Best of the Britcoms:

From Fawlty Towers to Absolutely Fabulous

by Garry Berman

Taylor Publishing, 140 pp., $18.95 (paper)

The Britcom has an edge, a fearlessness; unlike its American cousins (with the exception of Married With Children) it’s not afraid to show people as they really are — flawed, ugly, fat — and to wring laughs out of their situations. Berman’s book, while not particularly fat or ugly, is excessively flawed nonetheless, if its purpose is shedding any light on these mysterious lights from across the sea. Apart from some philosophical waxings in the preface, the author does little here besides synopsize around 40 program(me)s from the UK, crippling his selection choices savagely by deigning to include only those shows which have made it over to American audiences. There are bits of trivia and background information scattered about the book, so it’s far from completely useless, but in its determination to appeal to an American audience, it loses everything that the shows it purports to praise revel in. And that’s absolutely fatuous.

This article appears in November 5 • 1999.

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