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.