British TV Comedies
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Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 Introduction, editorial matter and selection © Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann 2016 Individual chapters © Contributors 2016 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–55294–5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data British tv comedies : cultural concepts, contexts and controversies / Jürgen Kamm, University of Passau, Germany ; Birgit Neumann, University of Düsseldorf, Germany [editors]. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–137–55294–5 1. Television comedies—Great Britain—History and criticism. 2. Situation comedies (Television programs)—Great Britain—History and criticism. I. Kamm, Jürgen, 1955– editor. II. Neumann, Birgit, 1974– editor. III. Title: British television comedies. PN1992.8.C66B75 2015 791.45'6170941—dc23 2015021440 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors viii 1 Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of British TV Comedy 1 Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann Part I The 1950s and 1960s: Beginnings of the British Sitcom and the Satire Boom 2 A Golden Age of British Sitcom? Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son 23 Richard Kilborn 3 ‘Your Little Game’: Myth and War in Dad’s Army 36 Bernd Lenz 4 ‘The Struggle of Class against Class is a What Struggle?’ Monty Python’s Flying Circus and its Politics 51 Alexander Brock 5 The Rag Trade: ‘Everybody Out!’ Gender, Politics and Class on the Factory Floor 66 Mary Irwin Part II The 1970s and 1980s: New Loyalties, Histories and Collective Identities – Post-familiar Paradigms 6 ‘Sambo’ and ‘Snowfl ake’: Race and Race Relations in Love Thy Neighbour 83 Nora Plesske 7 ‘You Snobs! You Stupid… Stuck-Up… Toffee-Nosed… Half-Witted… Upper-Class Piles of… Pus!’ Basil Fawlty’s Touch of Class and Other Hotel Matters in Fawlty Towers 99 Paul Davies 8 Ignorant Master, Capable Servants: The Politics of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister 114 Jürgen Kamm 9 Zany ‘Alternative Comedy’: The Young Ones vs. Margaret Thatcher 136 Eckart Voigts 10 The Uses of History in Blackadder 153 Gerold Sedlmayr v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 vi Contents 11 Black British Comedy: Desmond’s and the Changing Face of Television 167 Deirdre Osborne with Stephen Bourne Part III The 1990s: (Un)doing Gender and Race 12 Laughing at Racism or Laughing with the Racists? The ‘Indian Comedy’ of Goodness Gracious Me 185 Jochen Petzold 13 Exploding Family Values, Lampooning Feminism, Exposing Consumerism: Absolutely Fabulous 197 Rainer Emig 14 Comic Strategies of Inclusion and ‘Normalisation’ in The Vicar of Dibley 212 Lucia Krämer 15 Subverting the Sitcom from Within: Form, Ideology and Father Ted 225 John Hill 16 ‘The Lady of the House Speaking’: The Conservative Portrayal of English Class Stereotypes in Keeping Up Appearances 240 Marion Gymnich 17 Family Life in Front of the Telly: The Royle Family 254 Angela Krewani 18 Old Jokes: One Foot in the Grave, Comedy and the Elderly 265 Brett Mills Part IV The 2000s: Britcom Boom – New Britain = ‘Cool Britannia’? 19 Spin, Swearing and Slapstick: The Thick of It 281 Anette Pankratz 20 Life is Stationary: Mockumentary and Embarrassment in The Offi ce 295 Philip Jacobi 21 From Ever-Lusting Individuals to Ever-Lasting Couples: Coupling and Emotional Capitalism 311 Joanna Rostek and Dorothea Will 22 The Comic Nation: Little Britain and the Politics of Representation 326 Oliver Lindner 23 Laughing in Horror: Hybrid Genre and the Grotesque Body in Psychoville 341 Stephan Karschay Index 359 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 1 Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of British TV Comedy Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann 1 Comedy matters TV comedies make up some of the most watched, most profitable and most controversial productions on British screens. Not least due to the role of public broadcasting, TV comedy in the UK enjoys a tradition and success probably unrivalled anywhere. Firmly embedded in the British media culture and shaped by the specific dynamics of the British television industry, British TV comedies are immensely powerful cultural media, which have developed distinctive filmic formats and nationally inflected narrative tradi tions (Dannenberg 169). The great popularity of the British TV comedy has certainly much to do with its formal and cultural flexibility. Even if its primary aim is to be funny and to entertain, comedy typically touches upon a whole range of cultural topics and explores a variety of ideological conflicts (Feuer 69). Typically oscillating between appreciation and denigra- tion, affirmation and subversion, British TV comedy plays a significant role in the formation, dissemination and reflection of cultural values, structures of identification and notions of difference: concepts of class, gender, eth- nicity, disability, sex, family, work and domesticity find a most intriguing and provocative expression in TV comedies. Consider, for instance, Men Behaving Badly (ITV/BBC1 1992–1999), probably the signature sitcom of the 1990s, whose depiction of the ‘new lad’ propelled debates about new con- cepts of masculinity and the historical dynamics of gender relations. Since British TV comedies, with very few exceptions, pick out central themes that concern British society in general or particular social groups at the time of production, they offer a rich source for gauging the intersections of British (popular) culture, history and media. It is surprising that relatively little academic work has as yet been done on a genre that is as popular and entertaining as it is intellectually challenging. Up to now, British TV comedies, including their generic variety, filmic history, humour politics and cultural impact, have rarely been studied in a comprehensive and systematic manner. Of course, the present volume 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–55294–5 2 Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann cannot fill this lacuna; however, it can provide an overview of some mile- stones in this history of British TV comedy in an exemplary manner. We start from the assumption that TV comedy needs to be taken seriously (Palmer). There is no longer any need to defend the status of comedy against the charge of cultural triviality and aesthetic insignificance. Instead, we propose to examine particular features and functions of British TV comedy over time. The aim of this volume is to offer concise interpretations of major British comedies, ranging from the beginnings of the sitcom in the 1950s to the current boom of ‘Britcoms’, as well as to explore their cultural concerns, generic tendencies and historical developments. Some of the key questions to be addressed in the contributions include: which cultural concepts and topics are negotiated in TV comedies? How does comedy use symbolic codes and aesthetically condensed images to negotiate cultural issues? How and to what end is humour used? Who are the spectators and who are the objects of the comic spectacle? How are genre conventions and filmic formats taken up and further developed? How does (popular) seriality work and how do the dynamics of seriality connect to popular aesthetics? How does seriality bear on the negotiation of ideological conflicts? And what role is played by the British television industry, marketing strategies and the audience? By examining these and other questions, this volume wants to present the multifaceted generic variety and humour politics of British TV comedy, stimulating a debate about its cultural impact as a mode of public address. 2 Comedy and transgression Being closely intertwined with cultural and social configurations, there is hardly any topic and social arena of British culture that is not playfully negoti- ated by TV comedy, and yet TV comedies never operate in a purely mimetic manner. Rather, they use the imaginative and aesthetically condensed space of fiction to exceed the status quo of established concepts, to creatively sub- vert established norms and to humorously probe new forms of identifica- tion (Chambers; Emig, ‘The Family’ 151–152). Following the conventions of comedy, the playful discussion of cultural topics is not an end in itself, but aims at entertaining audiences and creating laughter among them. Whatever topic is taken up in TV comedy will therefore inevitably be depicted in a comically exaggerated or satirically distorted manner (Jacobson 1–38; Emig, ‘Taking Comedy Seriously’ 20).