I.

Introduction

British Television Comedy, history of British television entertainment—from early variety acts, through sketches and panel games, to sitcoms (situation comedies) and stand-up.

II.

The Early Days

Since its formation in 1922, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has carved out a reputation for producing high-quality programmes. John (later Lord) Reith, the BBC’s first director-general, emphasized the importance of comedy in his celebrated definition of the BBC’s brief: the need to “educate, inform, and entertain”. The first week of the full television service in 1936 featured the variety acts Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon.

Television soon became a showcase for popular music hall performers such as George Robey, Stanley Holloway, and Arthur Askey. After many years on the pre-existing medium of radio, such acts transferred easily to television. Cameras merely shot the shows as they had been performed in theatres for decades previously. Many variety agents resented the new medium, however, fearing rightly that it would mean the end for music-halls, and issued dire threats to acts caught appearing in the rival arena. They soon realized, though, that it offered potentially huge audiences for their acts, and entertainment became a staple of television scheduling. Although it may have lacked the buzz of a live performance, television was evidently the way for comedians to reach the widest possible public.

When BBC Television started up again after its suspension during World War II, it hooked a fresh generation of viewers and a new breed of comedy stars who emerged from the theatres: Norman Wisdom in Wit and Wisdom (1948); The Charlie Chester Show (1949); Terry-Thomas’s How Do You View? (1950); the The Howerd Crowd (1952) with Frankie Howerd; and the incredibly durable, saucy comedian Benny Hill in The Benny Hill Show (1955; dates given throughout indicate the first showing of a programme). These were still more or less filmed theatrical events, just as early sitcoms such as Fast and Loose (1954) with Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin and the newly created ITV (Independent Television) show The Army Game (1957) were no more than televised stage comedies. Many, such as Hancock’s Half Hour (1956), were successfully transplanted directly from BBC Radio. Morecambe and Wise, in 1961, were considered the greatest—and perhaps the last—of the variety generation to make it big on television.

III.

Innovations

The face of television comedy changed in 1962 with the creation of That Was The Week That Was, a ground-breaking satirical show produced by Ned Sherrin. It was the earliest made-for-television comedy, the first programme without any perceptible theatre background. It proved hugely influential. After the relative innocence of the previous decade, television comedy took on a more subversive hue during the 1960s. Inspired by the anarchic humour of Spike Milligan as manifested in The Goon Show on BBC Radio and the seminal television sketch programme Q (1969), Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969), which drew on a rich seam of Oxbridge revue graduates, was the most important of a raft of surrealistic-satirical sketch shows—Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life (1964), ITV’s At Last the 1948 Show (1967), and Do Not Adjust Your Set (1968).

Sitcoms, too, were moving away from comfortable set-ups into more challenging areas in the 1960s. Although they continued to work along the same principles of showing the same characters and locations from week to week, often in familiar settings, shows such as Sykes (1960), Steptoe and Son (1962), The Likely Lads (1964), and Till Death Us Do Part (1966) were not afraid to show the darker side of life. During the late 1960s and 1970s, more obviously mainstream sitcoms emerged—witness the chirpiness of The Liver Birds (1969), Last of the Summer Wine (1973), The Good Life (1975), To the Manor Born (1979), and Terry and June (1979). There was still a place for less sympathetic characters, however, such as Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army (1968), Fletcher in Porridge (1974), Rigsby in Rising Damp (1974), Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers (1975), and Reginald Perrin in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976). All of these characters have since become archetypal sitcom figures, demonstrating the maturity of a comedy genre that can effortlessly accommodate unpleasantness.

Comedians who interspersed stand-up routines with sketches also came to prominence in the 1970s. Dave Allen at Large (1971) and The Two Ronnies (1971) were both enormously popular—though both had to compete with the continuing brilliance of Morecambe and Wise.

IV.

Alternative Comedy

The turning point of the 1970s came towards its end when the alternative comedy boom rocking the live circuit found its way on to television in Not the Nine O’Clock News (1979), a highly significant, irreverent sketch show. It carried on the honourable tradition of political satire that had begun with That Was the Week That Was.

Traditional sitcoms—in the shape of Yes Minister (1980), Only Fools and Horses (1981), and One Foot in the Grave (1990)—carried on almost regardless, but Not the Nine O’Clock News spawned a new, parallel generation of so-called alternative comedians, who spread into all genres of television comedy over the next 15 years. They colonized all the main genres: sitcoms—The Young Ones (1982), Blackadder (1983), Mr Bean (1990), and Bottom (1991); sketch shows—Alas Smith and Jones (1984), French and Saunders (1987), and The Harry Enfield Television Programme (1992); and variety—The Lenny Henry Show (1984) and Vic Reeves Big Night Out (1990). They even prompted a reinterpretation of the quiz show with such radical programmes as Have I Got News For You (1990) and Shooting Stars (1995). These programmes swiftly moved from being viewed as alternative to establishment features, however.

The emergent comedy scene also helped boost women in comedy—hitherto something of a rarity. Victoria Wood, Julie Walters, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Ruby Wax, and Jo Brand all rose to prominence in the 1980s. After receiving acclaim in the sketch-show, French and Saunders (1987), Saunders went on to write and star in one of the biggest sitcom hits of the 1990s, Absolutely Fabulous (1992). This, perhaps for the first time, showed women behaving badly. French, her double-act partner, enjoyed huge success with The Vicar of Dibley (1994), penned by Richard Curtis (also responsible for Blackadder and films such as Four Weddings and A Funeral, 1994; Notting Hill, 1999; and Love Actually, 2003).

In turn, these examples have inspired a new generation of vibrant all-women shows, notably Smack the Pony (1999), a fast-paced sketch-show performed by a trio of highly versatile women (Sally Phillips, Fiona Allen, and Doon Mackichan).

V.

The Post-Alternatives

The future of television comedy looks safe in the hands of the post-alternative generation—led by such talents as Steve Coogan (Knowing Me, Knowing You…with Alan Partridge, 1994), Paul Whitehouse (The Fast Show, 1994), Caroline Aherne (The Mrs Merton Show, 1995), Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me, 1998), and Sanjeev Bhaskar (The Kumars at No. 42, 2001), all of whom specialize in wickedly accurate character comedy. In many of these cases, the humour operates through the “Trojan Horse” of a spoof chat-show host.

In recent years, the most successful comedy has been quasi-documentary. Eschewing a laughter-track and employing very naturalistic acting, hyper-realistic, fly-on-the-wall shows such as The Royle Family (1998), The Office (2001), and Phoenix Nights (2001) have all demonstrated the comic potential of the everyday. In these sitcoms, the idiosyncrasies of quotidian life are an apparently bottomless source of humour.

In the 21st century, there has also been a vein of black humour running through much of the most thought-provoking television comedy. Programmes such as The League of Gentlemen (1999) and Black Books (2000) have not been afraid to make darkness visible. These shows have managed to find comedy in the most unlikely areas.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of high-quality American comedy imports on British screens. Shows such as Cheers (1982) and Roseanne (1989) underline the popularity of well-crafted, character-driven sitcoms. The most durable shows from over there that have made it over here, Seinfeld (1990), The Larry Sanders Show (1992), Frasier (1993), Friends (1995), and Will and Grace (1998), are full of wiseacre characters firing off a volley of killer one-liners. The sheer wit of these programmes also disproves the old canard that Americans do not understand irony.

VI.

The Years to Come

It is British comedy, however, that remains the envy of the world, with its wealth of personalities that people everywhere can warm to—from Arthur Askey through Michael Palin to Victoria Wood. Performers such as Benny Hill and the Monty Python team run constantly on American cable television channels, and Mr Bean played by Rowan Atkinson does huge business as in-flight entertainment.

Now the United States networks are lionizing performers as diverse as Ricky Gervais from The Office and Absolutely Fabulous’ Jennifer Saunders. Figures such as Tony Hancock, John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and David Jason, the stalwarts of British television comedy, have a following the world over, which they look set to retain.