hearing about this a while back and, like other posters have mentioned, I was at a loss to see how it could be at all entertaining.

There's a reason we've yet to see a sitcom set in a concentration camp- some subjects are just not suitable for humourous scripts, even if the best satirists have a crack at it.

Menas · 08-01-2016 10:23AM

A sitcom about the famine sounds about as much fun as making a romcom from Peig Sayers's book.

The Backwards Man · 08-01-2016 10:31AM

A sitcom about the extraordinarily exciting lives of those who cry genocide at the first mention of famine would be funnier imo.

08-01-2016 10:36AM

Lollipops23 wrote: »

There's a reason we've yet to see a sitcom set in a concentration camp- some subjects are just not suitable for humourous scripts, even if the best satirists have a crack at it.

Tenko.

Except it wasn't a concentration camp. And it was never funny.

HalloweenJack · 08-01-2016 10:45AM

Like others, if the sitcom was actually funny, I don't see the problem.

If something is genuinely funny, regardless of the subject matter, I don't have a problem, it's a joke, and I think once people start saying "Oh, you can't make jokes about X" then we start losing our sense of humour.

If it's just piss-poor jokes about people starving and people in ridiculous Irish accents running around saying "po-TAY-toes" then I wouldn't be inclined to watch it. It doesn't strike me as particularly funny subject matter so I would be interested in seeing what it's like.

Anybody ever hear of/see "Heil Hitler, I'm home"? It's terrible, but not because of the subject matter, it's just terribly unfunny.

psicic · 08-01-2016 10:45AM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Tenko.

Except it wasn't a concentration camp. And it was never funny.

Hogan's Heroes.

Except it wasn't a concentration camp. And it was never funny.

vagazzled · 08-01-2016 10:48AM

The Backwards Man wrote: »

A sitcom about the extraordinarily exciting lives of those who cry genocide at the first mention of famine would be funnier imo.

Yea, and like Alan Partridge says, "Well, if they could afford to emigrate,, they could afford to eat in a modestly priced restaurant."

I suggest you educate yourself on the real history, there was no 'famine'-there was still plenty of food in the country. The potato crop failed yes, and a huge percentage of the remaining food went to England, under armed guard.

AnonoBoy · 08-01-2016 10:51AM

Lollipops23 wrote: »

I remember hearing about this a while back and, like other posters have mentioned, I was at a loss to see how it could be at all entertaining.

A good writer can wring humour or pathos from nearly any subject. Chris Morris managed to make a hilarious show about paedophilia and a really brilliant laugh out loud film about suicide bombers.

Now I'm not suggesting that this script was fantastic (in fact none of us know because we haven't read it) but deciding that it couldn't be funny because of the subject matter is just blinkered thinking.

There's a reason we've yet to see a sitcom set in a concentration camp- some subjects are just not suitable for humourous scripts, even if the best satirists have a crack at it.

Ever seen Life is Beautiful? Hilarious, heart warming film about the Holocaust....

ohnonotgmail · 08-01-2016 10:55AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Tenko.

Except it wasn't a concentration camp. And it was never funny.

It was never funny because Tenko was not a sitcom. It was serious drama.

Junkyard Tom · 08-01-2016 10:56AM

I think English/British producers would be better placed to make a few documentaries about the numerous mass-starvations that happened due to British colonialism.

"The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine itself but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, and turbulent character of the [Irish] people"

Sir Charles Travelyan.

The Backwards Man · 08-01-2016 11:11AM

vagazzled wrote: »

Yea, and like Alan Partridge says, "Well, if they could afford to emigrate,, they could afford to eat in a modestly priced restaurant."

I suggest you educate yourself on the real history, there was no 'famine'-there was still plenty of food in the country. The potato crop failed yes, and a huge percentage of the remaining food went to England, under armed guard.

Right on cue.

By real history do you mean your slant on it, or the truth?

Junkyard Tom · 08-01-2016 11:26AM

Making a sitcom about the Nazi holocaust doesn't require the viewer to wonder whether or not the Nazis were to blame - it's cut-and-dried. Here in Ireland we have an entrenched 5th column who will do their utmost to deflect responsibility from where it ultimately lay i.e. British colonialism.

Lollipops23 · 08-01-2016 11:32AM

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Ever seen Life is Beautiful? Hilarious, heart warming film about the Holocaust....

I have, great film! Having said that- it's been featured in psychology classes to study the paradoxical ending- as in, it's happy but also devastating.

The Backwards Man · 08-01-2016 11:33AM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Making a sitcom about the Nazi holocaust doesn't require the viewer to wonder whether or not the Nazis were to blame - it's cut-and-dried. Here in Ireland we have an entrenched 5th column who will do their utmost to deflect responsibility from where it ultimately lay i.e. British colonialism.

Well, I think that depends on whether or not you believe that directly causing something and indirectly allowing (most) of the conditions to exist for causing something are one and the same. For some it is cut and dried, for others it's a bit more complicated than that

Junkyard Tom · 08-01-2016 11:35AM

weisses wrote: »

Bigger tragedy

It's not considered a tragedy in Britain but 'The Great War'. The people who died in it are not considered victims but principled heroes who died for a 'good cause' (whatever the fuck that was? British Imperialism?).

Junkyard Tom · 08-01-2016 11:51AM

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Well, I think that depends on whether or not you believe that directly causing something and indirectly allowing (most) of the conditions to exist for causing something are one and the same. For some it is cut and dried, for others it's a bit more complicated than that

Oh I'm sure you'd find plenty of literature that would say the Nazi holocaust was not a cut-and-dried evil project if you were to look for it. It's just that that type of literature is not taken seriously because the Nazis lost spectacularly.

The ideological underpinning of both the holocaust and the Irish mass-starvation was essentially Malthusian. The feeble-minded subordinates need to be culled before they out-breed the good stock. The motivations were also similar - control of persons and property, racism, ideological fundamentalism etc.

RobertKK · 08-01-2016 12:44PM

In Ireland, it is not the done thing to say the famine was a form of genocide, even though the policy of food exports from a starving nation was a policy that came from the government in Westminster.

In New Jersey and New York, education about the Irish famine became contentious in the 1990s as the British were not happy that the Irish famine was included as being a holocaust.
The apologists for the British just wanted to make out it was simply a crop failure, and not mention how food was exported from a famine region and in some cases under military guard.
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-87915680/the-new-jersey-famine-curriculum-a-report

It should be viewed as something that was avoidable.

The Irish famine was probably the most significant famine in world history. All the talk about the 1916 rebellion but the famine was the catalyst. Irish people to this day I believe are still affected by that history, it is so powerful.
It led to a much increased wave of emigration to the point far more people who meet the requirements for an Irish passport live outside the island, and so many people from abroad have direct links back to Ireland.

The famine if it was designed to crush the Irish (given it could have been avoided) in the end made Ireland a far more powerful country on the international stage, compared to our size.
It gave us blood links to some influential countries.

Fratton Fred · 08-01-2016 01:24PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

"The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine itself but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, and turbulent character of the [Irish] people"

Sir Charles Travelyan.

That's right, the evil people who profitered from rising crop prices and bought up imports, stick piled them and sold them to the work houses at exorbitant prices.

Dirty Dingus McGee · 08-01-2016 02:49PM

psicic wrote: »

Hogan's Heroes.

Except it wasn't a concentration camp. And it was never funny.

Colonel Klink.Why have you forsaken me.

Sonderkommando · 08-01-2016 03:06PM

weldoninhio wrote: »

The fact that so many people still call it a "famine" shows how little people know about it. There was plenty of food around to feed the Irish, it was exported by the English though.

This was a genocide on a mass scale and nothing else. I'd recommend the book "The Graves are Walking" to get a better insight into what happened.

Great book, I would also recommend Tim Pat Coogan's book the famine plot.

The famine was a genocide.

Fratton Fred · 08-01-2016 03:36PM

Sonderkommando wrote: »

Great book, I would also recommend Tim Pat Coogan's book the famine plot.

The famine was a genocide.

Is that the book ripped apart by most reputable historians?

Galwayguy35 · 08-01-2016 03:41PM

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Is that the book ripped apart by most reputable historians?

The British let people starve to death, or do you not believe this happened?

pickarooney · 08-01-2016 03:41PM

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Is that the book ripped apart by most reputable historians?

That would be all of TPC's oeuvre. A renowned spoofer.

Fratton Fred · 08-01-2016 04:02PM

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

The British let people starve to death, or do you not believe this happened?

What? What's that got to do with Coogan's book being ripped apart by historians. He is an author that writes books targeting a particular market. That market aren't usually too fussy about facts, as long as the books say what they want to hear.

vagazzled · 08-01-2016 04:03PM

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Right on cue.

By real history do you mean your slant on it, or the truth?

Oh **** off

My name is URL · 08-01-2016 04:14PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I think English/British producers would be better placed to make a few documentaries about the numerous mass-starvations that happened due to British colonialism.

"The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine itself but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, and turbulent character of the [Irish] people"

Sir Charles Travelyan.

The sentence that preceded that speaks volumes too

The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated

He also described the famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population"

Considering the role they played in limiting foods available and the fact that Trevelyan was Administrator of 'famine relief' at the time, it'd be hard to keep a straight face while arguing that there wasn't a touch of genocidal thinking behind it all.

Fratton Fred · 08-01-2016 04:19PM

My name is URL wrote: »

The sentence that preceded that speaks volumes too

He also described the famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population"

Considering the role they played in limiting foods available

What role was that then?

pickarooney · 08-01-2016 04:29PM

So if we were to cast this we'd need a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, a head-in-the-sand colonialist, a dynamite-in-the-sack macrobiolgist and a gay man with a catchphrase.

Sitcom about the famine

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