Post-Python Sketch Shows (and why Little Britain doesn't cut it)

It would be impossibly time-consuming to offer a wholesale response to the British sketch show canon. Monty Python's Flying Circus took sketch shows beyond their traditional territory on the stage to mainstream TV, and alternative comedy by a gaggle of different writers came to life through Not the Nine O'Clock News not long after.

Python and NTNOCN were at the beginning of a train of sketch shows that culminated in modern shows like Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show and That Mitchell & Webb Look. My argument is simple: they don't make 'em like they used to.

Little Britain is probably the most overrated comedy in sketch show history - not only content with clogging up peak-time airwaves as well as Dave & UK Gold, it actually gets nominated for awards for its writing. Now don't get me wrong, Little Britain was amusing for a while, with some good, solid characters - but that's all. The show spanned three series (with more planned), but it should have stopped after the first one.

The reason Little Britain does not progress the sketch show genre and take it to the next level, is that everything it represents has been done before, only better. Let's take its ultimate premise - Britain has enough stereotypes and distinguishing features to make a decent comedy about. Fine. But this very premise has been done so many times before, not least with Python and NTNOCN which played on the idiosyncrasies in the UK very well indeed, with classic writing and great characters which were very original. The only 'original' British feature about LB is its Tom Baker voice over, which is extremely annoying and childish at best.

Next, the recurring characters and repeatable catchphrases, already done very well in Harry Enfield and Chums and the Fast Show, is taken to extremes in LB. Lucas and Walliams clearly had very few ideas about either extending the original characters beyond their first-series personalities, or think up some new ones - and went back to the catchphrases again and again.

The fact that they play all the characters - men and women - invokes memories of the excellent League of Gentlemen, but the latter took the sketch format to a new level, by blurring the format with a sitcom, setting it in a dark, local suburb and building intelligent, thought-through characters.

Little Britain has increasingly come under criticism for its use of cheap stereotypes, racism and offensive characters to bolster and already weak series. Fergus Sheppard, writing in The Scotsman wrote:

"The latest series of the hit BBC comedy Little Britain may be hauling in record viewing figures, but it has also sparked a previously unthinkable chorus of criticism, with claims that the show has lost its way, trading early ingenuity for swelling amounts of toilet humour in the search for cheap laughs, and becoming increasingly offensive."

In sum, Little Britain, as well as Catherine Tate, Mitchell and Webb et al have failed to take British sketch comedy to the level that their viewing figures would have afforded them. Shows like Smack the Pony, the superb, and my favourite, sketch show, Big Train, and the League of Gentleman have certainly progressed the genre, and hopefully ensure that future comedy will not follow the joke-starved, small minded and cheap catchphrase-ridden comedy people may be becoming used to thanks to the last few years.

Here's a Big Train sketch to take away the sour taste...