Exactly. I gather the language is called Afrikaans and its mainly based on the Dutch accent but can also sound a little bit Germanic. Definitely South African.
The complete inability of most Americans to get any English speaker's accent other than another American is legendary. Also no reaction to "oral or genital" at all until the chemist specified herpes.
They don't sound American. But British humour is shocking at first, especially from before everything got sanitized by the speech Nazis, but that is what makes also hilarious.
It’s a p1ss-take on the stereotype of South Africans being unbelievably upfront, unguarded and plain talking - which would fill most British people with horror.
The girl watching this was more embarrassed and uncomfortable than the actors . . . which made me wonder what percentage of the television audience watching this when it first came out were the same - if not worse . . .
7:33 Girl, Harry was playing an apothecary with a South African accent here , but he still had an incomparably better pronunciation and vocabulary than you.I strongly doubt that you would be able to understand it without subtitles.
HE IS BRITISH NOT RUSSIAN YOU.D.... HE IS FROM ENGLAND. IF YOU CAN READ A MAP YOU WILL FIND OUT THAT ENGLAND IS A BIG ISLAND CLOSE TO EUROPE IS ALSO CALLED THE UNITED KINGDOM SINCE HAS FOUR DIFFERENT COUNTRIES THAT COMPOSE IT. WALES, SCOTIA, IRELAND, AND ENGLAND.
The humour is based on the accent and also British stereotypes about white South Africans of the time. There were quite a few sketches based on this theme at the time. It wasn't intended to be complimentary.
Some of the sub-titles are almost as funny as Harry's pharmacist. At 2m 16s the girl customer says "God how are you" and the sub titles translates it as "you got a lawyer" 🤣
