Hello Habr! I'm back!
Many have very warmly received my previous . Thank you so much for this!
As I promised, I have prepared a continuation of the cycle and I hope you will also like the new article.
Today we will talk about three, in my opinion, the main comedy series in the field of IT. Many are now in quarantine, many are working. This compilation hopefully helps you through this difficult time. Someone to get away from problems, someone to relax after work, someone to keep a little positive.
As before, I must warn conservative readers of Habr.
Disclaimer
I understand that Habrahabr readers are people working in the IT industry, experienced users and avid geeks. This article does not contain any important information and is not educational. Here I would like to share my opinion about the series, but not as a film critic, but as a person from the IT world. If you agree or disagree with me on some issues, let's discuss them in the comments. Tell us your opinion. It will be interesting.
If, as before, you find the format worthy of your attention, I promise to make a few more articles about series and films in IT. The next plan is an article about IT philosophy in cinema and an article about the only feature series in IT based on historical facts of the 80s. Well, enough words! Let's get started!
Carefully! Spoilers.
Third place. The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory is an American sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, who, along with Stephen Molaro, were the show's head writers. The series premiered on September 24, 2007 on CBS and ended its final season on May 16, 2019.
Plot
Two brilliant physicists Leonard and Sheldon are great minds who understand how the universe works. But their genius does not help them to communicate with people, especially with women. Everything begins to change when the beautiful Penny settles opposite them. It is also worth noting a couple of strange friends of these physicists: Howard Wolowitz, who likes to use phrases in different languages, including Russian, and Rajesh Koothrappali, who is speechless (literally) at the sight of women.
Here the reader involuntarily raises the question: βThey are physicists. What does IT have to do with it? The fact is that in 2007 the premiere of the film took place, which means that the plot of the first season (or at least the first episodes) was written somewhere in 2005. In those years, IT was not as popular as it is now. An ordinary IT specialist seemed to the layman a strange, unkempt eccentric who always looks at the monitor and is removed from life. Every self-respecting physicist or mathematician knew at least one programming language to get the job done. The show also talks about it. Many heroes themselves write applications, programs, and even try to make money on it in several episodes.
Heroes
The most famous character to the audience is the Doctor Sheldon Lee Cooper.
Sheldon studies theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology and lives in the same apartment with his colleague and friend Leonard Hofstadter and on the same landing with Penny.
Sheldon's personality is so unusual that he has become one of the most popular television characters. A brilliant scientist, absorbed in theoretical physics from an early age, in his development he did not acquire sufficient social skills. The prudent and cynical Sheldon has a discrete (digital) thinking, he is deprived of the usual sensitivity, empathy and a number of other important emotions, which, along with hypertrophied conceit, causes a significant part of the funny situations in the series. However, his sympathetic nature is shown in some episodes.
Interesting facts about Sheldon:
- Dr. Cooper is played by actor James Joseph Parsons, who was the oldest actor on the set. At the start of the series, he was 34 years old, and he played a 26-year-old theoretical physicist
- Sheldon's last name is the same as the name of the famous American physicist Leon Neil Cooper, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the first name is the same as the name of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1979, Sheldon Lee Glashow
- Sheldon's mother, Mary, is a very devout Evangelical Christian, and her spiritual beliefs often conflict with Sheldon's scientific work.
- Separately about Sheldon, the series "Young Sheldon" (Young Sheldon) was filmed. Personally, I did not like the series at all, but I could not not mention it
Leonard Hofstadter
Leonard is an experimental physicist with an IQ of 173 who received his PhD at age 24 and shares an apartment with his friend and colleague Sheldon Cooper. Leonard and Sheldon are the main comic duo in every episode of the series. Penny, Leonard and Sheldon's neighbor on the landing, is Leonard's main interest, and their relationship is the driving force behind the entire series.
Leonard also had relationships with friend and colleague Leslie Winkle, surgeon Stephanie Barnett, North Korean spy Joyce Kim, and Raj's sister Priya Koothrappali.
Interesting facts about Leonard:
- His mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, is a psychiatrist with a Ph.D. In the series, Leonard's mother has a separate storyline, as she and her son have strong disagreements and misunderstandings.
- Leonard wears glasses, suffers from asthma and lactose intolerance.
- Drives a Saab 9-5, presumably 2003
- The main characters of the series are named Sheldon and Leonard in honor of the famous actor and television producer Sheldon Leonard.
Cutie Penny
Penny is one of the main characters of the series, a young and attractive girl, Leonard and Sheldon's neighbor on the landing. From the first days of moving in, she has been a romantic and sexual interest for Leonard. She has an attractive appearance and personality that greatly distinguishes her from the rest of Leonard's friends, who are serious scientists.
Penny works as a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory, where friends often go. However, Penny dreams of becoming an actress. She regularly attends acting classes. Penny's financial situation is usually deplorable (she often does not pay her bills for light, television, has to buy insurance "in a sharashka in the Cayman Islands", dine at the expense of Leonard and Sheldon, uses their Internet connection (which somewhat annoys Sheldon, in in particular, he puts passwords like "Penny is a freeloader" or "Penny get your own wi-fi" (no spaces), while in one of the episodes he lends Penny a large amount of money with the wording "give it back as soon as you can") Penny is kind, but that's all but assertive, so it contrasts very much with the characters of the guys.
Howard Wolowitz
Wolowitz has an original way of dressing: he wears T-shirts over a shirt-front, tight jeans and slip-ons. Plus, almost always, as an attribute, you can see a badge pinned to clothes. In everyday clothes, the badge (most often in the form of an alien's head) flaunts on the collar of a turtleneck or shirtfront on the left side.
Buckles can be attributed to Howard's weaknesses. According to costume designer Mary Quigley, the buckles for Wolowitz's belt are selected by the performer himself, depending on what the next episode is about, or simply "according to the mood." Simon Helberg has a large collection of buckles (whole shelves in the dressing room are filled with Wolowitz's buckles alone), and Mary is constantly looking for additions to this collection or creating new forms herself for upcoming episodes. The general fascination of the actor and his character with this piece of clothing is reminiscent of the general fascination with Flash T-shirts of Jim Parsons and Sheldon Cooper, who he plays. According to Helberg, the tight-fitting costumes and wild choice of accessories (including an eye patch in one of the episodes) are connected with Howard's hope to attract the attention of girls in this way.
Rajesh Koothrappali
The main feature of Raj is his pathological fear of women and, as a result, his inability to talk to them. In addition, he cannot speak to people in the presence of women or effeminate men. However, Raj can talk to the fair sex under the following circumstances: under the influence of alcohol, under the influence of drugs, or if he is related to a woman by blood ties.
What did you like about the show
- Good humor. Uncomplicated, but without toilet jokes
- Understandable characters and problems. The series tells about the problem known to everyone since the school bench - nerds and cool
- Positive attitude. Happyend is a good thing
What did not like
- Too long duration. The disease of all sitcoms
- Distance from IT. One way or another, there are very few jokes about IT
For me, The Big Bang Theory is the best chewing gum series ever. You can turn it on in the background while you work remotely from home and not follow any plot twists, or you can turn on the series after a hard day and βunload your brainsβ with a pleasant company. Again, itβs not scary if there is a child nearby and watches the series with you.
Second place. Geeks (The IT Crowd)
Have you tried turning it off and on again? If you have ever heard this question, then you probably know that it came from this series. The British comedy series The IT Crowd, which aired from 2006 to 2010 and received a special final episode in 2013, has become a cult comedy series about IT infrastructure.
Plot
The IT Crowd takes place in the offices of a fictional British corporation in central London. The plot revolves around the antics of a three-person information technology support team working in a dirty, run-down basement, in stark contrast to the splendor of modern architecture and the magnificent views of London available to the rest of the organization.
Moss and Roy, two techies, are portrayed as ridiculous nerds or, as Denholm described them, "common nerds". Despite the company's extreme dependence on their services, they are despised by the rest of the employees. Roy's annoyance is expressed in his unwillingness to answer calls to tech support, hoping the phone will stop ringing, and in using tape recordings with the standard advice: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" and βIs it definitely plugged in?β Mauss's wide and intricate knowledge of the technical fields is expressed in his extremely precise and at the same time completely incomprehensible sentences. However, Moss shows a complete inability to solve practical problems: put out the fire or remove the spider.
Heroes
Roy Trenneman
Roy is a lazy engineer, trying by all means to avoid fulfilling his duties. Roy constantly consumes junk food and despises his own position, although he has all the knowledge possible to fully carry out his work. Also, Roy is a big fan of comics and often reads them instead of working. In each subsequent series, he appears in a new T-shirt with emblems of various computer games, programs, famous quotes, etc. Before Reinholm Industries (the very company where IT people work), Roy worked as a waiter and, if he was rude, put customer orders to himself pants before serving them to the table.
Maurice Moss
Maurice is a typical computer scientist, as he is presented. The owner of encyclopedic knowledge about computers, but is absolutely incapable of solving elementary everyday problems. His overly specific statements seem comical. He lives with his mother and often hangs out on dating sites. Both Maurice and Roy believe they deserve more than the company values ββthem.
Jen Barber
Jen, a new member of the team, is hopelessly retarded in terms of technology, despite stating on her resume that she has "great experience with computers". Since Denholm, the head of the company, is also technically illiterate, Jen's bluff at the interview convinces him, and he appoints her head of the IT department. Her official job title is later changed to "relationship manager", but despite this, her attempts to build rapport between technicians and the rest of the staff mostly backfire, putting Jen in situations as ridiculous as those of her department mates.
What did you like about the show
- Simple and clear humor
- Chamber series (5 seasons). Due to the short duration, the series does not have time to get bored
What did not like
- British humor. Some may like it, some may not, but for a wide audience, this is more of a minus than a plus.
- Obsession. Where the series started, where it ended. The plot here is more for show. Although the fans βshakenβ the final episode from the creators, the sediment remained
- Labels. In this series, in no other, the characters are like in a comic book. It's all very formulaic.
Personally, I didn't like the show at all. I am not a fan of British humor and jokes about PMS and stuffing a sandwich in my pants, not for me. However, many of Habr's readers love this series. And this is understandable, it was the only humorous series about IT (and indeed, the only series directly about our work).
A movie worth mentioning. Personnel (The Internship)
One of the few (if not the only) comedy film about IT. If very briefly about the film, then the plot of the film is as follows: two friends who exchanged their fifth decade and were fired from their jobs, get a job as interns in a successful Internet corporation. Not only do they, who have been engaged in sales all their lives, understand little about high technologies, but also the bosses are half their age and just as much more incomprehensible. But endurance and some kind of experience will help even in the most difficult situations. Or they won't help. Or help, but not them ...
First place. Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is an American comedy series created by Dave Krinsky, John Altshuler and Mike Judge about the business of Silicon Valley. The television series premiered on April 6, 2014 on HBO. The sixth season premiered on October 27, 2019 and ended on December 8, 2019.
Ours in the city
In Russia, the rights to show the series were received by the company Amediateka. Due to the fact that the translation, which was made by "Amediateka", did not like the audience very much, the "Cube in the Cube" studio took up the localization. Yes, there was profanity in the translation (which is quite acceptable, since the series has an 18+ rating). Yes, amateur translation. And yes, the localization of the "Cube" is many times better than the localization of "Amediateka".
"Dice" successfully translated the series until the third episode of the fifth season. At this point, Amediateka officially banned third-party studios from translating the series.
Angry fans wrote petitions for two years and finally got their way. Silicon Valley was translated from start to finish by Cube in Cube and distributed through the Amediateki service.
That's what it means cool community!
Plot
Eccentric entrepreneur Erlich Bachmann once made money on the Aviato flight search application. He opens a start-up incubator in his house, gathering IT specialists with interesting ideas. So the programmer "nerd" Richard Hendrix, Pakistani Dinesh, Canadian Gilfoyle and Nelson "Bashka" Bighetti appear in his house.
While working at the Internet corporation Hooli (analogous to Google), Richard simultaneously developed and began to promote the Pied Piper media player. The application, which, according to the original plan, helped to find copyright infringement, no one was interested. However, it turned out that it was based on a revolutionary data compression algorithm, which Richard later called "Middle-Out" ("From the center out"), which is a combination of popular lossless data compression algorithms to this day, both from right to left, but existing there is still no implementation of the middle-out algorithm. Richard leaves Hooli and accepts an invitation from venture capital company Raviga, which is ready to finance the project. Erlich's house becomes the office of the future company, who proposes to organize a startup called Pied Piper.
Bachmann's friends form the core of the project and begin to refine it to a commercial state. During the presentation of ideas at the TechCrunch forum, the algorithm shows outstanding compression efficiency without loss of video quality, and several investors are showing interest in it. The Hooli company and the unscrupulous billionaire Russ Hanneman show particular attention to the algorithm. Ehrlich and Richard refuse to sell the algorithm to Hooli and decide to set up their own platform and sell a cloud storage service. The company is gradually expanding, hiring staff and going through all the growing pains of a young project. Richard's former colleagues at Hooli also don't waste time trying to crack his code and figure out how it works.
Pied Piper does not βtake offβ immediately, but as a result, the mass use of the new service by customers begins.
Heroes
Richard Hendrix
Richard invented and created the "Pied Piper" program, which is designed to find musical matches, when he lived in the Ehrlich incubator with his best friend "Bashka" and fellow geeks like Dinesh and Gilfoyle. The Pied Piper compression algorithm caused a bidding war and eventually received funding from Peter Gregory's Raviga company. After winning the TechCrunch Disrupt and earning $50, Richard and Pied Piper find themselves in the spotlight more than ever, which means non-stop thrills for Richard.
Jared Dunn
Donald "Jared" Dunn was an executive at Hooli and right-hand man of the company's CEO, Gavin Belson, but after gaining a particular interest in Richard's algorithm, he left his job at Hooli to work for Pied Piper.
Jared was raised by a number of foster parents, but despite this difficult early childhood, he continued to study at Vassar College, receiving a bachelor's degree.
Although his real name is Donald, Gavin Belson started calling him "Jared" on his first day at Hooley and the name stuck.
Dinesh Chugtai
Dinesh lives and works in an incubator with Richard, "Bashka" and Gilfoyle. He has a composure and coding skills (especially Java). Dinesh often clashes with Gilfoyle.
He is originally from Pakistan, but unlike Gilfoyle, is a US citizen.
He claims that it took him five years to become a US citizen.
Bertram Gilfoyle
Gilfoyle lives and works in an incubator with the boys. He is pompous and claims to be well versed in system architecture, networking, and security. Gilfoyle often squabbles with Dinesh over such things as their work efficiency, Dinesh's Pakistani ethnicity, Gilfoyle's religion, and other minor issues.
Often, Gilfoyle wins these arguments or comes to a dead end with Dinesh. He is a self-proclaimed LaVey Satanist and has an inverted cross tattooed on his right arm. His personality is that of an indifferent programmer who has libertarian tendencies. To say he's weird is an understatement.
Gilfoyle is originally from Canada and was an illegal immigrant up until the Charter, in which he received a visa after pressure from Dinesh.
Gilfoyle has a degree from McGill University and MIT, an unknown subject (probably Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering due to its insane hardware capabilities).
Gilfoyle is also a former drummer and has played in many major bands in Toronto.
Monica Hall
Monika joined Raviga in 2010, has made a rapid rise under Peter Gregory and is now the youngest partner in Raviga's history. Previously, she was an analyst at McKinsey and Co. Monica is not involved in software development.
She is passionate about both the consumer and healthcare sectors and has written several academic articles relating to consumer and patient rights. Monica received a bachelor's degree in economics from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford Business School.
Erlich Bachmann
Erlich runs a technology incubator where Richard, "Bashka", Dinesh, and Gilfoyle live and work in exchange for 10 percent of their potential business. Ehrlich is clinging to his glory days when he sold aviation startup Aviato, a move that, at least in his mind, allows him to be the ruler of an incubator over other tech nerds. He still drives a car adorned with lots of Aviato logos and smokes a lot of weed.
What did you like about the show
- IT humor. Most of the jokes will be understood only by people working in our field
- Chamber series (5 seasons). Due to the short duration, the series does not have time to get bored
- Mirroring with our world. Many of the characters are made or they talk about certain scientists in the field of IT
- Crafted characters. You worry about the success of these nerds and feel them like real people, and not like heroes from a comic book
- Business. There are many really working business schemes in the series that you can learn.
- Reliability. It's rare when you see a real IT job and sincerely laugh at the embarrassment that happens every day at work
What did not like
- Content strictly 18+
- Let us down the ending
"Silicon Valley" can rightfully be called the best humorous series about the IT industry. Watching it, you forget about all the little things. Although it is worth following the plot, it is perceived very easily and does not bother.
The final
After watching all the series about IT, I came to the conclusion that comedies were the easiest to watch (which is not surprising), but only one comedy managed to sink deep - "Silicon Valley".
Finally, I will ask you to vote for the comedy that you liked the most.
If you liked the topic, I will try to write the next article by the end of next week.
For now it's better to stay at home and with good TV shows. Watch all the series I have listed for yourself and draw your own conclusion about each of them! Be healthy and take care of yourself!
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Voting for the best IT comedy
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Present in several = 16,5%The Big Bang Theory42
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Present in several = 25,2%Computer scientists64
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Present in several = 53,2%Silicon Valley135
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Present in several = 5,1%Your own version (in the comments)13
254 users voted. 62 users abstained.
Source: habr.com