UK and Irish Television Comedy
Description
This book looks at television comedy, drawn from across the UK and Ireland, and ranging chronologically from the 1980s to the 2020s. It explores depictions of distinctive geographical, historical and cultural communities presented from the insiders' perspective, simultaneously interrogating the particularity of the lived experience of time, and place, embedded within the wide variety of depictions of contrasting lives, experiences and sensibilities, which the collected individual chapters offer. Comedies considered include Victoria Wood's work on 'the north', Ireland's
Father Ted
and
Derry Girls
, Michaela Coel's east London set
Chewing Gum
, and Wales'
Gavin and Stacey
. There are chapters on Scottish sketch and animation comedy, and on series set in the Midlands, the North East, the South West and London's home counties. The book offers thoughtful reflection on funny and engaging representations of the diverse, fragmentedcomplexity of UK and Irish identity explored through the intersections of class, ethnicity and gender.
Reviews / Votes
"This is a refreshing and vital book in its wide range of reference and most of all in its recognition that sitcoms remain important, as a way of 'working through' identity through their situations and places, and above all, for British and Irish viewers, as a way of understanding ourselves and the culture in which we live." (Phil Wickham, Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 20 (2), June, 2025)
"The collection will be an essential read for students of the individual comedies examined and for comedy and media scholars with broader interests in negotiations of national identity and shifting patterns in the production and consumption of popular culture." (Sarah Ilott, Comedy Studies, February 12, 2024)
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Persons
Dr Mary Irwin is a cultural historian and TV studies specialist, and an honorary research fellow at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK. She has published extensively on contemporary and historical television, television genres, and gender. Her monograph on television romantic comedy Love Wars: Television Romantic Comedy is forthcoming.
Dr Jill Marshall is a lecturer at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK, and specialises in textual and popular cultural studies. She has a PhD in the subject of women in comedy and organised the 2017 'Value of Comedy' symposium at which this collection was conceived.
Content
1. Introduction, Mary Irwin and Jill Marshall.- England and its Regions.- 2. 'Our Close is Where England Lives': Territorial Terrors in Ever Decreasing Circles, Mark Readman.- 3. Victoria Wood on TV: We'd like to Apologise to Viewers in the North, Jill Marshall.- 4. 'Welcome to Sparkhill, Birmingham': Regionality and Race in Citizen Khan, Paul Elliott.- 5. Anywhere but Jarrow: Hebburn and the Place of Geordie Comedy, James Leggott.- 6. Turkey Dinosaurs and Double Dinners: T his Country 's Everyday Lives in Rural Gloucestershire, Mary Irwin.- 7. Michaela Coel's Chewing Gum : Redefining 'Unruliness' in London's East End, Laura Minor. - 8. 'I'm Waiting for You': Detectorists and the Comedy of Landscape, Brett Mills.- The Celtic UK Nations and Ireland.- 9. 'Down with this Sort of Thing': Generation, Genre and the Undoing of Catholic Ireland in Father Ted, Marcus Free.- 10. 'Now Say Something in .. Welsh': Gavin and Stacey in Translation, Daryl Perrins.- 11. Derry Girls : Navigating Regionality, Trauma and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Sitcom, Anthony P. McIntyre.- 12. Scroogin on a Greg: Scottish Animated and Online Comedy, Nichola Dobson.- 13. 'Limmy-nality': 21st Century Glaswegian Scottish-ness in the Comedy of Brian 'Limmy' Limmond, Ian Wilkie.