Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of British TV Comedy

Abstract

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 traditions (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 denigration, 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, ethnicity, 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 concepts 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. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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