Before the 1950s, when the 'Windrush generation' of immigrants from the West
Indies began to make its presence felt, race was a relatively little-used
subject for British comedians. Even after that, while those touring the pubs and
working-men's clubs might well have included racial material in their acts, such
humour made little impact on television or radio comedy which, thanks to strict
producers' codes, scarcely if ever touched on controversial issues.
In the early 1960s, however, in the wake of the opportunities created by
series like That Was the Week that Was (BBC, 1962-63) and Steptoe and Son (BBC,
1962-65; 1970-74) to reflect and engage with contemporary social issues, Johnny
Speight's Till Death Us Do Part (BBC, 1965-75) introduced working-class bigot
Alf Garnett. Exceptionally played by Warren Mitchell, Garnett was unlike any
character seen on television before that time; an unapologetic racist,
passionate super-patriot, aggressive anti-trade unionist and monarchist, he was
the expression of the most appalling rightwing views that Speight could dream
up. The character and the show were huge hits, regularly leaving pubs almost
empty on Monday evenings.
Comedy frequently offers insights into the most sensitive of social or
political issues of its time, and Speight and Mitchell's intention in Till Death
was to ridicule the attitudes embodied in Garnett. But fiction can have a power
beyond the control of its creators, and although the comedy was largely at the
expense of him and his long-suffering but similarly ignorant wife, Elsie, it
became clear that a proportion of viewers identified with 'Chairman Alf' and
considered his declamations on 'coons', 'wogs' and immigration a courageous
expression of their own views.
While Speight's defence of Till Death was undoubtedly sincere, he was on
rockier ground with his subsequent creation, Curry and Chips (ITV, 1969). The
Irish-Pakistani Kevin O'Grady, played by a browned-up Spike Milligan, had
previously appeared in an episode of Till Death. But Curry and Chips,
though it again attempted to raise important questions, lacked a strong enough
voice to challenge the racist attitudes of its characters, and too much of its
humour relied on the use of crude racial abuse and Milligan's caricatured
performance as the charmlessly-nicknamed 'Paki Paddy'. The shocked reaction from
some viewers and cultural commentators led to the show being dropped by ITV
after just six episodes, and in retrospect it's hard to understand how Speight
and LWT can have failed to anticipate the offence it caused.
Milligan, for one, was undeterred - in 1975 he browned-up again for The
Melting Pot (BBC), in which he and John Bird played a Pakistani father and son
illegally arrived in Britain via Amsterdam and landed in a very
racially-mixed London lodging-house, replete with a black Yorkshireman and a
Chinese Cockney, among others. The BBC, fearing a public relations disaster,
pulled the series after a single episode.
Such sensitivity did not mean that the tide had yet turned, however. In the
early 1970s, with the anti-immigration warnings of politician Enoch Powell and
others stirring up racial tension, one of ITV's most popular shows was Love Thy
Neighbour (1972-76), written by Vince Powell and Harry Driver. The series dealt
with the tensions that arise when a Tory-voting West Indian couple, Bill and
Barbara, move next door to white working-class socialist Eddie and his wife
Joan. As in Curry and Chips, the antagonism between the two lead characters,
played by Rudolph Walker and Jack Smethurst, was expressed with little more than
obvious racial name-calling, with words like 'coon', 'sambo' and 'honky'
recurring with distressing regularity, to the apparent hilarity of the studio
audience.
Walker has defended his role in the series, arguing that Bill was just as
much a fool as Eddie, and gave as good as he got. This, however, seems to be
missing the point. Worse, it leads by implication to the view that the racist
and the victim of racism are somehow 'as bad as each other'.
The BBC's It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (1974-81), written by Dad's Army (BBC,
1968-77) creators David Croft and Jimmy Perry and set among an army
entertainments unit in India during and after WWII, gained most of its laughs at
the expense of the British occupiers, but suffered from its narrow stereotypes
of its handful of Indian supporting characters as alternately servile, foolish,
lazy or devious.
Stereotyping was at the very heart of Mind Your Language (ITV, 1977-79),
which presented an unprecedented mix of nationalities and races for a British
sitcom, but offered only the crudest caricatures. The series was saved from the
grossest offensiveness partly thanks to the genial tolerance of its central
character, English language teacher Mr Brown (Barry Evans), but it was hardly an
advance.
ITV's Mixed Blessings (1978-80) was, superficially, more progressive,
comically exploring the relationship between white man Thomas and his black
fiancée, Susan, and its effects on their respective families and neighbours. But
although the two main characters were sympathetically played by Christopher
Blake and Muriel Odunton, the series was critically undermined by presenting
their relationship as a problem.
Thankfully, not all '70s sitcoms were so muddled. In Rising Damp (ITV,
1974-78) Don Warrington's Philip may have suffered the ignorant racial slurs of
Leonard Rossiter's odious Rigsby, but he routinely got the better of his
would-be tormenter and was by some way the series' most intelligent
and dignified character. In Porridge (BBC, 1974-77), the troubled mixed-race
Scot, McLaren (Tony Osoba), faced some taunting from his fellow prisoners,
including Ronnie Barker's Fletcher, but was generally treated with respect and
sympathy.
By the mid-1970s, however, the absence of black voices in television
fiction's discussions of race was causing growing resentment among black
audiences and, particularly, black political groups. In this charged atmosphere,
new comedies aimed at black audiences, even those by black writers, were judged
by harsh standards and, perhaps inevitably, found wanting.
Britain's first all-black sitcom was The Fosters (ITV, 1976-77), about a
Caribbean couple and their three British-born children living on a South London
housing estate. But the series' American origins (it was almost wholly reliant
on the scripts of US sitcom Good Times, only slightly tailored for British
sensibilities) worked against the gritty realism of its scenario, and despite
its pioneering status, it attracted little enthusiasm and is best remembered for
the appearance of the young Lenny Henry.
The 1980s saw television moving with the times and beginning to respond,
albeit awkwardly, to calls for greater sophistication in black representations.
No Problem! (ITV, 1983-85) drew its cast and creators from the Black Theatre
Co-operative, and concerned the teenage and twentysomething Powell kids, left to
fend for themselves in a Willesden council house after their parents have
returned to Jamaica. But the accent was on comedy, not politics, and the show
quickly alienated some black activists, who objected to the narrow roles
allotted to its female characters, to its casual jokes at the expense of Asians
(ironic given its Asian co-writers, Farukh Dhondy and Mustapha Matura), and even
to the scenario itself, which, in the words of cultural critic Paul Gilroy, put
"voluntary repatriation at the heart of the situation".
Dhondy was subsequently appointed Commissioning Editor of Multicultural
Programmes at the recently-established Channel 4. The very existence of such a
post was a sign of the sea change in British broadcasting represented by the new
channel, with its unique remit to serve minority interests. Dhondy had already
scripted an Asian-themed sitcom for the channel. However, Tandoori Nights
(1985-87), about a pair of rival Indian restaurants on East London's Brick Lane,
failed to live up to expectations, despite a talented cast and writers including
Meera Syal.
Channel 4 arguably did more for the cause of black comedy with its imports of
The Cosby Show (US, 1984-92), which not only offered a rare example of a
financially secure and happy black family, but actually managed to be
consistently funny, even if the lifestyle it depicted was an unattainable
fantasy for most British (or American) blacks.
Closer to home was Trix Worrell's Desmond's (1989-94), unquestionably the
most successful black British sitcom and one of Channel 4's biggest comedy hits.
Set in a Peckham barber's shop that doubled as a kind of drop-in social centre
for friends and family, the series centred on Norman Beaton's tetchy but
warm-hearted title character and his forgiving wife Shirley (Carmen Munroe).
Comedy sprang from generational misunderstandings between the West Indian
parents and their British-born offspring, but also from the good-natured banter
between the characters. Enthusiastically received by its studio audience,
Desmond's was unusually comfortable with itself, but came to a close following
Beaton's untimely death in 1994. Its legacy survived for a time in the spin-off
Porkpie (Channel 4, 1995-96).
Desmond's represented a breakthrough for black representations. In his sitcom
return, Chef! (BBC, 1993-96), Lenny Henry, by now well-established as the only
black British comedian with mainstream appeal, achieved the distinction of
making race almost entirely incidental to the scenario, while spoof chat show
The Kumars at Number 42 (BBC, 2001-), like its two stars' (Meera Syal and
Sanjeev Bhaskar) previous work, the sketch show Goodness Gracious Me (BBC,
1998-2000), wittily played with Asian stereotypes, particularly family
relationships.
In Henry, Syal and Bhaskar, Britain now has three black performers who have managed to attain true and lasting stardom in comedy. But although this
represents a positive development, it seems little to show for a history of more
than half a century.
Mark Duguid
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