Doing It Wright

Last year, I wrote a blog post called 'Brit-Sitcoms: The Good Ones', about the brilliant sitcoms that British comedy writers and actors have brought to our screens over the years, and how, sadly, the classic, laugh-out-loud British sitcom seems to be a dying art lately. I spoke about how our TVs were desperately crying out for either re-runs of the classics, like Only Fools and Fawlty Towers, on mainstream channels, or some fresh meat which mirrored their level of sheer genius.

Well, Ben Elton, you read my mind. (Or you read the blog post. Actually, you probably read neither. You're probably not even reading this now. So why am I still referring to you in the second person, as if I'm talking directly to you...?)

Ahem.

Ben Elton is the legend who brought us, among other masterpieces, Thin Blue Line in the '90s, a sitcom based in a police station, which starred fellow legends Rowan Atkinson and David Haig. This is a programme which I vaguely remember seeing, but only as a child, so I've recently watched both series on DVD with nearly fresh eyes. My stomach still hurts from laughing. I could quite easily fill a good half a page with praise for that programme, but that's not actually what this post is supposed to be about, so I will leave you with a clip. Or two.

Right, now down to business. Let's go, go, go!

Well, nearly twenty years on from the sheer brilliance of The Thin Blue Line, Ben Elton has gone and done it again, by creating a new sitcom called The Wright Way, which first aired on BBC1 in April this year.
It stars David Haig (who you have just seen as Inspector Grim in the above clip) and follows the life of Gerald Wright, a Health and Safety officer for the council.

And, quite simply, it is hilarious.

It's a fantastic mix of physical and verbal comedy, rejuvinating the classic sitcom humour that had been left to gather dust under the bed in recent years.
For me, Gerald Wright's exasperated rants about the trivial things in life just make the show - not only are they brilliantly written by Elton, but Haig's execution of them is just genius, and they're all about things we moan about in everyday life!

[There should have been a clip here, but unfortunately I was unable to find one of my favourite rant of his from the first episode, where he manages to put into words the reasons why we all hate push taps. :')]

Along with the rants come the amazingly funny Health and Safety team meetings, where Gerald takes his job very seriously, while also choosing some less-than-ideal acronyms for the operations being carried out! (See below.)

Now, I admit that I was unsure about some of the characters to start with. For instance, Victoria - the girlfriend of Gerald's daughter, Susan - did get on my nerves with the way she spoke, but it's grown on me. I've soon come to realise that, intentional or not, she does a perfect imitation of the 'youth' I see around my way today - particularly the ones who like to act like they're hard nuts from London, when really they're just stupid kids from Kent. ("Ini' braaa"...hem, hem.)

 

But still, despite the small, initial doubts I had, I have to say, it's been a while since I last laughed so much at something on TV nowadays.

 

However, it's hard to ignore the countless negative reviews that The Wright Way has received. Even in the YouTube clips I've come across, the comments are so full of criticism, you'd have trouble finding a compliment if it was in red, emboldened capital letters, with big flashing arrows surrounding it, labelled "Look! It's a compliment! Right there!"

 

It's been called everything from 'unfunny' to 'shit', which I think is utterly ridiculous.

Some people have even said that the jokes are 'from the 1970s'.

Okay, let's go with that one then. Even if the comedy were a reflection of the style used in the '70s, how could that be such a bad thing? The jokes in those shows were far funnier than in anything I've seen recently. I laugh more at five minutes of Basil Fawlty trying to have a straight-forward conversation with Manuel than I did at a film-of-a-show which was just a bunch of adolescents making a*holes of themselves in a foreign country, with an overdose on smutty innuendo. And there was a time when many other people would have been the same. Sadly, not anymore.

So, based on this, I've been brought to the only feasible conclusion I can see: the majority of the British people have lost the ability to laugh.

Now, while I'd like to believe that this has been caused by an undiscovered invasion by an alien race who like to relocate the humerus of every human being in this country from their arms into their sexual organs, I'm afraid that the actual explanation is probably a little more realistic.

As time has gone by, newer generations of writers have brought this new, more explicit form of comedy to the table, which people seem to have almost adapted themselves to find funny.

So now, when the classic writers, like Ben Elton, create something which is more along the lines of (and just as awesome as) the older style of sitcoms, a huge chunk of the population has trouble appreciating it - which I think reinforces the point I was making in 'Brit-Sitcoms: The Good Ones'.

The Wright Way has made it onto the list of my favourite sitcoms, because it is genuine and fun comedy, which makes me laugh whenever I watch it!

Gosh, I even have a friend who's tweeted about it being the first show in ages that has made him laugh out loud, and I know how hard he is to please!

So, Mr Ben Elton, I salute you. You have pulled another masterpiece out of the bag, just as I was worried I'd never see any good new sitcoms on the telly ever again. Please, carry on doing what youre doing, because it's bloody genius. Thank you.

And yes, I am talking to you in the second person again, because it is a damn sight better than speaking to the people of today's wishy-washy, hoity-toity, never-know-good-comedy-if-it-danced-in-front-of-them-in-a-tutu-and-hit-them-on-the-head-with-a-rubber-chicken society.

I honestly weep for the funny bones of humanity.