Throughout film, television, and radio, British comedy has become known for its consistently peculiar characters, plots, and settings, and has produced some of the most renowned comedians and characters in the world.
History
British
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
history is measured in centuries.
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
incorporated many chase scenes and beatings into his comedies, such as in his play ''
The Comedy of Errors
''The Comedy of Errors'' is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. It ...
''. The quarrelsome couple
Punch and Judy
Punch and Judy is a traditional puppet show featuring Mr. Punch and his wife Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically Mr. Punch and one other character w ...
made their first recorded appearance in Britain in 1662, when Samuel Pepys noted a "pretty" puppet play being performed in Covent Garden, London.
The various episodes of Punch and Judy are performed in the spirit of outrageous comedy — often provoking shocked laughter — and are dominated by the anarchic clowning of Mr. Punch.
Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...
has been a major feature of comedy in the British isles for centuries. The pictorial satire of
William Hogarth
William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like s ...
was a precursor to the development of
political cartoons
A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine ...
in 18th century England.
The medium developed under the direction of its greatest exponent,
James Gillray
James Gillray (13 August 1756Gillray, James and Draper Hill (1966). ''Fashionable contrasts''. Phaidon. p. 8.Baptism register for Fetter Lane (Moravian) confirms birth as 13 August 1756, baptism 17 August 1756 1June 1815) was a British caricatur ...
from London, who has been referred to as the father of the political cartoon.
With his satirical works calling the king (George III), prime ministers and generals (especially Napoleon) to account, Gillray's wit and keen sense of the ridiculous made him the pre-eminent
cartoonist
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...
of the era.
In early 19th century England,
pantomime
Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speaking ...
acquired its present form which includes
slapstick
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...
comedy and featured the first mainstream
clown
A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms.
History
The most ancient clowns have been found in ...
Joseph Grimaldi, while comedy routines also featured heavily in British
music hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...
theatre which became popular in the 1850s. British comedians who honed their skills at pantomime and music hall sketches include
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
,
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson; 16 June 1890 – 23 February 1965) was an English comic actor, writer, and film director who was one half of the comedy double act, duo Laurel and Hardy. He appeared with his comedy partner Oliver Ha ...
,
George Formby
George Formby, (born George Hoy Booth; 26 May 1904 – 6 March 1961) was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930s and 1940s. On stage, screen and record he s ...
and
Dan Leno
George Wild Galvin (20 December 1860 – 31 October 1904), better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall ...
.
The influential English music hall comedian and theatre impresario
Fred Karno
Frederick John Westcott (26 March 1866 – 17 September 1941), best known by his stage name Fred Karno, was an English theatre impresario of the British music hall. As a comedian of slapstick he is credited with popularising the custard-p ...
developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue in the 1890s, and Chaplin and Laurel were among the young comedians who worked for him as part of "Fred Karno's Army".
[McCabe, John. "Comedy World of Stan Laurel". p. 143. London: Robson Books, 2005, First edition 1975]
Film comedy
''See''
British comedy films
British comedy films are comedy films produced in the United Kingdom. In the early 1930s, film adaptations of stage farces were popular. British comedy films are numerous, but among the most notable are the Ealing comedies, the 1950s work of the ...
(
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a significant film industry for over a century. While film production reached an all-time high in 1936, the "golden age" of British cinema is usually thought to have occurred in the 1940s, during which the directors D ...
).
Radio
Radio comedy in Britain has been almost exclusively the preserve of the BBC, and a number of British
radio comedies achieved considerable renown in the second half of the 20th century.
In the 1940s and 1950s,
variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
dominated the schedules, and popular series included ''
It's That Man Again
''It's That Man Again'' (commonly contracted to ''ITMA'') was a BBC radio comedy programme which ran for twelve series from 1939 to 1949. The shows featured Tommy Handley in the central role, a fast-talking figure, around whom the other cha ...
'' and ''
Much Binding in the Marsh
''Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh'' was a comedy show broadcast from 1944 to 1950 and 1951 to 1954 by BBC radio and in 1950–51 by Radio Luxembourg. It was written by and starred Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne as officers in a fictional RAF stati ...
''. In the mid-1950s, however, two notable series emerged which would help to shape the future of radio and
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
comedy in
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
.
The Goons (
Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs ...
,
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish actor, comedian, writer, musician, poet, and playwright. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Raj, British Colonial India, where h ...
and
Harry Secombe
Sir Harold Donald Secombe (8 September 1921 – 11 April 2001) was a Welsh comedian, actor, singer and television presenter. Secombe was a member of the British radio comedy programme ''The Goon Show'' (1951–1960), playing many characters, m ...
) starred in their own anarchic series ''The Goon Show'' which ran throughout the 1950s. At the same time, the
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, the first of a new generation of comedies based on believable characters and situations. ''Hancock's Half Hour'' later transferred to TV and was phenomenally successful throughout the 1950s, running concurrently on radio and television until 1960.
Another notable radio show was the
'', which ran from 1959 to 1964. ''
'' (1964-1973) gained a devoted youth following in the late 1960s.
Later radio shows made use of the panel game format, including the long-running ''
'' (1977–), which often broadcast a dozen of so episodes a year, normally split over two series broadcast at different points in the year. The success of the panel show format has in turn has influenced TV series like ''
'' (2005–).
BBC Radio has continued to be a breeding ground for new talent and many programmes have transferred successfully to television, including ''
, there have been many successful and influential series which were designed purely for TV. In contrast to their US counterparts, which have seasons of up to 26 episodes a year, British sit-coms traditionally have series of just 6 episodes. The main reason for this is that British shows are generally written by one or two dedicated writers - often the people that created the show in the first place - as opposed to the US model of having a larger writing team. In part, this is a reflection of the difference between the size of the TV audience in the two countries, and the economics of television production; for decades sit-coms were the shows on US television that delivered the highest ratings; in Britain the highest ratings figures were normally for soap operas, which generally run several times a week, year-in year-out, and as a result generally required larger writing teams.
Following the success of ''
became firmly entrenched in the television schedules. Some of the most successful examples include ''
...