sitcom
Veronica Lee
There’s little chance, I would guess, that the Windsors were gathered on the sofa to watch The Windsors last night. The show, thankfully, is not another attempt to oil up the collective fundament of the British royal family (and goodness knows television producers were doing enough of that in programmes about the Queen’s 90th birthday recently), more an attempt to destroy it by spoof.Royalists needn’t worry about the imminent downfall of their favourites, though; as funny as much of The Windsors is, there’s nothing much to challenge the crown in George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler-Moore’s scripts. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
With a slightly changed cast and set-up from its Hogmanay-themed pilot, screened on New Year’s Eve 2015, this was the first of a six-part sitcom (written by Simon Carlyle and Gregor Sharp) about the residents of a street in suburban Glasgow.At its centre are Beth and Eric (Arabella Weir and Alex Norton), a middle-aged couple whose son, Ian (Jamie Quinn), has just decided to leave home and move in with his boyfriend, Jaz, but has yet to tell them. Two doors down live Cathy (Doon Mackichan, acting up a storm) and Colin (Jonathan Watson), while two doors down the other way are Christine and her Read more ...
Jasper Rees
They say there are no second acts, but in the world of contemporary dad rock there’s little else. This year Squeeze became the latest band to re-form, not in quite the original line-up, but in an incarnation which patched up previous cracks between its two front men. The result was a cheerful tour and an enlightening album. I caught the live show at the Royal Albert Hall, where the old songs inevitably fared better than the less familiar new ones. In their studio incarnation, the robust new songs have the potential to sink into the marrow.Cradle to the Grave is the latest addition to a small Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The sclerotic culture of dithering that afflicts the higher-ups at the BBC has been mercilessly exposed in W1A. It turns out that fear of failure was always a managerial thing at the corporation. How else did Dad’s Army have such a bumpy ride to birth? As told in We’re Doomed! The Dad’s Army Story, one of the most enduring sitcoms ever made was very nearly never made.Stephen Russell’s script took the facts of the story and wove them into a comedy drama that touched and tickled in equal measure. At the heart of it was the partnership of David Croft and Jimmy Perry, one a producer barely Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“He has been in poor health for some time, but was cracking jokes to the last,” read the statement from Warren Mitchell’s family following news of his death today, at the age of 89. That will come as no surprise for those who remember the actor primarily as Alf Garnett, first in Till Death Do Us Part (on the BBC, 1965-75), and later In Sickness and In Health (1985-1992).But, as I discovered when interviewing Mitchell in 2002 on the eve of his playing the lead in Arthur Miller’s The Price, there was much more to him than the Cockney dock-worker. He was Miller’s favourite British actor, and won Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s a baby boom in sitcom. This week two of last year’s best comedies return for second helpings, each with a child in tow. In Detectorists (BBC Two on Thursday) Andy is out in the field panning for gold with a small sweet addition. But first Catastrophe is back – and the title holds good. For Sharon and Rob (played by series creators Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney) parenthood is just as much of a disaster zone as the unplanned pregnancy which threw them together in the first series. And the jokes still come at you like rapid machine-gun fire.In fact, it’s possibly even funnier now. In the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Turning autobiography into comedy gold is an alchemy that has often been tried. Among them Caitlin Moran’s Raised by Wolves, Kathy Burke’s superb Walking and Talking, and the mooted but, as yet uncommissioned story of Jeremy Clarkson’s childhood, provisionally titled For Whom the Bellend Trolls.When dealing with real-life reminisces, the balance between believability and comedy is a very difficult thing to get right. Slight situations can provide big laughs in a living, breathing reality, and the temptation is to supersize them for telly to make sure that everyone is in on the joke. The Read more ...
Barney Harsent
When Jim Hacker MP was unexpectedly promoted to the position of PM, the classic sitcom Yes, Minister required just a small tweak in title and it was pretty much business as usual, albeit with a grander sense of potential impact. When the shit hit the fan, there was alarm, followed by quiet restraint and arched eyebrows before predetermined Machiavellian plans were unveiled and the credits rolled over a comforting closure.As Selina Meyer prepared to make her first speech as President to the Joint Session in series four of US sitcom Veep, similarly, everything had changed, yet everything Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
For somebody who never seems to be short of things to say, journalist and author Caitlin Moran doesn’t half like to repeat herself. Raised by Wolves is, for those of you keeping score at home, her third attempt to tell the story of growing up chubby, eccentric and poor in Wolverhampton. Like last year’s novel How to Build a Girl this one is nominally fictional, but the addition of younger sister Caroline (Caz) as co-writer introduces something new.That something, as Raised by Wolves returned for a full series after 2013’s pilot, was red-haired Aretha (Alexa Davies), cynical, precocious and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There’s a tricky balancing act involved when writing a sitcom. Too much "sit" and you’re in danger of losing the laughs, too much "com" and it becomes increasingly difficult to find the space to land a serious dramatic punch. Get one of these things wrong and, like a fat man facing a baby on a see-saw, it looks all wrong and is no fun for anyone. Catastrophe, Channel 4’s new sitcom, written by and starring Sharon Horgan (Pulling, Dead Boss) and US stand-up Rob Delaney (Burning Love), approaches this dilemma with a classic love story: girl meets boy, girl gets pregnant, both try to work out Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The latest sitcom from the United States is very much in the American mould of smart dialogue, pacy timing and some astute human observation layered with a hint of schmaltz. It concerns two thirtysomethings, Annie and Jake, who have been together for six years. In the pilot episode last night, she was expecting him to pop the question while they were on a romantic holiday, while he has planned to go on bended knee when they return home.The opening is a beautifully choreographed piece of economic but laugh-laden exposition – students of the form could learn much from this episode – as it all Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Commissioning new sitcoms is a notoriously imprecise science. The first episode, and sometimes the first series, finds a sitcom at its least sure-footed. Keen to tell you all about itself, it tends to behave out of character, gabbling nervously and exaggerating every gesture. It might never find its feet, but you can rarely tell from one half-hour introduction. My own personal hostage to fortune was to have a sense of humour bypass when reviewing Father Ted. (But then episode one wasn't that funny.)Channel 4 used to hold an annual sitcom festival which searched for wheat among the chaff of TV Read more ...