Nostalgia Across the Pond

I seem to have spent the bank holiday weekend watching old American sitcoms.  One of the marvels of streaming TV is that, via various Roku apps, it is possible to watch various TV channels from across the pond which show nothing but old television shows.  Just like the UK, nostalgia TV is big business - it gives advertisers potential access to an older age group, (middle aged saddoes like me), plus it is cheap programming with a ready made fan base.  Quite a few of these sitcoms are shows that I don't remember ever airing in the UK - One Day at a Time, for instance - or which only ever screened a limited number of episodes on UK network TV - Welcome Back Kotter, which ITV showed twenty six of its ninety five episodes.  Of course, a fair number of them might have turned up here, but on channels I didn't watch or couldn't receive because I didn't subscribe to Sky.  A proportion, though, are based on UK formats, so have that air of familiarity about them, even though everything is different.  Some are obvious versions of UK hits, like All in the Family ('Til Death Do Us Part), or Three's Company (Man About the House) and its spin-offs, (which mirrored those of the UK original, with George and Mildred becoming The Ropers and Robin's Nest turning into Three's a Crowd).  While episodes from some of these ran in the UK, I came across one this evening that, to the best of my knowledge, never did: Too Close for Comfort.  It took me a while to recognise this one as being a remake of Keep it in The Family, a not so well remembered ITV sitcom that had starred Robert Gillespie as a cartoonist that ran for four series.  It was the situation I recognised, rather than the characters, which had undergone some changes from their UK counterparts.  

As previously mentioned, these sorts of channels attract an older demographic and the commercials running in the ad breaks reflect this.  They are dominated by adverts for insurance of all kinds: health,(particularly Medicare related), car, home and any other you can think of.  On top of that, are all manner of ads for medical supplies, particularly allergy treatments, but also for mobility and pain relief, (hey, I've learned that Voltarol is called Voltaren in the US, but uses near identically styled adverts).   In other words, exactly the same sort of ads you'd find in the average commercial break on a UK nostalgia channel, such as Taking Pictures TV, which cater to similar demographics.  There are some ads, however, which seem completely alien to UK audiences and emphasise the differences in national cultures.  Most startling are all the ads for charities which run children's hospitals.  Obviously, charity appeals are common in the UK, but they tend to be for specific types of medical research, animal charities or overseas aid.  The idea that any hospital, let alone one for children, should be run on charitable donations seems bizarre, (although, if the Tories have their way, it might yet become the norm here).  Related to this are the ads for legal firms that specialise in sorting out your tax affairs - according to them, they can reduce any tax demand from the IRS so that you only have to pay a fraction of it.  They give the impression that tax evasion in the US must be endemic, leading the UK viewer to conclude that this is probably why health care there is so under-funded by the state - not only do people not pay their taxes, but even when the IRS catches up with them, there's a whole legal industry dedicated to blocking them from recovering what is owed in full.  All very perplexing.