As in the US, UK TV offers a bifurcation between single-cam sitcoms, which are considered hip and are on the whole more critically praised, and multi-cam or studio audience sitcoms, which are fewer in number, critically framed as dumbed down entertainment for the masses, usually don’t win awards (except for the People’s Choice variety), and increasingly thought of as obsolete. However, Canadian TV critic Jaime Weinman has argued that British multi-cams might have a better chance of co-existing alongside single-cams than in the US because the UK industry shows more awareness of form, of forming the comedy to the format, which inherently makes the shows less problematic aesthetically, whereas in the US the choice to go multi-cam seems more driven by commercial impulses rather than aesthetic ones. I would also add to his argument that British TV has always had a wider range of comedy formats in prime time, especially studio audience formats, and not just multi-cam sitcoms but sketch comedy shows and panel chat shows, and at all times in the schedule, which might also feed into a wider awareness of the role of format, for both creators and audiences.
The sitcom Miranda is an intriguing case in that regard. Written by and starring Miranda Hart, Miranda presents Hart playing a character she honed during her standup comedian days, an awkward, bumbling thirty-something woman who nonetheless bounces along happily and self-deprecatingly through life, albeit hounded by a mother who thinks it’s unnatural that her daughter isn’t married with kids yet. Hart says she always envisioned the show as an audience sitcom as an extension of her standup comedy. She expected it would be disparaged as lowbrow fare and was gratified when audiences responded to it positively. Hart says she’s especially pleased that rather than seeing Miranda as a guilty pleasure, many see it as a chance to be “allowed to openly like an uncool show.” (And it is popular in viewership; it started on BBC Two, but due to its popularity has been bumped up to BBC One for its upcoming third season.) Critically, reception is mixed, with the typical multi-cam dismissal that it offers predictable and cheap humor, but it has gotten some respectable awards traction. It received BAFTA and British TV Academy nominations, and at the British Comedy Awards in 2011, Miranda won both the Best New TV Comedy Award (the first multi-cam sitcom to take that title since 1999) and the People’s Choice entry.
As Hart’s quote would attest, the show is quite self-consciously framed as uncool, unhip, unedgy, fitting perfectly with Miranda’s awkward character. Highly performative, Miranda wholly embraces sitcom theatricality; you could even say it panders to it. Each episode starts with Miranda talking to the audience, has moments in the middle of her commenting or playing to the audience, and ends with the main characters waving to the audience, a deliberate callback to 1970s British sitcom conventions.
[Depicted here are two consecutive scenes of Miranda playing to the audience. She runs a joke shop, a customer has come in and sees Miranda and friend (and love interest) Gary playing with toys, but rather than admitting they were playing childishly with the toys themselves, they lie and say they were just picking up the toys for their children. The lies spiral from there. (Make sure to watch through to the second scene, which is a perfect example of how fluidly Miranda interacts with the audience, in the studio and at home. Also, info on Cliff Richard, if you don’t know him.)]
Hart has said these asides are highly influenced by 1970s sitcom conventions and classic British TV comedians like Morecambe and Wise, but the show doesn’t feel like a relic of the past. It feels very contemporary, in fact, not far off from what single-cams have been credited with innovating, such as use of asides to the camera, quick cutaways, and self-conscious narrational moments.
[Here is a scene where Gary busts into a therapy session with Miranda and her mom. Watch the scene and then note in retrospect how the audience reacts according to multi-cam rules, even though there’s been a single-cam-esque temporal manipulation in production.]
But there’s no question Miranda relies on a type of humor one might call corny and unsophisticated. One review offered: “This is a show that wouldn’t be fashionable if Lady Gaga turned up in it to perform a secret gig. But neither is it meant to be.” The qualification there is significant. Similarly, one commenter, complaining about a reviewer calling the show kitsch, wrote, “There’s nothing ‘kitsch’ about it, unless you think the aesthetics of television are of themselves embarrassing, in which case why write about the medium? ‘Kitsch’ is a style in taste that presupposes an element of self-loathing that simply isn’t present in Miranda. The show doesn’t disapprove of itself for being popular culture.”
In such a manner, both the format and the performance present Miranda embracing who she is, an unconventional female comedy figure, and outwardly expressing it with infinite gusto, carrying forth through all manner of embarrassment. For me, the self-consciousness of the show’s style, the active studio audience, and Hart’s playing to that audience and viewers help to make the show’s cringe humor, the type quite common to post-Office single-cams, feel inclusive, endearing Miranda to the audience rather than separating her out, like a David Brent figure. In that sense, Miranda affirms Jaime Weinman’s point about strategic use of form being evident in Britain’s multi-cams, and it’s gratifying to see an audience, if not a full set of critics, respond to that. The show also points toward an incorporation of old and new that indicates the creative potential of the multi-cam, one that in the US seems to be going untapped, as excesses here seem to have come lately in the form of raunchy content, not creative form.
