The Brittas Empire

British TV sitcoms have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up watching them. I assumed that everybody else did, too, and it's only in recent years that I've realized this isn't true. I've frequently asked people (in Ireland, naturally) for their favourite British sit-coms and I'm always taken aback when somebody says: "I never really watched any."

There were always British sit-coms on the television in my home, growing up. My father was an Irish republican who had an anglophobic side, at least in theory. But he'd often say: "The British do comic characters better than anybody." Sometimes he'd preface this with: "It pains me to admit it..." (And yet, he read Samuel Pepys and John Le Carré, watched English soccer and cricket and every other English sport, and was hooked on British politics. As a bigot, he was an abject failure.)

Yes, the British do comic characters better than anybody, although I can't really comment on the comic creations of Iceland, Indonesia, or Fiji. But you know what I mean.

And this long predates television, of course. Since I read it in my teens, I've believed that Diary of a Nobody by the Grossmiths (1892) is the funniest book ever written. But then there's Bertie Wooster and Adrian Mole and any number of other literary gems.

Still, you can't beat a good old British sit-com on the good old telly, with a good old cuppa.

Here are some of the British sit-coms I love (and a few I don't), broken down into different tiers. It's not at all comprehensive (or perhaps I should say "comp"):

The Top Tier: Fawlty Towers (best of the best), The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, The Office (UK, obviously), Only Fools and Horses.

The Second Tier: Porridge, Rising Damp, Blackadder, Father Ted, The IT Crowd, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Sorry!, Steptoe and Son.

The Third Tier: Men Behaving Badly, Yes Minister, Keeping Up Appearances, Ever-Decreasing Circles, Bottom, I'm Alan Partridge, Red Dwarf, Yes Prime Minister, Only When I Laugh, 'Allo 'Allo, Bless Me Father, Bless This House, On The Buses, Love Thy Neighbour, Shelley, You Rang, M'Lord?

The Fourth Tier (stuff that I either don't find funny at all, or just so repulsive that I might occasionally laugh but still hate it); Last of the Summer Wine, The Young Ones, The Vicar of Dibley, Bottom, Rab C. Nesbitt, Dad's Army.

As eagle-eyed readers will have gathered from the title of the blog post, I'm going to be writing about The Brittas Empire here. The central character of this one is Gordon Brittas, the obnoxious but idealistic manager of a sports and leisure centre. It ran from 1991 to 1997.

I've been watching The Brittas Empire recently, and I think I'd place it in the second tier.

The funny thing is, I can remember when The Brittas Empire was originally broadcast, and I didn't like it at all. I half-watched it when my father was watching it, but I was never won over. I bracketed it with its close contemporary Keeping Up Appearances; a painfully formulaic show that won a certain amount of laughs from the fact that it was so audaciously formulaic.

Watching it again, I've completely changed my mind. The Brittas Empire is significantly different from any other sit-com I know. For the following reasons (none of them are unique in themselves, but the combination is unique):

1) The large cast. It's very much an ensemble piece with lots of regulars, despite the focus on the central character.

2) The frequently brutal nature of the comedy. It can't really be described as dark, because it's not realistic or serious enough to be dark. Nor can it be called unsentimental, because it has some quite sentimental moments (and I'm fine with that.)

No; brutal is the best term I can think of. Characters frequently die violently in The Brittas Empire. There's a general atmosphere of menace and extremity. One of the best lines comes when we're told that Gordon Brittas worked for the Samaritans for one day. In that one day, four callers committed suicide, and one of them had only called because of a wrong number. (It shouldn't be funny, but it is.) 

In another scene, Brittas's long-suffering wife is sitting by his hospital bed, as he lies unconscious, and is moved when one of his colleagues gives a speech on Brittas's complete lack of malice and his sincere desire to make the world a better place. She's is so moved that she plugs his life-support system back in.

Then there is the receptionist who is keeping her baby in a drawer at reception, and seems to be in a perpetual sense of nervous breakdown.

But the brutality isn't constant. That would get tiresome and too depressing. It's intermittent, and clubs you over the head at just the right moments. And the smattering of invincibly cheerful and oblivious characters (including Brittas himself) lifts the mood sufficiently.

3) The surreal elements. Sometimes the surrealism comes from highly improbable occurrences (like deadly and exotic spiders being sent to Brittas through the post), but sometimes it goes beyond improbable-- like the episode where a long line of people holding hands are simultaneously electrocuted, in a very cartoonish manner.

What makes the surrealism especially effective is that it's in contrast to the underlying atmosphere of the series. It's not a comedy like Father Ted or Blackadder, where the entire world in which the characters exist is zany. In The Brittas Empire, the bizarre is constantly breaking through a mostly very ordinary, very English existence.

4) The intensity of the farce. The Brittas Empire is like Fawlty Towers in that it generally involves a series of mishaps that come together, in unexpected ways, and form a disaster that is much greater than the sum of its parts. It's not as ingenious or brilliant at doing this as Fawlty Towers (nothing is), but it's much more extreme. The disaster often involves explosions, fires, deaths, and so forth. The best comparison is probably the comic fiction of Tom Sharpe.

To sum up, I'm surprised at how much I've had to revise my previous impression.

(One little additional thing: watching it this time round, I've wondered if the character of Carol, the permanently stressed receptonist, might have had any influence on Renée Zellwegger's portrayal of Bridget Jones. The resemblance is very striking. But it might just be coincidence. I'd link to a reel of Carol moments, but I can't find any.)