One of the lamentable side effects of the ultra-progressive wave that swept the western world in the mid-2010s was that it caused so many people to have a humour bypass. Quite literally, as Alan Partridge used to say. This wouldn’t matter so much in the ordinary scheme of things, but this failure occurred in the one place where it ought to have been of primary importance: the television comedy industry.
It’s not just the uniformity and relentlessness of this progressive politicking on television comedy that rankles. It’s the associated lack of actual laughter
Ever since those who produce TV comedy shows decided it was not only their remit to make an audience laugh, but to also lecture them, the levels of humour have inevitably declined in tandem. Mock the Week was axed from the BBC in 2022, mainly because of its unrelenting and tedious obsession with Brexit. Have I Got News For You is in the eyes of many an irritating shadow of itself, while the BBC’s flagship platform for the era of large-venue comedy, Live at the Apollo, became unwatchable – and unwatched.
It was no surprise, therefore, to hear yesterday that this programme, first aired in 2004 and initially hosted by Jack Dee, had also been cancelled. ‘Unfortunately,’ as a BBC statement explained, ‘we have to make some really tough choices in light of our funding challenges, and these savings have been identified from the Entertainment genre.’
While it’s a fact that mainstream television shows fail to command the audiences they once did, and with the BBC itself facing ever-growing scrutiny over the cost and viability of the licence fee, this decision cannot, in truth, have been too difficult. The marked decline in quality of the programme, performed in front of a live audience at the famous Hammersmith venue, has been matched by a vertiginous fall in its viewing figures.
The series, which used to feature the likes of Joan Rivers, Dara Ó Briain, Lee Mack and Jo Brand – some already living legends in the 2000s, some up-and-coming stars who have since proved their worth – commanded a peak audience of 6.29 million viewers on BBC One in December 2009. This figure fell to 1.3 million by 2018, before slumping to 660,000 in its most recent series.
Like many others, I gave up on this show soon after the political convulsions of the last decade began to make their unwanted inroads into the world of entertainment. Genuine talent who deserved a billing, the likes of Stephen K. Amos, Frankie Boyle, Kerry Godliman and Phill Jupitus, began to perceptibly disappear in favour of a more ‘diverse’ cast who would be more reliably guaranteed to say the correct things about the right subjects. As time elapsed, Live at the Apollo increasingly descended into the same show featuring white women and ethnic minority men talking about how good it is to be trans or how bad the English proletariat were for voting for Nigel Farage.
Many former fans who had likewise forsaken the show were woken from their ignorance two weeks ago after a few prolific X users caught a repeat from 2021. Footage of the episode went viral. As broadcaster Paul Embery noted, this particular airing featured the lesbian host Jen Brister giving a lecture about LGBT rights, before joking about having sex in front of her children, while one guest, Adam Rowe, also delivered a speech about the importance of gender identity.
That, to many, epitomised what ‘diversity’ actually entails today. It means everyone having the same opinion, and ideally not being a white male. It’s not just the uniformity and relentlessness of this progressive politicking on television comedy that rankles. It’s the associated lack of actual laughter.
There has always been scope for blending current affairs and humour. Mock the Week used to do it rather well and irreverently before the fateful year of 2016, when the Brexit referendum, the first election of Donald Trump and the so-called ‘Great Awokening’ seemed to change everything.
Yet it didn’t have to be that way. The BBC could have stopped the rot. Mock the Week’s rebirth on the TLC channel this February is a lesson on the perils of becoming consumed by your prejudices and self-righteousness, and how to learn from your mistakes. Since its reincarnation it has jettisoned most of its snooty, snide obsession with Brexit and has eased up on its unspoken rule of employing a diverse cast just to make up the numbers.
Other channels have tacitly wised up to the fact that audiences don’t like sermons, preferring instead laughs and light relief. That’s why TLC shows re-runs of the The Big Bang Theory practically all day, why U&Dave still airs Top Gear from the Clarkson era and episodes of QI when Stephen Fry was presenter. It is also why E4 Extra continues to replay golden oldies from the 2000s – Peep Show, The IT Crowd, The Inbetweeners – every night of the week.
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