Following two best mates as they work and play, Channel 4’s mockumentary Lee and Dean, which ends tonight, takes the bromance trope to a whole new level. Not only do the titular pair spend all their time together – whether they’re grafting on a building site or getting stuck into a bit of brass rubbing (not a euphemism) – they act like a couple in the first flush of love, continually stealing affectionate glances at each during the genre’s obligatory to-camera interview segments. Male bonding may have strong foundations in classic British sitcoms, from The Young Ones to Peep Show, but the heartwarming nature of these relationships tended to be buried under layers of irritation, miscommunication and resentment. In Lee and Dean, however, affection sings out from the screen: it’s a sitcom designed to make you go soppy at the sight of brotherly love.
But Lee and Dean aren’t the only ones injecting a very soft-centre into the sitcom shell. A quick scan of the iPlayer reveals a roster of awww-inspiring comedy. There’s Man Like Mobeen, which follows a 28-year-old man conscientiously and single-handedly bringing up his teenage sister. Then there’s People Just Do Nothing: the rowdy mockumentary about the men-children behind a pirate radio station. This Country, the Cotswolds-set, Bafta-nominated mockumentary follows the spectacularly uneventful lives of cousins Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe and their interactions with the local population. It’s an extremely lovely portrait of the pair’s deep bond, most movingly rendered in Kurtan’s kind-hearted attempts to protect Kerry from her selfish father.
It’s true that the sitcom has always had a sturdy thread of sentimentality running through it. Over the past couple of decades, the gloriously mundane naturalism of British comedy has made it the ideal showcase for life’s little disappointments and minor tragedies – something shows such as Only Fools and Horses, The Office and The Royle Family took advantage of in their warm, tear-jerking Christmas specials. The difference with these new shows is that they don’t save their moving moments for high-stakes seasonal fare. Instead they weave them throughout, ensuring the predominant air is one of misty-eyed but ultimately cockle-warming cheer.
There’s only one real candidate for the position of soppy sitcom godfather, and that’s Gavin & Stacey. Created in 2007 by Ruth Jones and James Corden – and setting the latter on the path to global stardom – it was a genial, sweet and very funny portrayal of two sets of inlaws that stressed the importance of family and the life’s run-of-the-mill joys. It was like a Mike Leigh film without the sadness – and with sicker jokes. Because Gavin & Stacey was careful to counter the schmaltz with ribald and sometimes rather horrible humour (the families – the Shipmans and the Wests – were named after serial killers).
Striking a balance between comfort and crudity is something many of these new shows have picked up on. Lee and Dean is packed with bawdy jokes, while This Country is speckled with gross-out gags. In fact, the beauty of the soppy sitcom is that they are often meticulously funny – which is lucky because if they didn’t have a cracking joke every 90 seconds they’d probably dissolve into a pile of unbearably sentimental mush.
Despite the ubiquitous use of that very 21st-century format, the mockumentary, those weaned on a diet of dark TV comedy – League of Gentlemen, Nighty Night, Peep Show, anything Chris Morris ever involved himself in – may find these soft-centred shows conservative, if not backwards. And compared with the dramedy trend (a strain of hard-hitting and sometimes subversive comedy-drama that skimps on the jokes in favour of sensitive and intellectual discussions of identity politics and mental health), the sentimental sitcom is determinedly mainstream. It’s non-threatening comedy that hammers home what we already know: the importance of family, friendship and caring for one another.
On the other hand, considering the current TV landscape – a place where drama is bleak, comedy even bleaker and the news is off the bleakness scale – these shows feel like a welcome respite. While their emotional button-pressing may look like the easy option, the soppy sitcom offers something that is currently extremely hard to come by: a large dose of niceness, comfort and joy.
