ACFM - ACFM Microdose: Sitcoms At Work

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

After last week’s look at the politics of comedy, this time the gang turn to the gogglebox for a Microdose about sitcoms. Specifically, we’re watching comedy shows set in the workplace – from shoddy B&Bs to big-box superstores, from Wernham Hogg to Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. What lies beyond the double entendres and cheap sexism […]

This is Acid Man. Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the Weird Left. My name's Keir Milburn and today I'm joined by Nadia Eidel. Hello. Jeremy Gilbert. Hello. And today we're talking about comedy or sitcoms about work. This is a spin-off of our main episode we did, our full trip on comedy. We thought it might be interesting to talk about different sitcoms that have been based in the workplace

in order to sort of see if they can tell us something about how work has changed. or representations of work have changed. It also, of course, functions a little bit like those shows in which people mentioned. Do you remember Spangles, but we'll ride that on out? I think you've got to explain that reference. The large numbers of especially international listeners have no idea why we mentioned.

Yeah, what are you talking about, Gia? Well, you see, there's a big constituency of shows which just consists of talking heads, doing nostalgic callbacks to their childhood, so perhaps about the 1970s. Spangles were a form of sweets that you might have eaten at that time that no longer exists.

We're going to do in a bit of that. I really enjoyed the microdose we did on films about strikes, partly because it gives you an excuse to go away and watch some stuff. I think, oh, yeah, I really enjoy that. So there'll be a little bit of that going on, but we're going to try to also include

a little bit of social analysis, of course. Well, at least that's what I've got in my head. What about you two? Well, I'm doing it because you wanted to do it. That's how it works around here, people. Yeah, we're doing this because Keir is really enthusiastic about it. And, you know, why not? It is a present to Keir.

Yeah, we love you. If you really want to do it, we're going to do it. And he's absolutely enthusiastic about this subject. So you are all listeners going to have to come along with for the ride. It was recently my birthday, dear listeners. So Nadia, Jeremy. and all of people listening this, this is my birthday present from you.

Fantastic. Of course, you know, ACFM is just not only about giving me what I want, although, you know, in my head it's mainly that, to be honest. Yeah, that's what I thought it was about. It's part of a wider ecology of things, of course. We have these, our main trips come out every month,

and we've just started to revamp our newsletter. So you can get a newsletter every month, which revolves around the theme of our main trip. That's got like bonus contents, bits we couldn't fit in, other thoughts that we might have around this topic, bits, a little bits of writing from the ACFM extended universe, etc. So sign up for that, navara.media slash ACFM newsletter. You can also listen to the ever-expanding ACFM playlist on Spotify. just search ACFM on Spotify. We added a few a strange eclectic mix of songs

for our episode on comedy. And of course, ACFM comes out on Navarra Media. So if you want more content from ACFM, if you want to support what we do and what the wider Navarra Media project does, which we think you should support, then go to navara.media slash support and sign up and give us some money.

Okay, where should we start with this? Perhaps we should define what a sitcom is, first off. Well, I think it's the 50s. It starts to be used. The term situation comedy just refers to, well, we all know what situation comedies. It's a sort of comedy. It's a fictional narrative.

It's a comedic fictional narrative about some characters who know each other. It's an odd term really, isn't it? Because the situation that the situation comedy could be about could be anything. I think, like, you know, when the term was being used in the 50s and early 60s, there was some idea that there was something specifically comedic about the situation. It was like the odd couple and things like that with this sort of idea.

But by the end of the 60s, at least, the term sitcom just means a sort of a comedic, episodic, fictional narrative, doesn't it? It's about what it's contrasted with. So it's not a crime drama. Yeah. And it's not, you know, some kind of epic trilogy with. some kind of hero's adventure. It's different to those things.

Well, it's not sketch comedy. I mean, in terms of, in like in TV land, the distinction is within comedy, the distinctions are stand-up, sketch and sitcom. So stand-up is just a comedian telling jokes on a stage. Sketch comedy is just individual humorous scenes. And sitcom is like a story that's supposed to be funny. Yeah, so it's like comedy around a repeated situation or something like that, isn't it, basically?

Which tends to go on, although it does tend to be episodic, some sitcoms are building each other. I suppose, like, the really earliest sitcoms in the UK cross that boundary between sketch comedy and situation comedy.

So Hancock's Half Hour is a little bit like a... It's definitely got its roots in that music hall variety sketch show comedy, but it's got a consistent cast of characters. And my sort of contention, when I raised this as a possible microdose, was that the early sitcoms tended to be based around the family or the home

and then they gradually work comes into it. We had a bit of discussion about that, but whether that's true or not. And that's what we're focusing on today. We're focusing on sitcoms about work. And we're going to start in the 60s, surprise, surprise. Go here, you can kick us off. Come on. Well, in the US, the comedy's about work.

It starts with the Dick Van Dyke Show, which is like 1961, one, which is the first one where the workplace is one of the situations that gets repeated. The work being done is writing a fictional comedy show. That's something that comes up over and over and over and over again, basically. In the Dick Van Dykepo's the story is that they're making a TV show. Yeah, it's the writing room for a fictional sitcom, presumably, actually. I didn't know that. I mean, that's very interesting. Well, it is because it comes up later on.

We're going to talk about 30 Rock in a bit, etc., which is. not very much the same. Yeah, yeah, but that sort of means all those like meta-comodies about, you know, the signed, the whole Larry David project, it's a lot less original. Yeah. Then you might think it is if you know that the Dick Van Dyke show. I was at the Dick Van Dykes show. I thought he was just, you know, a sort of suburban family sitcom.

That's really interesting. I think it's one where basically there's two repeated situations, his home and his work. And that's what was the innovation in it originally, I think. Yeah, but the work is, he's a comedy writer, I see. Well, I mean, you know, write what you know in it, basically. Yeah, yeah, sure. Writing about their own lives, aren't they? The constant repeating trope.

The first sitcom we wanted to talk about as a UK one, Stepto and Sun, which is, well, basically. Basically, that's set in a workplace, which is also the home, in it, because they're rag and bone men, basically. Yeah, and a rag and bone man for non-British listeners is, it's basically a rag and bone shop would be a junk shop. And the rag and bone men were people who would go around the streets, like offering to take away any junk, basically, and collecting junk that then they would sell at their junk shop. It was still, I think it's pretty much dead now. I guess up until about, I think the 90s is the last time I can remember seeing a rag and bone man in it. British Street but yeah these guys

you know in like you know old trousers and flat caps would walk down the street any old iron that was the cry because their main money mainly what they dealt with in scrap metal so they walked down the streets hanging any old iron any old iron any old iron do you remember spangles

yes rag and bone men used to love spangles it was their thing yeah so basically that it's set in in their yard. They still exist, Jim. If I, the other day I was getting rid of a, getting rid of some metal. It was a big radio and you just put it outside and it was gone within a couple of hours.

Not by the rag and bone man. And people take stuff, but they don't walk down the street, do they walk down the street crying it, crying it out? No, no. They can't, they can't get it out anymore because they've got too many spangles stuffed into their mouths. Well, well, down here in London, people just nick catalytic converters for your car. It's a different, it's a different, there's a different operation. Okay, what happens in this sitcom? Well, basically it's like an intergenerational conflict.

It's like the basis of it. There's an old Ragged Bowman and a young Ragged Bowman who's his son. It sort of was you, it was you to sort of dramatize, as you're saying, generational conflict, wasn't it? Because the old man, even though they're really poor, they're also, they're small, they are small independent business people. They're not workers. in a classic sense. And the old guy is a Tory.

That's one of the things that comes out at one point, whereas the young guy, you know, he considers himself a socialist. He's a sort of caricature of that. The phrase I'm now inventing is lump and petty bourgeois. He's a caricature, like, Steptoe Senior is like a caricature of a sort of a lump and petty bourgeois. As is Alf Garnet a bit later on, actually,

they're these sort of hate figures. For that post, for the kind of liberal, progressive boomers, it's upwardly mobile, but sort of politically sort of centre-left boomers. The real hate figure for them is their image of these old guys who, like, live through the 30s, but they're still basically, they're sort of protein Thatcherites, like individualistic, racist, Tory. It's an interesting trope, actually. And the whole sort of sense of the film is like, is that erold, the young one,

it's like trapped basically feels trapped he really wants more out of life he always you know he's got the yearning for escape somehow it's like real sense of claustrophobia including on on the set as well which is like you know basically all of this this this this junk almost like engulfing them you know yeah and so you could sort of read it onto onto that sort of generational probably like slash class sort of situation of the like basically improved prospects amongst the post-war working class you know what I mean which Harold, the young one, is not, doesn't really have access to,

because in the show, he's left school to work for his old man, so he hadn't got much education. He's constantly wants to better himself, do you know what I mean? There's a famous scene where Albert, the old man, the dirty old man, the dirty old man.

This is Spangles, isn't it? You dirty old man. He's like, he's having a go at Harold, the young one, for reading books. He said, oh, it's dangerous reading books, you know, book read at least a communism, he says. And it's that sort of. It does.

It's a fair accusation. Well, I mean, it's probably it. Well, I mean, what is that apart from, you know, basically anti-woke critical race theory, conspiracy theories, you know, for the 1960s? Is it funny? I watched one the other day. And it was sort of funny, but like, it's like dramedy, really, you know, that, like, it's really. you know that it's really has got it's quite black and sort of the general feeling as of like you know claustrophobia and like you know frustrated people rubbing up against each other although

they do love each other I think but well it's very bleak I mean it's always interesting to think about what that kind of popular cultural text is supposed to be doing for the audience isn't it and I think you are supposed to feel you're supposed to dislike steptoe senior and you're supposed to feel sorry for his son and you're supposed to feel sort of feel superior to both of them and you're supposed to feel happy about the fact that you, the viewer, have probably been more successful than Stepto Jr. has, you know, enjoying the fruit of post-war social mobility because statistically you probably have. And that is what it invites you to. And it is sort of mournful. I mean, it's very well remembered because it, I mean, it is, there is something quite profound. I mean, it's

often, it's sometimes compared to sort of Beckett because it's often, it's often, it's often, it's often, it's often, it's often, it's often, it's often, it's often, it's sort of existentially dark, but against the backdrop of a, you know, quite sort of optimistic structure of feeling in the broader culture. So it is really interesting for all those reasons. You know, the 60s, as I guess a lot of us know, by now. The 60s is this sort of golden age of people who had benefited from the expansion of not just the universities, but the art schools, the drama schools, various forms of arts funding in the post-war period, people coming from very poor working class backgrounds, you're getting careers doing things like writing TV. And this is the kind of thing they're writing really. They're sort of reflecting on the condition of people who haven't been as lucky as them. And they're also, it is a way of like venting their kind of hatred of the older generation who they see is kind of holding things back and, you know, being stuck in a sort

of interwar mentality and being politically reactionary. But it's also, it's sort of really striking from a contemporary vantage point that a stepto-senior is an absolutely proto-thacherite. They're writing this in 6566, but he is the proto-thacherite subject, the kind of working class individualistic entrepreneur. He is what's coming. He is what's coming. Even though he's like the old guy. I mean,

it is something I've thought, I've had occasions to think about recently and not really thought about that much before historically. The extent to which Thacherism in many ways, like drew on this sort of structure of feeling, which is much typical of England in the 30s, it's somehow reanimated, the kind of 1930s consumerist individualism,

which had been displaced by this. experience of war and then post-war reconstruction. And that is really, that is what Steptoe and Sun sort of plays off a lot, I think. Stepto and Sun was written by Galton and Simpson, who also wrote Hancock's Half Hour. They're like a really famous comedy writing duo. I just Googled it. And they're both born like, you know, around about 1930. So too young for the boomers, but I think your argument still sort of, still sort of works. So they're, they're basically. Too old for the boomers, you mean? The too old.

Yes, too old for the boomers. So they're like in their early 30s or in mid-30s when they're writing Step 2 and so. So they definitely are going to be more sympathetic to the Harold than the Alberts. Yeah. Yeah. So it does work that analysis, I think.

See, I told you this was interesting. It is interesting. It's an interesting topic. Anyway, do you remember spacehoppers? What spacehoppers until the early 2000s? I don't know what you're all about. My kids had space. I went to parties with lots of space hoppers.

I think you can still buy space hoppers. I know you're trying to make this into like a nostalgia trip here, but you know, there's a lot of stuff that is contemporary. Yeah, yeah. There's a great life on the buses. There's nothing like it you'll agree. Just take a ride upon the buses. Because there's plenty you can see.

So the next one on our list is on the buses, which I think is fair to say is not a Pinterest-influenced sitcom. The title music is so 70s. For anyone who has any kind of conception of what the 70s is, like the title, we go and listen to the title music of this. And we should say, by the way, at this stage, that almost everything, if not everything, on our list that we're going to be talking about today, you can probably find at least clips of on YouTube. So if you're interested in any

of these things, you can go and listen to that. But the title music of Omnibuses is so 70s and I love the idea that the BBC rejected it on its basis of saying like there's no way this is going to be a hit based in like a bus station. Like nobody's

going to watch this. And then LWT for those of us who are old enough to remember what LWT is then nabbed it up and yeah, it's like it became really popular wasn't it? I mean, it was a big hit, basically. Very much in that sort of like

carry-on, bawdy, seaside comedy type of thing. If you want, we talked about carry-on at your convenience in our ACFM microdose on films about strike, so we can't, shan't explain that reference, but yeah.

So it's set in a, it's setting a, well, it's set in a home and in a bus station. And the, the protagonists are Reg Varnie as Stan, the the driver of the bus or a bus driver. So Reg Varni was quite famous, I think, at this time. And that his mate, Bob Grant, who plays Jack,

who's like the conductor on the bus. I mean, it's got a little bit of an anti-authoritarian thing going on because they're basically trying to do as little work as possible, so they've got some time to chat up the birds. And the anti-authoritarian thing comes from their conflict with Blakey, who's like the bus inspector. That's about as far as, like, you know, class conflict. goes on it, I think. It was of that moment, at the late 60s, early 70s, you know, it was about

people working in a heavily unionised part of what was then the public sector, a nationalised industry, the buses, in a public service. And I mean, that was very much of that sort of moment of rising working class consciousness. I mean, by the mid-70s, it had already become notorious for its kind of casual sexism and racism. It was a reference point. very early sort of media cultural studies texts about kind of normalized racism and sexism in things like sitcoms but it was already a sort of byword for a fairly dated kind of comedy by the late 70s wasn't it I think carrying on at your convenience is sort of direct is was influenced by it actually thinking about they came out 71 it had been on on the buses been on

for a couple of years I think they were really trying to capture the vibe of and of on the busies in that film actually. Jack, the conductor is a shop steward in them on the buses, actually. They're not shown as like heroes on that at all, but I watched one of the films a few couple of years ago. So there was a series that ran and then in like 1977,

they started doing film versions. And one of those was, I can't remember where it's called now, but it's like on the buses on holiday or something like that. And it was set at Pontins at Prostating on the North Welsh coast. Where was it? It was.

And I watched it because, in the mid-80s or early 80s at some point, I went on holiday of the next door neighbours family and we went up to Prestatine Pontings and I remember the guy, the blonde guy who played Jack was the, he greeted you off the bus, basically. He was either in charge of it or perhaps he was just a public face of it, basically.

So I watched it to see that pontins again. And it was almost unwatchable, to be honest. definitely it's not Pinterest at all in fact I watched it because I went back to that pontins for one of those All Tomorrow Parties festivals

Oh which one did you go to Oh I love Altamor's parties It was curated by Stuart Lee In fact it was the last ever one They went bankrupt as the festival was going on So that's why I were re-watched on the buses And it's probably not watchable now

It's like not great comedy basically Well, I also had a holiday in Pristatin in the early 80s, but not at Pontings. We stayed in a nice bed and breakfast. Do you remember Spangles? They're just spangles at Prestonet's Prestatine, actually. They had a Spangle cafe just next to the space hopper rank, rink, I need to say. Okay, let's move on. Good morning, madam.

Are you being served? Just having a look. So's he. Are You Being Served, ran for 13 years, according to our notes. Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah, that was a huge show in British TV history. Are You Being Served, wasn't it? So why don't you describe that?

Well, yeah, so it's, Are You Being Served is set in a department store. Is it a clothing store, basically, a big department store with different departments in it. Yeah. They mainly focus on the clothing departments, but the implication is always that the store contains many other departments. It's like a traditional lot. And department stores is a thing. And it's like interesting media as a historical record of that

because probably in 10 years' time there won't be any department stores. It was a huge part of like, you know, it would be a huge part of like the concept of the British High Street and how people shopped, you know, and they're all disappearing. Well, it was that Are You Being Served as created by this writer James Lloyd And it's based on his He worked at Simpsons of Piccadilly

Which is like a big clothing department store He worked there briefly And it's sort of based on his experiences of that But that shut in 1999 And a lot of these department stores are shut And so yeah So it's sort of based on a whole series of characters It's sort of got like a class system

Within it basically So the person in charge is Captain Peacock, a haughty middle-class man, and then, you know, there's lots of... Whose military rank is used to address him, even while he's just the guy running a shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and above him is like at the Grace family

who own Grace Brothers, which is like the department store. So young Mr. Grace is often seen, he's like, he's sort of like a Mr. Burns type character. I see he's like a really rich and stingy. but in this he's always got dolly birds hanging off his arm etc. I'm using the language of the time obviously.

You have been, haven't you? This entire episode already. Dolly bird meaning a sort of a young woman who looks... He has just been wanting to say birds quite a bit so I'm going to count how many time you use that language yeah. Anyway, it's

really, I mean the innuendos I cannot believe how they keep a straight face where they make some of these jokes. I mean, it's just, I think, quite incredible how they managed to hold it. It's made me laugh, to be honest, looking, like watching back some of it. A lot of the humour revolves around sexual innuendo and the implication that, you know, that all of the characters actually, including like unmarried women and including, you know,

the character who is quite explicitly coded as gay, are very sexually active when they're not at the store. which is, you know, is a sign of the permissive society that it was an expression of. Yeah, totally. I think it's particularly remembered, yeah, for John Inman's character, Mr. Humphreys. I mean, even when the show is being made, he's not young. He's like a middle-aged guy or older. He's presented as, but he's very explicitly presented as gay, and he's very explicitly presented as, you know, typical of a member of a sort of London gay culture of the post-war period.

I don't think it's ever said he's gay, is it? But, like, you know, it's incredibly, that's the joke, basically. No, no, no. They never, you never, they never come out and explicitly say it, but the innuendo is very clear. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's, you know, he's not supposed to be in the closet. It's not supposed to be a secret to the rest of his colleagues that he's gay. It's just not something that polite people talk about explicitly.

Yeah. Rather than just making nods and winks and, you know, it's as explicit as him, you know, making slightly, you know, sexual comments about, you know, young, about men occasionally. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and a lot of the humour comes out of, like, really pushing the bounds of what you can get away with saying if you're not allowed to mention things, basically. But it does make, it does make you laugh because I just think, I was watching back some of this stuff and I just think, like, it just, it's such innocent, like, ridiculous humour in a way,

but it succeeds at something. Like, it's not complex. It's just whether the actors pull it off or not. And they do pull it off, which, you know, it's quiet. Sorry, I can't help being transported back to the era of sexual, Hindu, NGO and double entendres now. Anyway, my point was, you wouldn't get that now. You wouldn't get that now. And I'm not saying it's good or it's bad.

You know, obviously, like, sexism and racism, like, aside, which clearly all of these shows, you know, were not. You did not carry the contemporary values that we would see as progressive. You know, all society hadn't reached that level which we would see as, you know, what's permissible to say and not say in the values that that reflect. However, I do think that you cannot make a show today where every single show like, you know, there's a character that talks about not being able to get up in the morning because my pussy's like in an arm clock. You just wouldn't get that.

I don't even know if we're going to be allowed to put out this ACFM, saying the word pussy so much. So do you know what I mean? Like I just think it's actually there's something there about what it must have been like. Like we need to remember that 10 years before that this would have been unthinkable to make these kind of jokes. No, I don't think that's true. Actually, they try to do it.

I can't remember whether it was how you've been saying. But some of the comedies from that time, they've tried to do it. They've tried to repeat in various ways. And it sort of doesn't work because you actually can say these sorts of things. things. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You have to be careful about it, but it's not the use of particular words. And it reminds me of like in the US, there's a period when they bring in the Hays Code around

films, around Hollywood, etc, in which it really constricts what you're allowed to say. It sets up this thing in which, you know, instead of showing characters having sex, which is what you can do now on TV, on films, you get Hitchcock, you know, showing a train going through a tunnel, et cetera, these sorts of things. But it's, that's, but you're exactly proving my point, which is that today, you're like, all of these things are permissible in theory, but it's the point that it's a quite an innocent, childish Dublin entendre, Dublin, which is what makes it funny, being able to say those, those words. And we could talk all day about why Dublin, you know, Dublin entendres are central to the comedy of the 70s, in a way, they're not really at all other times. And I think it is to do with this transitional moment. It's the moment of the permissive society being conscious of itself,

but before it's fully opened up, before the sexual revolution has really completely happened. Because, you know, I mean, by the late 80s, it was itself an object of satire. You know, it was something that, you know, that comedy magazine, Viz, you know, its most popular, from the mid-80s onwards, it's probably one of its most popular strips

was just one, full of these really over-the-top, double entendres, which was just mocking the comedy of the previous decade. Yeah, it becomes satire, exactly, yeah. Yes, yes, well, yes. Well, I was wondering if you could offer me accommodation for a few nights. Well, have you booked? I'm sorry. Have you booked?

Have you booked? I know. Oh, dear. Why, you're full? I don't know, we're not full. Of course we're not full. One moment, please. All right, do you want to talk about,

Fulte Towers? Well, yeah, I think Folley Towers is interesting just because of the, the sort of subjectivity of Basil Faulty, who's the main character in it. So Faulty Towers is based in a hotel in Torquay, and so the main character is Basil Faulty, played by John Cleese, and his wife, Sybil, and they've got a couple of people working there, which is Polly, who's played by Connie Booth, who is John Cleese's wife at the time, and they wrote it together. And then Manuel was like the waiter from Barcelona, who's a subject.

to what would now be considered pretty racist humour, I think. Stereotypes. There's really heavy stereotypes. Yeah, stereotyping, yeah. Yeah, and stereotypes that don't really exist about Spanish people anymore, I think, you know, of its time perhaps. So the story is this, is that John Cleese is in Monty Python, and they were filming one of their films. I can't remember which one now. And they stay at this hotel, the Glen Eagles Hotel in Torquay, and there's, the owner of the Glen Eagles Hotel in Turkey is basically Basil Faulty.

And so John Clee sort of takes it up and uses that. And so his character is this, is that like, he's sort of like a classic of that aspirational-upward petty bourgeoisie, basically. The petty bourgeois, definitely neurotic. But he's sort of like, basically, he runs a hotel. He's sort of, he basically, he's constantly inconvenience by guests. It's like he's really rather not have the guests in his house, basically. I mean, you said he wanted to talk about

Buzzle Faulty because he represents a sort of ideal typical petty bourgeois subjectivity. And there was something going on in this convergence, isn't there? Because the kind of the guest housekeeper, you know, the small hotelier or B&B owner, who is also, he was just incredibly rude like to their guests. It's like, does become this cliche and stereotype in British culture for months of the 20th century

and it is quite weird to think why is that and it is partly because particularly within British culture you know part of petty bourgeois subjectivity is the absolute sanctity of home ownership the idea of the Englishman's home is his castle and it is also a thing that goes back to Victorian times

actually that having to take in lodgers is a sign that you have sort of you're downwardly mobile If you're someone who at some point has been wealthy enough to become a homeowner, but then you are forced to let out rooms in your home. That is a marker of downward mobility. So there's all this anxiety and tension around the fact that you're supposed to be a sort of, your effectively, yeah, this resentment.

But it's around the fact that you're supposed to be running a sort of service business. But yet you can't quite shake the sense that the customers are invading the absolute sanctity of your home. Exactly. And you sort of resent them. And it's also just this sense that, well, before the age of like TripAdvisor and things like that, once people have made the booking and they've arrived at the holiday, they can't, there's no recourse, really. They're stuck, whether they like it or not. So it's something about this intersection between expanding forms of consumerism and kind of residual forms of, indeed, of petty bourgeois ideology, really, that just can't, that don't really fit with this emerging consumer economy. within which everybody is supposed to be

offering the most competitive and most enjoyable level of service to customers in every interaction they have with everybody else in the world. I mean, that anxiety plays out in Basel Valti in the anxiety about his social position, I mean, because he's like, if he thinks somebody's this social inferior, he's totally dismissive with them, basically.

But if he, and a lot of the comedy comes out of that, like if you think somebody is his social superior, it is incredibly fawning and obsequious. And there are famous scenes where people check in, he thinks they're inferiorous, and they turn out to be lured somebody someday, and he's flips and becomes this incredibly obsequious sort of person. And of course, that's sort of interesting,

and that is a characterist of a certain subsection of the petty bourgeoisie, I think, And we'd have to work out whether that subjectivity is still, how prevalent that still is and whether that relates to people who own their own home and therefore have some sort of assets, but basically quite who are in quite an insecure economic situation, which is quite a large part of the boom. Well, it's contemporary iteration is, you know, is the pizza owner who gets described by the Guardian North of England correspondent

as a representative of working-class man, like when he's explaining why he's voting to all it. in the next election, even though people who own pizza restaurants have always traditionally voted Tory, and this isn't a historical development of any significance. Well, I'm suggesting you that this place is the crumbiest, shoddiest, worst run hotel in the whole of Western Europe. No! No, I won't have that. There's a place at Eastbourne. So we're going to, unless everyone else has got anything to say about faulty times, we're going to move across the Atlantic. to talk about and in well that's like late 1970s early into the early 80s we're going to talk

about taxi which is a sitcom set in a taxi dispatcher slash taxi garage type of setup yeah so it's definitely in a workplace and our taxi drivers are they employees are they self-employed they're in a sort of gray zone aren't they I think taxi drivers in that sort of sense they definitely work for a taxi him, but, like, then there's the bit about their, they've got the, you know, they account for their own, like, these days, taxi drivers hire a car and then, you know, that, and get dispatched, but, like, basically, they have to take control of their own accounts, sort of thing. And taxi, I mean, this, it's set in New York, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, yeah. I mean, taxi is, rightly or wrongly, taxi is remembered in the States as this being, this real sort of turning point in TV comedy. I think, exaggerated least, to be honest, like, given some of the precedence, you could, posit but you know it's it is you know to remember because it was being much grittier than things that had gone before it did have a somewhat darker kind of world view i mean it is i mean calling it calling the show taxi and making it about taxi drivers you know was quite deliberately sort of resonant with the film taxi driver although it's a not it's obviously

much it's not supposed to be anything like as dark or nihilistic as that but it is supposed to be you know the miz en cent as it were is um definitely draws on that a little bit but it's also this idea that they do that the characters do form a sort of community like despite working under conditions that are incredibly individualising and incredibly privatising there's this i think the one the reason it was so loved is because it did it presented characters living in this very bleak social environment where they do this job where you're just alone in a car with a customer You know, there's no camaraderie on the job. There's no assembly line japes.

There's no fun in the canteen. But, you know, when you're on break waiting for a, waiting for a job, you might banter with your mates. And yet they, and none of them want to be doing that job. The character I always remember the most was the one who wanted to be, you know, the ones who, the one who wanted to be an actor. Yeah, there's one who's like a failing boxer. Yeah.

And they're all, none of them really want to be doing that job. But, but yeah, they sort of, you know, they sort of look after each other. There's this sense of a sort of possibility of solidarity despite the odds. What's the setting? Well, it's a taxi office. It's a taxi dispatch office in New York. There's all taxis around it.

So basically they're sat around. The taxi's parked there. Some people are working on the cabs fixing them, etc. So they're on their break or they're waiting to go to work or something like that, basically. But also, I mean, it means that characters can be brought into the show who are customers of the taxi drivers. A customer will leave a bag on a seat and then somebody would try to track them down and get involved in their life somehow

for a short term. It introduces these plot devices. Famously featured Andy Kaufman, the subject of REM's Songman in the Moon, a biopic man in the moon. Latke Gravas is his character, Foreign Man. Yeah, who was basically a character he developed

as a Saturday Night Live sketch. so I think it's also I mean the taxi is also this kind of icon of American comedy of that period because there was this relationship between the people writing taxi and SNL at the time when SNL was at its most iconic

so yeah it is really interesting I think it does in some ways it does I think it does really anticipate a lot of the other shows we're going to talk about actually they are shows about which from this point on the kind of a lot of the shows we're interested in are shows are going to be shows which are about

they're about people forming relationships of solidarity despite working under conditions that are not conducive to them. Like on the buses it's a show about it is a show about people experiencing forms of solidarity but it's under conditions which in which you could not really form relations of

solidarity. It's the era of full employment, it's the era of Fordism, it's you know you're working in a public service where you're you're actually quite, you're very secure but you're also subject to various forms of discipline that you constantly have to evade to make life tolerable. You almost can't not form relations of solidarity

under those conditions. But from the end of the 70s onwards with the breakdown of all those conditions that made those forms of solidarity possible, a lot of this comedy, it becomes, it does become in some ways much more poignant. And Taxi is really sort of famous for its poignancy because it's about people forming relations to solidarity

despite working under conditions which mitigate against them, I think. So Danny DeVito plays this boss character who's like, the, oh yes, it's Danny DeVito's in here. Yeah, and he sort of like loavesome, really obnoxious, really horrible and like kind of represents the boss, basically, in this.

And then there's solidarity amongst it. Yeah, I forgot Danny DeVito's in it. I'm pretty sure that's where he's, you know, that's his breakthrough role. Yeah, I think it probably, yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right. He played Louis, the dispatcher.

Yeah, Louis, yeah. And that was his sort of breakthrough role. Of course, he is, and he is, he's a radical leftist portraying a kind of mean boss, a kind of small business tyrant and doing it really, really brilliantly. I watched a couple of episodes the last week or so. This is why I don't want to do these shows. It gives me an excuse to watch a little tell. I can say to Alice, oh, look, I'm working.

Yeah, exactly. Tell you your family that you're working so you can't make dinner. Yeah. Yeah, and I watched one where somebody had left some, like, cocaine cookies. And so there's one character who's played by, I can't remember what the actor's name is now. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. But he's sort of like, you know, he's like a drug burnout character. Like he's like a refugee from the 60s, basically, he's done too much drugs, et cetera.

You know, and he's like really spacey and all these sorts of things. And I read one analysis of it, of the show, which sort of set, which sort of, sort of portrayed it as, you know, this is all of the people, this is people from the, from the, who are influenced from the counterculture, etc. Some of whom might have thought you were going to a different world, certainly having the grim reality of having to get a dead end job, basically. Do you know what I mean? And that in some ways, that's why they all want to do other things. You know, they're dissatisfied that sort of the knuckling down to the failure of the counterculture

and nascent revolution of the 60s, 70s. I might be overdoing it, but I think it's an interesting one to position this. What's all these cookies? They were big by a guy I fired. Be friends. Ooh, they got a nice little surprise inside. What are you talking about? Well, I could be wrong, but I detect something anything.

here, it's a lot more powerful an oatmeal. So Nadia, you're going to talk about Margaret Thatcher's favourite sitcom. Well, I wanted to put, I wanted to put Yes Minister on the

list simply because I thought it fit the bill as you know, it is a sitcom about work as it takes place in the workplace, which is, you know, the workplace that is government. And I just think it's, you know, when I watched some of the

back, I think it's really funny. It's kind of the stuff that we know already. So in a way, like from an analytical position, like, it's not. It's terrible. It really does bring to like this idea of like, you know, double speak of how the mechanations of government can really not get things done. And my favorite bit is all the sketches about them trying to, the prime minister, trying to bring in the 25% women quota, which like there's several bits and sketches about that. and they make these really convoluted ways of making sure that they don't instill that policy. And it's funny, but also tragic because of that. So, you know, I really loved watching it.

At the end, we haven't, I don't think we've explained properly what it's about. We've done exactly. Oh, my apologies. Yeah, it's a, the, yes minister is a show set in the civil service. It's set in a government ministry. So it revolves around the activities of senior civil servant and their relationship with the minister they're supposed to be working for, who eventually becomes prime minister.

And the premise of the show is the premise that the full-time civil service in Britain are able to almost entirely obstruct any government policy agenda they don't approve of. For American listeners, there's quite a significant difference between the American British citizens of government in that a lot of jobs which are dependent upon the patronage of a particular administration in senior levels of government in the States. In Britain, are carried out by full-time officials who are career-sufficient. civil servants who don't change jobs with administrations. And the constant anxiety of professional politicians, this infrastructure of professional politicians, professional civil servants

is able to dictate its own political agendas. And that's basically what the comedy of the show is about. Yeah. So in a way, it seems as it's a radical critique. But it was, as Joe mentions, it was also Margaret Thatcher's favourite T-s sitcom. And it was, partly it's because, you know, it fit with a critique of bureaucracy, but also like the prevailing forms of management, you might want to say that, which, and the critiques coming out of the nascent neoliberal revolution, in particular, something called public choice theory in which constructs management and bureaucracy as something empire building. So what managers and bureaucrats are really interested is not getting, doing the work they're supposed to be managing or facilitating the work they're

supposed to be managing, but instead, by building a little empire for themselves, basically, getting more underlings, et cetera. That critique was used to introduce a whole new raft of management techniques, which actually become, as we go through these, they become a real central point of, like, you know, these new forms of management become a real central point of critique amongst the shows about work, which we'll probably return to in a moment. You were the boss?

Yes. I'll call security, sir. Well, listen to me, Mr. Bigshot. If you're looking for the kind of employee who takes abuse and never sticks up for himself, I'm your man You can treat me like dirt And I'll still kiss your butt

And call it ice cream And if you don't like it I can change All right The Simpsons is a show I don't think anyone Is going to have heard of this show We don't need to talk about

No one's ever heard of it Every I'm going to assume We're going to assume Everyone knows what the Simpsons is Well I mean the only The Simpsons and work Is that Homer works

In a nuclear power plant Well it works It doesn't really work as he's like incompetent, etc. He's lazy, he sleeps all day. They're in a union, you know. But the real sort of like cliche that develops over the years is how has Homer got this huge house, this family, you can do all these things when Mars doesn't work and there's

just one income. You know, that's not how things work anymore. And there's one episode in which the Frank Grimes episode in which that sort of brought out basically where there's their new employee comes along for, it was like hardworking, but like, you know, can hardly afford anything. think he lives in a, you know, in a ramshackle apartment. And he goes, he gets to hate Homer because Homer's like this lazy incompetent person that everybody really likes. And it's got this huge, fantastic life based on this one single salary, basically. Look, Homer, I'm late for

my night job at the foundry. So if you don't mind telling me, good heavens, this is a palace. How can, how in the world can you afford to live in a house like this, Simpson? I don't know. Don't ask me how do you economy work? but look at the size of this place. I live in a single room above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley. Yeah, well, it's already knowingly retro when the show starts. The show starts in the late 80s

and the setup, the single-income forwardist household with the guy working in part of the industrial sector. It's already kind of a joke, like in the late 80s. It's a joke. It's a knowing wink at the audience. And it's a knowing reference to a previous generation of animated sitcoms like, like the Flintstones and the Jetsons and wait until you before they get home and the fact that it starts off already as kind of a knowing wink on the part of a TV show which doesn't think it's going to last more than a couple of years to its audience who are going about to get who are going through the beginning of the recession around 1990 it becomes like a trope which they have to keep doing something with like for decades afterwards and I would say what I'm going to say one thing about the symptoms like it the

You know, the general consensus, at least among a lot of people among the Simpsons, is there's no point watching any of them after about Series 12. They've all been rubbish. I would say, I actually think it went through a really bad period, and the last few years of the Simpsons, it's very uneven, but there's some really interesting stuff in very recent years. And there's a whole episode with Robert Reich. The whole episode is just a lecture about the history of Fordism,

neoliberalism and post-Fordism, and the crisis, you know, the crisis of Fordism and its aftermath being the basis for the conditions upon which, you know, American society, you know, now built. I think it's really, or not, you know, built is the wrong word, but it's really extraordinary. It's absolutely extraordinary. I absolutely would recommend seeing it. Well, I'm going to go and watch that episode.

I'm going to go and Google it and find it and watch it. Because I am one of those people who hasn't watched it, well, who turns over when a new episode comes on and then, but we'll still keep watching the old episodes. And I went to the ATP that was curated by Matt Groening. Oh, did you? Yeah, which was amazing, because I have the T-shirt and all of the different bands are drawn as Simpsons characters. Oh, my God.

Yeah, I have that. Yeah, we should do a whole, maybe we'll do it. I've said before we should do a whole microdase one day about the Simpsons because I did the same must be said about it. And it's such a fascinating phenomenon. It's such a fascinating phenomenon. I don't think, it's hard to think of, you know, any sort of cultural or. of my life, that's emerged in my lifetime, that has that level of ubiquity. Now, it's like Dickens or Shakespeare or something, the extent to which it's, has a certain

kind of universality to its appeal. It's really extraordinary. That quote is going to go on Twitter. Yeah. It's going to be the next Jeremy Gilbert quote. The Simpsons is like Shakespeare or Dickens or whatever you said. Talking about old Simpsons episodes is like Spangles squared, basically. so it's always enjoyable. Anyway, let's move on.

So, like, this is interesting, actually, in our list of sitcoms we wanted to talk about, sitcoms about work. The Simpson starts in 89, obviously, still going now. And we have no sitcoms about work from the 1990s at all. We skip right to 2001. I'm sure there have been sitcoms about work. But, like, if you think about the paradigmatic sitcom of that era,

it is friends, isn't it? It's like people hanging out, basically. Because you guys hate the 90s. This is why. Okay, yeah, that might well be true. I mean, that was the era when sociologists and market research experts were all telling us probably rightly that one of the big shifts that was happening in the culture was people didn't really invest emotionally in their work anymore. They didn't form their identities around work. They formed them around consumption and leisure.

And that is what is being dramatized in all those things like friends or all those sort of slacker sitcoms. and there's dramas about work I can think of from the 90s. It's also probably works becomes increasingly unfunny from the 90s or more like in certain ways, you know. In fact, like 1999 is when the film office space comes out, isn't it? Yeah. And like, yeah, so that's not a sitcom. It's like a classic film about, a critique about how boring and terrible office work is,

etc. So perhaps that is when, you know, that's when the pain of work starts to override some of the things that you were talking about about the 1990s, Jim. No, the thing about practical jokes is you've got to know when to stop as well as start and now's the time to stop putting Gareth's personal possessions in jelly.

All right? Garret, it's only a trifling matter. Here we go. We're always like this. You should put him in custody. He's going to fit in here. We're up the Vic and Bar, aren't we? And one extra one. Oh, God. The office.

The iconic comedy product. of the turn of the millennium. And I think most people are going to be familiar with it. It is one of the relatively early examples of the mockumentary. In other words, it's in theory what you're watching is actually a reality TV show about life in an ordinary office building in Slough. In fact, it's not. It's a comedy satirizing, to some extent satirizing the very idea of that sort of reality

TV show, but mostly satirising a certain type of personality, which the show posits as being maybe typical of middle management in that kind of context of that kind of time in history. I think it was the vehicle which turned Ricky Jervasen to a big star. He co-wrote it and he stars as the main character. It was regarded as like incredibly funny at the time. It is obviously in terms of what it's trying to do, it's very well made. It's very well written, extremely well-acted. very well directed.

And the cinematography as well. So the way that it was filmed with the sudden close-ups to people's like horrified or deadpan faces with like the camera linging on them with also that kind of setting of the kind of light blue

and grey neon light of that kind of office was like a very specific like kind of like visual aesthetic because it was just It was grim, but not in a kind of self-knowingly grim way. It was just like, oh, my goodness, this is the office that nobody wants to work in, but everybody does kind of thing.

Exactly. But Kear, you have a very good line on what's wrong with the office, I think. So why don't you give it to us? Well, when I watched it, I was watching it as like a critique of, like, you know, the revelation of just how, of that mind-numbing inanity of like working in an office, basically. the life-sapping mundanity of it and that idea that you don't know

it seems like pretty pointless work it's a paper sales company isn't it? Paper sales or something like that stationary and stuff stationary sales in Slough so Slough probably thought of in the UK is the greyest of all cities basically of like

what's a John Becham in line come bombs and fall on come friendly brums and rain on slough Yeah So yeah I feel so bad for people who are from Slough, which I know if you, after the office came out, it was just like, God, they must have real difficulty on dating science.

But I was sort of reading it as, and I think this is a fair reading, which is that, you know, part of the critique is about, you know, that new form of management in which, like, informality is used to hide the fact that you're powerless, basically. You don't have union representation anymore, but you have a boss who's, like, informal or crack jokes, etc. that sort of stuff, which is like... Informal hierarchies as well. It's basically just like the same kind of hierarchical oppression,

but through let's have an office party, you know, that kind of. Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, and like, you know, this layering of like bullshit over the jobs that do exist, like with like pointless team meetings, being made, being jollied up and all these sort of thing. Dressed down Friday, all of these sorts of attempts to make work sort of, meaningful, perhaps, or to blur the distinction between work and life, that sort of, that sort of stuff. But, like, ultimately it bottles that critique.

It sort of, it basically draws back from... Meaning it runs away from it rather than you put it in a bottle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what the etymology of bottling it is, but anyway, that's not important. That's a digression. We're not doing those now. So basically, yeah, it draws back from that because later on, particularly when it, when in the second series, the Slough office gets joined together with an office from somewhere else, I can't remember.

And like some competent managers are introduced. And so all of a sudden, the subject of critique is like the personal failings of David Brent, who Ricky Jervais is playing as like this sort of manager. You know, the subject of critique is his personal failings rather than contemporary management and like, you know, what work is really like in an office. Do you know what I mean? So the structural critique gets pulled back from, I think, and so it shows the limits of it, shows the limits of what that sort of comedy will do, I think. Yeah, well, it shifted from being some kind of a social satire to being just a fairly misanthropic portrait of an unlikable individual.

Yeah, yeah, totally, yeah. Also, it's so cringy, like in this way, like, we can do a whole episode on, like, cringe and the content. of cringe and like how it relates to comedy but like yeah yeah drinkage of age is so good at like that portrayal or that pastiche and it's just like I can't sometimes can't watch it because it's just too much because it's so well done I think there is a big element of cringe and awkwardness in it in it basically with that people don't quite know how to respond to him sort of thing he just powers through he just keeps ongoing like his whole personality is built on like trying to create this kind of person.

And then like when he does the spin-off thing where like he goes, he releases an album and plays like Spanish guitar or something is so like cringy. It's incredible. It's like extreme cringe. This social theorist Adam Kotsky wrote a book about awkwardness using like, you know, comedy and these and TV shows, etc. And he says it's something, I can't quite remember the argument,

but it's something like when somebody won't obey social norms or social norms are not quite, we're not quite sure where the social norms sit at the moment. That's what the feeling of awkwardness and cringe comes from. And so, yeah, it's, when their boss is pretending not to be a boss, the norms about how the things are supposed to work get obscure and you're not quite sure what to do. I think that sort of, that does fit with the office to some degree. The other thing about the office is that in the UK, it lasts for, I think it has three seasons and and then some Christmas specials. In the US, it just goes on for years, for like,

I can't remember how many years, 12 years or something like that. Well, the American version, the American remake, it's one of the great examples of a transatlantic remake. And it becomes, it's very, it becomes much bigger than the British version. And I think the general consensus is because it isn't as coldly misanthropic. Yeah, less cynical. And the kind of awkward, the kind of awkward, embarrassing boss character is also kind of lovable. And the show doesn't hate him the way it hates David Brent. So that's his reputation

anyway. I haven't watched enough of it to make a job. Yeah, I've watched a little bits of it. Apparently, the first series, they basically just redo the first series of the office, like almost word for word. And it was a real, it didn't work. So they just started writing their own episodes and took it in a completely different direction. So that's the office. Let's move on. Nadie, do you want to talk about the IT crowd? Yeah, we'll talk about the IT crowd briefly. So, The premise of the IT crowd is basically some fictional company in London. And there's three like members of what I think called the IT support team. But they don't get to stay in the same like swanky offices or whatever that the rest of the company does.

And it's kind of this obscured really what the company is actually selling because it does different things. But they don't get to be in like the swanky offices. they are in some kind of basement somewhere, which got me thinking about whether IT departments are still viewed in the same way or whether now, like, with the whole digital explosion, they're kind of different. But anyway, so it's, yeah, it's unclear like what this company does, but, you know, there's three characters and they are all in this basement and it's just about them being like IT guys and being quite awkward.

I love Noel Fielding in it as like Richmond, who's the goth who lives in the server room, and this is the cradle of filth. So I find that really funny. But yeah, I mean, it's I guess a portrayal of like this idea of like the sub-department of like the uncool guys in like, you know, the up-and-coming cool corporation. I mean, I don't know what else to say about it except that I find it quite funny and entertaining. And to me, I mean, actually it feels a bit 19. as well, even though it came out in 2006 to 10.

But yeah, it's really good, I think. What do you guys think? Yeah, sort of it's basically about two geeks and then a, who are computer geeks, but geeks in every other for nerds in every other form of as well, you know. And then a woman gets introduced into this office who doesn't know computers and is basically, you know, freaks them out, et cetera. That's sort of like the sort of gist of it, isn't it, basically? Hello IT

Have you tried turning it off and on again Hello IT Have you tried turning it off and on again Hello IT Yeah have you tried turning it off and on again Let's go back across the Atlantic So the next one we wanted to talk about Was 30 Rock

Written by Tina Faye The 30 Rock in 30 Rock Is 30 Rockefeller Plaza or something something, which is the home of NBC, which is where Saturday Night Live is written and performed, etc. That's the 30 Rock. And it basically is a, it draws on Tina Faye's Stinter's head writer on Saturday Night Live in the early, in the late 90s, early 2000s, I think. This is in the mid-2006. This starts. When she originally pitched the show, though, she pitched it as a sitcom based in a TV news department. Actually, I need to do a little bit of filling in for that.

So I talked about the Dick Van Dyke show earlier, which was set in a writer's room, much like 30 Rock. But there was a spinoff show from Dick Van Dyke show called the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was set in a newsroom, a sitcom set in a TV newsroom. And so Tina Fey was trying to do a homage to Mary Tyler Moore show and I ended up doing a homage to the Dick Van Dyke show, basically. I mean, I find it really, really funny. I really love 30 Rock.

But it's sort of interesting in that, like, it's quite explicit. in talking about basically because it never talks it never mentions NBC etc but it is explicitly about that and about how corporate structures and ownership sort of interfere with the writing process with the creatives etc and push the writing the writers around and all that sort of stuff so like it's that corporate structure corporate ownership interfering with the creatives and so that is figured in the show by this Jack Donaghy who is the the evil Republican manager figure, basically, who's like this cynical actor, et cetera, and like...

He's played by Alec Bulls. Yeah, yeah, played brilliantly by Allic Bouldwood. And so it's like that, one of the themes going on is Liz Lemon, which is Tina Fey's character, who's, you know, has the subjectivity of a writer on Saturday Night Live, you know, liberal New York, and butting up against Jack Donnery is the evil uncultured Republican. It was kind of interesting that it is,

This was made at the same, pretty much the same time as Aaron Sorkins, like not very funny drama show, also basically based on the Saturday Night Live writers' room. So the idea of the SNL writers' room as like the engine room of American culture. It's really being to glamorized at that moment in, for reasons I'm not entirely sure. But, yeah, but that's the call back to the first sitcom about working America. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.

You are a suit. the creativity and hard work of other people and turned it into commercials and pie charts and triangle graphs. What's a triangle graph? I don't know. It sounded real. The show that's often talked about alongside

Thetty Rock was started a couple of years after and ran for a similar length of time. Also featured Tina Fey in a recurring role. It's Parks and Recreation. It's another American TV show about an institution. And Parks and Recreation very interesting. It features the central character

is this sort of lovable Girl Scout local government official, played by Amy Poehler. And the whole idea is, you know, it's really sort of celebrating the idea of public service and local government, municipal government, as being really good things for people. And the show is quite self-conscious that coming right at the end of the long period of neoliberal hegemony, really, oh, it's not at the end.

Well, actually, I would say, given it we're coming up to 2008, the show starts in 2006. Sort of is the period, the end of the period of a certain kind of neoliberal hegemony, at least in Tivor's neoliberalism, enjoys a moral authority. It will no longer quite enjoy again after the 2008 crisis. It's not quite self-conscious that there is something subversive, just about celebrating the very idea that actually government is good, municipal government is good, public services are good.

It's set in the Parks and Recreation Department. It's the park department, parks department of a small Midwestern town. And, you know, in some ways, symbolically, there is nothing less neoliberal than a park. You know, it's a public space. It's publicly owned land that isn't being used for any kind of profit-making utility, and it's just there for people to do whatever they want in and enjoy in some way. And the show is really, really conscious of that. And it sort of plays around, makes those themes really explicit by having this,

The one really sort of slightly brilliant sort of comedic gesture it makes is to have the central character's boss is a hardcore right wing libertarian who hates the very idea of government and is always trying to make it fail and thinks that parks shouldn't exist and that every public service should be privatised and that produces quite a lot of the comedy for the show. I mean, ultimately, it is a sort of comedic version of the West Wing, and it sort of becomes that by the end of the shirt series, when the central character Leslie goes off into national government. And like the West Wing, it is a fairly unashamed liberal fantasy. What if our government officials are actually just really well-intentioned people trying to make the world better for everyone? Wouldn't that be lovely and wouldn't they do lovely things? That is basically what it's about. But it's interesting that the show's first go comes on air 2006, a couple of years before Obama gets elected. And it is absolutely the Obama era American sitcom.

I mean, I would say the Obama presidency is entirely powered by an electorate that wants to reject neoliberalism. It's nostalgic for a kind of golden age of public service, which Obama, with all of his oratory, promises he's going to restore and absolutely, in fact, not restore and actively mitigates against any possible restoration of. And so by the end of this show's run into the 2015 and towards the end of the Obama presidency, you could not make this show, you could not make a show like this again. It would seem absolutely ridiculous. And it's sort of, it's become conscious that it is just a sort of fairy tale by the end of the show. But it is really, really interesting.

It's really interesting for that, as I've said, because the shows makers are very conscious that they are doing something that seems politically radical at the time, just by saying, well, parks are good, actually. So definitely worth watching. The next one on our list is a sitcom called Party Down, which I think I'm the only one who's watched it. The only couple of series were made in 2009, 2010. I want to talk about it because it's one of those sitcoms

about precarious work or the gigification of work to some degree. So the setup is this. It's a set of actors, comedians and writers, all work as waiters for a catering firm. And so that allows them to go into different, you know, basically go into different environments but with the same set of customers and some people outside characters to interact with them, et cetera, which is sort of quite good for a sitcom. But like lots of the humour comes from the difference between what those, the lives of

the people involved and how they think of themselves. So they're all, none of them thinking themselves of waiters. Obviously, they're actually actors and they're, you know, they're going off for trials and stuff like that. There's one episode in which really figures this really, really well, this sort of distinction between the way they think about themselves and what their actual lives consist of, in which one of the characters gets a really tiny bit part in a show

with one line. And then she creates this huge backstory in which the character is this actor who, you know, has got this really full life, etc. And then what they finally get through to say, well, so she's an actor this, but what's her name? She said, well, in the script, she's just called whore. And my one line is, looking is free, but touching is going to cost you. And then they get into this huge argument, go, well, look, she's not an actor. She's a whore. And that's what your characters is, and she gets into this big thing about, hang on a minute. Well, are we actors and comedians,

or are we waiters? Do you know what I mean? It's like, what counts. Is it like the way that we think about ourselves in life, or is it what we do every day? And it's obviously that basically portrays work as this sort of, like, horrendous, painful thing, basically. that they have to go through because it's meaningless. They don't want to be doing it. They want to be doing something else. But of course, they can't do something else because they basically just need the money sort of thing.

But it sort of figures this sort of like the changing nature of work to some degree. But although, of course, like in taxi drive, in taxi, sorry, not taxis driver, in taxi all of the work, all of the, all of the taxi drivers want to be doing something else and think of themselves as something else. So perhaps it's a recurring trope. I had a line on the show. Looking's free. Touch and I'll cast you

Well, I'll talk about another American Liberal Fantasy sitcom about a public institution that also goes on an interesting political journey is Brooklyn 9-9, which ran from 2013 to 2021 and is a sitcom about a group of police detectives working at a precinct in New York and of course the absolute fantasy of the show is that this perfectly multicultural range of

characters, including their black, gay, senior officer, are progressive liberals who never do anything, like, remotely reactionary. I mean, it's a lovable show, it's a lovable ensemble cast, there's almost nothing in it. The show basically has nothing at all to say about the politics of policing, like for most of its run. It's not about that, really. It really is a sort of, it's very much building on parks and recreation.

It's a show for liberals who want to watch a sort of fantasy of people working in a government institution being well-intentioned and caring for each other. My 12-year-old daughter has a phrase for a kind of show that she liked, and it is people who work together but treat each other as a family and the show sort of plays on that really hard. What's really sort of fascinating about the trajectory of the show is that apparently the cast or the writers or all of them got heavily radicalised by, I think really particularly the second wave of BLM around 2020, because the final show, series of the show, is all sort of responding. to BLM and I can't remember the exact plot details but basically at least one I think several of

the characters end up leaving the police and the show sort of ends up concluding that indeed the previous like seven series have just been a fantasy and that you can't really reform the police I mean it had been running for a long time already but my understanding is they sort of took a collective decision to bring the show to an end because they'd all been radicalised by BLM and thought that you just couldn't it was too much of a fantasy and they were sort of reproducing cop ideology by making this show. When I got stopped the other day, I wasn't a cop. I wasn't a guy who lived in the neighborhood looking for his daughter's toy.

I was a black man, a dangerous black man. That's all he could see. A threat. And I couldn't stop thinking about my daughters. In their future. And how years from now they could be walking down. on the street, looking for their kids, Mo Mo Mo, and get stopped by a bad cop. And they probably won't get to play the police card to get out of trouble.

There's politics to being a cop. But I wasn't harassed to being a cop. I was harassed as a black man. I mean, I would say the show is really, the thing it's closest to is something that, it's basically Star Trek, the next generation, like transposed into an imaginary New York police precinct. It's that kind of vibe with the kind of senior figure. is this sort of perfect liberal father

and all the other characters are his wisecracking but lovable children symbolically. But as a cultural artefact, it's really, it's fascinating and what happens to it is sort of fascinating. As is the next shade we're going to talk about, Silicon Valley, which is the great kind of comedic attempt to get to grips with that bizarre phenomenon of the tech sector in its imperial homeland

rather than in the basement of an anonymous corporate building. So this show runs from 2014 to 2019. And what's really interesting is... Let's say what it is, because I didn't say... I didn't say puppy what it is. So basically it's about, you know, a classic tech startup company in somebody's garage, and actually in a house where startups can go and live

and, you know, they can synergize each other, et cetera, et cetera. It follows this one startup which gets... Incubate. Incubate. Incubator, yes, that's it. That's the word. That's the word. And it gets really, really huge, and then it, you know, basically it crashes and it gets huge again. And one of the things that's really interesting about it is that it, from 2014 to 2019, or perhaps, before that, perhaps they were writing this in 2013, the general public attitude towards tech and Silicon Valley, etc., changes, basically. And the show itself becomes much, much darker as it goes on. this sort of almost quite optimistic sort of version of what startup culture is.

By the end of it, the show is very much concerned about the platforms having huge control over our lives, etc. And basically the platforms being evil to a large degree. One of the things that really, really strikes me in this is that, like, I think the moral centre of the show is this character called Gilfoyle, who's this cynical cod satanist libertarian, but like a right libertarian. And, you know, he's sort of like the one who maintains his moral core as of it, as the main character basically gets, you know, becomes evil and then sort of realizes

his evil right at the end, et cetera. Well, he's a hacky, he's a libertarian hack who's probably into things like discordianism and flirting with sort of Nicklandianism, but he never buys into sort of corporate ideology. So he goes from being this slightly sinister character because he's a right-wing libertarian to being, you know, somebody who's actually maintained a sort of anti-capitalist critique. I mean, I think it is quite clear. I think of people like, what's that guy, the Janier, the you are not a gadget guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, people like Sharon Lanier and some of the people around things like the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Like, there are some of those guys who at certain points they have flirted with right-wing libertarianism. But some of them have not just become kind of kind of sort of fash like Nick Land. Some of them have become much more left-wing in recent years through those sort of anti-capitalism. It does sort of track that. I think it's true, actually. I wrote an academic article a couple of years ago,

which is partly just tracking the different waves of optimism and pessimism around the internet revolution since the 90s, mostly amongst academic writing. And I think the period of the show's run happens during a transition point from a period of relative optimism, which is sort of coincides with the moment, which like in Britain, the Jeremy Corby movement is about to emerge basically because of Facebook, I would say, through to the present moment when people are much more pessimistic about monopoly platforms, as you said. It's really interesting. I think it does track that shift in a really interesting way. Finally, we're going to talk about the show that starts a year after that one, 2015 to 21, the great left-wing American sitcom of our time and possibly of any time, Superstore.

the show is set in a big box store like a Walmart or something like that but of course in the story it eventually gets bought out by a platform company an internet company like amazon or something and it tracks the lives of the people who work in the store their relationships with each other their relationships with work one of the characters eventually you know gets promoted to sort of senior corporate job another character is a kind of central character is a downwardly mobile son of kind of Ivy League professionals who dropped out of law school, but he ends up becoming a union organiser from his position as a worker. And I would say is the most explicitly anti-capitalist show of that sort of sitcom I've seen, actually. I can never remember seeing that there probably are forgotten examples from the 70s and 80s. I mean, there were probably episodes of things like Welcome Back Kossa in the States, which we could have talked about, which were that explicit. But it is really, really explicit. I mean, it's worth what. for only that reason. We only started watching it at home because my older daughter had

been watching it. And it was the only thing we could persuade the youngest to watch other than The Simpsons or Brooklyn Nine. But we all got really into it. And I was sort of amazed I hadn't read more about it once it finished because it is the show that it is that sort of tries to track the structure of feeling of sort of millennial precarious leftism and make comedy out of it. It's really interesting. I've only watched series one and half of series two and I've watched

like most of series one and then we were having a meeting yesterday about like, well, what should we talk about? And you started saying how anti-capitalist it was, Jammer. I was going, is it really? I don't get that. Then I went back to watch a couple of episodes and they were about when they all go out on strike basically because the manager gets sacked

the manager of the store gets sacked because he does something kind for somebody who's giving birth, etc. Oh, no, I see what you're talking about, yeah. They fired Glenn. What? Yeah, so about that walkout. Mateo, Glenn got fired, we're walking out.

Are you coming? Yeah. Yeah, which leads us on to the next show I wanted to talk about, which is Atlanta, which is set in the city of Atlanta. And it sort of follows a series of characters around. The main protagonist is called Earn. And he's got to earn, man. He's got a, you know, he drops out of business school, I think, gets back to Atlanta.

And he's just, you know, he's got to work out. He's got to hustle his way to get some money, basically, to look after his kid. And these sorts of things, his friends are like Paperboy, who is a rapper, who basically gets a hit record, which takes the subsequent series off in different directions because Earn becomes his manager, et cetera. and so it's got that similar sort of stoner aesthetic absolutely as high maintenance but also that sort of like you know having to earn somehow you know to get through etc it's got that afro surrealism so it's got that absurdism basically what makes it special is

it's got that sort of raw realism basically that you might associate with with the sensibility of hip-hop but it's got a real afro surrealist absurdism to it which which does add comedic elements to it, I think. Hey, man, where are you being? Look, we need to get out of this club and cut some money in the face, man. You get our money. Man, you fuck this, man.

Like, he only gave us $750, man. I'm sorry. Fuck that. We're getting our fucking money, man. The last thing I wanted to talk about is, one is this series corporate, which is 2018 to 2020. which is this, basically, you know, if you want an anti-captor's critique of corporations,

at least initially you'd think you're going to get it. It's like this really quite nihilistic show about an evil corporation called Hampton DeVille, cartoonishly evil, the boss is cartoonishly evil. I guess sometimes I feel like this can be sort of a confrontational work environment. Hey, but Hampton DeVille encourages aggressive confrontational criticism. Why don't you like confrontation? Defend your position. No, no, I mean, I think confrontation is a good thing.

It's just sometimes confrontation hurts my job performance and damages my personal well-being. Uh-oh, well, if you can't manage your emotions, Matt, what makes you think you're qualified to manage people at this company? It tries to take on board and critique lightweight anti-capitalist sorts of sensibility. So it has a one of the episodes has this character who is sort of like a sub-banksy sort of anti-corporate sort of activist who then gets sort of sells out and creates Hampton DeVille create anti-capitalist products for the protesters and these sorts of things, you know. The show is really good on that, like, on repeating those things from, like, the office and shows like that about the soul-destroying nature of working for corporations, etc. And in fact, yeah, so there's a little bit of a callback to like office space as well, you know, 20 years earlier, although it's much darker than office space. In office space, the film, the escape is manual labour.

idea of that anymore like you know what i mean but what's interesting about it is well there's a couple of things one of which they they really tried to bring in this idea of like a lot of this the the the junior managers who are like trainee managers etc who are absolutely bored out of their minds all the time it keeps bringing in things about how one of them was in a was in a sort anti-corporate scar punk band in his youth etc these sorts of things taking the piss out of it And everyone really wants to be a craft beer, a craft beer, you know, makes craft beer, he wants to produce craft beers and all these sorts of stuff. That whole idea of like, you know, really taking the piss out of the idea that like,

we may work for this corporation, we may have these boring office jobs, but like really we want to do this other thing sort of thing. But basically there's no room for that at all. And then the interesting moment comes with this where they introduce a parody of their own show. So like they have this water cooler moment show that everybody's talking about called society tomorrow basically, which has an evil corporation taking over everything, etc. Matt, oh, you almost ran into me. Oh, sorry.

I was just thinking about society tomorrow. It really gets in your head, doesn't it? In that episode, it reaches its limit point because, you know, there's a scientist who works for the corporation, right in a bit like the IT crowd right at the bottom in the, in the sellers of this is somebody actually doing actual work rather than just managing and doing office stuff, a bullshit job sort of thing. She doesn't want to watch this society tomorrow. She sort of critiques it, and she's got this line going,

oh, in real life, there's no diabolical CEO with a plan to destroy the world. Basic ineptitude and people trying their best is what leads to the daily horrors that people deal with. You know, even at its most anti-capitalist critique sort of moment, it draws back from that structural critique. It's that thing of like, look, it's almost like a sort of like cynical Panglossian You know, even, basically, it's just ordinary people, just incompetent people, basically, trying to do their best, you know, we end up in this hell.

There is no possibility of something better, basically. There's no structural critique in it, and so there's no idea that you could get outside this world and do something different. Just that limit point, basically, of virtually all of these anti-work, anti-corporate shows. And then the final show I want to talk about isn't really a comedy either, although it's got comedic elements. You definitely wouldn't, yeah, you would say it's got comedy within it, basically, a comedic and absurdist elements in it, which is this show called Severance from last year.

Hi, Ellie. Oh, what's happening? Great to see you. Your orientation's been so much fun. Where am I? Okay, so sometimes when a new hire is adjusting to a severed space, we help by bringing them here to the stairwell to experience the transition. Miserally.

Oh, no. Look, fair warning, listeners, Severance is one of those shows where spoilers might actually spoil your enjoyment, so you can stop listening now if you want. Severance is what you, you know, that's a sort of, severance is getting sacked,

and the compensation you might get paid for getting sacked. People talk about severance. And in this, that is overlaid with this idea of severance. So the setup for the show is this, is that some new technology has been developed, which can sever your work, life experiences and eventually persona from your home life experiences, so that each one of those has no recollection at all of what goes on in the other one

and develop into their own distinct personalities, basically. So you've got, they call inies are like the people, the work personalities and outies are the out-of-work personality. And as it goes on, you sort of realize that basically the in-is are slaves or the outies, basically and that the conceit of the show is there's this new innie that wakes up as an iny with no memory of like a past life etc works out what's going on and is constantly trying to escape because she realizes she's a slave for the outy basically so she's trying to send messages to the outy and then trying to even trying to kill herself or a suicide attempt in order to

convey to the outy that she wants out of this thing basically and of course if she gets out of this thing that the iny's persona will disappear which would be death But it's really, really good on, you know, if there's no outside of life, outside of work, how do you get motivation? And they have all of these tiny little reward such as these little toys such as finger traps, or they have waffle parties, etc. So it's got that other critique going on. I would highly recommend that you watch it.

It's a really, really great series, basically. Once again, very dark, even though it's got community moments. And that was. Here's birthday microdose. Join us this time next year where I will be going through my comic collection. Oh, right?