Why television isn’t funny anymore

The occasion this month of the mockumentary The Office celebrating the 25th anniversary of its first appearance on television, an anniversary marked by a couple of actual documentaries, will have prompted some to revisit the comedy, or watch it for the first time.

Many who have done so will have inevitably asked themselves the same question: why did television comedy used to be so funny, and why is that not the case anymore? It’s not a conclusion that will be confined to us old timers: it’s said that there is vogue for all things turn-of-the-millennium among generations Y and Z.

They might be drawn to that era for the same reason my generation looks upon it wistfully. The Office was symbolic of a freer age, when we were mostly allowed to say what we thought and laugh at what we liked. This was before the censorious, safety-first, puritanical cult of hyperliberalism ruined everything, with television comedy being one of its greatest casualties.

The Office worked precisely because it was unsafe and made us feel uneasy. It wasn’t just the pervasive themes of disappointment and failed ambition, but the social transgressions made by the maladroit but redeemable David Brent, the creepy Gareth Keenen and the genuinely horrible Finchey.

Their jokes and observations regarding race, sex, homosexuality and the disabled would be impossible to broadcast today on two counts. First, because it’s unacceptable to even laugh at fictional characters who say awful things in public. Woke fundamentalism dictates that some words are inherently evil, unsayable in any context.

Secondly, society now doesn’t do forgiveness or understand redemption. David Brent’s transgressions would forever be held against him in our cancel culture. In real life, no scriptwriter would dare submit a comedy with such content. No commissioner would go near it – the industry has seen what happened to Graham Linehan.

This is why people of all ages return to or discover not only The Office, but Brass Eye, I’m Alan Partridge, Da Ali G Show, Peep Show, Little Britain, The League of Gentlemen, The Inbetweeners and even Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and co – all offensive in their own way, and all still being or repeated or watched on demand.

Television comedy has been a wasteland since the end of the noughties. In America, the glory days of Frasier, Friends and Seinfeld are a distant memory. And what have we in Britain produced since The IT Crowd? Mrs Brown’s Boys, Derry Girls, This Country, Peter Kay’s Car Share and Fleabag. A few of these tepid shows may have raised a smile, but none will be celebrated in 25 years. Or even remembered at all.

The public have bigger concerns than Farage’s mates

If much of the broadcast media and many of the newspapers are to be believed, Nigel Farage made a terrible misjudgement in standing down as MP for Clacton to prompt a by-election there. It was an ‘own goal’, we are constantly reminded.

I’m not so sure. Farage has behaved with impropriety, and the whole episode is sordid, but this is not a game changer. Most Reform UK voters or sympathisers are unmoved by the accusations and care even less about parliamentary procedure.

That Farage’s main opponent is now Count Binface, a comedian who has written scripts for Have I Got News for You (a show which epitomises everything smug and superior about the liberal-left clerisy), has only given more weight to the narrative that the ruling classes (neither Labour nor the Conservatives are standing at Clacton next month) are determined to suppress him and dismiss the people he stands for.

Reform is only the latest manifestation of a tide of discontent, a multifaceted swell comprising classic conservatives, working-class types of a conservative disposition, and old-school liberals, which made its voice known in 2016, and which remains unbowed today. Many have supported Reform because of Farage, many in spite of him.

This wave will prevail unless whoever is in power address the issues the governing parties have consistently failed to address for years: unsustainable levels of immigration that are destroying the fabric of this nation; excessive government spending, especially on those who don’t deserve it, which will bankrupt it soon; and the breakdown of the social contract manifest in the epidemic of shoplifting, anti-social behaviour and the disintegration of our once much-vaunted multicultural society.

For good or bad, most people don’t care what Nigel Farage has done. He is likely to win because many believe that this country is on the precipice. They fear that any scandal today is, from the longer view of this country’s very survival, a trivial distraction.

VAR sucks the life out of football

This year’s World Cup has once more reminded us of the inherent drawbacks with VAR.

The debate over the use of the video assistant referee in football may strike outsiders as a niche, esoteric matter, but whether we defer to this technology is a matter of significance. It reminds us that there are two types of people in the world.

On the one hand we have the idealists and perfectionists. They believe it is always possible to make objective and definitive judgements about human behaviour, that we should and can eliminate error and attain pure truthfulness. On the other hand we have realists, those who accept that we must live in an imperfect world, and that idealism can have unintended negative outcomes.

Introduced by perfectionists, VAR only introduces more doubt, more uncertainty and less respect for authority. Now more fouls must be re-considered, more decisions made by the referee called into question. The flow of play is interrupted with more appeals to the camera and interminable deliberation. Football as a fluid spectator sport has been much diminished since its introduction.

Yet human relations only function if we proceed with the understanding that justice is imperfect, perspectival and contingent. We have accepted this principle in common law for centuries, where judgements are dependent on multiple witnesses and many perspectives. We accept verdicts ‘being beyond reasonable doubt’. We have double jeopardy because we know that we can’t go on indefinitely raking over previous decisions. We acknowledge human subjectivity, in that some judges will be harsher and others more lenient. In football, we similarly know that some referees will be draconian, others indulgent.

Idealism can beget procrastination, inertia and paralysis. Or as Voltaire once counselled: the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Patrick West is a columnist for spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017). Follow him on X: @patrickxwest.