{"id":97877,"date":"2025-08-28T04:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/97877\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T04:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:20:08","slug":"the-greatest-comedy-director-ever-according-to-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/97877\/","title":{"rendered":"The greatest comedy director ever, according to science"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out)<\/p>\n

Thu 28 August 2025 1:00, UK <\/p>\n

How can we identify what makes some forms of comedy<\/a> better than others? Are some kinds of humour just smarter? And how is it that there are some things that make us laugh when we know they shouldn\u2019t?\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are certain movies that use a specific kind of humour that sometimes feels \u2018beneath us\u2019. We don\u2019t want to admit to having a high-brow taste in comedy, of course, what\u2019s more pathetic than that? But we certainly know that liking something like Mrs Brown\u2019s Boys is enough to blacklist you from ever having the TV remote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Overly crude jokes, toilet humour and dated, predictable punchlines are certainly inferior to witty, more subtle kinds of comedy, but who am I to decide? We all have our own sense of humour, and life would be no fun if the same things made us all laugh. It\u2019s such a subjective thing that we can\u2019t really pick one filmmaker, for example, to crown as the greatest in the comedy genre, so that\u2019s where we turn to science\u2019s analytical hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are many people you could put in the running for the best comedy director, like Mel Brooks, Albert Brooks<\/a>, Woody Allen (if we ignore his heinous controversies, of course), Billy Wilder, or Frank Capra. The answer backed by science might surprise you, though, because the so-called \u2018greatest comedy director\u2019 certainly made many popular comedies, but whether they are actually good is another question altogether. <\/p>\n

According to Livio Bioglio and Ruggero G Pensa\u2019s research, entitled \u2018Identification of key films and personalities in the history of cinema from a Western perspective\u2019, \u201cThe success of a film is usually measured through its box-office revenue or through the opinion of professional critics; such measures, however, may be influenced by external factors, such as advertisement or trends, and are not able to capture the impact of a film over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, their \u201cobjective is to measure the success of a movie by accounting how much it has influenced other movies produced after its release, from both the artistic and the economic point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their findings suggest that in the comedy category, Gerald Thomas sits at number one. You might not even know who that is, but you\u2019ve almost definitely seen one of his films, because he\u2019s the man responsible for directing almost every Carry On movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carry On movies are objectively not good, but they\u2019re a British cultural institution. Relying on bawdy \u2018Oh matron!\u2019 humour, casual sexism, racism, and everything in between, the long-running series is still broadcast every Christmas season, and you\u2019d be lying if you said you haven\u2019t enjoyed at least one in the aftermath of the haze of a massive meal. It\u2019s not something that you might be proud to admit, especially when you can identify the films\u2019 many flaws, but there\u2019s something about the series which has long caused people to revisit them for nostalgia\u2019s sake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of what the Carry On series got away with would not fly today by a mile, and so they feel like a relic of a bygone era in British cinema, when humour was much simpler, cringey sex jokes were the height of comedy, and Sid James somehow secured leading roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas might not have helmed cinematic excellence, directing Carry On Screaming, Carry On Doctor, Carry On Camping<\/a>, Carry On Cleo, and Carry On Matron, but his work has been, like it or not, incredibly influential in building the British comedy backbone. These films were accessible, imbued with a working-class charm that made them light, relatable, and raw. Meanwhile, the use of satire to poke fun at genres like the western, the historical epic, and period dramas, as well as authority in general, allowed them a free and fun run of the cinematic playground, the likes of which you just don\u2019t see anymore. The delivery may be flawed, but there\u2019s a lot to learn, and that\u2019s just the science.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out) Thu 28 August 2025 1:00, UK How can we identify what makes some forms of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[30276,48058,2973,96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-97877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-british-cinema","tag-british-film","tag-comedy","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}