Situation comedy

The Development of British Situation Comedy

The term 'sit - com' describes a narrative series comedy, generally between twenty-four and thirty minutes long, with regular characters and settings. Like soap opera, situation comedy has its roots in radio. Live American performance humour, employing writers like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen and stars such as Bob Hope and Jack Benny, had a strong influence on the development of zany broadcast comedy in Britain. This irreverent, working class comedy was only given real expression, for the first time on Forces Radio, during the Second World War. The 'vulgarity' of such material included lewd innuendo (honed to a fine art by, amongst others, Kenneth Williams) and caricatures of class and social types later taken to surreal extremes by Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine in The Goons.

While most early comedy of this kind was in the form of sketches the sit-com format was being developed in the United States in the 1940's. A number of radio sit-coms in America transferred directly to the small screen in the late 40's and early 50's as did their stars such as Lucille Ball. Her show I Love Lucy was one of several Hollywood TV sit-coms imported to Britain. Until the 1960's the family depicted in American sitcoms tended to be husband and wife, without children - such as Bewitched or The Dick Van Dyke Show. These were known in the industry as 'Hi honey, I'm home' shows.

The influence of these shows in Britain can be seen in Hancock's Half Hour where the use of reaction shots and the casting of straight actors for minor roles was developed. The 'naturalism' of Hancock's Half Hour - its grey bedsit setting, realistic if 'oddball' characters, low key supporting performances, everyday plot developments and rambling cod-philosophical monologues set the tone for a distinctively 'British' brand of situation-comedy. This comedy grounded in aspirational frustrations, class antagonisms and a gloomy, mocking attitude to the mundane social realities of modern urban life was later exemplified by classic (and endlessly repeated) sit-coms like Steptoe and Son, The Likely Lads, Porridge, Fawlty Towers and Rising Damp. The same vein of humour can still be found running through more recent popular sit-coms like One Foot in the Grave and Rab C Nesbitt.

Alternative v Mainstream

In 'Television Producers' Jeremy Tunstall shows how mainstream and alternative comedy are not discreet traditions but have tended, in their development, to inform and influence each other. The big successes of British comedy, Tunstall notes, have focussed on, 'working class loners, misfits and bigots.The archetypal British TV comedy was Steptoe and Son, about the embattled relationship between a rag-and-bone man and his eccentric and exasperating old father.'

Mainstream TV comedy, Tunstall argues, incorporated the impact of US situation comedies, but was anchored to predominantly British working-class comic traditions. A comedy such as Till Death Us Do Part, when it began in 1964, was considered daring in its screen portrayal of a working class bigot. For a time Till Death Us Do Part was the most popular programme in Britain with audiences of 18 million. The series was attacked by Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV Campaign' for its disrespectful attitudes and strong language (the use of the word 'bloody' was a cause for concern). According to Wheen (1985) the arrival of Lord Hill as a new Governor at the BBC in 1967 saw the introduction of censorship to this programme which was resented so strongly by the writer that its production was suspended for four years. However, the series (or the Alf Garnet character) returned and ran on into the 1990s, by which time it had long since entered the mainstream.

Eccentric caricatures of English class and society were also to be found in Dad's Army written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft (who went on to write other ensemble cast comedies: It Ain't Half Hot Mum, 'Allo 'Allo' and Heidi-Hi !). The brilliantly cast types included a pompous bank manager, Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe); a softly spoken and quietly exasperated second in command, Sergeant Wilson (John Le Mesurier), a spivvy black marketeer, Walker (James Beck), a doddery old-age pensioner (Arnold Ridley), whose only contribution to the platoon was to supply 'my sister Dolly's fairy cakes'; and the tight-fisted and manic Scot (John Laurie). The Liver Birds (started in 1969), Man About the House (1973), Rising Damp (1974) and Last of the Summer Wine'(1974), were another eccentric but mainstream series located in typical everyday situations. These and other comedies appeared on the main channels (BBC1 and ITV) and attracted large audiences and considerable press attention, especially in the tabloid newspapers.

The 1960's and 1970's saw only a handful of variety shows and situation comedies aimed at smaller, more adventurous audiences. These included 'That Was the Week That Was' (TW3), Monty Python's Flying Circus, Spike Milligan's Q, Dave Allen and Not the Nine O'Clock News. These programmes were generally shown on BBC2 while BBC1 and ITV aimed their shows at more general, mass audiences. By the end of the 1970's, however, none of the relatively daring or eccentric comic talent was shining as it had done in mainstream comedy for the previous two decades. Many of the great comedians such as Morecombe and Wise, Frankie Howerd, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker were ageing and this showed in the tired material they produced while inventive sit-coms such as Dad's Army, The Liver Birds, Butterflies' and The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin were far outnumbered by banal comedies of social manners epitomised by Terry and June.

The creation of Channel 4 provided an opportunity to cater for more diverse tastes in comedy. Initially, little action was taken apart from the introduction of some new American sit-coms to the schedules. There were, however, some short films made by the Comic Strip Team including Five Go Mad in Dorset which received unexpected praise and attention. These films, which came out of the the channels youth programmes department run by Mike Bolland introduced, a more hip, sex-and-drugs-and-rock'n'roll edge to the kind of Eng. Lit. pastiches and media parodies pursued at the BBC by Oxbridge comedians since The Frost Report and Not Only... But Also

The BBC was sufficiently anxious about Channel 4's success with the Comic Strip to allow producer Paul Jackson to assemble the same group of performers (plus Ben Elton, though minus the Strip's director/writer, Peter Richardson) to make The Young Ones for BBC2. The four students: a violent punk, a morose hippy, a wheeler dealer and a posturing 'anarchist' live a monstrous parody of student life - destroying the house they share, viciously abusing each other verbally and physically, eating stomach turning food and turning to any substance or pathetic distraction (such as the white dot signal TV at the end of the evening) to avoid the boredom of doing nothing. Half way through the episode a band would play on the set; there were incongrous interruptions such as puppet hamsters holding a conversation, a subliminal shot of a frog leaping, a ranting monologue by the deranged landlord as well as implausable jumps in time and violence taken to surreal excesses. As one television journalist has suggested,' 'The Young Ones', more so than the Comic Strip films, was a genuine alternative to all other television comedy. It demonstrated that you could break all the rules of narrative TV comedy and still hold a big (for BBC2) audience.'

BBC2 and Channel 4 now began to compete directly for the same young, 'smart' audience so beloved of advertisers. Paul Jackson's success with the Young Ones 'enabled him to launch the careers of Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Ruby Wax in Girls on Top and Craig Charles and Chris Barrie in Red Dwarf. While on Channel 4, Mike Bolland now head of entertainment greatly increased original comedy output in the form of new sit-coms, sketch shows and stand -up comedy, including the highly influential Saturday Live (later Friday Live) where new names and careers were made.

As experimental comedy output increased massively in the early 1980's so did the rules by which it was judged. With multiplying hours of airtime and protected by youth television's 'public service' origins (where low ratings don't matter if the programme is deemed novel or daring enough) audiences of two million were now regarded as quite acceptable for a new show and new stars. Most of this alternative comedy did not aim for mass audiences. Many of the leading participants came from Cambridge or (by the 1980s) Manchester Universities. These people lacked the typical mainstream comedian's lengthy apprenticeship in front of live audiences. Many had worked on the all talk and fairly up-market BBC Radio 4 and in London comedy venues and fringe theatres, as well as in West End commercial theatre.

'Alternative' comedy, as Tunstall suggests, is difficult to define, not least because it tends after an interval, to join the mainstream. Nevertheless, a key difference from mainstream TV comedy was that alternative comedians typically wrote their own material. They adopted deliberately non-commercial approaches; for example, the strong vein of political satire prevalent in 60's shows like That Was the Week that Was or much of the new comedy in the early 80's which was not geared to massive ratings success. Indeed, several of these alternative shows included an element of topical references to recent events: Spitting Image, The New Statesman'and Drop the Dead Donkey, were, by including topical political references, reducing the long-term, repeat-asset, value of their output.

However the boundaries of mainstream and alternative comedy are continuously shifting. Not only are elements of the alternative always merging into the mainstream, but some comedians and comic styles, only recently regarded as too embarrassing to be still included in the mainstream, are soon dusted down and proclaimed to be classics. Benny Hill (who wrote his own scripts), after his dismissal by Thames Television apparently for being outdated and sexist, was being praised by Anthony Burgess in 1990 as 'one of the great artists of our age' and a genius of the 'comedy of sexual regret'. The BBC Omnibus arts programme also devoted an hour to Benny Hill in 1991, a year before his death. (Tunstall *)

As television critic David Housham suggests, the fact that Channel 4, of all channels, was prepared to screen repeats of Benny Hill, ' was a sign of the degree to which the cultural partitioning of British comedy, so energetically and noisily constructed in the early 1980's, has been steadily demolished in the 1990's.'

Sit-Com Narrative

'The principal fundamental situation of the situation comedy is that things do not change.' (Grote)

'The situation, to fill the demands of the time-slot, the demands of constant repetition of/in the series, needs to be one whose parameters are easily recognizable and which are returned to week after week. Nothing that has happened in the narrative of the previous week must destroy or even complicate the way the situation is grounded.' (Eaton 1981)

Sit-coms, like all serials, employ a 'classical' narrative structure that involves the disruption of a stable situation and its resolution within each episode. The reassertion of stability is different from that in feature films, however, where narrative closure establishes a new equilibrium. In sit-com narrative closure is marked by a return to the original situation. The sit-com centres around the refamiliarisation of a recurring situation, repeated and redefined it in the face of various disruptions and transgressions.

Situation comedy, unlike sketch based comedy series, have a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. The situation - the humorous development of this week - is usually based around a problem, the complication of this problem and its resolution within the half hour episode. In 'Genre Study' Jane Feuer quotes Horace Newcome on this narrative strategy:

'Newcomb sees the sitcom as providing a simple and reassuring problem/solution formula. The audience is reassured, not challenged by choice or ambiguity, nor are we forced to reexamine our values......Newcomb thus constructs the sit-com as the most 'basic' of the television genres in the sense that it is the furthest from the 'real world' problems such as are encountered in crime shows and from real world forms and value conflicts such as are encountered in soap operas.' (Feuer 1987)

Unlike soap, then , the basic 'situation' does not change but is subjected to a recurring process of destabilisation-restabilisation in each episode. The sit-com's process of narrative transformation relies, then, upon circularity. That is not to say that some modification of basic situation is impossible. Families may gain or lose children as they grow up (as in Roseanne), long lost relatives are found, additional characters join series, old ones leave and background details change to keep the stories from becoming stale and repetitive. Nevertheless, the essential elements remain the same. Where there is a temptation to exploit a particular character in a new setting and with new characters a 'spin off' series may be the result. Frasier from Cheers, Benson from the anarchic Soap and Going Straight from Porridge are just three examples of this phenomenon.

The essential 'circularity' and 'ritualistic simplicity' of sit-com is illustrated by what Philip Drummond calls its 'synchronising motifs'. These are repeated situations or catchphrases such as Meldrews exasperated , 'I don't believe it!' or the freewheeling downhill accidents of Last of the Summer Wine. These highly recognizable motifs are an important comic technique, as they are in sketch comedy where catchphrases such as Dick Emery's 'Oh, you are awful but I like you !' or Paul Enfield's 'Loads of Money !' have entered the popular consciousness.

Situation comedy's 'simplicity' is also apparent in the choice of themes and experiences which the genre draws upon. Family and home, work and authority are the most commonly explored areas of sit-com. As Mick Eaton (1981) observes:

'..the two basic situations used continually over the years are 'home' and 'work''...'these basic situations provide material for the constant repetition of character and theme, and fit the economic demands of the company's budget in allowing for the use of stock sets, and little or no filmed footage.'

Home and work are common areas of experience and most people are able to recognize the humour that results in friction between people forced to live or work together. The collision of values, identities and lifestyles is at the heart of most comedy - and the harsher the collision, the louder the laughter. For this reason, most comedies involve characters confined by their circumstances, railing against each other or society. Taken to slapstick extremes the collision or conflict involves violent verbal and physical abuse as can be found in Fawlty Towers or The Young Ones. The comedy 'situations' may also take the form of racial, sexual or class conflicts, for, as Mick Bowes notes:

' ..the genre is constantly having to handle areas of social unease.' (Understanding Television 1990)

Sit com and representation

Situation comedies are frequently controversial in their representations. Sit-com, like so much TV comedy, deals with stereotypes (simplified concepts of a social group) which can be offensive and perpetuate myths that are damaging in their effect. They may also, through absence of certain representations, sustain deeprooted inequalities and prejudices.

Mick Bowes in his essay 'Only When I Laugh' illustrates the ambiguous role of stereotypes in situation comedy:

'In a form which attempts to establish character and narrative and produce humour all in a half hour it is inevitable that characterisation will tend towards the stereotypical. in many senses stereotypes are both simple and complex - they are simplified ways of conveying distinct cultural images. In many senses what is important is to examine the place of the stereotype in the structure of the programme - is the stereotype the target of the humour or the producer of it ? Are we laughing at the stereotyped group or with it ? In this sense there is a considerable difference between the crude racist stereotype of Asian characters in 'It Ain't Half hot Mum', who we are invited to laugh at, and the gay stereotypes of 'Agony' who often function as a means of making the prejudices of 'straight' people seem odd and laughable.' (Goodwin and Whannel 1990)

The great tradition of British situation comedy has centred around men. Steptoe and Son, Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Only Fools and Horses are just a few examples of sit-coms that are remarkable for having virtually no female roles. This contrasts with American sit-coms where there is a long tradition of women having major characters: I Love Lucy, Bewitched, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, The Golden Girls, Roseanne and Grace Under Fire are just a few examples.

In British sit-com maleness becomes associated with 'dirt', 'disgustingness' and 'misbehaviour': only consider the roles in sit-coms such as The Young Ones, Bottom, Men Behaving Badly and RedDwarf . Women are frequently absent or banished, as in "Her indoors" from 'Minder' or Mannering's wife in Dad's Army. When women are there their relationship is usually as the mother figure to the inadequate men, as in 'Terry and June' or Some Mothers Do Have 'Em. Much of the slapstick comes from the men being left in charge of domestic duties such as cooking or cleaning, with disastrous consequences.

In Last of the Summer Wine the old men are infantalised and the women, like Nora Batty are powerful, domineering figures - akin to the Northern seaside postcard representation of husbands and wives. Men and women in Last of the Summer Wine , as in so many other sit-coms, live in irreconcilably polarised worlds. The sexes only seem to mix at meal times - again suggesting a parent-child relationship operating at a deeper level within the representation .

The portrayal of men, like the portrayal of virtually any social group in sit-com raises the question of whether it is possible to have comedy without stereotypes. British comedies are not socially engineered in the same way that some British soap operas are. This situation is the reverse of the case on American television where there are far more racial minorities shown in sit-com than in soap. The very rich backgrounds of the black characters in several shows like The Cosby Show or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air may seem unrepresentative and at odds with our knowledge of wealth distribution in the U.S., but as Simon Hoggart has said on the subject,

'The charge of racism, or at least that Cosby is letting the side down by depicting a hopelessly glamorised black family, tends to come from whites. Alvin Pouissant, the black Harvard psychologist who advises Cosby on his scripts, argues that the Huxtables' success, as breadwinners and parents, helps to change whites' perception of blacks: 'It's doing far more to instil positive racial attitudes than if Bill came at the viewer with a sledgehammer or a sermon.'

What of the opposite charge that is sometimes levelled at the Scottish sit-com 'Rab-C-Nesbit, that the depiction of an unemployed, aggressive, drunken, work-shy Glaswegian slob in the central role does nothing but damage to the image of Scottish people ? John Foster, a lecturer at the University of Paisley and a Govan resident for 18 years, defends the series on the grounds of its oppositional humour:

'In a sense, Rab represents the way Govanites would see Govan if they tried to make fun of themselves. It's a self-effacing humour - but it's also a kind of oppositionalism, which says, 'This is us portraying us in terms of accepted values, in the worst possible light. it's a self caricature launched against polite culture.' (Class Act)

The writer of the series Ian Pattison is blacker in his defence of the character:

'If you wanted to portray an accurate picture of Govan, you wouldn't have two parents living in that house. In terms of the social or family bond, the Nesbitts are like the Waltons, they're romanticised. There are whole blocks of kids in Moorepark, and not one has a father living in the house. So in that respect I think we're upholding the old values.' (Class Act)

Sit-coms tend to provide familiar settings, situations and character types as a recognizable background to the comic excess of exaggerated plotting and performance. The use of stereotypes as a negative structural element in sit-com should, therefore, be set against the comic requirement of transgressing expectations that is fundamental to the success of the genre. This ambiguity lies at the heart of the character realism or shock value of 'quality' sit-coms.

The BBC v the Independent Sector

The following extracts from 'Television Producers' by Jeremy Tunstall (pgs. 129-132) describe institutional differences between the production of comedy within the BBC and Independent Television. It is an interesting description because it clearly illustrates how the size and organisational structure of an media institution affects the type of material it produces. It also shows how rival media organisations have a powerful influence on the choices made by their competitors. In the case of situation comedy, like soap opera the creation of Channel 4 and its unique charter to cater for new audiences had a powerful impact on the programming policy of existing broadcasters.

'The British style of TV comedy was primarily developed by the BBC and has continued to favour the BBC. The BBC has long relied on comedy to a greater extent than has ITV.... Situation comedies in 1991 were ITV's fifth most popular genre, while on the BBC channels comedy was surpassed in popularity only by the soaps.'

'Given the range and complexity of broadcast comedy - and its need for old mainstream favourites as well as radical new alternatives - the BBC has an advantage over ITV's single commercial network which schedules comedy in mid-evening and thus can only handle shows with high ratings. The BBC has continued to use radio as a training ground for writers, performers and producers. Moreover, with two TV networks, the BBC has been able to switch new radio talent to BBC2 before a final move to the showbusiness bigtime of BBC1. Of course, it seldom works that smoothly, but the BBC has a much wider range of possibilities than does ITV. The ITV cartel arrangement previous to 1993 in practice carved up the limited comedy time between the larger ITV companies; consequently, each of those ITV companies aimed to have just one or two big comedy successes rather than to develop a comedy factory to rival the BBC.'

'The sheer quantity of the BBC's comedy production is the most obvious evidence of its comedy commitment. Each year the BBC1 channel runs about 25 separate situation comedies of which about 6 are completely new series. The BBC comedy approach is not dissimilar from that of a large magazine or book publisher, film studio or record company; in a risky and highly unpredictable business it is difficult to spot winners, so each year you try a range of new things in the hope that one or two will be winners.'

'There has been a standard comedy progression - of writers, performers and producers - from BBC radio, to BBC television, to ITV, and then back to BBC television. This does not mean that the BBC's comedy factory has always been an all winning, all smiling show. BBC comedy has also been the focus of bitter criticism and fierce resentment; since the BBC's comedy effort is in effect, the national comedy theatre, this is predictable and inevitable. The inadequacies and limitations of both ITV and BBC comedy efforts were underlined by the alternative-comedy successes of Channel Four in the 1980's.'

'Despite the BBC's dominance, ITV as well as Channel Four have had comedy successes. During the 1980's Central Television and Yorkshire Television were responsible for two highly original comedies - 'Spitting Image' and 'The New Statesman'. Both took political caricature to extremes not previously seen on British television. Both were popular with the young educated audiences; both required too much interest in politics to allow mainstream super-popularity. Both were expensive to make - especially 'Spitting Image' whose original notion of presenting public figures as puppet-caricatures used many writers of separate sketches and required a small army of puppet artists, puppet-operators and voice-over artists. both shows were unique and virtually impossible to copy. 'Spitting Image' seemed to go far beyond the normal restraints of good taste and the libel law; it depended in part on the assumption that no politician - however grossly abused - would be so unwise as to try to sue a puppet. both these shows were exceptions to the rules; they conformed only to the general rule that the British comedy system welcomed the zany, the unique, the eccentric and the lovingly written.'

British Production Practices

It is commonly recognised that the success of a situation comedy lies in a strong sit-com character, well acted in a well written show. While the roles of actor, director, producer and writer were traditionally quite separate in mainstream comedy, since the 1960's, particularly in the more adventurous or 'alternative' sit-coms many of these roles have overlapped. Hence 'producer-directors' and 'writer-performers' are now common combinations in TV comedy.

In Britain, writers have almost always been individuals or pairs, and until the 1980's were exclusively male. This situation may be contrasted with the American sit-com script-factory tradition. American production companies, such as the hugely successful Witt-Thomas Production set-up, favour a large team of regular house writers. They are far better paid than British sit-com writers, earning according to Greg Brenman's documentary 'Funny Business' up to $ 45,000 a week , but are expected to churn out a continuous stream of high quality scripts ( up to 52 per year) as opposed to the 6 or 12 demanded by British television companies. The burn out rate for writers on shows with massive pressure ratings such as Roseanne is phenomenal, and the team working on scripts one year may be completely different to that working the following year.

The high quality and export potential of so much American sit-com is forcing British production companies to consider team writing. The journalist Geoff Deane, describing his experiences of writing a sit-com is highly critical of the British comedy tradition and its writers:

'British humour is founded upon an array of peculiarly British foibles and preoccupations: our class system, our national reserve, our vulgarity and toilet fetishism, even our admirable intellectual quirkiness. These elements have long been the stock in trade of our comedy writers, and the harsh fact is that they mean nothing to anyone but the British. While the Yanks were making poignant and incisive comedies about the Vietnam war, we still had Terry Scott struggling to get his trousers on because the vicar had turned up for tea.'

The producers 'respect for the writer and the script' lies at the heart of British comedy, according to Jeremy Tunstall. No changes are made to the script without consultation with the writer/s. Once the script has arrived the producer or producer-director will cast the parts, organise a production/design team and begin rehearsal. The first readings are often nerve-wracking because, ' perhaps one million pounds rides on the success of the newly assembled group.'

Tunstall continues his description of the production process:

' All the outdoor filming (taping) may be done together in between one and several weeks; there are the usual problems of weather, transport and logistics. Next, the production returns to the studio for a succession of weeks; each week is spent rehearsing the actors, then come the camera rehearsals and finally, on the fifth or sixth evening, the show is taped in front of a studio audience. This recording is another anxious time for the producer; it is also difficult for actors confronted with an audience of 300 people, plus the probing attention of mobile studio cameras. a common practice is to use one 'slave' camera which only looks at the star. On the day following the recording the producer-director focuses on the relatively modest amount of editing involved in this type of studio-recorded production. Next day the weekly sequence begins again.

British television has operated on a tradition of a thirty minute comedy taking more than one week to tape, including the exterior filming which is inserted into the studio recording. Around 1990 there were pressures to make economies. in some somedy-sketch shows, for example, only 5 studio weeks would now be used to make enough sketches for 6 shows.

The comedy producer might make a total of 15 shows in one year. This might total between 17 and 22 weeks of combined outside filming and studio recording; for each of these weeks the producer would have spent at least another week on preliminary planning, including script supervision and casting non-continuous parts. In the remaining few non-holiday weeks of the year the producer might be working on a pilot for a new show, producing a one-off comedy special, and working on scripts submitted by independent producers.' (Television Producers)

Exercises

List as many sit-coms as you can. Write a list of sit com characters or character types under

some or all of the following headings:

e.g. Other nationalities: Americans, Germans, French etc

Old men: Melrew, Steptoe etc...

Young men:

Old women:

Young women:

Children:

Working class characters:

Middle class characters:

Upper class characters:

Homosexual characters:

Any other group:

How are these groups represented ? What stereotypes exist ? Do any comedies challenge stereotypes ? How ?

What are some common sit-com conventions ? Try to think of any common characteristics, for example common settings include workplaces: On the Buses, Are you Being Served ? The Rag Trade, Drop the Dead Donkey etc. There are other common conventions.

Character:

Plot:

Setting:

Costumes and props:

Music:

Lighting:

Themes:

Dialogue:

Visual style:

Exercise

Read the following 'recipe' for US sitcoms:

1 female heroine

1 man-crazy best friend

1 oafish ex-husband or lover

2/3 dysfunctional buddies

children (optional)

Take the female heroine - preferably witty, attractive, neurotic in a cute sort of way and successful in creative occupation (actress, cartoonist, etc) or - if these are out of season or otherwise unavailable - perpetually harried in a succession of low-paid jobs. Add the man- crazy best friend with reason to spend her entire life at the heroine's home. Add and subtract in quick and repeated succession one oafish ex-husband or lover. Sprinkle socially dysfunctional buddies on surface. Stir and half bake. Place crack team of gag writers in pressure cooker; remove immediately and replace with new team. Repeat process throughout every stage of the recipe. Stuff with one-liners about sex, relationships, work, relationships, sex, sex, and relationships. Garnish with children (optional) gifted with precocious line in quips. Five minutes before the dish is complete, add weepy moment, swiftly followed by this week's moral (careful; ratings will not rise unless this is timed just so.) For larger servings (if entertaining Friends, for instance) multiply ingredients proportionally. Do not use this recipe for highbrow sitcom - consult the Woody Allen Cookbook. ( David Bennum 1996)

Write a recipe for British sitcoms

Essay

'Comedy is really about conflict.'Discuss with reference to British and/or American situation comedy.

(or)

'The necessity for the continuity of charcters and situations from week to week allows for the possibility of comedy being generated by the fact that the characters are somehow stuck with each other.' (Mick Eaton) Illustrate with reference to British and/or American situation comedies.

Essay

Vyvyan (referring to The Good Life): 'It's so bloody nice... Felicity treacle Kendal and Richard sugar-flavoured snot Briars... They're nothing but a couple of reactionary stereotypes confirming the myth that everyone in Britain is a loveable middle-class eccentric and I hate them.' (from 'The Young Ones' quoted by Bowes (1990))

What other 'reactionary stereotypes' can be found in British situation comedies ?

(or)

'Comedy is not possible without stereotypes.' Discuss with reference to British and American situation comedy.

Essay

'The charges of conservatism, excessive stereotyping of racial, class, sexual and regional differences and so, which are often levelled at the sit-com seem to pinpoint not so much the total imperviousness of the form but rather the particular way in which it operates as a site of negotiation of cultural change and difference.'

Discuss.

Sources

'Television Producers' Jeremy Tunstall *

Feuer, F. 'Genre Study and Television' in Allen, R (ed.) (1987) 'Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Bowes, M. Only When I Laugh in Goodwin, A. and Whannel, G. eds (1990) 'Understanding Television' Routledge

Eaton, M. in Bennett, T. et al. (1981) Popular Television and Film BFI Publishing and Open University