“Love Thy Neighbour” is another popular sitcom from the 70’s, it was released simultaneously to the time when large amounts of black immigrants had come to Britain. The sitcom is based about a white couple that find themselves living next door to a black couple, and their attempts to come to terms with this. The sitcom is full of racial abuse, as the jokes are nearly always racially motivated; the black man is referred to as nig-nog on many occasions. However the racial abuse is not one sided as the whites are referred to as Honky, Snowflake etc. This sitcom and others alike it are now seen as period pieces because their ways of handling racial issues are seen as politically incorrect. Racial sitcoms were very popular within the 70’s, however today no racist sitcoms are being made because racist views are no longer accepted in today’s society. Today, the new sitcoms are based around issues and dilemmas within families or a group of friends and this is now seen as the replacement for the racist sitcoms.
As well as racism, another popular sitcom theme has been homosexuality but instead of stopping gay sitcom productions like the racist ones, the homosexuality genre has been able to develop with time. The 70s portrayed being gay as wrong and the gay characters of the sitcoms were the victims in the situation comedy. However as time progressed gays have now been accepted in society. So now in the modern sitcoms such as “Will and Grace” they gay is not a victim of gay jokes because the modern audience now accepts homosexuality opposed to before.
Some features from the original sitcoms haven’t changed and are still going strong today. The laugh track is one of the most notable; many sitcoms are not recorded in front of live audiences, so a laugh track is added to the parts of the jokes through editing later on, this feature is still being used today, even after the 50+ years ago it was first used on the American sitcom; The Hank McCune Show.
The genre has also done very well not to diversify and keep its “situation” status. This has been done by having the same characters throughout the series, with the same environment and similar situation in every episode. The British sitcom has also kept the same stereotypes throughout the years, for example the women are shown as the most feared member of the home, the men sit around and really do nothing, the children are scared of their mother but not their father and so they usually try to blackmail him. Proof of these stereotypes in the modern day can be found in sitcoms such as “My Family”.
British sitcoms are different to American sitcoms. In UK sitcoms the focus is very much on all the characters and their class. The upper-class characters are portrayed as intelligent and civil, however the Lower-class characters are shown as loud, shallow but nice. The British sitcom concentrates on the social aspects and likes to show that everyone has their place in society. American sitcoms usually like to focus on individual developments of a character opposed to their position in a class system like the British sitcoms. They also tend to use dysfunctional relationships to get the audience to interact with the characters and therefore provoke more laughter. A good example of an American sitcom with all these features is “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”.