A hearty congratulations to Steven Moffat. It was announced this week that the writer of such British television greats as Coupling, Press Gang, and Jekyll will be taking over the reins of the legendary Doctor Who series from departing show runner Russell Davies. Moffat has written several episodes since the reboot of the series a few years back.
It’s long been the opinion of your’s truly that Moffat is one of the best television writers of his day, displaying a mastery of dialog and a willingness to push the bounds of what’s gone before in terms of narrative. It’s one thing to experiment with timelines and points of view in a speculative program like Doctor Who; it’s quite another to do so in a situation comedy or children’s drama. [Be sure to read my interview with Moffat's better half, Sue Vertue, and her mum, Beryl, in 30 Years of British Television, in which we discuss Coupling, Doctor Who and the rest - your pushy author.]
Check out the Coupling episodes “The End of the Line” (Season 2) and “Split” (Season 3), as well as the Press Gang episode “Friendly Fire” (Season 5) and the series finale, “There are Crocodiles,” to get a taste of Moffat at his best. And for heaven’s sake, if you haven’t seen Jekyll, do yourself a favor and track down the DVD straight away.
I was speaking with actor Robert Mandan (Soap, Three’s a Crowd) yesterday for another project — more on that at a future date — when the conversation came around to a simple convention of British television and radio that is nevertheless effective.
It is the running joke: carrying a gag over the course of several episodes of the same program. Mandan recalls listening to a British radio show (The Goon Show, I suspect) in which a character would state every few episodes that someone “fell in the water.” Marvelous, you say. You probably had to be there for this particular example. Still, it got me thinking about the running joke in British comedies and what makes one variety successful and the other, well, not so much.
The good: Coupling. In my opinion, this remains the best sitcom ever made. That is to take nothing away from other favorites such as Are You Being Served and Fawlty Towers, but there is a depth to Coupling that is particularly hard to surpass. Among other things it is the master of the running joke. In Coupling, such jokes are based on the personalities of the individual characters. As Coupling producer Sue Vertue says in 30 Years of British Television, “One line will work, but only if you’ve built up the joke throughout the rest of program. British humor is a longer game than American humor.”
The YouTube clip above provides a classic example of a rant by Steve (Jack Davenport) based on his inability to understand the attitudes and enthusiasms of women. More often than not, he speaks for the majority of men everywhere. The running joke in this case is not his bafflement by the opposite sex so much as the histrionic way in which he expresses it. Although the audience is often aware that Steve is building up to a flip out, the joke never gets old, in part, because the content of the rant is always so well crafted by series writer Steven Moffat. There are running jokes centered around the rest of the Coupling sextet, but when Steve is on form, he’s nearly impossible to overshadow.
The shopworn: Keeping Up Appearances. When discussing this program, it’s hard to avoid the obvious fact that this is one of those shows you either get or you don’t, and there’s not a lot of middle ground. While I enjoy many of the individual performances in KUA, I must admit that I really can’t connect with it the way I do with other series such as Are You Being Served. The reason is simple: Every episode, it’s the same joke. And that’s not limited to the fact that we know Hyacinth is going to try to climb the social ladder, only to be embarrassed. We also know she’s going to go to Daisy’s house and fall into the shrubbery when Daisy’s dog jumps out and barks at her, we know Onslow’s going to say “Niiiice,” and if it’s an Emmett episode, we know he’s going to fret that “She’s going to sing at me.”
And yet, after speaking with actor Clive Swift — Hyacinth’s long-suffering husband Richard (check out his in-depth interview in 30 Years of British Television) — I feel as though I understand it a little bit better. He explained that the show does particularly well with children, who adore it, and it’s a very child-safe program. Family’s can watch it without fear of encountering anything in the way of adult content. “It’s very simple, really,” Swift said. “The joke is oft repeated.”
