Have you noticed a phenomenon that the excellent sitcoms of these years are almost invisible.
Why are there fewer sitcoms?
Because it's in a more awkward position, it's longer than a skit, and it's shorter than a comedy movie.
The positioning that is not long or short makes it much more difficult to create.
By a simple analogy, the most tiring thing in track and field is not 100 meters, nor 1500 meters, but 800 meters.
Because of the 100 meters, you just need to sprint;
At 1500 meters, you adjust the rhythm and finally sprint.
And 800 meters, you sprint all the way, the energy bar is not enough; you adjust the rhythm, the distance is too short, this is not long or short distance is very uncomfortable.
The same sitcom is also this problem, you are funny all the way, a laugh every few minutes, for the creator, too difficult; but you lay the groundwork, the audience watched for two minutes, directly changed the stage, sandwiched in the middle is not good.
Coupled with the fact that it is now the era of short videos, the audience will not see the reversal and laughter points in 15 seconds and will be cut off, and the decline of sitcoms is also an inevitability.
China's sitcoms, with "The Story of the Editorial Department" as the embryo and ending with the collapse of "Love Apartment 5", have experienced a development cycle of nearly 30 years, during which many classic good dramas have also been born.
Today we will take stock of the five highest-rated sitcoms in China in the past 30 years, helping everyone to regain their childhood memories, and we will also explore why Chinese sitcoms have entered a bottleneck.
—5—
"The Northeast Family"
In 2001, Douban scored 8.4 points
You may not have seen "The Northeast Family", but you must have heard this popular saying: "Jade flowers, sauerkraut!" ”
This sentence comes from "Northeast Family".
"Northeast Family" is a Northeast sitcom directed by Yingda in 2001, and like "I Love My Home" eight years ago, this drama has a total of 120 episodes and tells the story of an ordinary family in Changchun, Jilin Province.
Uncle Niu, played by Li Qi, was a labor model before retirement, and after retirement, he still worries about his children's lives with his wife and children;
The eldest daughter, Niu Jihong, is a kindergarten teacher, divorced and remarried with her ex-husband, and the two have a 10-year-old son;
His son Niu Xiaowei worked in the factory before Uncle Niu retired, and in the wave of layoffs, he was not spared from becoming a laid-off worker, so he turned to business and opened a restaurant;
After the youngest daughter, Niu Xiaoling, graduated from vocational high school, she did not have a job and lived an old life at home.
The family got together and lived a tasteful life.
Of the 120 episodes, each episode is a separate story, with cameos by many big names in addition to a few main casts.
Zhang Tielin and Feng Xiaogang have guest appearances as thieves in the play, and they are zero-paid actors;
Shen Teng made a cameo appearance as a military brother in the play, and he revealed in the show that he took 500 yuan a day when he acted;
Wang Gang made a cameo appearance in the play as a fortune teller half-immortal;
Deng Chao made a cameo appearance in the play as a vulgar big money;
Although the whole drama is not as classic as "I Love My Home", the whole drama is very real, there is not much trace of artistic processing, and it records the life of ordinary people, which also gives people a certain inspiration in addition to being funny.
—4—
The Story of the Cooking Class
In 2002, Douban scored 8.8 points
In 2002, "The Story of the Cooking Class" was China's first military-themed sitcom, an exploration work of Shang Jing, the director of "Wulin Waichuan", and also the peak of Sha Yi's appearance, after which he starred in "Wulin Waichuan", and he never returned on the road to the comedy star.
The cooking class in the play has six characters with very different personalities.
The squad leader Fat Hong is seriously responsible, and the big things and small things are always dealt with at the first time, but they frequently make mistakes, causing a lot of jokes;
The deputy class elder has coveted the position of squad leader for a long time, loves to make small reports, loves to pull people's braids, and is a funny "villain" in the play;
The buyer is enthusiastic like a fire, but the impulsive personality is always good and does bad things;
Henan guys are not tall, have a lot of ghost ideas, and are the dog-headed military division in the team;
There is also a handsome beard with its own literary temperament, writing sour articles while steaming steamed buns;
And the little ginger that can eat and drink, and likes to brag.
So six living treasures gathered together, natural collision of countless sparks and wonderful, when this drama was broadcast, Pi Ge was still in elementary school, eating at noon while chasing this drama in eight sets of CCTV, becoming a happy time in my student days.
In fact, several characters of "Wulin Waichuan" can find similar archetypes from "The Story of the Cooking Class", in which Sha Yi, Fan Ming, and Jiang Chao are also the backbone members of "Wulin Waichuan".
Therefore, you can see "The Story of the Cooking Class" as a modern version of "Wulin Waichuan", this drama has been filmed in total, all of which have maintained a good reputation, and friends who like "Wulin Waichuan" must not miss this drama.
—3—
《Underground Transportation Station》
In 2007, Douban scored 9.3 points
Following "I Love My Home", "Northeast Family" and "Idle Centaur Big Sister", Indah launched a new sitcom "Underground Traffic Station" in 2007.
What is quite surprising is that the story of this drama takes place during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and in 1943, in a small town in the base area behind enemy lines, our underground party members and the Japanese puppet army launched a series of open and secret struggles.
It is reasonable to say that anti-Japanese dramas and sitcoms are mutually exclusive, so how can the scars of a nation be made into comedies as jokes? However, Yingda prefers to challenge the high difficulty, and he said in an interview that he will make "Underground Traffic Station" into a Chinese version of "Tiger's Mouth Escape", so that the audience will be influenced by revolutionary optimism while laughing.
To some extent, "Underground Traffic Station" has realized Yingda's wishes, and the whole drama has created a lot of wonderful villain roles, and some netizens have summarized a god summary on the summary -
"Captain Jia, the male god of East Asia, the golden standard of the two sleeves of the breeze, the pro-Japanese cai shuigen, the soul of the gossip Sun Treasurer, the Chinese the tenth level of black vine jun, the tea and rice do not think about the wild Jiri jun, the concise and concise translation, the empty ear Tianhou Qi old lady."
Among them, Captain Jia has gone out of the circle and become a B station red, because of his existence, "Underground Traffic Station" has also occupied the top few of the B station TV series list for many years.
However, "Underground Traffic Station" is an anti-Japanese drama after all, the biggest problem of this drama is that the protagonist cannot be brilliant, after all, a comedy can not joke with the underground party members of our army, and can only rely on the villain to play ugly to make the audience laugh.
Just like Lu Yi in "The Name of the People" and Liu Ye in "No War in Peiping", the role that is too bright is not easy to shine, which is also the biggest regret of this drama.
But Yingda's bold spirit of exploration is still worthy of affirmation, and the whole drama also uses a comedic tone to reveal the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China, in addition to being funny, it can feel a lot of bitter taste, and sure enough, the core of comedy is tragedy.
—2—
"I Love My Home"
In 1993, Douban scored 9.3 points
In the commentary sections of "Northeast Family" and "Underground Traffic Station", we all mentioned director Yingda. Last year, CCTV launched a comedy program "Gold Medal Comedy Class", in which Yingda also served as mentors with Chen Peisi and Guo Degang.
Chen Peisi and Guo Degang are masters of the sketch world and the cross-talk industry respectively, and it is understandable that many young people do not know Yingda and have posted questions: How can Indah He De be a mentor for comedy programs?
There are many labels on Yingda: he is Song Dandan's ex-husband, a high-achieving student who graduated from Peking University, and his father is Ying Ruocheng, who was a former vice minister of culture.
However, there is one label that stands out the most, he is the director of "I Love My Home", which is the real pioneering work of Chinese sitcoms, even if he later shoots "Northeast Family", "Underground Traffic Station" and other works, with a "I Love My Home", Yingda is eligible to sit next to Chen Peisi and Guo Degang.
In 1987, Yingda returned to China from studying abroad and looking for opportunities in various crew running halls, when Beijing Renyi was rehearsing a play "Arsonist", he ran to be an assistant director, met the actor Song Dandan in the play, and the two became lovers as soon as they came and went.
In the following four years, Song Dandan became a household name by acting in the Spring Festival Gala sketch, while Yingda still ran the dragon set, and he urgently needed a chance to prove himself.
In 1992, Wang Shuo's "The Story of the Editorial Board" was broadcast to cause a huge response, this drama has the prototype of a sitcom, Yingda just happened to study in the United States, studied the creation mode of sitcoms, and he saw opportunities in this drama.
After the "Story of the Editorial Department" fire, Wang Shuo launched a new drama "Love You Is Not Negotiable", and as a result, he encountered Waterloo, and under the discouragement, he ran to Hainan to relax.
Yingda took the baton from Wang Shuo and followed the creative ideas of "The Story of the Editorial Department" and wrote a two-page story synopsis, and after Wang Shuo read the synopsis at the wine table, he gave the play a name with a red face, called "I Love My Home".
Yingda found Wen Xingyu, Song Dandan, Yang Lixin, Liang Tian and other powerful actors, and then pulled his Peking University brother Liang Zuo as a screenwriter, Liang Zuo is the screenwriter of the classic cross-talk "Tiger Mouth Reverie" and "Thief Company".
In this way, China's first epoch-making sitcom was born.
"I Love My Home" premiered for 40 episodes in 1993 and continued with 80 episodes the following year, becoming a phenomenon-level hit of the year.
This 120-episode sitcom focuses on a family of six in Beijing in the 1990s, and the whole drama uses vivid characters and funny things to reflect the spiritual outlook of all levels of Chinese society after the reform and opening up.
The show has several characteristics.
The first is that the laughter point is dense, and many stems are born, among which there is the familiar "Ge You Lie";
The second is the real laughter, we later saw the sitcom, most of the laughter is the post-matched, and this drama is invited to the audience to record the real on the spot, one of the episodes has a particularly unique and sharp laugh, that is, when Cai Ming went to the set to visit the class, she was amused by Ge You's performance, and her unique laughter was also included.
The third is that the story is not only a laugh, in fact, this drama is a hundred scenes in the 90s, the story of 120 episodes covers almost all the hot events and social phenomena of that era, and many of the laughs in the play are with spicy irony, and now it seems that it is still outdated.
"I Love My Home" is the beginning of chinese sitcoms, I did not expect the beginning to be the climax, and the subsequent sitcoms almost did not reach the height of this drama, until the "Wulin Waichuan" that came out in 2005.
—1—
Tales of The Martial Arts
In 2006, Douban scored 9.6 points
Douban 378,700 people rated 9.6 points, it is safe to say that "Wulin Waichuan" is the No.1 of Chinese sitcoms, it is China's real original sitcom.
Director Shang Jing made this landmark work after shooting a large number of sitcoms, and in the behind-the-scenes footage, the always humble Director Shang said that he was not sure how good "Wulin WaiChuan" was, but its innovation was obvious to all in the industry.
This is true, because the domestic sitcoms of the past 30 years have almost all referenced the creative model of American sitcoms.
Or imitate other people's comedy forms, such as "I Love My Home" and "The Story of the Cooking Class".
Or directly from the characters to the plot of a large section of borrowing, such as "Family with Children" to learn "Growing Pains", "Love Apartment" to learn "Friends", and some episodes even directly do Chinese.
Only "The Tale of Wulin" has created a new comedy with local Chinese characteristics, which we call "wuxia comedy", which uses the form of a chapter hui novel to interpret a scene of heroic and righteous stories in a small inn.
Compared with traditional sitcoms, its characters are more plump and three-dimensional, not simply for funny; its story, although independent, also has a certain continuity.
After this drama branded with originality was broadcast on CCTV Eight, it first appeared for a short period of time, and then quickly spread across the country and was replayed by many television stations at the same time.
The characters in the play are already familiar to everyone: Guo Furong, played by Yao Chen, who is brave and brave, Tong Treasurer, who is cold and hot inside, Bai Zhantang, a thief of Jiang Yang, played by Sha Yi, Lu Xiucai, who is full of books and angry, and Li Dazui, played by Jiang Chao, who has long become a classic image in the hearts of a generation.
The lines in the play are also deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, "mountains and seas", "sunflower point hole hands", "the son once knew", "hand over the stinky tofu egg to release the hostage", I believe that when you read these lines, your mind must be automatically played by voice.
When filming this drama, several main creators also suffered a lot.
In order to play Bai Zhantang, Sha Yi has to lose weight continuously;
In order to play Li Dazui, Jiang Chao must keep gaining weight;
Yao Chen, who graduated just 3 years ago, took over the play with a salary of 1,000 yuan per episode;
33-year-old Yan Ni was experiencing divorce at the time, and her life sank to a low point, until she was pulled to the crew by Shang Jing, giggling under the shell of the role, it can be said that Shang Jing's encouragement supported her to finish filming this drama and helped her usher in the take-off of her career.
There is also Yu Entai, who is also a talent in reality, and at the same time as filming "The Legend of Wulin", he became a doctoral student majoring in theater directing with the first place.
It is such a group of people who have a common pursuit of art that have come together to make this classic.
Of course, the real soul of the whole drama is actually Ning Caishen, and this drama has almost squeezed out all his talents.
Foreign "Friends" has 10 screenwriters, while "Wulin Wai biography" only has Ning Caishen alone, and the initial script is only 30 episodes, but later in order to repay the mortgage, Ning Caishen forcibly wrote 80 episodes.
After writing 80 episodes, Ning Caishen was completely squeezed dry, so that later the creative talent dried up, had to resort to drugs, and finally lost his reputation.
"Wulin Wai Biography" should have had 160 times, but in the end only the first 80 times were filmed, and the sequel of the last 80 times has not been filmed so far, I am afraid it is far away, which makes this drama also become the "broken arm Venus" in Chinese TV dramas, leaving the audience with endless regrets.
After reviewing these 5 classic sitcoms, it is not difficult to find that it has been a full 14 years since our closest "Underground Traffic Station", and the signs of the decline of Chinese sitcoms have become very obvious.
Later, the "Love Apartment" series was superficially prosperous and also cultivated a large number of new generations of fans, but the means of plagiarism outside the play and the shallow kitsch concept inside the play actually gave the domestic sitcom a fatal blow.
In the future, will sitcoms disappear completely and become artifacts of an era. We don't know if it will rise again and meet the audience in a new way.
But one thing is for sure, in this era of extremely developed Internet, it is becoming more and more difficult to make fun of the audience.
Comedy fragmentation is the trend of the times, when network strips, talk shows become the new favorite of the times, when the Spring Festival Gala sketches are becoming more and more boring, there is really not much room for sitcoms to survive.
The only thing we can do is to reminisce more about the classics of the past, and then let out a deep and helpless sigh.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: A Chicken
© Original 丨 Article Copyright: Ppdianying
Please do not reprint in any form without authorization