BRITCOMS VS. SITCOMS: WHY BRITISH COMEDIES GO FOR THE THROAT
( The Dallas Morning News ) Jerome Weeks The Dallas Morning News; 01-19-1997
The scene: a kitchen in Elizabethan London. Sir Edmund Blackadder (Rowan
Atkinson) is trying to teach his idiot servant Baldrick (Tony Robinson) to add.
Using beans as counters, he fails repeatedly - with Baldrick concluding that
four beans must add up to "a small casserole."
"I see, Baldrick," Sir Edmund says, giving up with a sneer. "The Renaissance was
just something that happened to other people."
Viewers may immediately recognize this as a scene from a British TV comedy -
regardless of its period or place. First, there's the cultural--historical
reference (the Renaissance). American sitcoms play on pop culture knowledge, at
best. Second, it's a condescending put-down of an underling's ignorance by an
educated man. The exchange plays on classand privilege. All it needs is a bawdy
insult or maybe even a slap upside the head to make it a model of British comic
dialogue.
In America, the overwhelming concern of TV producers is that we welcome their
characters into our homes week after week. They all must become another part of
our friendly, upscale, middle American family. With some exceptions - mostly
secondary characters - likability is enforced.
On British television, on the other hand, a merry savagery often rules. Some of
the finestachievements in Britcomedy - after Monty Python's Flying Circus -
feature obnoxious, manipulative, self-indulgent and even vile lead characters -
who are hilarious. It's the reverse side of their fabled stuffiness. We revel in
their deviousness, their self-delusions, their snide insults - the very educated
way they hammer each other with racial and sexual slanders.
Look at Blackadder; Fawlty Towers; Keeping Up Appearances; Yes, Prime Minister;
Chef! all of which have aired or are airing on KERA. And, of course,
there's Absolutely Fabulous, which is returning to Comedy Central Sunday with an
eight-hour marathon (noon to 8 p.m.) followed by a new two-hour movie, The Last
Shout (8 p.m.), on Comedy Central cable.
In Dallas, more Britcoms are coming - to a city that regularly watches more such
shows than any other in America. KERA, a leader in importing Britcoms, has
started screening two new series, The Vicar of Dibley and The Thin Blue Line.
Vicar is written by Richard Curtis, co-author of the Blackadder series, and it's
produced by Jon Plowman, who produced Absolutely Fabulous. Blue Line reunites
Blackadder star Rowan Atkinson with the other Blackadder co-author, Ben Elton.
American TV tamed
Certainly, some American sitcoms have been based on mouthy main characters. But
it's revealing that two of the most influential such shows - All in the Family
and Sanford & Son - were modeled on British originals. Even those American
sitcoms that have a degree of confrontational energy tend to get domesticated
over time. Feuding couples get hitched. Murphy Brown has a baby. Archie Bunker
becomes less and less outspokenly bigoted, just charmingly grumpy. Roseanne
strays from its original noncondescending portrait of blue-collar Americans into
conventional Hollywood gimmicks.
"American culture gives lip service to breaking rules," says Dennis Kratz, dean
of undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and a professor of
literature. "But it's really much happier when the social order is firmly
re-established at the end. American popular culture is more moral and
conservative than we think it is. We get sidetracked by the sex or violence on
the surface. What our popular culture is always telling us is that the nice
person wins. It's better to be good. I like to tell my classes that America is
where Catholics, Protestants and Jews can all be Calvinists together."
This "taming" process doesn't happen just over time; it happens repeatedly in
individual episodes. Perhaps the most common narrative in American sitcoms is
the ancient comedy format of the lead character' s comeuppance. He or she must
eventually apologize for whatever scam has been attempted. He or she must make
up and be nice.
Thus, on such snappish shows as Murphy Brown, Frasier or Cybill, we repeatedly
witness a career woman or a highly educated man humiliated and forced to
apologize for his or her aggressiveness or opportunism. Even The Simpsons - as
brilliant a satire of pop culture as America has produced - keeps its characters
lovable. For a supposedly jaded show, The Simpsons often ends with affirmations
that would not look out of place on The Honeymooners: Homer and Marge rekindle
their love, Bart 'fesses up to some prank.
Imagine, instead, The Simpsons written from the point of view of Montgomery
Burns, the rapacious millionaire - and that although his evil plans may be
foiled each episode, his failures only feed his greed and his belief that all
around him are fools and peasants.
Imagine, in other words, the best of British television comedy.
It must be noted that many British sitcoms do offer characters and stories so
quaint they make The Brady Bunch seem toxic. These Britcoms are the "cozies":
The Manor Born; Good Neighbors, 'Allo, 'Allo; Are You Being Served?
But compare the cozies' warm mix of wool cardigans, chipper dottiness and camp
humor to the interpersonal nastiness that rules in the world of Ab Fab, as its
fans call it, or Fawlty Towers.
"British humor has long been more pointed than American humor," says Mr. Kratz.
"Americans really have a general fear of offending sensibilities, a fear of the
insult, while British comic performers are masters of it."
Howard Rankin, a British psychologist who is currently executive director of the
Carolina Wellness Retreat, says British comedians begin mastering such sniping
in college. The British educational system produces more verbally skillful
graduates, he contends. Certainly, the culinary knowledge spouted by Chef!
provides ample evidence - as do the Blackadder episodes devoted to Samuel
Johnson's dictionary and the election strategies of William Pitt, the younger.
Says Mr. Rankin: "There's also the tradition of the university revue - like the
Footlights," the annual Cambridge University show where members of Monty Python,
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore got their start. Mr. Rankin himself wrote for such
revues in London, he says, and "that kind of college humor is much more
iconoclastic, more irreverent than in America."
But what allows such lashing out to flourish on the network level in Britain,
says Mr. Kratz, is the class system. Characters such as Basil Fawlty, Hyacinth
on Keeping Up Appearances or Edina and Patsy on Ab Fab are basically social
climbers who aren't going to make it.
"They're stuck where they are," says Mr. Kratz. "They're not going to advance.
So they take it out on the people around them because ultimately it doesn't
matter. It's a comedy of frustration. Ironically, America is supposed to be the
culture of energy, but we're frightened of letting that energy loose. In
Britain, it's a more highly structured society, yet that allows more expression,
more free play."
A classic example
The Blackadder series is a history-classroom demonstration of this. The series
began with Edmund Blackadder as the illegitimate son of a medieval king,
constantly plotting to take over the throne. In succeeding seasons, the family
fortunes declined until ultimately, Edmund found himself in the trenches of
World War I, just another piece of machine-gun fodder.
All along, Rowan Atkinson's character mocks the moronic noblemen he must serve,
while he continually berates his own inept servant, Baldrick.
So why would TV viewers take delight in watching such a mean-spirited loser? Or
in watching the childish attempts of Edina and Patsy to remain trendy and
youthful at all costs?
Perhaps because there's something wistfully heroic in their doomed efforts. John
Cleese's Basil Fawlty will never leverage himself out of his predicament; his
inn will never become a four-star attraction. So he connives, he hurls abuse, he
rails against his plight.
"It's very British," says Mr. Rankin. "Basil is a quintessential type of
Englishman, the way we often see ourselves - the heroic failure. The entire
British Empire was a heroic failure."
Lenny Henry, the star and creator of Chef!, agrees. "Our best sitcom characters
are losers who can't get a break. When they do, the whole country rejoices."
But Mr. Henry also notes two basic industry differences that allow Britcoms to
be so bad-mannered: They're often scripted by just one writer; one sensibility
can dominate. And British series have only six episodes in a season.
"You guys do a very long run," he says, "so I think anybody abrasive or mean or
nasty after 12 episodes, you start thinking, `Well, yeah, I've seen that. What
else have you got?' "
`Vicar' is cozy
Of the three new imports, only Ab Fab's The Last Shout lives up to expectations
in the snarling humor department. The Vicar of Dibley, in fact, is mostly
crumbling Anglican cozy-dom, with a cherubic ordained woman (Dawn French) posted
to a sleepy backwater. We are reminded that Richard Curtis co-wrote Blackadder,
but he also wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, with its high coyness quotient.
As for The Thin Blue Line, Rowan Atkinson plays Inspector Fowler, the head of
the uniformed beat cops in a humble London suburb. But instead of a petty tyrant
commanding a pack of incompetents, Fowler is just a dutiful dweeb. Too bad.
The Last Shout, however, is a highly satisfying farce, although it does have an
abrupt ending and, in trying to sustain the comedy over two hours, writer-star
Jennifer Saunders loads on the chaotic complications. But in this story about
the wedding plans of Edina' s daughter, Saffron, we get to see Eddie and Patsy
storm the chi-chi ski slopes of Val D'Isere, France. As ever, champagne,
cocaine, cigarettes and Christian Lacroix prevail. (When Eddie actually meets
Mr. Lacroix, she grovelingly won't let go of his leg.) One imagines Eddie and
Patsy wearing T-shirts with their life's command - "Consume conspicuously" - and
slagging anyone not as desperately fashion-conscious as themselves.
How mean, how tacky.
And in these shows, how British.
American adaptations have mixed results
Hollywood hasn't picked up British shows as much as Broadway has. But there have
been a number of adaptations and inspirations. Amanda' s in 1983, for instance,
featured Bea Arthur as a California female version of irritable innkeeper Basil
Fawlty. Last year's High Society with Jean Smart, on the other hand, pretty much
transposed Absolutely Fabulous into the story of two well-off American friends
who spend much of their time smoking and drinking (the same has been claimed of
Cybill). The record of trans-Atlantic success, however, has not been inspiring;
most series have lasted only a season or less. - Jerome Weeks
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