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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.
About the author
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.
Report
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)
