Comedy and Variety: commentary

A commentary on the top 20 in this genre

It comes as no surprise that the most voted-for comedy series was also the most voted-for programme overall. Audiences may be moved by dramas and educated by documentaries but comedy is what they hold most dear. The best shows stand up to any number of repeats and gain fans in each new generation. This is especially the case with sitcoms. The blend of comedy, characters whom we get to know and a recurring situation, creates a relationship between programme and viewer that is affectionate and timeless. Just look at the continued popularity of Dad's Army. The show still gets audiences of seven million, 30 years after its first broadcast and many dozens of repeats later. What seems on the surface to be a gentle series about pensioners in uniform has so many layers of comedy and pathos that we can get something more out of it at each viewing. Great shows like this form part of the national identity.

In the TV industry, it is recognised that comedy is hard and situation comedy is the hardest of all. The press and the public may be quick to rubbish new sitcoms but the industry realises just how difficult it is to get the formula right. Because of this schedulers are willing to persevere with series that initially get short shrift in the review columns and negligible viewing figures. That's because the accepted wisdom is that it takes time for a series to settle, indeed many series pick up far more viewers and appreciation in repeat runs than in their first outings. But when you get it right, you're laughing all the way to the bank. A successful TV comedy show has become a holy grail amongst broadcasters - it brings a loyal audience, a product that will last for years and lucrative sidelines in video and format sales. In artistic terms too, comedy represents some of the very best of British TV. Some incredibly talented writers and performers have made us laugh out loud and made us think about our lives.

Initially TV comedy was imported wholesale from the successful practitioners on radio. Tony Hancock was one of these, but his huge success on TV gave the new medium the impetus to develop its own talent. Television offered a whole new vista of visual humour and stage stars like Terry-Thomas, Morecambe and Wise and Tommy Cooper were soon delighting the home audience with the slightest facial tic or funny walk. Although sitcoms had been born on radio they thrived on TV, where the visual setting and faces of the performers added extra depth to the humour and made it easier to establish a relationship with the audience. Steptoe and Son, written like Hancock's Half Hour by Galton and Simpson, achieved massive audiences of around half the population in the 1960s. As well as its considerable artistic worth it also marked an important change in its use of actors rather than comedians.

Many of the successes of the 1960s carried on into the 1970s, and alongside new shows invented at the time ensured that the mid-1970s came to be regarded as a sort of 'Golden Age of British Comedy'. Certainly there were a number of great sitcoms in that period that are still popular today. Entertainers like The Two Ronnies also had a wide-ranging, devoted audience, but in truth, each generation throws up its own great performers and writers who both reflect their times and transcend them. Despite comparatively poor financial rewards, comedy writers in Britain have more opportunity to find a distinctive voice than in the system established in American broadcasting, in which teams of writers contribute to the same scripts.

The top 20 comedies bear out many of these points. The list comprises 16 sitcoms, two satire shows, one comedy/variety series and one sketch show. It is an area where the BBC reigns supreme: 19 of the titles are from the BBC, the other (Father Ted) is from Channel 4. This once again demonstrates how difficult independent broadcasters have found it to match the Corporation on the comedy front. Throughout its life, ITV has had sitcoms that scored with audiences (The Army Game, On the Buses, The Dustbinmen, Bless this House, Please Sir!, Man About the House - all huge hits) but their shows don't seem to have quite the same timeless appeal of those of their rivals. The closest that ITV has come is with Rising Damp, a memorable, durable series starring Leonard Rossiter, which narrowly missed getting into the list (it was 24th, two places behind ITV's puppet satire series Spitting Image). The Royle Family of course is made by an ITV company (Granada) but airs on the BBC.

There is one show from the 1950s and, hearteningly, six from the 1990s, which tends to undermine the theory that we are undergoing some sort of quality crisis in modern comedy. 19 of the shows regularly turn up in reruns or are currently airing - only one, That Was the Week That Was, seems solely to exist as a purely historical choice, a fair indication of the show's impact and influence.

Look at our top sitcoms. All are graced with memorable performers but, more importantly most are the result of brilliant writing. Fawlty Towers stands supreme at the top, John Cleese and Connie Booth's scripts were dazzlingly crafted, featuring complex dove-tailed plots, fiendishly funny dialogue and marvellous, sometimes excruciating characterisation. Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister are pure dialogue shows satirising political double speak in a way that drew recognition around the globe. Then the two service sitcoms, Dad's Army and Blackadder Goes Forth, poles apart in style and content but separated by just a few votes. The top 5 sitcoms are rounded off by Absolutely Fabulous, a 1990s' upstart that proved the comic potential of women behaving badly.

The other sitcoms in the top 20 have equal class. From the 1950s: the 'lad himself', Tony Hancock, whose series (by Galton and Simpson) was the benchmark for all comedies to come. From the present day: the remarkable Royle Family (Normal, Cash and Aherne), whose couch-bound meanderings have struck a chord with audiences. Then there is Clement and La Frenais's masterpiece, Porridge, with its perfect plotting and two wonderful leads; and Steve Coogan's hilarious I'm Alan Partridge, both exponents of more adult sitcom which had been born with the title that follows them on the list, Steptoe and Son. The Trotter family duck and dive their way to the next slot with Only Fools and Horses just above the strange inhabitants of Craggy Island as featured in Father Ted. Clement and La Frenais score again with The Likely Lads and its sequel Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads (counted here as one choice) - pure character comedy at its very best. More off-centre was The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, David Nobbs' highly individual take on the madness of the male menopause, Leonard Rossiter's Perrin just pipping another of society's tortured souls, Victor Meldrew, incident prone anti-hero of David Renwick's magnum opus One Foot in the Grave. Last but not least of the sitcoms is a true giant of the genre, Till Death Us Do Part, Johnny Speight's razor-edged attack on bigotry and hypocrisy which brought kitchen sink drama to the world of the sitcom, commanded vast viewing figures and sparked volatile debates.

It is a good line up of vastly different shows, each of which has triumphed in the hardest and most disciplined of all the genres.

Away from the sitcom we find, at number 2 on the list, Monty Python's Flying Circus, the internationally successful sketch show which revolutionised the genre and made world stars of its creators, all of whom have since triumphed in other fields. A memorable double for Cleese, at number one with Fawlty Towers and at number two as part of the Python troupe.

The beloved double-act Morecambe and Wise prove that they are as popular with the industry as they were with the public, with their classic BBC series lodged at number four. And making up the twenty are two examples of small screen satire, Have I Got News For You?, Hat Trick's consistently brilliant contemporary news quiz, and finally the mother of all satire shows, That Was The Week That Was, the impertinent lampoon which kick-started it all.

As television enters an era of frenzied change, some have begun to doubt whether comedy has much of a future on the small screen. Surely it does. Good sitcoms will still be made. The hysteria that greets every dud or slow starter is proved time and again to be misplaced. Do people expect every drama or documentary to be perfect? Despite the weight of critical disapproval, each year throws up successes as diverse and innovative as The Royle Family, Dinnerladies or The League of Gentlemen. And audiences still enjoy seeing their favourite comics perform on variety shows, or - more common these days - in specially filmed extended stand-up performances.

Meanwhile, sketch shows have climbed new heights in the last ten years with the work of Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse and chums delighting all from kids to pensioners (The Fast Show for instance, was 23rd in the comedy list).

Whatever direction TV takes, we'll surely still be laughing, discussing the plot over the water cooler (no longer a solely American luxury) and repeating the catchphrase at the pub.

Phil Wickham and Dick Fiddy