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Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom
form

BRETT MILLS

The majority of the analysis of television sitcom form argues that it

has, in contrast to many other television genres, developed little since it
was first created. Arising out of the US networks' desire to employ
popular comedic vaudeville names in regular formats and timeslots, the
genre developed as a compromise between its theatrical origins and the
necessary strictures of television and radio broadcasting. Steve Neale
and Frank Krutnik consider The Jack Benny Show (CBS, 1950-64;
NBC, 1964-65) to be the programme in which these tensions were
most successfully worked through, resulting in a form which featured
Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik.
Popular Film and Television
regular characters and setting, but which, unlike vaudeville and the
Comedy [New York. NY and sketch show, utilized a 'repeatable narrative'.1 Since this initial
London: Routledge, 1990). p. 227. development, US sitcom has, according to John Hartley, seen 'few
John Hartley, 'Situation comedy,
fundamental changes'. 2 Similarly, Stephen Wagg's history of the
Part I', in Glen Creeber led.), The
Television Genre Book (London: development of British sitcom structure begins and ends in one decade,
British Film Institute, 2001), p. 65. with all subsequent series merely offering different content within the
Stephen Wagg. 'At ease,
same narrative form.3 Thus, while it is possible to trace histories of the
corporal: social class and the
situation comedy in British television drama which demonstrate a movement away from its
television: from the 1950s to the theatrical origins and the emergence of a more complete television
1990s', in Stephen Wagg led.),
aesthetic,4 such a history is not apparent for sitcom. The 'remarkably
Because I Tell a Joke or Two:
Comedy Politics and Social
stable' 5 nature of the sitcom form is, therefore, one of its most
Difference (New York, NY and established generic aspects.
London: Routledge, 1998). p. 3.
See Jason Jacobs, The Intimate
This stability has been seen as running parallel to a constancy in
Screen: Early British Television sitcom content, with the genre criticized for its simplistic use of
Drama (Oxford: Oxford University
stereotypes, outmoded representations and an apparent failure to
Press, 2000).
Hartley, 'Situation comedy, Part
engage with social or political developments. The preponderance of
I', p. 65. sitcoms centred on the family is seen to reinforce assumptions about

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
6 Neale and Krutnik, 'Popular film domestic normality.6 These representations are regarded as springing
and television comedy', p. 239.
from an often unquestioned 'heteronormativity', 7 in which gender
7 Kathleen Battles and Wendy
Hilton-Morrow, 'Gay characters in
distinctions are presented as natural and comedic content revolves
conventional spaces: Will and around heterosexual desire. This process, particularly in a patriarchal
Grace and the situation comedy
society, is confounded by the genre's propensity to render women only
genre'. Critical Studies in Media
Communication, vol. 19, no. 1 as 'comic objects . . . peripheral to the production of the humour'. 8
(2002), pp. 87-105. Similarly, in terms of race, Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis find that any
8 Laraine Porter, 'Tarts, tampons
progressive element that may exist in the content of The Cosby Show
and tyrants: women and
representation in British comedy', (NBC, 1984-92) can be understood only in terms of conventional,
in Wagg (ed.). Because I Tell a white representations that render all divergence from ideological norms
Joke or Two, p. 69.
as unrepresentative stereotypes.9

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9 Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis,
Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Of course, there have been series which are recognized as offering
Show, Audiences, and the Myth progressive representations within the sitcom form. Roseanne (ABC,
of the American Dream (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1992).
1988-97) has been examined for its portrayal of the 'unruly woman',10
10 See Patricia Mellencamp, High in which the title character, in physicality, performance and politics,
Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, successfully questions the norms for female representation within
Age, and Comedy (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press,
television sitcom. Similarly, Absolutely Fabulous (BBC, 1992-) has
1992), pp. 338-50; Kathleen been read as a further celebration of the unruly woman while
Rowe, The Unruly Woman: simultaneously critiquing the excesses of consumer culture.11 Yet the
Gender and the Genres of
Laughter (Austin, TX: University
debates which persist concerning series such as Ellen (ABC, 1994-98)
of Texas Press, 1995). and Will and Grace (NBC, 1998-) demonstrate how series which may
11 Pat Kirkham and Beverley Skeggs, have progressive elements cannot escape the 'representational trap' 12
'Absolutely fabulous: absolutely
feminist?', in Christine Geraghty
regarded as inherent in mainstream comedy. Thus Ellen's difficulties in
and David Lusted (eds). The retaining an audience once the title character came out as gay is
Television Studies Book (London:
considered representative of the US networks' ignorance of how to
Edward Arnold, 1998).

12 Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment

present gay characters successfully,13 while Will and Grace's
(New York, NY and London: representations are variously valorized or vilified depending on whether
Routledge, 1992), p. 146. they are viewed as a celebration of camp or as a straightforward rehash
13 See Jane Feuer, The "gay" and
of gay stereotypes."
"queer" sitcom', in Creeber (ed.),
The Television Genre Book. Furthermore, sitcom has been criticized for failing to place its
14 See Battles and Hilton-Morrow, representations - whether progressive or not - within a larger social
'Gay characters in conventional
context, and for representing class, race or gender conflict as nothing
spaces', and Jane Feuer, 'Will
and Grace', in Creeber (ed.), The more than personal squabbles and ignoring broader aspects of ideology.
Television Genre Book. Darrell Hamamoto argues that while there have been attempts to
respond to social changes in order for sitcom content to remain
15 Darrell Hamamoto, Nervous
comprehensible, the commercial nature of the institutions which
Laughter: Television Situation
Comedy and Liberal Democratic
produce the programmes inevitably leads to 'repression'. 15 And while
Ideology [New York, NY: Praeger, this is a critique levelled at other narrative forms, for sitcom it seems
1989), p. 1.
magnified in the face of (as Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the
16 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his
World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
carnivalesque suggests) comedy's assumed social role to say the
University Press. 1984). unsayable, question the accepted and undermine authority.16 For David
17 David Grote, The End of Comedy: Grote, the sitcom has 'overturned more than two thousand years of
the Sit-Com and the Comedic
comic traditions and established an entirely new and unique form of
Tradition (Hamden, CT: Archon,
1983), p. 12. comedy'," which replaces comedy's anarchic social role with a
18 Jim Cook, 'Introduction', in Jim repressively commercial one. Following this argument, developments
Cook (ed.) BFI Dossier 17:
within sitcom content are irrelevant, for the genre is 'fundamentally a
Television Sitcom (London: British
Film Institute, 1982), p. 2. conservative form',18 an opinion that prevails despite the different

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 theatrical heritages of British and US sitcom. Whether the genre's
origins lie in theatre, music hall, vaudeville, cinema or a combination
of these, the resultant form is seen to have remained stable for decades
and is now such a part of the global television language that a
significant number of US and British series are sold in a wide range of
19 Hartley. 'Situation comedy. Part foreign markets.19
I', p. 65.
The conservative nature of sitcom content, then, can be seen to go
hand in hand with, and be upheld by, the stable form of the genre.
However, in this essay I shall make a distinction between the two, with
particular reference to a number of recent comedy series on British

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television. In the past decade or so it could be argued that sitcom has
begun to develop and mutate, and is doing so in a manner which
requires a reappraisal of the accepted understandings of sitcom form.
Furthermore, such developments, it will be shown, are representative
of, and respond to, changes which have occurred within other television
forms, such as the documentary and the docusoap.
To explicate this argument I shall consider The Office (BBC2,
2001-). This series represents the apotheosis of this new form of
sitcom, with the deliberate use of the characteristics of other television
forms not only offering new ground for the sitcom, but also resulting in
a programme which complicates conventional genre divisions and, by
extension, uses debates about the nature of performance and
representation within the media for its comic material. Such
characteristics are also apparent in other recent British television series,
such as The Day Today (BBC2, 1994), Brass Eye (Channel 4, 1997,
2001), People Like Us (BBC2, 1999, 2002), Marion and Geoff (BBC2,
2001-02), and Human Remains (BBC2, 2001). All of these series
demonstrate new forms for the sitcom, ones that undermine accepted
notions about the stability of sitcom's characteristics and its
representations.

Vital to an understanding of the sitcom - by both the academy and

audiences more generally - are its music hall origins. That is, while
many histories of television outline the medium's development from
theatre, it is apparent that the majority of genres have now evolved
their own televisual language. Sitcom, as I have suggested, is not seen
in this way. Andy Medhurst and Lucy Tuck, for instance, suggest that a
major part of the pleasure derived from sitcom results from its attempt
20 Andy Medhurst and Lucy Tuck, to recreate the music hall experience.20 This is usually demonstrated
The gender game', in Cook (ed.),
through discussion of the laughter track, and the audience being
BR Dossier 17, p. 45.
positioned as the 'fourth wall'. Indeed, sitcom is one of the few genres
that are still, on the whole, shot in front of a live audience, and staged
as if theatre. Medhurst and Tuck see this format as 'the electronic
21 Ibid. substitute for collective experience',21 with such theatrical staging used
to create the group atmosphere necessary for a social phenomenon such
as laughter. Putterman suggests that sitcom's only concession to its

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 televisuality was the introduction by the production team on / Love
22 Barry Putterman, On Television Lucy (CBS, 1951-59) of a 'three-camera set-up',22 meaning that any
and Comedy: Essays on Style,
Theme. Performer and Writer
exchange between two characters could be filmed as a mid-shot
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995), covering both performers, as well as a closeup being trained on each.
p. 15. While this development Putterman argues that this shooting style was developed the better to
was partly a requirement of
compromises made between the
capture Lucille Ball's reaction shots, the reaction being vital to the
show's stars and the network, production of comedy. While traces of such staging are still apparent in
Mellencamp finds it is a many British soap operas, the majority of television drama abandoned
'technological rather than
economic innovation', in 'The
the fourth wall long ago, using a variety of camera angles to create a
unruly woman', p. 322. complex and fully-formed narrative space. Sitcom, on the other hand,
retains a shooting style which serves to 'encode presence and the status

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23 Ibid. of live performance'.23
The look of sitcom, then, is one which foregrounds the aspects of its
own performance, offering pleasure in the presentation of verbal and
physical comic skill. While acting is an area of textual analysis that is
still notoriously undertheorized, it is apparent that distinctions are
conventionally made between comic and serious performance. Indeed,
many US sitcoms are structured precisely around a comedian's
performance - Roseanne, The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984-92) and
Seinfeld (ABC, 1990-99), for example - signalling the centrality of that
performance in their eponymous titles. While such a tradition is less
apparent in British sitcom, comic actors have conventionally moved
from sitcom to sitcom, carrying their comic associations with them, for
example Ronnie Barker in Porridge (BBC1, 1974-77), Open All Hours
(BBC1, 1976-85), Going Straight (BBC1, 1978) and Clarence (BBC2,
1988). Steve Seidman, analyzing film, calls such forms 'comedian
24 Steve Siedman, Comedian
comedy',24 and suggests that narrative and verisimilitude are
Comedy: a Tradition in Hollywood
Film (Ann Arbor, Ml: University of
downplayed in such texts. Here the foregrounding of the star, and their
Michigan Research Press, 1981). individual, iconic performance legitimizes the existence of the text, the
plethora of jokes justifying the lack of a coherent narrative in a manner
unavailable to other forms.
However, this is not to suggest that all sitcoms completely conform
to such genre characteristics. There is a history of sitcoms that do not
25 M'A'S'Hexists in two versions, use a laughter track, most notably M*A*S*H (CBS, 1973-84), which
one with and one without a Larry Mintz explores precisely for this reason.25 In addition, M*A *S*H
laughter track, the former shown
in the USA and the latter in
employs a less obviously theatrical performance style and, while not
Britain. See Mark Lewisohn, constructing a complete narrative space, is less concerned than most
Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy other sitcoms with positioning the audience as the fourth wall.
(London: BBC, 1998), p. 427.
However, Mintz has difficulty in accepting M*A*S*Has a sitcom
26 Larry Mintz, 'Situation comedy',
in Brian Rose led.), TV Genres: a
precisely because of its abandonment of these theatrical signifiers. His
Handbook and Reference Guide note that it does not 'look like a sitcom'26 betrays the notion that the
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
sitcom form is so rigid and easily identifiable that any deviation from
1985), p. 112. A similar difficulty
in defining programmes is found
it, no matter how minor, results in a text that then asks to be understood
in Mike Clarke, Teaching Popular as something else.
Television (London: Heinemann
Educational Books, 1987), p. 106,
These easily identifiable characteristics that are taken to be inherent
as Clarke attempts to categorize in sitcom are indicative of a need for the genre, and comedy more
The Young Ones (BBC, 1982-84).
generally, to signal its comic intent as quickly and unambiguously as

0 g Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 possible. Schechner argues that all performed communication requires
'metacommunication'; that is, 'a signal that tells receivers how to
interpret the communication they are receiving. For example, winking
an eye or holding up crossed fingers while speaking indicates to the
27 Richard Schechner, Performance listener that the speaker's words are not to be taken seriously.'27
Studies: an Introduction (New
The analysis of comedy has conventionally rested on the assumption
York, NY and London: Routledge,
2002). p. 92.
that the standard form of communication is a serious one, and thus it is
comic intent which must be clearly signalled to ensure the intended
reading is made by an audience. John Allen Paulos calls such signals
28 John Allen Paulos. Mathematics 'metacues', 28 while Jerry Palmer terms them 'para-linguistic markers'.29
and Humor (Chicago, IL: While the precise manner in which such signals work has yet to be

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University of Chicago Press,
1980), p. 52.
adequately explored, the vital point is that comedy - whether social or
29 Jerry Palmer, The Logic of the broadcast - must adopt the conventions of such markers to achieve its
Absurd: on Film and Television intentions. That is, while the ideological import, offensiveness,
Comedy (London: British Film
Institute, 1987), p. 23.
meaning or funniness of any piece of humour is open to debate, the fact
that something was intended as funny is, thanks to metacommunication,
rarely misread. It may be this reliance on cues which has forced sitcom
to maintain a rigid form over many decades.
Metacommunication or paralinguistic markers are necessary partly
because humour works more effectively when its intention to be funny
is unambiguous. However, their presence is also representative of the
need to distinguish between humour and seriousness as clearly as
possible. By having a visual form and genre characteristics that are not
only as coherent as possible but are also distinctive from those for
serious programming, the sitcom can be seen to revoke its claim to
engage with anything other than its humour function. Instead, the
audience position offered by sitcom 'is manifestly one of the
30 Barry Curtis, 'Aspects of sitcom', satisfaction of watching sitcom',30 and the distinctions between
in Cook (ed.), BFI Dossier 17, p. 9. sitcom's form and those of other genres help to maintain and promote
such satisfactions, while clearly distinguishing them from those offered
by more 'serious' forms.
Indeed, expectations for comedy serve to legitimize a number of
conventions uncommon in other genres. So while much British and US
television has developed a realist aesthetic, entertainment television is
judged in terms different from those for other, more 'serious' forms,
31 John Corner, Television Form and particularly in terms of 'the real'.31 Furthermore, while most fiction in
Public Address (London: Edward any medium attempts to hide the fact that it is a fiction formed around
Arnold, 1995), p. 175.
codes of construction, sitcom relies on its artificiality not only as part
32 Peter Goddard, 'Hancock's of its metacommunication, but also for its very effectiveness. Thus
Half-Hour, a watershed in British
television comedy', in John
'sitcom naturalism' is based on audiences 'suspending disbelief in
Corner (ed.), Popular Television in return for pleasure',32 in which the laughter track, the theatrical
Britain (London: British Film shooting style and the displayed performance clearly demonstrate
Institute, 1991), p. 80.
sitcom's artificial status and its clear, precise, single-minded aim: to
33 Hartley, 'Television sitcom, Part
I', p. 65. make you laugh. In this way sitcom is a 'transparent' genre.33
34 Jim Cook, 'Narrative, comedy However, this is not to suggest that audience readings necessarily
character and performance', in
respond consciously to such artificiality; the sitcom is not, after all, a
Jim Cook (ed.|, BFI Dossier 17,
p. 18. Brechtian text. Instead, Jim Cook sees sitcom's 'dual-reading focus'34

K 7 Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 as one in which audiences are made aware of sitcom's artificiality
while simultaneously adopting the engaged reading position common
for most television fiction. Audiences, then, find pleasure in sitcom in a
manner similar to most narrative television, while the text constantly
reminds them of its artificiality; audiences are simultaneously distanced
and engaged. Such a contradictory position is one vital to comedy
generally, in which laughter requires an involvement with, and a
detachment from, that which is funny.
While there is a lack of audience-based studies to find out if this is
actually how viewers make sense of sitcom, such a contradiction
mirrors that of the social role of comedy. On the whole, comedy and

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sitcom are low cultural texts, seen as less important than news,
35 John Caughie. Television Drama: documentaries and 'serious drama'35 by broadcasters, policymakers,
Realism, Modernism and British academics and audiences. The nature of sitcom, then, is one in which
Culture (Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 2000), p. 24.
its texts, and its texts' intentions, are signalled as clearly and as often
as possible. Sitcom's distance from standard forms of realism is
indicative of the assumption that serious subjects should be treated
seriously, and that there are appropriate forms and genres for doing so.
Of course, this is not to say that nothing in sitcom has any serious
import; indeed sitcom has been critiqued as representative of deep-
36 See, for example, Hamamoto,
seated, prevalent, hegemonic attitudes within society.36 However, by
'Nervous laughter'; David Marc, distancing itself from the verisimilitude associated with other, more
Comic Visions: Television Comedy serious genres, sitcom form signals its intentions to be understood as
and American Culture (London:
Unwin Hyman, 1989); Gerard
nothing more than entertainment. It is this which has led to critics
Jones, Honey, I'm Home! maligning sitcom as 'committed to harmony and consensus',37 with
Sitcoms: Selling the American comedy's potential subversiveness neutered by the industry's
Dream (New York, NY: St
commercial requirements.
Martin's Press, 1992).

37 Marc,'Comic visions', p. 118. My argument here is that the conventional sitcom form has been
repeatedly challenged in recent years. Programmemakers have begun to
abandon some of the genre's most obvious conventions and have
replaced them with the formal characteristics of other, distinct genres.
In this way, the distinction between the ways in which the comedic and
the serious are conventionally signalled have begun to be dismantled,
and this has occurred in a manner that explicitly questions television's
role in setting up such a distinction. To outline these developments I
shall focus on the most critically acclaimed new television sitcom in
Britain: The Office.

When The Office, written by Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant, was
first broadcast it was a relatively low-key affair, screened as part of
BBC2's Monday night Comedy Zone. It quickly garnered much critical
38 Baftas are the awards given by
acclaim - winning Baftas38 in both 2002 and 2003 - and, on its repeat
the British Academy of Film and
Television, and are (probably) the
showing in 2002, steadily built a solid audience. So far there have been
most respected and desired two series of six episodes, and two final episodes were broadcast as
awards for British film and part of the BBC's 2003 Christmas schedule, this time on the more
television makers.
mainstream BBC1. The series, like most sitcoms, deals with a group of
people in a specific environment, in this case, a stationery distribution

g g Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 office in Slough. There are four main characters: David Brent (Ricky
Gervais), the office manager, who believes he is a hilarious comedian
and insensitively tramples over his workers in his attempts to be funny;
Gareth (Mackenzie Crook), David's assistant, who adores him and
incessantly tells stories of his own Territorial Army experiences; Tim
(Martin Freeman), a sales clerk, whose desire to leave the office and
start a degree in psychology signals his dissatisfaction with, and
distance from, the office ethos; Dawn (Lucy Davis), the secretary, who
is soon to be married but who clearly has the possibility of a
relationship with Tim.
The series' humour arises out of the interplay between these

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characters, but often does so through presenting embarrassing situations
as laughable. Thus Brent spends much of the series convinced that his
employees adore him, that his job is meaningful and that his
philosophical musings on life are profound. His inability to perform
appropriately in social situations, coupled with an enormous sense of
self-importance, creates a monster of a boss whose employees are
powerless to question him. In the second series, the merging of two of
the stationery distributor's branches suddenly means Brent has a
superior, and subsequent episodes explore his attempts to work out his
new role within the office. The series plays on the notion of
embarrassment by incorporating many shots of Brent's employees
looking aghast at what he says and does; that is, their response is as
vital to the comedy as the events themselves are. While clearly
scripted, the whole is performed in a faux-improvizational style, so that
the performance is noticeably different to that in the majority of
sitcoms, although it has appeared in US series such as The Larry
Sanders Show (HBO, 1992-98), and Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO,
2000-), as well as the Australian series Kath and Kim (ABC, 2002-).
In many ways, The Office conforms to the expected characteristics of
sitcom, with the single setting, the recurring characters with conflicting
personalities and the single narrative problem in each episode.
Similarly, the fact that it was broadcast as part of the designated
Comedy Zone signals the programme's comic intent and predisposes
audiences to certain readings.
However, the programme - as M*A *S*H before it - does not look
like a sitcom. Its opening titles do not signal to an audience the
programme's comic intent. We are shown a series of shots of Slough
highways and roundabouts, until we make our way to an industrial
estate and the office itself. The theme music is a downbeat song,
39 Written by Mike D'Abo in the 'Handbags and Gladrags',39 in contrast to the standard upbeat music
1960s, a cover version of the and brightly lit opening titles associated with many other sitcoms.40
song was recorded especially for
This low-key atmosphere is representative of the look of the
the programme by Big George.
40 Curtis, 'Aspects of sitcom', p. 5.
programme as a whole. Shot on hand-held cameras, with muted colours
and abandoning the fourth wall, the programme uses the visual
signifiers of another new form of television: the docusoap.
While 'docusoap' is a contested term - particularly between the

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 academy and the wider public - for my purposes it can be seen as a
form in which traditional documentary shooting techniques are aligned
with editing practices more associated with popular drama or soap
41 See Stella Bruzzi, New opera.41 Beyond these formal qualities, docusoaps also differ from
Documentary: a Critical
traditional documentaries in their choice of more obviously entertaining
Introduction (New York, NY and
London: Routledge, 2000), p. 76.
subjects, featuring characters such as traffic warden Ray Brown in
42 See Stella Bruzzi, 'Oocusoaps', in Clampers (BBC1, 1998).42 Thus the visual nature of docusoaps is one
Creeber (ed.). The Television arising from their documentary heritage, and is significantly distinct
Genre Book. p. 132.
from sitcom. The fictional recreation of that style in The Office
demonstrates not only sitcom's new-found engagement with alternative
modes of representation, but also inevitably critiques the necessity for

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the distinction between the two forms. I shall return to the implications
of this later.
The Office, then, is narratively structured and shot as if it is a
docusoap. The camera appears to roam the office, capturing events as
they happen, with jerky, hand-held shots and, frequently, pictures that
are out of focus. Like much docusoap, it also incorporates interviews
with its participants in which they talk about events in the office that
the audience has just witnessed. The series thus acknowledges its
mediation, but in a manner dissimilar to that of comedy's typical 'dual-
reading focus'. Instead, the programme appears to act as if it were a
real documentary or docusoap. Thus, the flctive reconstruction of a
factual form puts the mediated processes of the documentary on display
while actively obscuring those of comedy. The effects of this are
twofold. Firstly, by adopting the characteristics of another form, The
Office responds to the debate concerning genre hybridity which is at the
core of analyses of the docusoap, which in itself undermines purist
definitions of genres such as the sitcom and the documentary.
Secondly, by accurately recreating the textual surface and possible
audience pleasures associated with docusoap form, it also refers to the

Tim (Martin Freeman) casts a

despairing look as the camera
roams the office. Picture
courtesy: BBC Photo Library.

"JQ Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/45/1/63/1623961 by guest on 30 April 2021
David Brent (Ricky Gervais), as if
caught by covert filming from
another room. Picture courtesy:
BBC Photo Library.

critiques of the legitimacy and objectivity in documentary that many

43 See Bruzzi, New Documentary, theorists have outlined.43
Brian Winston. Lies. Damn Lies
The programme thus uses the aesthetics and conventions of
and Documentaries (London:
British Film Institute. 2000).
docusoap, but for comedic ends. The incidences of characters
acknowledging the camera are intended to be funny, and they also
work with and against our understanding of what the docusoap can tell
us. It is noticeable that in much of The Office humour is constructed
through documentary rather than sitcom conventions. For example,
while the characters usually know they are being filmed, there are also
moments when they do not. The programme usually signals to its
audience this covert filming by having objects in the way, most
commonly a window blind, so that the camera crew is apparently in a
different room to the action. In one such moment Brent is shown
getting ready to interview an attractive job applicant; he puts on
aftershave (rubbed from an advertisement in a men's magazine) and
sits in a variety of positions to work out which will appear the most
attractive when the interviewee first sees him. While jokes in sitcom
often revolve around the ways in which characters are seen and how
they wish to be seen, in conventional sitcom form the distinction
between public and private is one that exists only diegetically, with
characters within the programme the only witnesses to public actions.
By using docusoap characteristics, however, The Office makes Brent's
private actions ones he wants hidden from both the diegetic audience
(his coworkers and the camera crew) and the extradiegetic one (the
implied audience at home). Thus the existence of the television
audience is made explicit and used for comedy purposes, whereas in
conventional sitcom the audience exists as a laughter track only, an
extradiegetic phenomenon unknown to sitcom's characters. This leads
to an odd reversal where, by discarding the laughter track, The Office

7 1 Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 abandons the audience's function as a metacommunication signalling
comic intent and instead uses the audience as part of the diegetic comic
meaning of the programme.
Indeed, the programme abandons many of the ways in which sitcoms
have traditionally signalled, and ensured, their comic intent. The
docusoap format used by The Office removes the availability of the
three-camera set-up to record comic reactions, because the docusoap
conventionally does not employ this kind of set-up and is unlikely to be
capable of capturing events in a manner which would be smooth
enough to lend itself to traditional sitcom editing. Instead, in order to
capture reactions to events the camera conventionally focuses on the

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speaker's face and then quickly pans across to capture any reaction. As
a result, the viewer often misses the beginning of a character's reaction,
which, in a three-camera set-up, would be neatly recorded in its
entirety. In this manner, The Office constructs character interaction that
looks less structured than conventional sitcom, while still getting the
laughs from the reaction.
This is demonstrated in the way in which The Office's, characters
respond to the camera. As would be expected, like most docusoap
characters those in The Office attempt to act as if the camera is not
44 Bruzzi, New Documentary,
present.44 On the whole, everyone acts as if they are not being filmed;
pp. 92-3.
or, at least, voiceover and editing are used to construct a text in which
the invisibility of the camera is upheld. Yet in The Office, this
convention repeatedly falls apart, as the characters refuse to stay within
the roles required of them by docusoap. Brent, who repeatedly states
how he and his colleague Chris Finch should be on television - 'We're
45 Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise the new Morecambe and Wise'45 - clearly performs not only to
are probably the most famous
comic double-act in British
entertain his workers but also to impress the film crew and the audience
television history, appearing in at home. When making jokes in response to others he often glances at
many series {The Morecambe and the camera as he delivers the punchline, checking he is being filmed
Wise Show, kVJ 1961-8, BBC
1968-77, ITV 1978-83) and
and ensuring his performance will be captured as he intends. He tells
Christmas specials. Their the camera crew to leave their equipment running when Finch arrives,
television work displayed its assuring them that they will be able to make a series out of them.
theatrical heritage in filming,
performance style and humour
Clearly this is a reference to the way in which the presence of the
content. Lewisohn, Radio Times camera has an effect upon its subjects, and refers indirectly to the
Guide to TV Comedy, pp. 452-4. successful media careers of The Cruise's, (BBC1, 1997-98) Jane
46 Bruzzi, 'Docusoaps', p. 134. McDonald and Driving School's (BBC1, 1997) Maureen Rees.46 It is
clear that Brent senses an opportunity to be noticed by a talent spotter.
It is here that the programme explicitly makes a distinction between
the kinds of performance associated with sitcom, and those apparent in
other television forms. Much of the humour in The Office arises from
the embarrassment felt by other characters, and the viewing audience,
at Brent's awful attempts at sexist, racist outdated humour. It is
therefore significant that Brent performs as if he is in a sitcom,
awaiting everyone's attention, adopting a stance similar to standup
comedians, delivering preconceived lines and leaving a pause after
jokes for laughter. He thus represents the performance style and

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
humour content of traditional sitcom, signalling comic intent through
traditional metacommunication which is singularly at odds with the
diegetic world the series constructs. It would seem that by offering a
laughable disparity between such conventional comedic performance
and the 'realistic' office environment, presented via the docusoap
format, traditional comedy is repositioned as merely ridiculous, to be
laughed at and not with. In this way, The Office explicitly ridicules
such a performance style and the comedy associated with it, redrawing
it as outdated in relation to contemporary television forms and audience
understandings of them.
On a broader scale, The Office also critiques the nature of television

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performance overall, particularly that type of performance most
commonly associated with documentary, whose veracity rests on the
assumption that there is a lack of performance. This can be seen in
Brent's performance when he is alone in his office, apparently being
interviewed by the unseen camera crew. While the shot is set up so that
he is looking at the interviewer, who is positioned slightly off camera,
Brent repeatedly glances directly at the camera at opportune moments,
such as when he makes statements about his success as a boss or
prowess as a comedian. He thus explicitly manipulates the conversation
so that he can tell stories that make him appear significant, charitable
and popular, and is clearly using the camera, and docusoap iself, to
legitimize his actions and demonstrate his popularity. Significantly,
while this reveals the uncaring demon Brent is, he obviously feels he is
giving the camera crew what they want: interesting characters, funny
moments and heartwarming stories. Brent recognizably understands the
requirements of docusoap, and sees himself naturally able to fulfil
them. In so doing, the programme uses for comedic purposes the
inability of the documentary production crew to maintain authority over
their text.
The problematic effect or presence of the docusoap camera is also
demonstrated by the character Tim, who uses the camera in a very
different way. It is apparent throughout the series that Tim is the
unhappiest person in the office, and the narrative in the final episode of
the first series revolves around his unfortunate decision to take a
promotion rather than to resign and begin a psychology degree. Tim
has previously demonstrated his detachment from his coworkers and
their actions by using the camera as a means of escape. At moments
when Brent and Gareth are at their most obnoxious, clearly performing
for the camera crew, Tim is seen to steal quick, questioning glances at
the camera, mocking his coworkers and clearly looking for a way out.
In this way, Tim attempts to construct a relationship with both the
camera crew and the audience at home, acknowledging the
entertainment rationale behind the documentary process in a manner
that undermines its supposed observational role. For Tim the camera
functions as the possibility for escape, his pleading looks a cry to his
unknown audience to rescue him.

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 What both Tim's and Brent's use of the camera most tellingly
reveals is the effect of the camera crew on its subjects. Thus, while
documentary and docusoap often rely on an assumption that they
present an unmediated truth, much of the humour in The Office comes
from demonstrating the impossibility of this. Indeed, if the camera crew
had no effect on its subjects it would result in a very dull programme.
What The Office does is to explore the lengths to which people are
apparently willing to go to be on television, and in Tim's case his
awareness of this falsity and his ability to use the conventions of
documentary to his own ends.
This is not to say, however, that The Office adopts a documentary

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aesthetic so that it can more easily attain the kinds of legitimacy that
may be associated with the form. While the programme does employ
all the signifiers of authenticity - the handheld cameras, the
47 Dai Vaughan, For Documentary: downplayed acting, the mundane storylines47 - the humour of the series
Twelve Essays (Berkeley and Los
is often based around the gap between the valued 'authenticity' of
Angeles, CA: University of
California Press, 1999), p. 120.
documentary and the minimal truths it can actually capture. By
illustrating how docusoap 'characters' are capable of using the camera
to their own ends, The Office articulates concerns around documentary
fakery. And by using the conventions of documentary for humour, The
Office undermines the distinctions between sitcom and documentary,
between seriousness and humour, demonstrating that the outcomes of
one can be achieved through the conventions of the other.

The Office's use of the documentary form characteristics continues the

long-running debate about veracity. It is clear that there is a disparity
between the supposed objectivity and depiction of truth required of
documentary by both audiences and regulators, and the inability to
achieve such a goal as evidenced by many filmmakers and academics.
In that sense, it is incorrect to suggest The Office adopts the
characteristics of all types of documentary; instead, its insistence on
engaging with the tension between the camera as objective record and
the effects of filming are resolved and explicitly used within cinema
verite. John Corner, following Jean Rouch, divides documentary into
direct cinema and cinema verite. While both forms privilege
documentary as observation, direct cinema assumes that the camera is
capable of objective record, and, significantly, relies on filmmakers
recording merely what is happening rather than searching for, or
instigating, exciting footage. Cinema verite, on the other hand,
Far from wishing to render the camera 'invisible' and to project what
happens before it as some magical capturing of the spontaneous ...
[instead] ... showed thefilmmakingprocess intervening in the events
48 John Corner, The Art of Record: a
Critical Introduction to
filmed, with participants not only looking at, but also addressing, the
Documentary (New York, NY and filmmakers.48
Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1996), pp. 43-4. Clearly this has implications for the reality which any such film

~l4 Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
purports to present and, in fact, the deliberate display of the
characteristics of cinema verite results in texts which explicitly refuse
to present the possibility of the lack of mediation. Also, cinema verite
has implications for the performance of its subjects, in which the
acknowledged relationship between the filmed and the filmmakers
relies on the proximity of the latter for its very existence. As has been
shown, the humour of The Office relies on these tensions for its effects.
Corner notes 'the way in which television has recently attempted to
mix a primarily verite approach with elements drawn from other areas
of programming', terming this development 'neo-verite'.49 Clearly,
what I am suggesting here is a development of what might be termed

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'comedy verite', in which the visual characteristics of verite have been
adopted by sitcom for comedic purposes. However, comedy verite is
more than a definition of style. It also indicates a use of television
comedy to interrogate the processes and representations of media
forms, in a manner similar to the aggressively involved characteristics
of cinema verite.
Considering the history and techniques of television comedy, it is
perhaps unsurprising that such a development should take place. There
is a tradition of British broadcast humour questioning, exaggerating and
undermining the characteristics of different genres and media
institutions. Spike Milligan's work on The Goons (BBC Home Service,
1951-60) and the many Q series (BBC2, 1969-80) relied on
experimenting with, and reacting against, the limitations of the medium
on which they were broadcast. Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC2,
1969-74) similarly played freely with the conventions of the sketch
show, repeatedly failing to deliver standard punchlines and allowing
discrete sketches to bleed into one another. Similarly The Young Ones
(BBC2, 1982-84), while critiquing racist and sexist sitcom content,
also played with the genre's structures, abandoning realism, breaking
the fourth wall, and failing adequately to end narratives. In doing so, all
of these series reacted against the dominant genres of their times, as
well as questioning conventions for television comedy. It in
unsurprising, then, following the sudden popularity and schedule
dominance on British television of the documentary in the 1990s, that
comedy should be used to interrogate and play with this particular
form's structures.
The Office is only one of many new comedy verite sitcoms using the
format of other genres to create different kinds of comedy. Marion and
Geoff, for example, pares down its visuality to a point which is
inconceivable for sitcom and sparse even for documentary. The series'
only performer is Keith (Rob Brydon), a London-based taxi driver
whose estranged wife, Marion, and two children live in Cardiff with
Marion's new lover, Geoff. The series consists of Keith's monologues
to the camera as he drives his taxi. The camera is positioned on his
dashboard and never moves; all we see is Keith, framed by his
workplace, as he stubbornly maintains his optimism in the face of a

71) Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 collapsed marriage and an increasingly pointless life. For Keith, the
camera functions as a confessional, in a manner similar to the series
50 Video Nation is a series in which Video Nation (BBC, 1993-).50 He addresses the camera directly, saying
'The BBC lent camcorders to and
trained participants who were
hello to it (and thus to us as an audience) and pouring out heartfelt
then free to offer insights into confessions; for Keith, the camera is his only friend. Furthermore, it
the minutiae of their lives,
quickly becomes apparent that Keith's naivety means he is incapable of
normally by a piece to camera',
Winston, Lies, Damn Lies and
realizing the implications of what he is saying: his optimistic
Documentaries, p. 143. statements about his relationship with his children - whom he very
rarely sees - suggest to the audience the lack of interest his offspring
have in him, a disinterest he continually fails to realize. The series'
humour lies in accessing the truth of documentary - in this instance the

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gap between the truth which Keith attempts to construct (and clearly
believes) and that which is apparent to everyone else. Thus the comedy
emerges as an effect of the different levels of narrative which the
documentary form offers, where one contradicts the other.
Another response to the apparent veracity of documentary narrative
can be seen in People Like Us. This is a series of fictional
documentaries in which each episode centres on a different workplace
such as an estate agent, a school, and so on. The only recurring
character is the documentary filmmaker, Roy Mallard (Chris Langham),
whom we hear speaking to his subjects but, as he is always behind the
camera, never see. The humour in People Like Us arises primarily from
Mallard's incompetence as a filmmaker, forever asking the wrong
questions, annoying his subjects, and talking about himself; thus the
resulting documentary never matches Mallard's intentions, as he
constantly grapples to maintain some sort of control over his text and
its contents. In doing so, the programme foregrounds the very
constructed nature of documentary, for aspects of the production
process continually infringe upon the legitimacy of the text. Unlike The
Office and Marion and Geoff, then, People Like Us places the
filmmaker as the comic focus rather than the subjects, finding humour
51 Bruzzi, New Documentary,
in the 'performative'51 subgenre of documentary and explicitly
pp. 153-80. displaying the subjective processes of documentary-making arising out
of the filmmaker(s) involved.
The series' humour also relies on the effect that the intrusion of a
documentary crew can have upon individuals and social groups, as
interviewees constantly reject Mallard's questions and alter their
behaviour once they realize they are being filmed. Throughout,
Mallard's performance remains downplayed, with a clear lack of comic
metacommunication. Indeed, as we never see Mallard, and yet much of
the humour arises from his droning nasal incompetence, his existence
as a comic character negates the traditional requirement for comic
excess. However, Mallard's very intrusiveness, and his subjects'
subsequent refusal to answer personal questions, displays the efforts of
filmmakers to construct interesting television, and the effects of camera
crews on participants. People Like Us's humour, then, comes from an

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy write: contemporary sitcom form
explicit presentation of the production processes of documentary,
where we are invited to find laughable the gap between the form and
content that are conventionally associated with documentary, and the
incompetence of this particular filmmaker.
Comically engaging more actively with the structures of other
television genres are Chris Morris's series The Day Today and Brass
Eye. The former is a parody of news programmes; the latter a parody of
current affairs programmes. Both series visually structure themselves as
closely as possible to their target, the comedy arising from the accuracy
of the lampooning, particularly in the self-centred self-importance of
news journalists, and the excessive use of meaningless graphics in

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much contemporary factual television. The most famous moments in
Brass Eye concern Chris Morris successfully tricking real celebrities
into doing pieces to camera about campaigns which are, unknown to
them, fictional. These include a crusade to rescue an elephant whose
cage is so small her trunk is stuck up her own anus, and, notoriously,
the fictional drug 'cake' supposedly flooding Britain from Prague,
which Morris hoodwinked one MP into raising as a concern in the
British parliament.
Here the comedy relies at least partly on the accuracy of the parody,
as well as a whole range of linguistic absurdities that could appear in a
number of comedy forms. Yet a prime concern is clearly the gap
between the presentation of informational television - whether that is
news, current affairs or documentary - and its content. By showing a
range of public figures who are willing to support campaigns which
have no validity, the production processes of factual programming are
foregrounded and, in this instance, rendered laughable. Morris's work,
then, perhaps most obviously demonstrates the active, questioning
nature of comedy verite, in which conventional television techniques
intended to disguise processes of mediation are laid bare for comic
purposes. In doing so the sitcom, which has traditionally displayed its
artificiality, has instead used comedy to display the artificiality of other
genres of programming whose meaning and veracity is at least partly
bound up in their pretence of a lack of mediation.
Such developments in the sitcom raise significant questions about the
ways in which the genre has traditionally been analyzed and
understood. This is particularly true for statements made about the
ways in which audiences make sense of sitcom, and how comedy
signals its humorous intent. It is difficult to see here that the pleasure
offered by such programmes is 'manifestly one of the satisfaction of
watching sitcom', as outlined above. Quite the opposite: by using the
characteristics of other genres, and removing those traditionally
associated with sitcom, the pleasure offered requires at least a working
knowledge of other television forms.

It has been shown that a number of new series on British television

7 7 Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
 have abandoned some aspects of the traditional sitcom form, and
instead now reproduce the characteristics of other genres. The question
remains as to why this should be so, and what implications it has for
audiences and comedy more generally. Significantly, this development
marks comedy's reengagement with an active social role (albeit in
relation to the media social role) which sitcom has traditionally been
criticized for abandoning. There are signs, then, that sitcom has moved
away from being 'mere entertainment', and has in some instances
abandoned the genre characteristics which distinguish it so forcefully
from other forms. In doing so, the sitcom has finally abandoned its
music hall origins, and begun to interact with aspects of television to

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create meaning. This is, then, sitcom as television, and, as such, is
television comedy made by, and for, generations of viewers for whom
the music hall experience is meaningless. That is, while Medhurst and
Tuck suggest that sitcom recreated the collective experience of theatre
audiencehood, this is only appropriate for audiences for whom music
hall signifiers have any meaning, and for whom, importantly, music
hall functioned as a significant social event. As television has replaced
'live' entertainment as the social arena in which societies and cultures
talk to and about themselves, so it has became necessary for sitcom, to
maintain its social role, to adopt the characteristics of that social
medium. In so doing, the sitcom has not only ceased resembling its
previous self, it has also begun to interrogate and break down the very
characteristics of the medium whose forms it is finally beginning to
embrace. Comedy verite, then, is comedy for audiences raised on
television formats.
In addition, comedy verite represents a further development within
the debate about the nature of documentary as a whole, one which,
while having a long history, was certainly reinvigorated by the
docusoap boom on British television in the 1990s. The movement of
documentary forms into mainstream primetime broadcasting, followed
by its hybridization with other genres and mutation into 'reality TV,
has meant that 'documentary and factual television now exist in a space
52 Jon Dovey, Freakshow: First that is neither wholly fictional nor wholly factual, both yet neither'.52
Person Media and Factual
Television (London: Pluto Press,
Because of this, the social role of previously factual forms is one
2000), p. 11. repeatedly interrogated by policymakers, programme producers and
audiences. It should come as no surprise then that sitcom, a form which
has continually used current concerns for its comedic content, should
exploit the newfound contradictions within factual programming for its
own comedic ends. Comedy verite not only represents the logical
conclusion to contemporary developments in television forms, whether
factual or fictional; it also suggests that the sitcom, a form forever
maligned for its stability, offers a site for subtle, yet powerful, critiques
of television media.

I am grateful to Glen Creeber for editorial assistance with this article.

Screen 45:1 Spring 2004 • Brett Mills • Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form