International Laughter - Sitcoms Around the World Quiz

Answer: The Goldbergs

"The Goldbergs" was one of television's earliest attempts to put an ordinary immigrant family, and specifically a Jewish-American family, at the center of a sitcom. It was based on the enormously popular radio program from the 1920s. The show had Molly Goldberg, a warm, meddling Bronx mother who was forever dispensing advice, solving other people's problems, and sticking her nose into everyone's business. It captures a New York Jewish immigrant community right at the moment when many families were moving toward assimilation and the suburbs.
Gertrude Berg, who played Molly, was a real pioneer. She created, wrote, produced, and controlled her character, making her one of the earliest female television stars to exercise that kind of creative authority. Think of an earlier Lucille Ball.
There's also a dark, if not unusual, Hollywood story lurking behind the laughs. Philip Loeb, who played Molly's husband Jake, was caught up in the Red Scare and eventually lost his job after being accused of Communist associations.

Answer: 227

"227" was a very different, and more relatable, picture of Black America from the polished, upper-middle-class world of "The Cosby Show". It was set in a Washington, D.C., apartment building and revolved around Mary and Lester Jenkins and their neighbours. This was a funny, affectionate look at Black working- and middle-class life...filled with family, church, dating, arguments, gossip, money problems, and everybody being all up in everybody else's business. Something that I got to tell you I felt. None of these chunky-pattern sweaters and supercilious actors flogging a life you could never have. "227" was real.

The apartment building itself was almost a character: neighbours are constantly dropping in, listening through walls, giving unsolicited advice, and generally making it impossible for anyone to just let well enough alone.

And then there was Sandra Clark, played by Jackée Harry. Originally just a supporting character, Sandra's outrageous clothes, enormous hair, shameless confidence, frank sex appeal (at least to this young buck), and constant rivalry with Mary made her the show's breakout star...and earned Harry an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in the process!

Answer: Yes Minister

"Yes Minister" is one of those rare sitcoms that manages to make government bureaucracy genuinely hilarious and make YOU feel smart at the same time. Jim Hacker is the newly appointed, if naive/stupid, minister who actually wants to get things done. Conversely, Sir Humphrey Appleby, the senior civil servant, is perfectly happy to ensure that absolutely nothing gets done unless it was his idea in the first place.

It is truly hard to describe how amazingly good this show is. The minister, his senior civil servant, and his secretary are perfectly written. In the show, nobody is entirely stupid and nobody is entirely innocent. The dialogue is extraordinarily sharp, and god help me, it left me thinking that government might actually be a force for good.

Finally, unlike a lot of political comedy, it wasn't simply making fun of one political party or person. The joke was the system itself. The Conservatives loved it, Labour supporters loved it, civil servants apparently loved it, and politicians on both sides recognised people they knew. The fact that Margaret Thatcher was reportedly a fan and even appeared in a short sketch that was awful, but still less cringeworthy than Tricky Dick telling you to "Sock it to [him]?" tells you something about just how perfectly it hit its target.

Answer: Heil Honey, I'm Home!

"Heil Honey, I'm Home!" is probably one of the strangest ideas ever to make it onto British television. Take the cosy conventions of a 1950s American sitcom, you know...neighbours dropping by, marital squabbles, domestic misunderstandings, and add in a very unconventional married couple at the centre of it. That married couple? Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. Yep!

These cute suburbanites live in Berlin right next to their Jewish neighbours, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein. In the pilot, and only episode that aired, Hitler is expecting Neville Chamberlain for dinner and desperately does not want the Goldensteins finding out and then showing up, because he considers Rosa a nosy busybody who has interfered with his dinner parties in the past. Eva, naturally, tells Rosa anyway, and Rosa decides to bring her niece Ruth along because she thinks the unmarried Chamberlain might be a suitable match for her.

As mentioned above, only one episode was actually broadcast, despite eight being produced, before the series was pulled amid controversy. Wonder what that could have been. The entire thing is so bizarre that it's difficult to decide whether it was offensive, astonishingly stupid, or a very clever parody of the sitcom genre. Probably all three.

Answer: Sazae-san

"Sazae-san" is practically a piece of our Japanese cultural furniture. It began in 1969 and ran for decades, following Sazae Fuguta and her extended family through the tiny dramas of ordinary Japanese life like school, work, neighbours, family arguments, shopping, holidays, and the endless little inconveniences of domestic life.

There are no superheroes, elaborate plots, or even much of a sense that the characters are going anywhere. The whole point is that life just keeps happening. It is based on Machiko Hasegawa's newspaper comic, and its longevity is almost ridiculous. Generations of us Japanese people have grown up by tuning in every Sunday evening at 6:30 PM to be comforted by the same family dealing with the same sorts of problems. There is even a phenomenon known as the "Sazae-san syndrome", the melancholy feeling that Sunday evening is coming to an end and Monday morning is waiting around the corner.

Answer: Yusha Yoshihiko

"Yusha Yoshihiko" is what it would look like if someone decided to make a Japanese RPG, give it a tiny budget, and then apparently spend the remaining money on sake. The basic premise is straight out of "Dragon Quest". Yoshihiko is a young hero sent on a quest to save the world, accompanied by a group of adventurers. The problem is that almost nobody in this party is particularly heroic, useful, or even competent. One companion wants to kill Yoshihiko, another has ulterior motives, and Yoshihiko himself is frequently more confused than courageous.

The whole thing is a loving send-up of RPGs, with cardboard-looking sets, gloriously cheap-looking monsters, ridiculous magic, bizarre costumes, and characters who seem to have wandered in from completely different television shows. The low-budget look was actually part of the joke, not a result of underfunding, and the series became popular enough to run for three seasons between 2011 and 2016.

Answer: Pataclaun

"Pataclaun" is a wonderfully strange piece of Peruvian television. The premise sounds simple enough. A married couple moves into a house on a hill, only to discover that it is already inhabited by a bunch of ghosts- er...clowns... clown ghosts? From there, the show gets stranger, smashing together improv comedy, weird humour, Peruvian slang (let me tell you!), absurd characters, and plenty of social satire. "Pataclaun" is like nothing else, ever...unmistakably Peruvian, and that's what makes it interesting and worth a watch even decades later.

My god! I was in Peru in 1997 when this was a thing, and it is impossible to describe how influential it was. Literally every TV you passed was tuned to it when it was on. It was hugely popular in its home country, almost from the first episode, during its run from 1997 to 1999, and several of its performers went on to become major figures in Peruvian comedy and entertainment.

Answer: Not My Family

"Not My Family" was Zambia's first sitcom, first aired in 2015 and ran for only a single season. It takes the familiar headaches of family life and puts them into a recognisably Zambian setting. The show follows Mate Chisola as he tries to keep the peace between his disapproving mother-in-law, his wife, and two children, all while trying to make ends meet on a modest income. There's nothing particularly exotic about the problems, just marriage, money, children, in-laws, and the daily struggle to keep everybody reasonably happy, and that's exactly what makes it interesting. It gives you a glimpse of ordinary Zambian domestic life through comedy, rather than presenting Africa as some sort of wildlife documentary where people live in mud huts and fight off hippos at every turn, all while dressing in ceremonial garb and jumping to an Adumu dance.

A girlfriend of mine introduced me to this show on DVDs that she brought to Japan from Zambia. It is absolutely a sweet and familiar, if conservative, slice of life. Hard to find out there, especially since YouTube is dominated by the Zambian hit show, "Date My Family", an execrable piece of reality TV trash.

Answer: Home Along Da Riles

"Home Along Da Riles" is a truly Filipino take on the family sitcom, built around a working-class family living alongside a railway line in Manila. At the centre is Kevin Cosme, played by the comedy treasure Dolphy (think Tora-san, Ronnie Corbett, or Red Skelton), trying to keep his family together while dealing with the usual collection of money problems, arguments, neighbours, children, and everyday chaos.

The railway isn't just scenery, either; the whole idea of living beside the tracks becomes part of the show's identity and its comedy. Running from 1992 to 2003, it became one of the Philippines' biggest and most beloved sitcoms, and 535 episodes is an absolutely ridiculous amount of television. This wasn't some little cult comedy. For more than a decade, Filipino families were inviting Kevin and the Cosmes into their homes.

Answer: Spice of Life

"Spice of Life" is one of those wonderfully obscure television footnotes that make international TV, especially comedies, so much fun.
Like "Not My Family" was in Zambia, "Spice of Life" was Fiji's first locally produced comedy television series, with all the ingredients you would expect from a genuinely local production. It had Fijian actors and stories drawn from situations familiar to people living in Fiji. It also used iTaukei, Hindi, and English in a mishmash that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever visited the islands.
The plan was for a thirteen-episode run, with each episode telling its own story, but funding problems brought production to an early end after the first seven episodes. It is not exactly a forgotten classic, it's more like a television archaeological artefact, but that's precisely why I wanted it in here. Most people outside Fiji will have absolutely no idea it ever existed, which makes finding a place for it on this quiz rather satisfying. However, unlike "Not My Family", you can find the full run of "Spice of Life" fairly easily on YouTube.