Outnumbered: the freshest sitcom for some time
Which is the greatest British comedy series of all time? The results of our online survey are in: click here to read Peter Bazalgette's blog on the results
There is a learned treatise to be written about television nurseries: series whose greatest significance is the embryonic talent which they nurtured. But don’t worry, this is not it. Any such study would have to record how the Tonight programme in the 1950s produced Alasdair Milne (later BBC director general) and Antony Jay (the co-author of Yes, Minister). Thames TV’s This Week in the 1960s and 1970s gave us Jeremy Isaacs and David Elstein, who went on to found Channels Four and Five respectively. In the 1980s, Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life! incubated Adam Curtis (now our most influential documentary maker) and Sean Woodward (currently Northern Ireland secretary). The 1990s Big Breakfast yielded, among others, Charlie Parsons (creator of the world-beating format, Survivor) and Ruth Wrigley (who launched Big Brother in Britain in 2000).
The common denominator between these folk is that they all worked behind the camera. Since television is part of the entertainment industry, such figures are often ignored in favour of the front-of-camera stars. This was something Not Again: Not the Nine O’Clock News (BBC2, 28th December) tried to remedy.
It partially succeeded by including John Lloyd and Sean Hardie, the producers of the hit 1980s comedy series, along with Richard Curtis, one of the writers, and Howard Goodall, who composed many of the pop parodies that the show excelled in. Was this programme biopic nevertheless just a pretext for repeating yet another potpourri of bargain basement clips? To some extent it was. But two raw stories redeemed the general air of self-reverence. One explored the painful sacking of Chris Langham after series one, as he fought various addictions. The other revealed the chilling announcement from Rowan Atkinson at a dinner, following what turned out to be the final series: “I don’t want to work with the Second XI any more.”
But as we listened to these famous faces celebrating their mutual wit and wisdom, the programme failed to mention the extraordinary rollcall of other writers who worked on the show: Douglas Adams, Clive Anderson, Colin Bostock-Smith and David Renwick were just a few of them. And two more illustrious Not the Nine O’Clock News alumni just happened to be responsible for one of the best shows over the festive break, on BBC1 the night before.
Outnumbered, the freshest situation comedy we’ve seen for a while, is the creation of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. They not only contributed to NTNON but also went on to write the innovative Drop the Dead Donkey for Channel 4. They have now struck gold again with a highly original, very funny and utterly charming sitcom format. If you haven’t yet seen it make sure you do. The next series will be shown later this year.
Its originality lies in the production technique: it’s how Mike Leigh would make a comedy series if he ever did. The Brockman family live in sitcom-land (middle-class suburbia) and have three children: Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey), Ben (Daniel Roche) and Karen (Ramona Marquez). Child actors in comedies traditionally come from stage schools where they are well-trained but, imprisoned by parental ambition, become artificial little “actors” complete with naive over-emphasis and precious delivery. What Hamilton and Jenkin have done is cast three naturalistic, apparently innocent kids. Then they loosely script each episode and leave it to the cast to improvise the details. The level of trust that must exist between the adults (Hugh Dennis, Claire Skinner and David Ryall) and the children creates wonderful scenes which perfectly replicate the surreality of family life. The undoubted star of Outnumbered is the enchanting Ramona Marquez. In this Christmas special the seven-year-old rumbles her parents trying to falsify an insurance claim, speculates about porpoises under the kitchen floorboards and requests they sing along to the pop song, “Sex on Fire.”
Outnumbered is not in my top 20 greatest-ever sitcoms, but it’s certainly bubbling under, as the late DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman used to say. The best sitcoms take three or four years to worm their way into our affections and Outnumbered is on its way. And it’s why the BBC and Channel 4 are essential: they are the only broadcasters left who have the bottle to stick with a low-rating sitcom which they believe in until it breaks through. Many of the finest sitcoms (Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers, Last of the Summer Wine) earned derisory ratings to begin with.
Which is the greatest British comedy series of all time? The results of our online survey are in: click here to read Peter Bazalgette's blog on the results
There is a learned treatise to be written about television nurseries: series whose greatest significance is the embryonic talent which they nurtured. But don’t worry, this is not it. Any such study would have to record how the Tonight programme in the 1950s produced Alasdair Milne (later BBC director general) and Antony Jay (the co-author of Yes, Minister). Thames TV’s This Week in the 1960s and 1970s gave us Jeremy Isaacs and David Elstein, who went on to found Channels Four and Five respectively. In the 1980s, Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life! incubated Adam Curtis (now our most influential documentary maker) and Sean Woodward (currently Northern Ireland secretary). The 1990s Big Breakfast yielded, among others, Charlie Parsons (creator of the world-beating format, Survivor) and Ruth Wrigley (who launched Big Brother in Britain in 2000).
The common denominator between these folk is that they all worked behind the camera. Since television is part of the entertainment industry, such figures are often ignored in favour of the front-of-camera stars. This was something Not Again: Not the Nine O’Clock News (BBC2, 28th December) tried to remedy.
It partially succeeded by including John Lloyd and Sean Hardie, the producers of the hit 1980s comedy series, along with Richard Curtis, one of the writers, and Howard Goodall, who composed many of the pop parodies that the show excelled in. Was this programme biopic nevertheless just a pretext for repeating yet another potpourri of bargain basement clips? To some extent it was. But two raw stories redeemed the general air of self-reverence. One explored the painful sacking of Chris Langham after series one, as he fought various addictions. The other revealed the chilling announcement from Rowan Atkinson at a dinner, following what turned out to be the final series: “I don’t want to work with the Second XI any more.”
But as we listened to these famous faces celebrating their mutual wit and wisdom, the programme failed to mention the extraordinary rollcall of other writers who worked on the show: Douglas Adams, Clive Anderson, Colin Bostock-Smith and David Renwick were just a few of them. And two more illustrious Not the Nine O’Clock News alumni just happened to be responsible for one of the best shows over the festive break, on BBC1 the night before.
Outnumbered, the freshest situation comedy we’ve seen for a while, is the creation of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. They not only contributed to NTNON but also went on to write the innovative Drop the Dead Donkey for Channel 4. They have now struck gold again with a highly original, very funny and utterly charming sitcom format. If you haven’t yet seen it make sure you do. The next series will be shown later this year.
Its originality lies in the production technique: it’s how Mike Leigh would make a comedy series if he ever did. The Brockman family live in sitcom-land (middle-class suburbia) and have three children: Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey), Ben (Daniel Roche) and Karen (Ramona Marquez). Child actors in comedies traditionally come from stage schools where they are well-trained but, imprisoned by parental ambition, become artificial little “actors” complete with naive over-emphasis and precious delivery. What Hamilton and Jenkin have done is cast three naturalistic, apparently innocent kids. Then they loosely script each episode and leave it to the cast to improvise the details. The level of trust that must exist between the adults (Hugh Dennis, Claire Skinner and David Ryall) and the children creates wonderful scenes which perfectly replicate the surreality of family life. The undoubted star of Outnumbered is the enchanting Ramona Marquez. In this Christmas special the seven-year-old rumbles her parents trying to falsify an insurance claim, speculates about porpoises under the kitchen floorboards and requests they sing along to the pop song, “Sex on Fire.”
Outnumbered is not in my top 20 greatest-ever sitcoms, but it’s certainly bubbling under, as the late DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman used to say. The best sitcoms take three or four years to worm their way into our affections and Outnumbered is on its way. And it’s why the BBC and Channel 4 are essential: they are the only broadcasters left who have the bottle to stick with a low-rating sitcom which they believe in until it breaks through. Many of the finest sitcoms (Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers, Last of the Summer Wine) earned derisory ratings to begin with.
