'What Does I.T. Really Stand For?'; The Brilliance of The IT Crowd, and why Graham Lineham's Comedy is So Important

There's a marked and primary difference between American and British sitcoms. Most, when asked, would probably say it's the humour, which is a valid point, but not the one I'm aiming at. Others might say that there tend to be more American sitcoms than British ones overall, and they often tend to be more successful, and again this is a great point, but I'm thinking of something else. And that's quality over quantity.

Both American serials and dramas tend to have something of an obsession with the number 20 through 25, because this is often the episode count for a season of production. On the other hand, British shows often only run for six or seven episodes, nine or ten at the most, and while the reason could be pegged to America having a more dedicated platform for media production, I would argue that it's the precedence of quality over quantity in the televisuals that they produce, and one man is at the forefront of this; Graham Lineham.

Graham Lineham - or 'Glinner' to much of his fan base - is the mastermind behind several of the most iconic and popular sitcoms in British television. His career broke out into the limelight in 1995 upon the release of his first full length television series, Father Ted. The sardonic show focused on the exploits of the eponymous Father Ted Crilly and the other larger than life inhabitants of his house on Craggy Isle, a remote and somewhat desolate Irish island seemingly cut-off from the rest of civilisation. Over the last eighteen years it has gone on to become one of the most enduring sitcoms in British televisual history, outlasting just about all of its ilk, and is still broadcast routinely to this day. Shortly after the close of his first hugely popular creation, Lineham's Black Books closely followed. Debuting in 2000, the show ran until 2004 for three hugely successful series, following the obscure day-to-day life of borderline psychotic bookshop owner Bernard Black and his friends Manny and Fran.

With the pre and post millennium-turning sitcom era over, it could have been assumed that Glinner's time as a creator of sitcoms was well and truly over, especially after two such popular television shows. But then, in 2006, Lineham returned with his third concurrent sitcom success. Despite getting off to something of a slow start, The IT Crowd became one of the most popular and iconically relevant programmes in recent years. The premise was simple, and brilliantly so; it followed the employees of the IT department of multi-billion dollar company Reynholm industries, who are confined to an office in the basement. The department is singularly composed of workshy Roy, socially inept genius Moss, and relationships manager Jen, and follows their day-to-day experiences doing the occasional oddjobs for the computer-oblivious workers upstairs, all the while coping with their prodigious ability to get into overwhelmingly awkward and overtly embarrassing situations.

The show succeeds on so many inimitable levels within it's medium. The actors and the characters they portray aren't the make-up drenched type that you'd expect from US production; while they're all very much likable, Moss and Roy are frequently social victims to their line of work and the awkwardness that comes with it, and Jen is, at one point, referred to as 'looking a bit like a man.' That said, the 'beautiful' people tend to exist in the world above, inhabiting the upper floors of the Reynholm Industries building, while the overlooked IT department are confined to the basement; quite literally basement dwellers, in the vein of the stereotyped dungeons and dragons players - an entire episode of which the show is based around. Of course, the characters wouldn't break free so brilliantly from their basic archetypes without one of the shows most important and excellent production aspects, and that's the writing. It's been remarked in the past by Chris O'Dowd that if he phrased a line differently to how it was written in the script, that would be the end of the take; Lineham's writing is careful and minutely controlled, and the comic timing with which the actors execute their lines adds all the more to the sheer presence of apparent quality in the writing and timing of the shows various plots.

However, what separates the IT Crowd most of all from its American sitcom counterparts is Lineham's creative control over it. His admirable quote on ending the series was that he 'didn't want to have the brain be dead but the body still rolling around on the floor.' On the 27th September, just two weeks ago, the show ended with a one-hour special, that being it's 25th episode, tying up the characters stories and bringing it to the close that it very much deserved. Where many sitcoms have a tendency to plow on based on ratings alone, regardless of artistic merit or the quality of production - I'm looking at The Big Bang Theory here, particularly - Lineham chose to end the IT Crowd despite consistently increasing ratings, an original and great premise and a dedicated fan base. It came to an end with its dignity intact and the knowledge that it was smarter than just about all other recent sitcoms.

If you were to watch all 25 episodes it would only take you around 10 hours, likely a little less than that, but those ten hours would be some of the most enjoyable television you could experience in this modern age. The episodes premises frequently revolve around the themes of social awkwardness, embarrassment, humiliation and, on a completely different note, Lineham's seeming obsession with making the concept death comical. They're cringeworthy because of how well they portray embarrassment in the modern age, instead of being cringeworthy for negative reasons - that they might be, simply but, bad. But in ten years time, when The Big Bang Theory enters it's nineteenth season and everyone's praying for something close to a dignified end for the show, one or two people might google the term 'shows like The Big Bang Theory.' And they might just stumble on a seasoned and exceedingly witty sitcom from the UK that ran for just four series before coming to a proper and perfect ending.

Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 16, 'Felina' - Review

'I was alive.'

With Felina, TV's greatest drama has come to an astonishing, redeeming, fulfilling end. Breaking Bad's final episode may not have tied up every single minute loose end, but certainly brought the tale of Walter White, chemistry teacher turned drug manufacturer to a brilliant finish. The show couldn't have ended any other way than the way it did.

After we see Walt steal a car, narrowly avoiding a police patrol and leaving his winter retreat, the Gilligan set up one of the tensest pieces of television that I've ever witnessed. I am, of course, referring to the sequence involving Walt's arrival at the Schwartz household. It was obvious from this point that Gilligan himself had directed and written the episode; the whole scene was pulled off with pure formal mastery and genius and, as per, it was impossible to tell whether Walt would apologise or kill both of them. But he didn't. He asked for Andrew and Gretchen to deliver his remaining nine million dollars to his son upon his eighteenth birthday, but as a gift from them, rather than from himself. From this point there's a real and noticeable absence of pride and egotism in Walt, although not completely; he still exercises a strong precedence of fear of the Schwartz's, claiming to have two world-class hitman waiting just outside with sniper dots on their chests, threatening to have them killed if the money never gets passed on... Which appears to be true. That is, until Walt returns to his car and we discover that the two best hitmen west of the Mississippi are in fact Badger and Skinny Pete, armed with laser pointers.

We then see Walt intruding on a meeting between Todd and Lydia, apparently attempting to set up a business deal that is completely and utter false on his part. But what it does allow him is to swap Lydia's tea sweetener for something a little less savoury, that being a dose of ricin. This is made clear by the slow zoom from above, down into the contents of the cup. After this, we see Skyler leave a conversation with Marie that converges into the slow reveal that Walt is standing across from her in the kitchen of her new temporary home. He gives her the lottery ticket alluding to the location of Hank and Steve Gomez's bodies and asks her to strike a deal with the prosecutors. More importantly, in a very poignant moment, he readily admits for the first time that he has done everything for himself. The execution of this line was one of the best Cranston has ever pulled off in the series, to the point of being captivating as the character himself; there wasn't a trace of the actor beneath the beard and straggly hair. He sees his baby and his son one last time before leaving for Uncle Jack's 'clubhouse'.

Prior to this we see him out in the desert, creating a rotating mechanism that works via transmission of his car keys. Before Jack states that he will kill Walt, he brings in Jesse, chained and scarred, for Walt to see that he is not a liar and is indeed been held captive, rather than working as a partner of Jack's crew. Walt pretends to attack Jesse, landing them both on the floor before clicking his car keys and triggering the mechanism, revealing that it is connected to his previously purchased M60 and acts as a rotating device, firing round after round into the clubhouse. This, combined with Walt and Jesse's subsequent revenge against Uncle Jack and Todd, respectively, made for a final vengeful moment that Walt and Jesse shared, proving that they always beat the enemies in their line of business. More so, it acted to establish that Walt no longer cares about recovering his lost money, after Jack attempts to strike a deal with him before Walt shoots him at point blank range.

There was a real and genuine poignancy in the final moments between Walt and Jesse. After Walt has called Lydia to inform her of her impending and unavoidable fate in the most unsympathetic of ways, they share a moment as Jesse is about to get in the car and leave. He looks at Walt and Walt looks back at him, and all they do is nod to each other. Nothing else needs to be said. We know everything that's happened between them, and so do they, as they both realise how their partnership has come to a necessary end. But there's a real sense of gladness between the two, a mutual understanding about the events that occurred over the past two years that would be hard to imitate in any other franchise. It was wonderful to see Jesse riding off into a more solid future, finally in control of where he chooses to go in his life, and hopefully it's a reflection of the woodworking Jesse we saw earlier in the episode, handcrafting a storage box in a unfilled workshop.

Coming to the end of Breaking Bad, as we look down at Walter Hartwell White, aka Heisenberg, drug manufacturer legend and extraordinaire, and above all, family man, you suddenly realise that this has been a story about the celebration of life. As Walt laid his hand on the canister for the last time, almost a goodbye to an old partner in crime, I thought back to the episodes most beautifully honest line; 'I felt alive.' At it's heart this is a story about life, but it's also about reaching a real form of life by rebelling against societal constraints and really doing something bold and dangerous. It's easy to forget that the entire series only takes place over the time frame of just over two years. It's amazing to think about how far Walt has come in two years and I'm betting that, in the world of the show, he's experienced more in that time than he'd ever experienced prior to one wacky day in which he ended up riding through the desert in an RV in nothing but a pair of boots, his underwear and a gas mask, alongside his unconscious ex-student-turned-dealer, having cooked a batch of illegal substances, all the while with two bodies rolling around in the back. Strangely enough I was reminded of the character of Lester Burnham in Sam Mendes's American Beauty; here we have a man who makes one simple decision to change his life forever, and things are never the same.

For all it's drama and heartache, this has been a genuinely funny and ingenious TV show, and one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Staring up at the ceiling of the lab in his final moments, I hope and bet that Walter White didn't regret a single thing that he did, because I certainly didn't regret watching it, and most of all I didn't regret going along on this psychotic journey with him.