Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Great if you love canned laughter ...

The canned laughter is so annoying, it makes the episodes less amusing. I wish it could be turned off, like subtitles. I hadn't seen the series on TV when it was new, and bought the collection recently thinking I'd probably enjoy it because it was so well reviewed. The problem isn't so much that I didn't think it was funny, which I didn't, but worse the same predictable situations repeat, and after one disk, you've pretty much seen what there is. The character played by Penelope Keith is tiresome, in my opinion, but the shows might have seemed a lot funnier in the late 1970's or early 80's when they were made. Peter Bowles's role is more subtle, more dry, not begging for laughs. Small footnote, the actress playing his mother was the old nanny in a couple of episodes of the original Upstairs Downstairs, in which she looked and acted like a nanny from the time of Queen Victoria.