Talk:Joan Is Awful

Why British English?
I realize this started as a British series (er, a British show--this anticipates my objection), but it has been on Netflix (an American company) for years, and this particular episode uses mostly American actors and seems to be set in the US.

What I found weird to read (as an American myself) is the sentence "Brooker described 'Joan Is Awful' as the only episode of the series to fit the show's traditional style." For an American to read "the only episode of the series" comes across as describing a unique episode for the show, throughout its entire existence--although this of course becomes nonsensical when you say it's the only one to fit the show's traditional style, an inherent contradiction in terms.

I know the British usage is to say "series" in place of what Americans would call a "season" of television (a group of episodes released either weekly for a few weeks or months, or--in the case of Netflix--released all at once). Whereas for Americans, "series" means all episodes released of a show, from all seasons combined. The thing is, beyond the reasons I noted above to observe American rather than British terminology, it's also just objectively less confusing--and not only from an American-centric perspective. If a British person reads "the only episode of the season..." they will perhaps wrinkle their nose at how "off" this sounds to them, but I don't see much danger of their actually misunderstanding what is meant. Whereas an American reading "the only episode of the series..." can definitely misunderstand. SlackerInc1 (talk) 20:40, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * take a look at MOS:ENGVAR. Within an article, we need to use a variety of English consistently. My opinion is that we should use British English across all Black Mirror articles for consistency. The show was created in Britain for Channel 4 and is primarily written and produced by British people (Brooker and Jones). The production companies are hard to classify easily but each of them (Zeppotron, House of Tomorrow, Broke and Bones) can broadly be construed as producing British TV or having British key figures. Many of the programme's settings are ambiguous but a plurality of those with strong national themes are British (e.g. "The National Anthem", "The Waldo Moment", "Smithereens", "Loch Henry", "Demon 79").For "Joan Is Awful" specifically, the episode was written by a British person, released by an American-based international conglomerate, and filmed in Britain with a Canadian director, Canadian lead actor and American setting. — Bilorv ( talk ) 10:24, 1 April 2024 (UTC)