Ye Gods is he? He must be 90 years older than God himself. We got a LOT of BBC content back in the day and I think that is why you, us, the Kiwis and to a lesser extent the Canadians seem to share a certain common flavour to our humour. Indian humour has quite a few commonalities with ours too whereas we puzzle Americans and many Philippine people just look cofused they smile but they are definitely confused!
Which was mostly pure slapstick. The Americans have tried to copy British shows and mostly failed. They tried to copy “Porridge” but Fletchers character was too complex so they “split” it into five separate characters and then could not understand why it fell flat. They even had a go at replicating Red Dwarf - big fail! American writers are too formulaic. I saw Mel Brooks interviewed once about American Comedy and the early days of things like the Sid Caesar show. They asked him what happened to American comedy after ‘60s and he just said “the 70’s”. Then he explained that the accountants became involved so it became more formulaic and that is death for true comedy