Another Period

I've watched a few episodes so far and it's hilarious. It's the same sort of over-the-top, don't-take-it-too-serious sort of humour as The Office was. I mean, it's Victorian era setting with Snoop Dogg intro music.

The characters and dialogue are really funny, and just how they make such fun out of what those times must have been like - even though when looking at it, there's a stark reality that reminds you, some of what you're seeing WAS really how it was.

It's a show about gossiping girls and the comings and goings of their home. I'm a guy and usually HATE those stupid reality housewife and kardashians and all that. But I find the script so funny and the girls so dumb, that I love it. Actually, I like it more than my girlfriend so far, which is weird.

Oh well.

I almost didn't watch Another Period because I do not care for Natasha Leggero's humor (it's too catty and mean for me). But I find her character, Lilian, to be so hilarious and intriguing that I think I may now be a fan.

I've watched the first four episodes of Another Period more than once and I laugh out loud each time. My favorite so far has been episode four, "Pageant," simply because of how hard I laughed.

I'm a big fan of many shows on Comedy Central, but this one stands out for me. Not only is the humor historically accurate, but it's dark. It reminds me of how I laughed at Django Unchained for its portrayal of the pre-Civil War south. There are many moments in Another Period when I think, "That shouldn't be funny, but it is," as I laugh way too hard at the blatant, over-the-top classism, racism, and sexism that was prevalent at the time. In our PC culture, it's refreshing to finally see a show like this one. I hope we see many more; they're necessary. It's good to be reminded of where you came from. And it's even better that we can now find the humor in it.

I laugh at this show from start to finish, then I watch it again because I missed so much while I was busy laughing the first time. There's a whole lot of story and character development packed into each episode. I find myself paying close attention and being rewarded for it. That says a lot about a show. I find the writing witty, consistent, detailed, and intelligent.

The acting is excellent and the characters become more complex as the episodes continue. I'm so interested in some of these characters that I feel like I could watch a spin-off about each of them and never get bored.

I appreciate that the humor hasn't been too "gross out" as of yet. I don't know if anyone involved with the show will ever see this, but on the off chance they do, I have a request: please don't get grosser. Episode four had a few scenes involving buckets that went right up to the "eww!" line for me but didn't make me recoil in disgust.

I've said here that the writing is historically accurate, but I'm no historian so I don't know how accurate it actually is. I haven't seen anything that I would consider to be inaccurate, though. I already knew about the "rule of thumb," which was mentioned in one of the episodes, so my hunch is that much of it is grounded in truth.

*added later, regarding historical accuracy*

I've read several interviews with the show's creators (and stars) Riki Lindhome and Natasha Leggero. I hate that this is one of those shows that make a person think, "that's silly, none of this really happened, these plots are too ridiculous to be true" - if you think that, you are wrong.

The show's creators took tours of mansions in Newport, RI (I now want to go there and take those tours) and used some of their real, ridiculous history in the writing of this show. So far, it takes place in 1902 (during "the Gilded Age," as Mark Twain called it) when the vast majority of America's wealth was concentrated in Newport, RI There was no income tax and no business regulation. Rich people did whatever they felt like doing, and poor European immigrants were still headed to the U.S. by the thousands, resulting in outrageous class disparity between the wealthy and the poor working class.

I hate that some call this a Downton Abbey spoof. I love both Downton Abbey and Another Period for different reasons, and that description would not have enticed me to watch. The Lords and Ladies of the post-Edwardian era in England were not like the nouveau riche on the other side of the pond.

By the early 1900s, some of these American families had only been wealthy for a generation or two. These families were eccentric, with no limits, behaving how they assumed "royalty" would behave.

For example, on Downton Abbey, servants are treated with respect, kindness, and human decency. On Another Period, servants are treated like furniture, cattle, or worse, because these Americans had way too much new money -- which naturally accompanied increased industrialization -- and no "proper" examples of how to use it.

I see this show described as "Downton Abbey meets the Kardashians," but that would've turned me off, because I've never watched more than five minutes of the Kardashians, and also because I think Downton has enough naturally occurring humor. Why would I need to watch a silly spoof of it?

Another Period is not a Downton Abbey spoof. It's an original comedy that's rooted in some lesser known (and arguably shameful) American history.

This very silly show imagines Downton Abbey with the classy upper classes replaced by blithering idiots.

The show is funniest in the way these rich people treat their servants, which is as considerably less than human, as when a servant is whimsically renamed "Chair" by one of her employers.

The wealthy are idle and clueless, and episodes often center around a sibling rivalry that the dumber of the two rarely seems aware of.

The show loves to push the bounds of decency, with characters being horribly racist and crude humor that often cheerfully crosses over the line, as in an episode that mocks rape (which one of the reviewers here is very angry about).

It gets away with this because it knows what it's doing. Underneath the silly, broad comedy, is a fairly sharp satire of class privilege. That combination of cheap jokes and smart comedy is, for me, irresistible.

Mid first-episode and I think I've found my new favorite show, and there's like 3 seasons of it!

I think one misconception of it is that it's just a funny period piece show, or that it's a mock-reality show set in 1900's US history. Intriguing, yes, for a minute. I mean there's only so many hours in a day, sand in a bottle, and what good does that premise do me anyway? Why is that pertinent to the times and the culture? And that's why I took so long to give it a chance. But Leggero's charm pulled me in. And now, I'm laughing every minute. Sometimes for minutes straight. Classic lines smacketing out left and right. It's utter mayhem. It's Marx Brothers. That kind. That good.

So, what is it exactly? It's a rich, snobby reality-show, where the characters are so disconnected from the rest of their species that it's shocking. But have the year be 1900. Basically, if you wanted to watch some of these reality shows, but you've heard they're so stupid, and so many times, that you just know you'd hate it. Yet still, you like to laugh at current shows and not have all of them be thought-provoking podcasts. Then, this show makes it intellectually engaging enough to do so. You get to understand or at least witness the psychosis of the characters while still remembering that they are not necessarily to be admired or emulated. They are not heroes. You are witnessing your time, understanding it, not being indoctrinated into some kind of cult-worship. Maybe that's what the camera lens does, creates heroes.

Have you ever wanted to watch the Office or shows like it, but felt like the office environment got old and dreary after an episode or two? This show is more flamboyant, gaudy, can go anywhere, and it's steeped in history, while still maintaining current humor and hilarious, but somehow astoundingly fitting, contemporary musical soundtrack-segues. The modern editing fluorishes of the segues are also easily appreciated.

And have you ever wanted to watch those old period-piece tv shows, but felt the characters and the drama seemed too unrelatable or otherwise too over-the-top emotional or action-packed? This show is completely unrelatable and more over the top than any of those shows! And it gets away with it, it works, because it's a comedy. Everyone knows it's not really 1900. And everyone knows that we're expecting to be shocked, so when the shock actually comes, we feel it instead of using some of our delight wondering whether it was scripted or how planned out it was. We KNOW this was scripted! And it was scripted by geniuses. It was produced by geniuses. It was conceived by geniuses. Everyone on cast and crew deserves a promotion!!!!!!!!

This isn't the best show to come out in a while, but it is surprisingly funny. The gags are pretty hit or miss, but when they hit, they hit hard, and when they miss, it isn't too bad. In many ways this reminds me of Children's Hospital - in that they've taken a genre (Edith Wharton/Downton Abbey/Victorian) and totally lampooned it. There's plenty of absurdist WTF humor as well as send up's of victorian society as a whole.

If you like Portlandia, where every single joke is DOA and is just pure garbage, then I'd stay away from this. It's got some mean spirited humor which I personally find funny. Whereas Portlandia is all simple safe and tired over trod material and unfunny jokes that (much like SNL) go on for way too long. God I hate Portlandia.