Television comedy

In 1972, TV Times announced the new and daring sitcom Love Thy Neighbour (ITV 1972(ITV -1976: 'It is about racial prejudice -with a difference. It should make us laugh a lot … and think a lot, too' (quoted in Pratt). The main source of humour is the conflict that ensues when the black couple Bill and Barbie Reynolds from the West Indies move next door to the white bigot Eddie Booth and his long-suffering wife Joan. With its central presence of black characters and the neighbour's squabbling as the prod of racial disputes, this sitcom, according to Alix Coleman's promotion, constitutes 'anything but another over-the-garden-wall comedy' (Coleman 28). Indeed, Love Thy Neighbour's approach to race and race relations has rendered the series '[o]ne of the more controversial sitcoms in the annals of British television history' (Taylor and Perry 155).

This chapter examines the relationship between collective trauma and comedy as a meaningful cultural ritual. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Emile Durkheim, Scepanski highlights the temporal aspects of these theorists' work to note the ways in which comedy manages the emotional and political intensities initiated by events like 9/11.

In order to provide a conceptual framework of consensus in the field of fiction programs in television, at both professional and academic levels, this essay has the objective of defining and compiling the different paradigmatic genres and formats of drama and comedy in TV series, as well as those concepts of «genre» and «format». With that, we pretend to relieve one of the most serious problems at the moment of begin any type of research that takes television fiction as object: the lack of an unique sense in the definitions of the concepts that it must handle. The present article, result of a process of both bibliographical and empirical research, is, in that way, an offer of definitions and categorizations of the different genres and formats of Tv fiction series, offer capable of being a common place both for future researches and for possible reviews and discussions.

This article considers how the concept of micronationality served as a launching pad for a broadcast comedy, the 2012 Australian television series, Micro Nation, set on the fictional island of Pullamawang. I argue that by setting the series within a fictional micronational environment, the creators were able to develop a distinct type of situation for the comedy, embedding the theme of relative size and isolation as a key aspect of the show’s content and utilising unusual production and broadcast techniques. The article’s analysis draws on literature from Television and Broadcast Studies, Island Studies and Genre Studies and reflects on the media representation of micronations more generally.

Published as part of a journal special on 'invisible television', this article places the popular comedy show Harry Hill's TV Burp within traditions of 'television about television' and in particular the 'clip show' format. Tracing the evolution of the clip show from the 1970s to the present, it considers how the format, relatively invisible within television scholarship, raises critical questions around agency, authorship and value. It argues that TV Burp typifies the clip show's complex positioning of the viewer in relation to the televisual flow, and offers a reminder that there are various ways of defining 'invisible' television.

This paper presents the research findings obtained from a research project investigating media audiences and their reception of a cult-television (Cult TV) text, namely Da Ali G Show. The audience research comprises 18 semi-structured interviews conducted in London (the United Kingdom) and in Zagreb (Croatia) aimed at establishing how fandom is discursively constructed. The analysis of the interpretive community in two distinct socio-cultural contexts showed that there were more similarities than differences overall. The practices engaged in by the interviewees mostly involved making a conscious effort to regularly watch the primary text as well as to show an interest in the future work of the author.

This paper presents the research findings obtained from a research project investigating media audiences and their reception of a cult-television (Cult TV) text, namely Da Ali G Show. The audience research comprises 18 semi-structured interviews conducted in London (the United Kingdom) and in Zagreb (Croatia) aimed at establishing how fandom is discursively constructed. The analysis of the interpretive community in two distinct socio-cultural contexts showed that there were more similarities than differences overall. The practices engaged in by the interviewees mostly involved making a conscious effort to regularly watch the primary text as well as to show an interest in the future work of the author. The research showed that interviewees typically engaged in a type of ‘moderate’ fandom, whilst strong emotional attachments were seen as negative, as was intrusiveness into people’s privacy. This indicates a split between the signifier and the signified: the term ‘fan’ was readily adop...

This research sets out to explore the social reception of the television comedy Da Ali G Show -a text that raised controversy due to its politically incorrect discourse. It was carried out in two different socio-cultural settings: London/United Kingdom and Zagreb/Croatia. The results are based on eighteen interviews with these interpretive communities built on shared preference for the show and the type of humour it promotes. There were obvious differences in the position the text itself had in these respective communities: While it was very popular in the UK, especially among young people, it had a marginal position the in Croatia, viewed by a small niche that considered themselves to be alternative to the Croatian mainstream. The decoding of the text showed profound differences: in the UK interpretive community mechanisms were found that enabled appreciation of the show while still remaining within a politically correct discourse. In the Croatian interpretive community, however, these mechanisms were absent, since there was no sense of violation of a norm if one engaged in a politically incorrect discourse. The findings suggest that the broader social context determined the position the text itself had in these respective interpretive communities, and was important in shaping the way it was decoded by the readers.

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, Friday nights were (all too briefly) enlivened by a pair of young scamps with a penchant for critiquing popular culture, whether mounting toybased parodies of contemporary film and television, utilising Star Wars figurines to skewer trash TV formats, or dispensing Vinyl Justice to the mad, bad and (occasionally) dangerous of rock 'n' pop.

Despite their renown as one of the most successful double acts in British television history, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise have received scant academic attention. However, they have been celebrated in numerous biographies and documentaries, as result of which various narratives have come to be constructed around them: namely, that their success at the BBC in the 1970s was in large part due to the re-working of their screen personae by writer Eddie Braben. Braben claimed to be the first person to have incorporated the real bond of affection that existed between the men into their screen alter egos, and also stated that his reimagining of Ernie Wise’s character as a pompous yet talentless writer allowed him to eschew the traditional role of a straight man and feed.
Drawing upon archive interviews, written accounts and textual analyses of Morecambe & Wise’s television performances, both at the BBC in the 1970s and in the 1960s at ATV, this article demonstrates that their personalities were very much an established part of the act prior to Braben’s arrival, and that his reinvention of their screen dynamic, while capitalising upon Eric Morecambe’s comic talents, in fact served to weaken Wise’s agency as a performer.

Late night magazine show The Last Leg was developed during London 2012 to entertain a mainstream audience and promote dialogue about disability in an innovative way. The show was led by comedian Adam Hills and regular panelists Alex Brooker and Josh Widdicombe and screened on Channel 4 after each day’s Paralympics transmission, and during and after broadcast the audience were invited to participate using Twitter and the hashtag #IsItOk. This method of second screen engagement allowed a broad community of viewers to ask questions of Paralympic athletes and other disabled people in a way they might otherwise have avoided for fear of appearing insensitive or inappropriate. This chapter explores the program’s approach to identity and the development of a variety of voices discussing disability during the games, showing how a skillful comedic address and a mixture of traditional and social media engagement was used to meet the program’s aims.