"Horribly coarse": Johnny Vegas and Elsie Kelly in Benidorm. Photograph: Kieron McCarron/Tiger Aspect
I was staring at the ITV site for a long time this morning before I worked out where they kept the comedy shows. Is there a whole big comedy section? No. Search for ITV Comedy on Google, and you'll be presented with some "comedy" Emmerdale e-cards. Look in the Entertainment section, and of course you'll find nothing there of sitcom flavour at all. Because, let's face it, if there's one thing it's very hard to describe ITV sitcoms as, it's entertainment.
The current crop of ha-ha-larious big-name trailed-everywhere sitcoms currently gracing the ITV big screen include Benidorm, Bonkers and The Abbey, which was much trailed in the ad breaks of last week's Brits, due to the fey involvement of Bouffant Brand.
None have so far gone down a storm with the audience. Or the advertisers. Or the critics, for that matter, with the Guardian's Gareth McLean describing The Abbey alone as "monumentally awful", and Sam Wollaston writing off the bunch of them as "silly but not funny". Elsewhere, thecustard.tv called Benidorm "not very funny and horribly coarse" and Bonkers "slightly too zany for its own good", which is surely an understatement of quite considerable magnitude. I mean come on - calling a show Bonkers is the programme-making equivalent of having a large collection of Homer Simpson ties, a large sign on your desk that declares "you don't have to be mad to work here but it helps" and a horrendous tendency to make little faces out of punctuation marks for no apparent reason.
So you look at the current sitcom output of ITV (and ITV1, particularly, that's where the main ad revenue is based, you'd expect them to be working hard at churning out the big-hitters) and you see... nothing worth shouting about. And there are plenty of writers about, the people that they're attracting to appear in these things should make them of some vague worth, so surely, surely there should be something good coming out of ITV's little sitcom hole every now and again. Surely.
And then you think back and you realize that there's no real substance for your belief. ITV should be making good sitcoms? Why? When have they ever done it before? Taking into account the funniest thing on the whole channel is Harry Hill's TV burp, which merrily tears quite a lot of the rest of their (and everyone else's) content apart, it's not long before you realise that you can't think of the last time they made a sitcom you enjoyed.
Go on, think about it. What was the last good ITV sitcom?
No, Men Behaving Badly was only on there for one series, and it was the worst series of them all. No, Entourage clearly doesn't count, it's on ITV2 and a buy-in. But what else does that leave us with? Only when I Laugh? Duty Free? In the holy name of Morecambe (Eric, obviously), that was 23 years ago, had a frighteningly similar "sit" to Benidorm, and it wasn't even that funny then.
Surely I'm forgetting something. Surely there must have been something good, even once. Because if ITV have never produced a sitcom of any worth, if there's nothing we can really compare these present diseased turkeys to, then why do I feel so bloody let down every single time the throw another clunker at us?
