And Now For Something Completely Different
Coat of Arms of the British Broadcasting Corporation, in use since March, 1927.
“It’s…”
– The “It’s” Man (played by Michael Palin), Monty Python’s Flying Circus
British television and American television had much in common, given the shared language and cultural heritage between the two nations; but there were many finer points of distinction between their uses of the medium, as might be expected given the physical separation of the Atlantic Ocean, along with 200 years of separate jurisprudence. American television, for example, was largely produced by three privately-owned networks (four until 1956) who, though they were closely regulated by their government, were given broad latitude to determine the content and presentation of their programming. The publicly-owned network, PBS, was marginal by comparison, and its cash inflows were entirely dependent on the whims of successive governments. Under the Great Society, they had been doing very well indeed, but that might not always be so.
By contrast, though the United Kingdom had been the first power to produce regular television broadcasts, doing so in 1936 (though they were suspended for the duration of World War II), it was in other ways rather less developed than the American industry. Britain was served by only one network (the venerable, state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC) until 1955. At that time, after considerable deliberation, legislation was enacted that created ITV, understood to mean “Independent Television”; it was the first commercial network in the UK, organized in a similar manner as to the American networks (that is, a cooperative collective of smaller, regional affiliates). However, due to American private broadcasting of the time being seen as incredibly vulgar by standard-bearers, the government maintained significant control over its content. A third channel, BBC2, was launched in 1964, also under the auspices of the British Broadcasting Corporation; the original channel was thus redesignated as BBC1. (Plans for a second commercial network – which, in an odd coincidence, would become the fourth channel in the UK – went nowhere, just as plans for a fourth network in the US so often did). BBC1, BBC2, and ITV were found on Channels 1, 2, and 3 on the VHF band respectively, though these channels were found at different frequencies than in the US and Canada. Both BBC channels were free of advertising, and funded by a licence fee paid by all television viewers, which covered the overwhelming majority of their expenses; a common source of funding for public broadcasters in Europe, such a levy would likely be found unconstitutional in the United States. Among technological differences, British television used
Phase
Alternating
Line (
PAL) systems for colour encoding (alongside much of Western Europe, with the notable exception of France), in contrast to the system devised by the
National
Television
System
Committee (
NTSC) in the Americas. [1] Though PAL was judged superior to NTSC at the time of its implementation, this did not stop Britain from being several years behind the United States in terms of adopting all-colour programming. Black-and-white shows could still be seen first-run, even into the 1970s.
In the United States, British television was known from the late 1960s onward for its action-adventure and science-fiction programming, along with historical and period dramas, because these comprised the vast majority of its successful exports. However, within the United Kingdom itself, the most popular genre of programming was
“light entertainment”: comedies, musicals, and variety shows. However, there was a commonality with American programming, and that was an increasing tendency toward sophistication.
As was the case with television, British comedy and American comedy had much in common, but there were many finer points of distinction, which was naturally to be expected with a genre so subjective and context-sensitive. Granted, in the last few decades, American and British culture seemed to be coming together rather than growing apart, as part of the broader Anglosphere. All forms of media – broadcast, along with cinema and literature – and the shared cultural experiences of World War II and the Cold War did much to help this along, as did the greater phenomenon of globalization, prominent during this era of détente.
One of the hallmarks of British comedy was the dramatization of class conflict. This was far less prominent in the US, given the popular historical notion of all men being created equal, along with the perception of social status as impermanent and meritocratic. In the UK, on the other hand, social strata were far more rigid, and indeed were often seen as inherited, as if they were formal titles: working-class and middle-class (along with the ancient upper classes: the aristocracy and the landed gentry below them, who had been decimated by the World Wars and the Great Depression, among many other factors). A number of popular sitcoms of the era would focus on class conflict: Behind the Green Baize Door, for example, told the story of two housemaids working in a country house of the Victorian Era. [2] Somewhat more ambitious was Are You Being Served, which was equal parts farce and satire, set in a London department store in the present day. Key themes were the formalized, archaic relationships of the sales staff; their respective ranks within the rigid workplace hierarchy; and their interactions (as part of the middle-class) with the store’s ancient and eccentric owner, along with their more affluent clientele (upper-class), and the “dead common” maintenance staff (lower-class, but better paid than the sales staff due to their trade union).
Another hallmark of British comedy was
inter-generational conflict, which was far more universal, and indeed struck a chord with American audiences; to the point that two of the most popular programs of the 1960s,
Till Death Us Do Part and
Steptoe and Son, were both remade into two of the most popular
American series of the early 1970s:
Those Were the Days [3] and
Sanford and Son (both produced by Norman Lear
’s company, Tandem Productions) respectively; all were known for their grittiness, their realism, and their unflinching look at modern society, to contrast with the escapism and the artificial wholesomeness of years past. And, indeed, both parent programs were brought back for new runs in the early 1970s, each after a hiatus of several years. Though the success of their offspring stateside does not appear to have been a major factor in their return, it certainly could not have
hurt matters.
Till Death Us Do Part, like
Those Were the Days, was forced to brighten its tone somewhat given the more optimistic society of the early 1970s (though, unsurprisingly, this attitude was somewhat more muted under the grey skies of Albion). Mike and Rita had a son, also named Michael, and it is believed that this may have inspired Richard and Gloria to have a son on
Those Were the Days the following year. [4] Despite a general sympathy with the viewpoints of the younger generation, at least one very popular show with older protagonists premiered in this era:
The Library Mob, which starred three middle-aged Yorkshiremen, though they maintained a curiously youthful (some might say childish) attitude and perspective about the world around them. [5]
As popular as situation comedy was in Britain,
sketch comedy was perhaps even more so. The late 1960s saw one of the most influential such programs ever to have aired, the product of six comedy writers and performers:
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, as the show was eventually called (with its repertory players
– Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin – accordingly becoming known as
“the Pythons”), had a highly peculiar and idiosyncratic comedic style. Though it
did have clear antecedents (
The Goon Show and
Q5, along with previous projects involving various Pythons), it integrated these influences in a novel, anarchic yet also bizarrely cohesive, fashion. Surrealistic and absurdist, the program was thoroughly intellectual, but at the same time, deeply silly. Highbrow satire shared space with lowbrow sexual and scatological humour. Perhaps the overriding intention of its creators was to critique traditional comedic devices; an entire sketch parodied the concept of a punchline, and indeed the very notion of
“sketches”, with clear beginnings and endings, was rarely in evidence. In an attempt to lure an American audience, a compilation film of their best sketches (re-recorded on film, without an audience) was released in August, 1972. Connie Booth, John Cleese
’s wife (who
had made a name for herself stateside, in
Doctor Who) featured in several sketches, and the film (given the title
And Now For Something Completely Different, ironic as it was comprised entirely of reused material) was a minor success there, grossing $10 million and finishing at #20 at the box-office that year. Though none of the three major networks chose to carry
Flying Circus, PBS did, and it became one of the most popular shows on the network. [6] The run of the original program ended in early 1973, after three seasons; Cleese wished to spend more personal time with Booth, who had ended
her involvement with
Doctor Who after two seasons. Among their plans were starting a family (their daughter, Cynthia, was born in 1973) and, at Cleese
’s urging, working together on new story ideas. Thus, in lieu of a fourth season, the BBC agreed to support the production of a motion picture; in this endeavour, the Pythons were assisted by American investors who had become
Monty Python fans. Both Cleese and Booth
did agree to appear in the film. [7]
Monty Python was certainly the most critically-acclaimed and
avant-garde of the sketch comedy and variety series during this era, though it was far from the only one, and it was far from the most popular, either.
The Goodies, which debuted the year after
Python, had a much firmer slapstick orientation, allowing for far greater universality and comprehensibility. This same broad appeal, especially with younger viewers, provoked the inevitable criticism of the show being
“childish”; an unfortunate criticism, as the Goodies had almost as diverse a set of influences, and almost as eclectic an overall comedic style, as the Pythons. The Benny Hill Show, a long-running program entirely reliant on slapstick and double entendres, also faced harsh criticism from moral guardians and the intelligentsia alike, despite being hugely popular, at home and abroad; with its iconic sped-up chase sequences, set to the tune of
“Yakety Sax”, proving instantly memorable and often imitated. But perhaps the most popular
– and certainly the most beloved – sketch comedy was produced by the team of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, who had worked together since 1941. The most recent incarnation of their television career, simply titled The Morecambe & Wise Show, had aired on the BBC since 1968. Morecambe unfortunately suffered a heart attack in November of that year, but he was able to prove the old adage true when that which did not kill him ultimately made him (creatively) stronger, especially after he and Wise were teamed with writer Eddie Braben, who refined their comic personae for more modern sensibilities. From that point forward, they were appointment television, attracting ever-growing audiences throughout the 1970s.
Another sketch comedy series was The Two Ronnies, which featured one of the earliest Star Trek parodies on British television, as part of its first season of episodes in 1971. It played on said two Ronnies – Corbett and Barker, who naturally played Kirk and Spock, respectively – looking nothing like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, which became a plot point: the cause was a mysterious machine on an alien planet; hijinks ensued. [8] This initial parody, the first of many television parodies on the program, would directly lead into their second Star Trek parody, also part of the first season. A typical parody of Till Death Us Do Part, starring the two Ronnies as Alf and Mike, was suddenly interrupted by the crew of the Enterprise (in which the two Ronnies reprised their roles as Kirk and Spock, through the use of split-screening and body doubles – as added meta-humour, the body doubles for Kirk and Spock were deliberately made to resemble Shatner and Nimoy instead of Corbett and Barker) – beaming down and explaining that they had followed a “silly moo” (Alf’s famous term for his wife, Else) all the way from outer space. An obvious reference to the Star Trek-Doctor Who crossover, which had aired just a few months earlier in the UK [9], it became so popular that many other sketch comedies of the era aired their own such parodies – a phenomenon which reached its zenith in the Royal Variety Performance of 1972, in which Barker and Corbett made an unannounced appearance interrupting a sketch performed by the actual cast of Till Death Us Do Part – though in this version, they are swiftly shooed away by Alf Garnett, and the original sketch continues as “planned”, after an enthusiastic audience response. [10]
One of the commonalities to most forms of
“light entertainment” in the UK was that their production runs were much shorter than those in the US, with six to eight episodes per season being the British standard (in contrast to 26 episodes per season for American series). There were palpable risks and rewards with this rate of output, primarily of the eggs-to-basket variety, but the fact remained that British audiences tended to prefer this method on their homegrown programming
– after all, if they ever wanted to watch shows with lots of episodes, all they had to do was watch an American import. Star Trek was just one example of their popularity. For as much as the British loved comedy, so too did they appreciate action-adventure and science-fiction programming, which, for that matter, included their
own such shows
…
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[1] Today, NTSC and PAL are better known for their importance in video game localization, as many games have historically been chosen for export from Japan (which uses a modified version of NTSC) in only one of these two markets (North America and Europe, respectively), which have mutually incompatible technology.
[2] Behind the Green Baize Door was a working title (and concept) for what eventually became Upstairs, Downstairs – the epic story of an upper-class family in Belgravia through the early 20th century – IOTL. This also explains its absence from Emmy eligibility in the Outstanding Drama Series category ITTL.
[3] Recall that, IOTL, this series was instead produced as All in the Family. The development of Those Were the Days is detailed here and here.
[4] Actually, it was the aforementioned “Mini-Boom” that inspired the (premature, relative to Joey Stivic IOTL) birth of Mikey Higgins ITTL.
[5]
The Library Mob, so named because said library is a frequent haunt of the central characters, was a working title for
Last of the Summer Wine IOTL.
[6]
And Now For Something Completely Different was a flop in the US IOTL, but it becomes a sleeper hit thanks primarily to the presence of Booth (who, due to her role as Linda Johnson, appeared very little within
Flying Circus proper ITTL), and generates excellent word-of-mouth. PBS, for their part, has a wide-open timeslot that, IOTL, went to
Doctor Who, which allows
Monty Python to fit right in, ahead of schedule.
[7]
Python received a truncated fourth season IOTL, with limited involvement from Cleese. He wants nothing to do with it ITTL, for the already-mentioned reasons along with those of OTL; in concert with added momentum for a more lavish and elaborate film version, this results in the near thing becoming a near-miss instead.
[8] This sketch on which this one is based actually aired in 1973, during the third season, IOTL. It can be found online right
here, though the version that aired ITTL would have minor differences from the OTL version. Worth noting, as observed by Thande, is
how many classical parody elements are strangely absent from this sketch.
[9] The four-part arc aired on
Doctor Who throughout the month of January, 1971 (and the
Star Trek version, a two-parter, in September, 1970), as detailed
here.
[10] The cast of
Till Death Us Do Part did indeed appear on the Royal Variety Performance of 1972 IOTL, though obviously they were not interrupted by the Two Ronnies as they were performing their sketch. This synergistic appearance (as both programs appeared on BBC1) is the culmination of the
“Captain Kirk Interruption” sketch, which goes on to become a
cliché (the most obvious subversion
– someone from a British series interrupting a Star Trek parody – is exploited by 1973).
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Special thanks to Thande for his suggestions and advice in the writing of this update! I could not have painted a picture of British television in the early 1970s ITTL without having been briefed on what it was like IOTL, after all! And I can only hope that those of you non-Brits (and non-Anglophiles) who are reading now have further insight!
Actually, that’s not true. I can also hope that you all appreciated the numerous call-backs to previous updates. And as is so often the case, I have more information than I can comfortably fit into a single post, so we’ll be back exploring “the telly” at a later date. One good thing to come out of all this planning that, rather than a drought of topics for the late 1970s, as I initially feared, a flood is becoming much likelier, instead! Someday we will reach the 1980s, though, I can promise you that!
Special note: All uses of the word “series” in this update refer to the entire production run of a television program; “season” refers to the production period(s) therein.
), "Macgyver" and "Knight Rider" will happen in this timeline...
