That joke isn’t funny anymore

Earlier this year, Comedy Central started broadcasting free to air via cable in Germany.

Finally! Finally! Some decent comedy. Arrested Development, Chapelle’s Show, Extras, Little Britain, Green Wing. It sounded too good to be true.

Unfortunately it was. Because some bright spark – let’s call him Brains – decided to translate, ‘localise’ and dub all the shows – and badly. In doing so, Brains has actually managed to remove the humour lock, stock and barrel from some of the finest and funniest shows around.

Let me give you an example from an episode of Little Britain. There is one recurring sketch with a middle-aged woman and her long-suffering husband. The scene is always the same, sitting in a restaurant. Every time, the woman finds some way of levering into the conversation the fact that she was a bridesmaid at Mollie Sugden’s wedding. Typically it starts off with something like, “I’ll have a glass of Mollie. Ooh I mean water. Did someone say Mollie Sugden?” And off she goes.

Mollie Sugden, for the benefit of those of you scratching your heads, was an actress most famous for her role in a popular ‘70s/’80s British sitcom called Are you being served – a show whose jokes revolved around cheeky innuendo and tiresome catchphrases. Sugden played an old battleaxe called Mrs Slocombe who made endless references to her pussy – meaning her cat of course.

Anyway, Mollie Sugden has barely graced a TV screen since the BBC pulled the plug on Are you being served in 1985. When she has – say on Noel’s House Party – you could bet your crinkly bottom dollar she was only there to mention her withered old pussy.

So essentially, the joke of the Little Britain sketch is based around the fact that Mollie Sugden isn’t famous anymore, yet this woman in the restaurant wants to tell her pathetic claim to fame to the whole world. Admittedly, it’s one of the poorer sketches on Little Britain. Nevertheless, there is at least a hint of humour there. Until Brains at Comedy Central got his hands on it, and decided it needed knocking into shape for a German audience.

It must have gone something like this: “Who the hell is Mollie Sugden? Don’t know. Shall I ask someone? Naaa. Tap it into Google. Ah look, Wikipedia says she’s a famous British actress. Ok but no one in Germany will have heard of her. Let’s replace her with someone else. Someone British and famous. Got it! Victoria Beckham. Genius.”

Yes folks, they have actually written out Mollie Sugden and replaced her with Victoria Beckham. Ooops. Only one problem with that. Like it or not, Victoria Beckham is a megastar, an A-list celeb. Poor old Mollie is the very essence of a Z-lister. By morphing Sugden into Beckham, what’s left is a rather tepid sketch with a woman proudly telling the world she did something many others would love to have done – and would also love to boast about.

This sloppiness shouldn’t surprise anyone who has ever watched MTV Germany – the sister channel of Comedy Central. Because they seem to invest little thought and even less money in dubbing and subtitling their US shows for Germany.

That results quite frequently in some terrible bloopers – misinterpretations caused by not listening properly, not understanding properly – or by guessing.

One mistake will remain forever etched in my memory. It was an episode of The Osbournes – the fly on the wall ‘reality’ show following the deranged Osbourne family. Unlike normal episodes, there were no dogs shitting on carpets or people throwing joints of ham into the neighbours’ garden. This one just had Ozzy reflecting on his life. He talked about growing up in Birmingham and about how his parents worked hard to provide for the family. One of the things he said was (paraphrased): “We were a poor family but we never went without, there was always food on the table.” The German subtitle?: “Wir hatten nie was zu essen” – we never had anything to eat.

You couldn’t make it up. Unless you work for MTV, of course.