French cable TV channel Canal Plus is bringing French television its first stand-up comedy shows. Reportedly, France has had sketch comedy on TV but not stand-up and “no tradition of comedy clubs as in Britain and America.”
I’ve seen some British stand-up comedy; it didn’t seem particularly different from the American version that I know. I wonder if there will be cultural differences in France.
A surprising thing when I lived in Japan was that there were no situation comedies on TV. They had some dramas with more humor than most (often based on children’s manga [comic books]), but they were at most “dramedies” not sitcoms. Of course, now there are fewer and fewer sitcoms on American TV. It used to be almost every weeknight had two half-hour sitcoms followed by two one-hour dramas on the then-three networks. Now there are reality shows, more news magazines, and more dramas.