The History of Sitcoms

The word ‘Sitcom’ derives from the words Situational Comedy. Sitcoms are a series of programs shown on television that usually involve a family or a close group of characters.

Sitcoms seem to have been around ever since television was introduced to the family home, and are continuing to change along with television itself. Traditionally, sitcoms were generally centred around men, usually having only one or two female characters. Examples of this are, ‘Yes Prime Minister’, ‘Blackadder’, and the still popular ‘Only Fools and Horses’.

They complied with the social and ethnic majorities of old day society – middle aged, middleclass, and white characters dominating sitcoms of that day. Very young or old people were not represented, along with the disabled and ethnic minorities. This may have been so as not to offend the more narrow-minded views of society.

Men and women had very stereotypical traits that were incorporated into the main characters of a sitcom. Male characters were shown as independent, irrational and delusional, whereas the leading woman was usually the opposite. She was domesticated, caring and motherly towards her blundering husband. As sitcoms developed further, camp characters were introduced along with the convention of role reversal between men and women. An example of this is ‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em’, where role reversal is used to make the sitcom funnier and more unique.

In modern times, some conventions of traditional sitcoms have been maintained, and as sitcoms developed some devices have been subverted. ‘My Family’ is still centred around a typical middle class family, the leading man possessing the same characteristics as traditional male characters, and role reversal being used between come characters. However, as times and views have changed, other sitcoms have become more controversial, now featuring homosexuality (‘Will and Grace’, and ‘Ellen’), different religions (‘The Vicar of Dibley’) and ethnic minorities, with women as main characters, as in ‘Sex and the City’.

However, older sitcoms appear to still be held in such affection by the older generation, who watched the sitcoms with their families and keep watching as a tradition.

My Family Analysis

My Family is an in-house production for BBC1, and was first shown in 2000. Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker (the producers) designed My Family to appeal to a wide audience and included many conventions of older sitcoms.

Set in the south of England, It stars a middle class family who are shown going about daily life in the kitchen, on the sofa and around the house in general.

Ben is the ‘head-of-the-house’ male, typical of many sitcoms as being arrogant, cynical and delusional, and he seems to resent his family. In my opinion he sometimes behaves like a teenager.

Role reversal is used with his wife’s character, Susan. She adopts some traits of a housewife, as she is middle aged and house based, but her characteristics are mainly those of a man. With her husband Ben she is stubborn and with her manipulative nature, seems more in charge. This is effective as it plays on some situations of real life.

Michael and Nick, their two sons, are strong opposites. Michael is the ‘voice of reason’ in the family, sometimes even taking over his parents’ role, whereas Nick is clumsy and is the source of slapstick humour. Abi, the family’s cousin, acts as the centre point for easy jokes. She is slow and a bit kooky.

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In the title sequence, the family is introduced as shots of their faces appear, complemented by cheerful happy music. The mise-en-scene, their house, is set almost like a theatrical stage, so that the audience can fully see the very staged drama. The house is decorated in a middle class suburban way, with characters entering/exiting from the real world as if in a play. Lines are ‘delivered’ as if performing in a theatre, and this is accompanied by a laughter track. Well-known actors are used to increase audience, and midshots and medium close-ups are used in the sitcom.

The general opinion (or voice) of the production team is conveyed to the audience; that it is a hard life for men, and women add to it. My Family is shown pre-watershed time, so it can be viewed by the whole family at home. Slapstick comedy combined with sarcastic humour is used to related to children and adults alike. It is technically well made, but some critics say it is too bland and conventional to be a main sitcom of the BBC.

The Simpsons Analysis

The Simpsons is a cartoon sitcom starring a typical suburban working class family. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and baby Maggie are animated in their house and around their fictional town of Springfield.

The sitcom opens with the family members going about daily chores, introducing the characters to an up-beat, bouncy theme tune. They are seen on the sofa, (the main setting) watching TV. To add originality, a different humorous sofa scene is shown every time.

The Simpsons is realistic in the sense that the family is dysfunctional, yet tried to be perfect. Homer, the leading head-of-the-house male, is blundering and delusional. Bart, the ‘rebellious teen’ is constantly arguing with sister Lisa, who acts as the moral centre of the family.

There is also Maggie, the humorous baby, and Marge, who tries to hold the family together.

However, in many ways, this sitcom is also very unrealistic, for example the inclusion of aliens, the exaggerated biased politics and the fact that the sitcom itself is a cartoon.

Viewers are entertained by slapstick comedy from Homer and Bart. Their typical traits are used to create humour, e.g. Homer’s generic delusional views and lovable stupidity, and Bart’s immoral ways and ‘evil’ sense of humour.

Another convention that the creator, Matt Groening, uses is the idea of including two contrasting personalities. This is done with Bart and Lisa.

Bart is an under-achieving troublemaker, whereas Lisa is moralistic and ‘the school swat’.

The Simpsons started out as a series of 48 shorts in a different program before its popularity increased. It is now a sitcom of its own. It is made by a team of US animators and supported by a wide, loyal audience for its slapstick and sarcastic humour.

Matt Groening vents his thoughts on politics, race and family life in the Simpsons, for example all the characters have yellow skin – not black or white – to show racial equality.

Sitcom Comparison – The Simpsons, My Family and The Royle Family

Who/Setting:

Each of these three sitcoms features five main characters, all members of conventional families. Each family consists of a married couple and 2/3 children (the national average). The 3 sitcoms being compared all share these basic similarities, but their backgrounds and lifestyles are different.

My Family and The Royle family are both set in England, but the different areas of the country depict their social status.

The Royle Family live in the North of England, which is conveyed to the audience by their strong accents. The north is recognised as an underprivileged area, ands this shows the Royles as a working class family.

My Family are immediately recognised as an upper middle-class family, as they are typical of West London, the ‘soft underbelly’ of the South.

The sofa and living room are used as the main setting in both of these 2 sitcoms, but the way that props and cameras are positioned further reinforces their different social classes.

The Royles’ cramped living room is shown at awkward angles and no windows or open spaces are shown. This gives the impression of a pokey terraced house.

The living room of My Family is airy and spacious, a wide area of it being shown and lots of carefully placed ornaments and windows.

The Simpsons is also a working class family, whose standards lie between those of the two extremes; My Family and The Royle Family.

The big difference, however, is that The Simpsons is set in a fictional area of America – Springfield. As with the two English sitcoms, the living room is the main scene, but more of the outside world is explored than in My Family or The Royles, which are both quite inward.

Occupation:

In this sense, the Simpsons and My Family are more conventional in work than the Royle Family.

Ben and Homer – the men of the families, both earn money for the rest of their family with quite advanced jobs (Ben works as a white-collar dentist and Homer as a blue-collar nuclear power plant controller).

However, Jim, (the leading male of the Royles), is unemployed. His wife Barbara is the main earner, a blue-collar worker in a bakery. Both of the other women are between jobs, although sometimes Susan works as a tourguide, and rely on their husbands as a main source of income.

Each of the three sitcoms have at least one child in school. Bart and Lisa, the child characters of The Simpsons, are young and both attend primary school.

Anthony of the Royles and Michael of My Family are the only child characters of these two sitcoms, and are in secondary school.

Another similarity in occupations is that one character in all three sitcoms stays at home;

The Simpsons’ baby Maggie, My Family’s unemployed son Nick, and the retired Nana Royle.

Production Background / audience readings

All three sitcoms are now shown on the BBC channels, but originally they were made in very different ways.

My Family, the most recent of the three, was first shown in 2000, and was written as a BBC in-house production. The Royle family debuted in 1998 as a Granada production and The Simpsons, which first started out as 48 shorts in a separate program, first made its appearance as an independent sitcom in 1987, on American television. It is a C20th Fox Production.

The Simpsons and MY Family are designed to appeal to the whole family, and are thus shown pre-watershed time. They are shown on mainstream channels, and entertain with more than one genre of comedy to suit children and adults alike. The Simpsons is probably the most widely enjoyed of the three, as it is a cartoon so it relates most to children, without losing out on adult viewers.

The Royle family, however, appeals to a much more specified genre of people. It is shown late at night, and is put in the ‘alternative comedy’ slot along with programs like Alan Partridge and The Office.

Although its audience is small, the Royle Family has developed a loyal ‘cult following’ with its unconventional situations and controversial humour.

Some aspects of production, however, are true to all 3 sitcoms. An example of this is the inclusion of well-known actors. In each sitcom this is done for different reasons.

Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston play the Royle Family’s Barbara and Jim. This adds to the realism of the sitcom as these actors previously acted the realistic soap Brookside.

The producers of MY Family have included a well-known cast aswell, for example Zoë Wanamaker starred in Harry Potter.

The reason for this is to boost My Family’s ratings and make it more popular. Adding familiar faces causes more people to relate to the sitcom.

The producer of the Simpsons uses celebrities to add humour. As this sitcom is a cartoon, caricatures and deliberately bad voice-overs can be used to make the sitcom funnier to watch.

Credits/Title Sequence

Each sitcom introduces their characters by showing them in their typical environments. Both the Simpsons and The Royle Family include the couch scene in their opening sequences, this Simpsons including originality by showing a different humorous sofa scene every time.

My Family, however, ends their title sequence more conventionally, showing a family portrait of the characters.

All three-title sequences are accompanied by music. The Simpsons and My Family are both introduced to an upbeat theme tune, whereas the Royles’ dreary Oasis song immediately sets the depressing mood. The lyrics, ‘half the world away’, suggest the Royle Families cut off, inward status from the outside world. Also, the Royle family uses black and white shots to complement this mood, whereas Simpsons and My Family are less explorative, shooting their credits and title sequence in colour.

Types:

Generic characteristics have been shown since the start of sitcoms – MY Family, The Royle Family and The Simpsons being no exception. This point is most clearly portrayed in the men of the families. This point is most clearly portrayed in the men of the families.

Ben of My Family is arrogant, cynical and delusional, and holds the dominant place in the family, as does Homer Simpson.

Homer is blundering, immature and stupid, yet still a character that audiences sympathise with.

The Royle Family is probably the ‘odd-one-out’, with its leading male Jim. Jim is seen mostly on the sofa watching television, therefore in that sense he is domesticated, and he also doesn’t work, unlike the men of most sitcoms. Subtle role reversal is used with Jim and his wife Barbara, for uniqueness and humour. However, he is the dominant person of the household, as he has his own particular seat on the sofa whereas the other family members don’t, and also has permanent possession of the remote control. These two characteristics are needed to establish Jim to the audience as the head-of-the-house man.

The women of these 3 sitcoms also share generic characteristics. They are all domesticated, and hold their families together, but some of their traits are very different.

Marge Simpson is a typical affectionate mother; she cleans, tidies, cooks for and looks after her children (and husband), trying to make hers the ‘perfect’ family. She is also seen as the stereotypical nagging housewife, her discerning moaning acting as her motif throughout shows.

Barbara, of the Royle Family, also cares for her family, but in a different way; she goes out to work. Given this, she is less domesticated than Marge, spending more time socializing with her family or working than cooking and cleaning. It could be said that she tries harder to hold her deficient family together, as she has the burden of an idle husband and immature yet adult children, and doesn’t moan about it. This is effective as Barbara is a character that the audience will sympathise with and respect.

Susan, of My Family, has very little maternal or loving characteristics and therefore doesn’t make a very strong bond with the audience. She is not very domesticated, as she often states she cannot cook, and also she is more the head of the household than Ben, instructing her children and husband on what and what not to do. The fact that she works also takes any maternal nature out of her character, and her sarcastic, tempestuous and sometimes-immature nature is used to get laughter from the audience rather than to make a bond with them.

In fact, there is no palpable affection shown between any of the rest of the Archer family either. Every character contains an element of sarcasm, and the main entertainment from My Family comes from The Families ridicule and general intolerance of one another.

One thing that most sitcoms have in common is the inclusion of one “normal voice” – a character that possesses no prominent qualities. This is effective in keeping some reality to a sitcom especially if in all other aspect its is unlikely that any of its situations would happen.