Funny Business
Encyclopedia
Funny Business is a documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 style television series about the craft of comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 consisting of six 50-minute episodes. The first episode aired in the UK 22 November 1992. The show was also shown in Germany and released on video. It was directed by David Hinton. The writers were Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...

, Robin Driscoll
Robin Driscoll
Robin Driscoll is a British actor and writer, best known as a writer of Mr. Bean. He and Rowan Atkinson are close friends.He appeared with Rowan Atkinson in Laughing Matters - Visual Comedy, a documentary on the mechanics of visual humour....

, and David Hinton
David Hinton
-Life:He studied Chinese at Cornell University, and in Taiwan. He lives in East Calais, Vermont.-Awards:* 1997 Academy of American Poets Harold Morton Landon Translation Award* fellowship from the Witter Bynner Foundation...

. It was produced by Tiger Television Productions.

The show featured appearances by many comedians, including Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...

 who made an appearance both as the presenter/narrator, and as an aspiring comedy actor named Kevin. Atkinson demonstrated many of the principles of comedy (slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

, mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...

, etc) in a manner which was instantly identifiable to anyone familiar with his Mr. Bean
Mr. Bean
Mr. Bean is a British comedy television programme series of 14 half-hour episodes written by and starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character. Different episodes were also written by Robin Driscoll, Richard Curtis and one by Ben Elton. The pilot episode was broadcast on ITV on 1 January 1990,...

 character.

Episode list

  1. Visual Comedy
  2. No title
  3. No title
  4. Murphy Brown
  5. Let There Be Love
  6. A Question of Taste

Visual comedy

In this episode, it is claimed that the three principal mechanics behind (visual) comedy are for an object or person to
  1. behave in an unusual way
  2. be in an unusual place
  3. be of the wrong size


The documentary then goes on to show these mechanics at work in different embodiments, each time illustrated with examples of mostly early visual comedy.

In a central part of the documentary, Atkinson emphasizes the need to deliver the comedy with a carefully crafted attitude. The character behind the comedy is at least as important as the techniques used. He claims that Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

, who is considered one of the greatest comedians of all time, and arguably the greatest of his time, does not make us laugh anymore today, because his character is outdated, despite the fact that his usage of the techniques of visual comedy is probably without par.
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