A Polish House Awaits?
There are some issues that are no longer considered taboo in Polish sitcoms – homosexuals, the handicapped and AIDS testing, to name a few. Nevertheless, TV stations still avoid certain topics… The world of Polish sitcoms is a world of women. Certainly not by accident as it is women who constitute between 53%-68% of all viewers; only Świat wedlug Kiepskich has more male viewers than females. Strangely enough even thriller-type sitcoms attract more women than men. What do females expect from these types of television shows? “They want a programme produced in Poland, one that features well-known Polish actors,” says Piotr Jasek from BrzydUla. “The main character should be a woman, too”. It is great if the heroine in question ‘defeats’ men in some way. “She must have problems at work as well as at home”. BrzydUla’s main character is in love but it is an impossible love: she is an ugly girl from the countryside who falls for a handsome, intelligent and wealthy man, one who often deceives her. The viewers root for her, though. ‘Difficult love’ has also been a theme within Magda M., Ranczo and Dom nad Rozlewiskiem. Breaking patterns is not a strongpoint of Polish television stations. While in W labiryncie (the first Polish family sitcom whose 120 episodes aired between 1988 and 1991) God was sometimes presented in a rather negative light, now it would be rare to find a similar approach to religion in more contemporary TV programmes of the same kind. Topics such as abortion or in vitro fertilization are generally avoided. Politics is yet another topic rarely found in sitcoms because, “these are issues that divide people; if we mention them in our programmes, some people will stop watching. And in today’s competitive world every viewer is worth his or her weight in gold,” says a screenwriter.
Gazeta Wyborcza
