WHEN was the last time you laughed during a laugh-track-free sitcom? Perhaps it was the current series of Girls, when Adam’s new lover tells him she has just had an abortion. Or during Catastrophe, Sharon Horgan’s accidental-fertilisation show; one episode is devoted to the possibility that her unborn baby may have Down’s syndrome. Then there’s Togetherness, a comedy that — when not dealing with ill-advised semi-sexual encounters between a husband and wife — focuses on two of life’s lost people, slowly falling apart.
Say what you want about Mrs Brown’s Boys (tacky, outdated, awful?), but at least it makes its fans laugh. It does what sitcoms have always done, those tied to the old definition, at least: “A genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment... with often humorous dialogue”. It’s still the keynote of primetime series such as The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. And Friends was like that. So were Seinfeld, Blackadder, Frasier, Cheers: funny first, serious about fifth. The one in Friends when they poke a naked guy with a stick, though, feels dated now — ever since all the best clowns started crying.
“Please,” begged David Brent (Ricky Gervais) in the second series of The Office. “Don’t make me redundant.” As Brent pleads, the show goes still. The job was all that buffoon boss had. In the following year’s specials, Brent is seen unconscious in a cheap hotel room, empty minibar whisky on his chest.
Fast-forward to Gervais’s most recent effort, Derek, and there’s nothing funny in it at all. This is intentional. “I’ve left behind the veil of irony,” Gervais said at the time. “This is more sincere, more straight down the line. The characters are exactly what you think they are, which makes it more dramatic.”
Oddly, though, these shows are still billed as comedies, despite having fewer laughs than Broadchurch. None has traditional canned applause. Maybe that’s it. Do these new shows seem depressing only because we don’t hear anyone else laughing? Think of last year’s Transparent, about a sad retired man, Mort (Jeffrey Tambor), coming out as transgender. It won best television series — comedy or musical at the Golden Globes, and it has no songs. Read this key scene: “This is the ladies’ restroom. And clearly thatis a man,” barks a belligerent blonde in the lavatories. “This is my father,” replies Sarah (Amy Landecker), aggressively. “And he’s a woman.” It’s tense. Now imagine the same scene with a laugh track. It’s a very different experience.
Advertisement
Comedians have always been neurotic, emotional messes; and, like Woody Allen, these new kings often write what they star in. We’re not talking the Allen of the 1970s, though. Today’s sitcoms have more in common with the tragedy of Blue Jasmine, as if writers have decided that if they’re not laughing, nobody else will either. Lena Dunham has talked openly about her neuroses feeding into several scenes in Girls; and the gags she wrote when her programme was new, when she was less confident, have all but dried up. The show has never reflected who she is more than it does now.
HBO’s Togetherness is written by the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay; the latter is also in Transparent. From a lowly start in “mumblecore” films — made with microbudgets, improvised scripts and ad hoc sets — where Dunham also cut her teeth, the siblings have seen their shrugging humour find its way into studio films such as last year’s The Skeleton Twins. The married couple in Togetherness are like lovers who read Fifty Shades of Grey before moving straight on to Gone Girl and now have no idea how to act in or out of bed. The theme is how to tell someone you love that comfort isn’t enough. There are jokes, but they aren’t what stays with you.
Call it nourishment comedy, or misery mirth. Either way, it’s blooming. A quick theory as to why: blame Twitter. The social network is fun for the 10 best pop videos featuring dinosaurs, or a biscuit that looks like Nick Clegg, and great when you’re stuck on a commute, but people want enrichment, too. Memes and Gifs provide the LOLs, so the tweeting classes — the influencers — don’t look for them on television at home. That’s why the sitcom has become so serious. Beautiful, often, too. But very, very sad. The days of Ross and Rachel drinking coffee, carefree in the cafe, seem rather quaint now.