Alas, It's Not That Funny Anymore

Over the past few months I’ve caught a couple of old episodes of “Alas Smith and Jones”, the 80’s comedy series brought to us by those “Not the 9 O’Clock News” legends Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones.

I loved these two back in the day, and the younger me was a massive fan of this show back then, so I jumped at the chance to re-live some happy childhood memories when one episode was shown on BBC Four, and another one recently on BBC Two. Sadly, I was quite disappointed.

The teenage me probably roared with laughter back in the day, but the adult, 51 year old me didn’t. Well, maybe there was a slight smirk at the old Grange Hill Street Blues sketch, but apart from that what I saw didn’t actually seem that good.

This kind of shocked me a little, given how much I loved these shows when they were first shown, and how I would have probably jumped at the chance of getting them if they appeared on VHS. But now, in 2023, I just didn’t find these shows that funny.

Why? Have my tastes changed that much over the past forty years? Or is it that these shows just haven’t aged that well?

Alas, I probably won’t have many more chances to find out, given that you can’t really get much of their stuff on Amazon or Ebay, and I don’t really fancy buying an old VHS tape or paying about £50 for a second-hand DVD. Maybe if I find something in a charity shop, or if the Beeb decide to put all the old episodes up on the iPlayer.