By Christopher Stevens
PUBLISHED: 20:02 EST, 15 August 2013 | UPDATED: 03:15 EST, 16 August 2013
Britain’s classic sitcoms are so well-loved that the repeats are never off our screens. After 30 years, Only Fools And Horses still tops every poll of our favourite TV shows.
Entire books have been written to analyse the success of Dad’s Army or Fawlty Towers. And Porridge is such a national treasure that in Aylesbury, Bucks, there’s a statue in its honour, depicting Ronnie Barker as Fletch.
So what happened to British sitcom? Why don’t we make them like that any more — have we forgotten how?
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David Walliams' (second right) love of old fashioned British humour comes to the fore in Big School, a sitcom with a stellar cast including (left to right) Philip Glenister, Catherine Tate and Frances De La TourDavid Walliams is a fan of old-fashioned humour. As a boy, the comedian who found fame with Matt Lucas in their sketch show Little Britain, was a starstruck nerd who queued for hours to get autographs from stars like Frankie Howerd, famous for the bawdy sitcom Up Pompeii.
Walliams grew up wanting to mine that rich comic vein. Little Britain, which ran from 2004 to 2006, was often compared with a ruder, coarser version of Seventies shows starring Dick Emery or Benny Hill, with plenty of scope for broad humour and dressing up in women’s clothes.
Emery’s most popular character was a lusty spinster who could send men reeling with a swing of her handbag and her battlecry: ‘Oooh you are awful?.?.?.?but I like you!’ Little Britain paid homage, with Walliams and Lucas in outrageous drag and declaring: ‘We are ladies!’
Critics complained that this sort of comedy should have died out with the music hall, but audiences paid no attention to that, and Little Britain won the comedy Bafta two years running.
So this year, when Walliams announced that he was co-writing and starring in a BBC sitcom, one prediction seemed certain: this was going to be a show that celebrated the humour of his childhood.
But a sneak preview reveals it’s not just old-fashioned comedy that Walliams is nostalgic for.
Big School, a series of six half-hour episodes, launches tonight on BBC1 at 9pm. Set in a secondary school, it stars Walliams as an inept chemistry master who falls hopelessly in love with the new French teacher, played by Catherine Tate, but doesn’t know how to tell her.
It features a stellar cast, including the veteran from Seventies sitcom Rising Damp, Frances de la Tour, as the headmistress. Philip Glenister, who was dirty copper Gene Hunt in Life On Mars, is the pot-bellied gym master, and Joanna Scanlan, best known for The Thick Of It, is the lesbian drama teacher.
Big School opens with a rush of warmth and sympathy for old-fashioned teaching methods. Walliams plays a chemistry teacher who is down on his luckFrom the first moments, it’s plain that Walliams has deep affection for teachers. But the children?.?.?.?well, he’s not quite so keen on them.
Earlier this year, he made a one-off documentary for ITV, going back to his former school, Reigate Grammar in Surrey, and meeting old classmates and teachers. There was an instant rapport between him and the staff, and an awkwardness with his own peers.
He had been bullied as a teenager, and we got a strong sense that he’d be happiest at a school with no pupils at all, just teachers.
Of course, thousands of teachers would heartily concur.
So it is no surprise that Big School opens with a rush of warmth and sympathy for old-fashioned teaching methods. Keith Church, a chemistry master with a bouffant combover, is trying to engage a bunch of listless, sarky students by staging an explosion.
He drops a container of liquid nitrogen and a sack of ping pong balls into a tub of water, and the innocent awe and glee on his face is touching. He’s so excited that he can’t even sense the boredom blanketing his class.
Before the chemical reaction can occur, however, the bell rings for the end of lessons, and the children are gone. Poor Keith looks like he’s about to cry with disappointment.
And then, with a bang and a flash, the classroom is inch-deep in ping pong balls.
Give the youngsters rulers and ink pellets to play with, instead of mobile phones, and it’s a scene that would fit neatly into Carry On Teacher, the black-and-white 1959 movie with Ted Ray and Leslie Phillips.
If we were expecting old-fashioned comedy, we’re certainly getting it.
The traditional approach brings benefits. There’s no wobbly handheld camera work, no improvised dialogue, no barrage of foul language, no filthy single entendres
David Walliams played a disgruntled teacher in his sketch show Little Britain with every teacher's worst nightmare Vicky Pollard, played by Matt Lucas. It's clear from both shows that Walliams has a great sympathy for teachers, but not studentsInstead, there’s a brisk script with plenty of jokes. Some fall flat, and tonight’s opening episode on occasion plays for cheap laughs, but the show soon settles down. This has the feel of a sitcom that will win viewers over.
For a start, we want to know if Keith will summon the nerve to tell Sarah Postern, Catherine Tate’s French teacher, that he fancies her rotten. She can see that, of course, but she wants him to pluck up the nerve to say something.
The trouble is, there’s a leery, cocky gym teacher in the staffroom too, and Miss Postern seems to enjoy flirting with him.
Tate’s Postern suffers from the classic sitcom character flaw: she thinks she’s wonderful, despite all the evidence. She’s desperate to be liked, and she can’t see what an idiot she’s making of herself. Miss Postern is David Brent in a dress.
This show could be the lift that Tate’s career has badly needed since she lost her way as the Doctor’s mismatched companion in Dr Who. She’s in her element here, as a needy, nervy woman who tries to put on a daffy act.
It’s hard to play vulnerable without seeming weak, but in next week’s episode there’s a lovely moment when Miss Postern’s courage fails her altogether, in front of a packed assembly hall, until Keith steps in to save her.
Philip Glenister isn’t known for sitcom, but he’s doing double-takes and reaction shots like a veteran here. His character, Mr Gunn, is Sid James without the charm — his first attempt at a chat-up is to tell Tate that he lives with his mum, who does all his cooking and cleaning.
In recent years, Walliams has been spent more time judging on Britain's Got Talent that creating comedy‘I’m living the dream,’ he boasts, and adds: ‘Obviously, if I get married, I’ll put her in a home.’
But it’s Frances de la Tour whose comedy pedigree really tells. She glides through scenes like she’s on castors. We last saw her as the ghastly Violet, a one-joke character in Vicious who was overshadowed by the show’s theatrical megastars, Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen.
Here, she dominates effortlessly, playing a headteacher whose only joy in life is humiliating her staff.
She sits in her office, drinking whatever alcohol she can confiscate from the pupils, and honing her putdowns.
When Miss Postern starts enthusing about the French, the head cuts her dead: ‘Dirty people, dirty country.’
Funny lines, endearing characters: this is a sitcom that will grow on us. Which is a relief, given some of the pretentious twaddle that Walliams has been spouting during publicity interviews this week.
The 41-year-old comic said he was inspired to write a story of unresolved love after seeing The Remains Of The Day, the 1993 film starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins, adapted from a Booker Prize-winning novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.
It might have been more honest if he’d admitted he was trying to write a cross between Are You Being Served? and Grange Hill.
Big School isn’t our first taste of retro laughter on BBC1 recently, not by a long way. Miranda Hart has revived slapstick, and Mrs Brown’s Boys stems from a long tradition of cross-dressing ribaldry.
Even Ben Elton’s execrable council sitcom, The Wright Way, was intended to revive an old-fashioned format.
But Walliams goes much further than any of them. Keith’s car looks like a prop from a historic comedy, such as Terry And June or Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em — it’s a 1970 Austin Maxi.
The car belongs in a motor museum, but it’s the kind of vehicle Walliams’s teachers used to drive.
He’s recreating his life at Reigate Grammar, reimagining it through comedy. They might have been tough first time around, but now David Walliams is determined to make his schooldays the happiest days of his life.
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