I was a devoted fan of Star World and its great sitcoms - especially ’Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ’Frazier’. Yet of late more of the better ones have found it to Zee English first. While ’Will and Grace’, ’Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ and ’The Mind of the Married Man’ have their moments, none can compare in scope and sheer hilarity to Seinfeld.
The show, which self proclaims itself to be much ado about nothing, manages that most difficult of touches - it brings the more unmentionable activities into the spotlight and makes them into a subject of amusement. Therefore, when Elaine carefully weighs the pros and cons of considering a man ’spongeworthy’ (go figure!) somehow the situation is transformed from mere locker room humour to rib tickling comedy.
Each of the four principal characters are distinct in their personalities. Jerry, the stand up comic, with a gift for picking up women and then promptly breaking up. Elaine, the practical and calculating secretary, always on the lookout for the right man. George, the mostly unemployed, henpecked son, with no qualms or compunctions. And finally, Cosmo Kramer, the jack in the box with a thousand hare brained ideas and a taste for Jerry’s fridge! These four are brilliant in their own way, but their sidekicks are no less funny - Newman, Jerry’s and George’s parents, Elaine’s temperamental and quirky employers Messrs Peterman and Pitt and a whole range of wonderful cameo characters like Racquel Welch and Marisa Tomei.
But even the genius of the acting could not carry the show on its own, were it not for the brilliant scriptwriters. The humour is never contrived and each and every scene is worked out to the smallest little detail. Obviously, the men and women behind the stage have worked just as hard as the main cast in bringing out riotous, yet not slapstick comedy. Amongst all sitcoms that I can remember, perhaps only ’Yes Minister’ comes close into tickling our funny bone.
Why the show had to go off air I cannot imagine. The sitcom itself is far better than the stand up comedy Jerry does at the beginning and end of each serial.