Comedy verite: Contemporary sitcom form

Screen

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 63-78

  Mills, Brett ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 63849215413     PISSN: 00369543     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/screen/45.1.63     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popular Film and Television Comedy (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1990), p. 227
2. John Hartley, 'Situation comedy. Part I', in Glen Creeber (ed.), The Television Genre Book (London: British Film Institute, 2001), p. 55
3. Stephen Wagg. 'At ease, corporal: social class and the situation comedy in British television: from the 1950s to the 1990s', in Stephen Wagg (ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy Politics and Social Difference (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1998), p. 3
4. See Jason Jacobs, The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
5. Hartley, 'Situation comedy, Part I', p. 65
6. Neale and Krutnik, 'Popular film and television comedy', p. 239
7. Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow, 'Gay characters in conventional spaces: Will and Grace and the situation comedy genre', Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 19, no. 1 (2002), pp. 87-105
8. Laraine Porter, 'Tarts, tampons and tyrants: women and representation in British comedy', in Wagg (ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two, p. 69
9. Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis, Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992)
10. See Patricia Mellencamp, High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age, and Comedy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 338-50
11. Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995)
12. Pat Kirkham and Beverley Skeggs, 'Absolutely fabulous: absolutely feminist?', in Christine Geraghty and David Lusted (eds), The Television Studies Book (London: Edward Arnold, 1998)
13. Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1992), p. 146
14. See Jane Feuer, 'The "gay" and "queer" sitcom', in Creeber (ed.), The Television Genre Book
15. See Battles and Hilton-Morrow, 'Gay characters in conventional spaces', and Jane Feuer, 'Will and Grace', in Creeber (ed.), The Television Genre Book
16. Darrell Hamamoto, Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology (New York, NY: Praeger, 1989), p. 1
17. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984)
18. David Grote, The End of Comedy: the Sit-Com and the Comedic Tradition (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1983), p. 12
19. Jim Cook, 'Introduction', in Jim Cook (ed.) BFI Dossier 17: Television Sitcom (London: British Film Institute, 1982), p. 2
20. Andy Medhurst and Lucy Tuck, ' The gender game', in Cook (ed.), BFI Dossier 17, p. 45
21. Barry Putterman, On Television and Comedy: Essays on Style, Theme, Performer and Writer (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995), p. 15. While this development was partly a requirement of compromises made between the show's stars and the network, Mellencamp finds it is a 'technological rather than economic innovation', in 'The unruly woman', p. 322
22. Steve Siedman, Comedian Comedy: a Tradition in Hollywood Film (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Research Press, 1981)
23. M A S H exists in two versions, one with and one without a laughter track, the former shown in the USA and the latter in Britain. See Mark Lewisohn, Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy (London: BBC, 1998), p. 427
24. Larry Mintz, 'Situation comedy', in Brian Rose (ed.), TV Genres: a Handbook and Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), p. 112
25. A similar difficulty in defining programmes is found in Mike Clarke, Teaching Popular Television (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1987), p. 106, as Clarke attempts to categorize The Young Ones (BBC, 1982-84)
26. Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: an Introduction (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 2002), p. 92
27. John Allen Paulos, Mathematics and Humor (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 52
28. Jerry Palmer, The Logic of the Absurd: on Film and Television Comedy (London: British Film Institute, 1937), p. 23
29. Barry Curtis, 'Aspects of sitcom', in Cook (ed.), BFI Dossier 17, p. 9
30. John Corner, Television Form and Public Address (London: Edward Arnold, 1995), p. 175
31. Peter Goddard, 'Hancock's Half-Hour: a watershed in British television comedy', in John Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain (London: British Film Institute, 1991), p. 80
32. Hartley, 'Television sitcom, Part I', p. 65
33. Jim Cook, 'Narrative, comedy character and performance', in Jim Cook (ed.), BFI Dossier 17, p. 18
34. John Caughie, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 24
35. See, for example, Hamamoto, 'Nervous laughter'; David Marc. Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989)
36. Gerard Jones, Honey, I'm Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream (New York, NY: St Martin's Press, 1992)
37. Marc, 'Comic visions', p. 118
38. Curtis, 'Aspects of sitcom', p. 5
39. See Stella Bruzzi, New Documentary: a Critical Introduction (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 2000), p. 76
40. See Stella Bruzzi, 'Docusoaps', in Creeber (ed.), The Television Genre Book, p. 132
41. See Bruzzi, New Documentary, Brian Winston, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries (London: British Film Institute, 2000)
42. Bruzzi, New Documentary, pp. 92-3
43. Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise are probably the most famous comic double-act in British television history, appearing in many series (The Morecambe and Wise Show, ATV 1961-8, BBC 1968-77, ITV 1978-83) and Christmas specials
44. Their television work displayed its theatrical heritage in filming, performance style and humour content. Lewisohn, Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy, pp. 452-4
45. Bruzzi, 'Docusoaps', p. 134
46. Dai Vaughan, For Documentary: Twelve Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 120
47. John Corner, The Art of Record: a Critical Introduction to Documentary (New York, NY and Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 43-4
48. Video Nation is a series in which ' The BBC lent camcorders to and trained participants who were then free to offer insights into the minutiae of their lives, normally by a piece to camera', Wnston, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries, p. 143
49. Jon Dovey, Freakshow: First Person Media and Factual Television (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 11