Love and marriage, Love and marriage...

Is there anymore more American than the sitcom? Frasier, Seinfeld, King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, Married with Children...the list goes on and on and on and on and on. When one thinks of Russian television, one tends to think about the strictly supervised news programs of the Soviet era, and even today political satire is suppressed and news programs present only the Kremlin's point of view. However, in recent years, adaptations of American sitcoms have become among the most popular shows in Russia, the most prominent being Счастливы вместе - an adaptation of Married with Children. However, the significance of this story is not that America makes by far the best TV shows, no, the fact that sitcoms, which are almost universally about middle class people and poke fun at the lives of the well off, are now popular in Mother Russia, which means that more and more people in Russia are able to relate to the people in these shows. When sitcoms were first introduced in Russia during the 1990s, they had very poor ratings because people were simply not interested in watching comedy which they could not relate to.

Here are clips from both the American and Russian versions of Married with Children. There definately seem to be similarities...Oh! They both have a dog!

THE ARTICLE

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/world/europe/10sitcom.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

THE SHOW

THE ORIGINAL