Is laughter the best medicine? As we spend more time at home due to the coronavirus outbreak, Professor Alec Charles, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, argues that there's something reassuring about sitcoms and nominates five favourites to help get you through the lockdown.
It鈥檚 a truth frequently acknowledged that laughter is the best medicine (at least when paracetamol isn鈥檛 available). A few months after the British government launched the 鈥 whose aim is to refer vulnerable people towards to underpin their mental wellbeing 鈥 this truth has rarely felt more timely. Art may disturb and challenge us 鈥 but it can also console and inspire us in our darkest hours.
There鈥檚 something remarkably reassuring about the situation comedy. It embraces a homely nostalgia, an old friend to which we return time and again from the comfort of our couches, a pleasure to share with family and friends. It鈥檚 ingrained in our memories 鈥 its best lines as easily parroted as those of Monty Python鈥檚 parrot sketch.
Sitcoms offer more than the shallow pleasures of schadenfreude, with good humour borne out of resilience and camaraderie. The stubborn humanity of its emphatically ordinary protagonists reminds us of our own heroic capacity, , to live in joy and laugh into the face of death.
But such satires upon Armageddon as or may not be to everyone鈥檚 tastes at this time. I, for one, won鈥檛 be sitting down tonight to watch . My preferred small-screen security blankets tend to be less blunt as to our impending doom.
These aren鈥檛 necessarily the greatest sitcoms ever made 鈥 though they鈥檙e all very fine indeed. I鈥檝e not included Friends, Frasier or Fawlty Towers because, works of genius though they are, they don鈥檛 present quite the foil to quotidian suffering or existential angst that these do. I鈥檝e avoided Steptoe and Son because it makes Waiting for Godot seem blithe 鈥 and The Good Life and Outnumbered may hit too close to home.
My last two choices deliver reliable family viewing. The first three may provide an antidote to having too much of that.
The self-styled show about nothing is inevitably about everything. combined Jerry Seinfeld鈥檚 relaxed observational comedy with Larry David鈥檚 sharper and more anxious perspective upon the daily horrors of life (which we still relish in ).
As I suggested in , Seinfeld 鈥渆ncompassed the aspirations of Generation X, then in the influential last throes of its youth鈥. And, in doing so, it addressed the nature of the human condition through its hilarious and sometimes hysterical portrait of the frustration of living in a world plagued by soup Nazis, interminable subway journeys and inescapable multi-storey car parks.
In Elaine and George, we find an everywoman and everyman equal to Leopold and Molly Bloom 鈥 those resolutely flawed souls in James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses, struggling with all the impossible optimism of against the vicissitudes of modern existence. (We must, Camus finally reminds us, imagine Sisyphus happy.) And for British viewers it鈥檚 available for free online from .
What new can be said about ? A surprise international hit, this tragi-comedy doesn鈥檛 so much balance pathos and laughter as deliver them both simultaneously in gut-wrenching chunks.
Yet somehow 鈥 despite its unsentimental knowingness 鈥 it remains uncompromisingly focused upon its faith in the redeeming quality of love. And it鈥檚 all from the good old BBC.
This may seem a strangely stoical choice in a time when we must trust our lives to the decisions of politicians. Yet Armando Iannucci鈥檚 masterpiece , even in its foul-mouthed candour as to the hypocrisies of power, remains firmly on the side of cheerful scepticism rather than soulless cynicism.
There鈥檚 something gloriously vital in Malcolm Tucker鈥檚 remorseless streams of vitriol and in the resigned but resilient submission of his various victims to their verbal batterings. And there is something curiously life-affirming in the well-intentioned, deluded innocence of all its players 鈥 including even the monstrous but ultimately tragic figure of Tucker himself. It is as epic and truthful as War and Peace. (And, again, licence-fee-payers can on the BBC.)
Graham Linehan has, as I鈥檝e , almost single-handedly revived the glories of the family friendly situation comedy. But even more than the incandescent IT Crowd and the sublimely ridiculous Count Arthur Strong, it was this early collaboration with Arthur Mathews which not only sealed his reputation as a master-craftsman of the genre but which has also best stood the test of time.
The gentle, innocent and truly loving friendship between Dermot Morgan鈥檚 Ted and Ardal O'Hanlon鈥檚 Dougal 鈥 like that between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy 鈥 beautifully counterpoints the utter pandemonium which they repeatedly let loose.
Available from , it鈥檚 a series which, even after multiple viewings, still rewards re-watching, either as a self-indulgent treat or as a joy to savour with your loved ones. That鈥檚 the miracle of . However absurd things get, Ted make things seem better.
As the world crashes down around our ears, let鈥檚 not forget that one day, maybe not such a very long time away, someone somewhere will produce a brilliant sitcom about all this. It鈥檚 happened before. Launched just 23 years after the end of the second world war, remains the BBC鈥檚 most enduringly appealing family comedy.
A Don Quixote figure maybe, but one who defends the nation against real enemies (and Nazis at that), Arthur Lowe鈥檚 Captain Mainwaring may be preposterously pompous but is also fundamentally heroic. (One forgets how often he risks his dignity, reputation and even his life for the sake of his platoon and their noble mission.)
If, as our media and politicians keep telling us, we鈥檙e now operating on a war footing, then Jimmy Perry and David Croft鈥檚 classic comedy () can still teach us a lot about how we might best keepcalm 鈥 or at least not panic too much 鈥 and carry on.
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Photo of Dad's Army: BBC Pictures
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