I'm not sure if I quite get what you are talking about, but the concept of "understated exaggeration" seems to capture what I think of as "British Humor" -- a vast generalization to be sure -- encompassing (for me, anyway) people like the Pythons, Douglas Adams, and PG Wodehouse and shows like Blackadder, Red Dwarf and Yes Minister. Their humor (I suppose it should be "humour") seems to be centered around creating incredibly ridiculous situations that people tend to react rather calmly towards. An illustrative counter-example might be Fawlty Towers -- in which the humor is created by Basil completely over-reacting to the most mundane situations.

Anyway, analysing comedy is about as easy and effective as herding cats, so I'm going to stop now. Are we even on the same page here, DubDub?