Day 305. Comedy. (1/11/13)

As I'm watching channel 5's great comedy characters list, I'll give you my theory on great British comedy.

All the best (and a fair bit of the worst in fairness) British comedy is based in the lives of those who are trapped in a situation that they feel that they are better than, with people that they believe are their natural inferiors; these characters feel that they were destined for better, still may be destined for better if they could only escape all the baggage of their lives that holds them back.

Hancock was the archetypal dreamer/snob, a would be intellectual, a philosopher who knows nothing but believe that he's above everything. Trapped in a bedsit in East Cheam, alone and staring into the future.

Steptoe had the father and son, the father happy to live in squalor, in the life that he had been brought into and the son with middle class aspiration and artistic desires who despaired of his parent but was unable to escape him.

Basil Fawlty and his frustrations at his marriage and his business - always sure that he should be the one that was being served rather than carrying out the service, an endless ball of frustration driven fury.

Bottom. Genuinely a Hancock for the eighties. The same sense of imprisonment, the snobbish dreamer stuck with the working class wide boy, knowing that he's no better but desperately attempting to fool himself.

Even Dad's Army (which I've never actually been a fan of) - Mainwaring knows for a fact that he's a born leader. The fact that nobody follows him is the fault of others.

The Likely Lads, viewed at my age in the form of its seventies return 'Whatever Happened To the Likely Lads' was based in the struggle of two lifelong friends who were completely incapable of escaping each other no matter how they tried.

Partridge. A world class broadcaster. Not a mid morning DJ on a digital station with a limited audience. Honest.


It's something to do with the British soul. No matter who we are, we feel that we were supposed to do something better than this; Americans don't have the same souls, don't feel the same need to run away from their own lives (generalisation, I'm sure there are many who do) as the English. Perhaps it's the result of living on a small island; our horizons are so limited.

The UK could never make Friends but that's okay, the USA couldn't produce an ounce of the endless despair that we call comedy.

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