When the humble British sitcom is done well, it is one of the most enjoyable forms of comedy. If there is one partnership that perfectly exemplifies how well Britain can do a situation comedy, that partnership is Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, particularly with their first show The Office – one of the world’s great creations that I’m sure will come to be remembered in the same manner as the Mona Lisa, Hamlet and The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.

Its dry British humour, including moments so uncomfortable that you’d rather murder a kitten than look at the screen, combined with addictively funny and loveable characters and a sincerely charming and sometimes emotional plotline, makes it the perfectly moreish TV programme.

Their next project, Extras, depicted the jealous and shallow Andy Millman (Gervais) desperately trying to break out of being a ‘background artist’, and became equally famous. Whilst perhaps not of quite the same standard as The Office (can anything ever be?) Extras was still a strong comedy, and was well received by critics and audiences alike.

To replace that ‘special quality’ from The Office that it inevitably wouldn’t have, Extras added embarrassment and humiliation to its plotlines and introduced Stephen Merchant to the acting scene, playing the incompetent agent Darren Lamb, one of British comedy’s all-time greatest characters.

From here, Gervais and Merchant’s aims for their comedy changed massively, and their work suffered greatly as a result. From Gervais’ string of mildly amusing comedies such as The Invention of Lying to Merchant’s ‘quite funny’ HBO series Hello Ladies, and its awful straight to TV follow-up movie of the same name, the duo have lost that spark that once made their comedy great in attempting to target the US market. The excruciating moments have been replaced with slapstick whilst their emotional scenes are graceless and awkward to watch.

I forgive them for this decline, which was a consequence of broadening their comedy for a larger pay cheque, and I still revere them as the creators of something amazing, but when news of a future project from Gervais and/or Merchant reaches me, such as the up and coming Life on the Road David Brent movie, I find myself not excited, but rather filled with fear that my once loved characters are being ruined.

Although there have been some relatively recent moments of British comedic brilliance, Peep Show, (and the delectable chemistry between David Mitchell and Robert Webb) and Phoneshop to name but two, these are sadly being almost totally overrun by the now notorious British shitcoms, *ahem*, sitcoms, flooding the British market. In shows such as Miranda, Man Down and Friday Night Dinner, slapstick rules supreme and one joke is milked until three series in – when the show ends because the writers have given up and are shivering on the floor in a vast pool of egomania.

The British sitcom is now smothered by attempts to broaden appeal, and a focus on generating money. We might fear that this once great comedic form is on the verge of extinction in its true, genuinely amusing form. But can it be saved?

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The answer to that comes from a new British comedy duo on the scene, and the answer is definitively ‘yes’. This new pair is Allan Mustafa and Hugo Chegwin, the two leading characters in BBC3’s People Just Do Nothing. Written and produced by the duo, along with Steve, a.k.a The Wiggy Mess, and their designated ‘fixer’ Chabuddy G., People Just Do Nothing follows the lives of MC Grindah and DJ Beats, owners of Kurupt FM, a pirate garage radio station in a secret location in West London.

This sitcom, aired in 2014, breathes life back into the British TV comedy scene and is perhaps the most praiseworthy British sitcom since The Office. It certainly has strong parallels with the show, and, on more than a few occasions, Grindah certainly appears to be the David Brent of the underground garage scene.

Despite this slight similarity, the show is refreshingly original and once again achieves that perfect balance between addictive characters, intelligently funny dialogue, and painfully uncomfortable scenes. People Just Do Nothing goes to show that by sticking entirely to British humour at its best, and staying with an idea, rather than expanding it extensively, we can create something truly hilarious and potentially seminal. With the next season coming this year, surely People Just Do Nothing and the DJs of Kurupt FM are the future of British comedy?

Currently airing is the new series of Bodyshockers: Nips, Tucks and Tattoos.This is a Channel 4 documentary (in the sense of the word that is only ever applicable on Channel 4) fronted by Katie Piper, herself the victim of an acid attack, in which she meets people who have chosen to take their body to extremes, be it through cosmetic surgery, piercings, tattoos, or other painful body modifications, and, most importantly, regret doing so.

The programme shows us the ins and outs of extreme aesthetics, in the most literal sense of the word. It regularly features graphic surgical scenes, and each episode is punctuated by pained groans and people adding to, or removing, their collection of extreme modifications. Bodyshockers is not the only television programme of this ilk. From Embarrassing Bodies (another Channel 4 creation) to TLC’s charmingly named Too Ugly for Love?, British television is full of lifestyle programmes that revolve around unconventional bodies, whether through biological disorders, botched procedures, or simply visible, glaring and brutally regretful decisions.

Bodyshockers paints itself as a semi-charitable enterprise, charting the reversal of the modifications made by its subjects (cue more graphic surgical scenes), as well as pitting them against someone intending to have a similar procedure done, in order to prevent them from making what was for them, a mistake. Often emotional, and always shocking, it would be unfair not to say that I openly admit to enjoying Bodyshockers, and similar modification-orientated programmes.

Where this ever expanding TV genre becomes alarming, however, is in programmes like Too Ugly for Love? or The Undatables, where people’s mental and physical health is paraded across British television under a façade of showing us that they’re ‘just like us’, when really we know that they have been put on primetime TV to tell us precisely the opposite. The Little Couple, Bodyshockers’ ‘parent’ programme Bodyshock and other similar aspects of the ‘documentary and lifestyle’ genre all set out to display the ‘freaks’ of the world: people with conditions that range from minor to completely debilitating. When you realise that Bodyshockers is alarmingly similar to programmes like this, the overall picture becomes much darker. Just because this was something they did to themselves doesn’t really make it any better, or more acceptable; it’s just how we legitimise another covert means of public mockery.

Surely the popularity of ‘freakshow’ TV actually reveals something fairly alarming about the mentality of the typical TV watcher, myself included. We will sit, by choice, taking an hour out of our evening, to watch people who have made irreparable and extreme changes to their bodies, or were simply born slightly different to ourselves, try and go about their daily lives. In reality, I think it boils down to the fact that we like to watch others suffer. We like to see people struggle, to feel intellectually superior to their poor decisions, or to simply feel fortunate that we are ‘normal’. TV like this is designed to make what is ‘average’ or ‘normal’ feel ‘superior’, and when you take a step back and look at it like that, an evening watching Bodyshockers just doesn’t sound so sweet.

★★☆☆☆

Two Stars

Americans with nationalist tendencies: look away now. Clint Eastwood’s latest
film, based on the autobiography of Chis Kyle, tells the eulogistic story of a young everyman soldier who, while looking to find himself by shooting the USA’s enemies, grows into the deadliest sniper of the Iraq War.

American Sniper begins with Kyle’s early life, in which he kills animals, beats up bullies (literally liquidising another child’s nose aged about ten) and is taught mantras by his father like, “Never leave your rifle in the dirt.” Church, rodeos and violence shape him as he grows up. When Kyle sees footage of the 1998 Dar-Es-Salaam bombings, he is shocked. His response? To enlist and go kill people; a subtle, tried-and-tested way to deal with terrorism. The rest of the film sees him unfailingly bedecked in wraparound sunglasses, shooting Iraqis. There’s the typical witty banter during the basic training and battle sequences that we’ve come to expect from the modern war film – if this appeals to you, then you should watch Jarhead or Full Metal Jacket instead.

It’s awkward, but one almost knows what to expect from this movie before it begins. The film opens with the Islamic call to prayer and something that sounds like a pulsing heartbeat; immediately something is ominous, but why should it be? Evil Muslims? Surely not! Right on cue, a woman in a hijab turns up and gives a child a bomb. As well as simplistic racial stereotypes and mild Islamophobia, there’s a lot of violence against children in this film; whenever Eastwood wants to make a point, he introduces a young boy who usually gets
smashed up or killed. The exploitation leaves a bitter aftertaste. Ironically, the Arab characters are so panto-evil (drilling children in the kneecaps) that you don’t believe in them, whereas Kyle himself has such an understated stupidity that you really don’t like him.

Early in the film, he asks “Why would you say I’m self-centred? I’d lay down my life for my country. It’s the greatest country on earth.” Thus he inadvertently answers his own question. Sure, we’re meant to feel for the man. He has a girlfriend – later a wife – for whom he wins teddies at fairground shooting games, and children whom we see grow up between his tours of duty. The problem is, he’s so arrogant it’s impossible to want to have anything to do with him other than a quick sit down to explain the failures of Western foreign policy since 2001, and why he represents them inherently. Kyle wears a military medal over his heart on his wedding day. He carries a Bible with him when he enters the field. If his personal relationships are meant
to be emphasised, they are lost beneath a tide of jingoism. He feels vaguely bad when he shoots a child, but he gets over it and is ready to kill another later. Bradley Cooper is usually a decent actor but even he can’t humanise the man who in real life wrote how fun it was to kill “savages” and how he “couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis”. Are we meant to hate him or not?

It’s not all bad. A duel with an enemy sniper develops over the course of the film that is reminiscent of the best points of Enemy at the Gates, with some great, tense results. The action sequences in general are well-executed. American Sniper is not a badly-made film, it’s just one with a ridiculously simple and frankly incorrect message.

Ultimately, it’s for people like Eastwood, who don’t really see war itself as evil but rather a conflict between good guys and bad guys. This is a Republican’s Hurt Locker. In a good war film you want to see the ills of conflict and the shades of grey but American Sniper has about as much subtlety as Call of Duty. Last week, Michael Moore tweeted “Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders [are] worse”. Naturally, he’s being slated by every rightwinger from Fox News to Sarah Palin to Kid Rock, but I’m inclined to agree.