A short history of British comedy

British comedy has an unusually traceable family tree. You can draw a fairly straight line from Victorian music hall to a modern mockumentary without leaving anything out.

Here is the short version, era by era, with the shows and names that changed what came after them.

Music hall and variety, 1850s to 1950s

• Music hall gave British comedy its house style: working-class, quick, and built on the double entendre.
• Performers like Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno worked a live room every night, which trained a whole tradition in timing.
• The seaside postcard and the pantomime come from the same root and never really went away.
• Variety fed directly into radio when radio arrived, taking the acts with it.

Radio and the Goons, 1940s to 1950s

• The Goon Show, from 1951, broke the rules of what radio comedy could sound like - surreal, fast and mostly plotless.
• Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe made absurdity mainstream in Britain.
• Hancock's Half Hour introduced the comedy of character and disappointment, still the engine of most British sitcom.
• Radio's cheapness allowed risk, a pattern repeated in every later era.

The satire boom, 1960s

• Beyond the Fringe in 1960 took comedy from the seaside to the university.
• That Was The Week That Was put satire on the BBC and made politicians a fair target on television.
• Private Eye, founded in 1961, gave print satire a permanent home.
• Steptoe and Son proved a sitcom could be genuinely bleak and still enormously popular.

Python and the 1970s

• Monty Python's Flying Circus, from 1969, abandoned punchlines and structure, which turned out to be exportable worldwide.
• Fawlty Towers packed twelve episodes with more farce than most series manage in fifty.
• Porridge and Rising Damp did character comedy inside confined spaces, the classic British constraint.
• The Two Ronnies kept the music hall wordplay tradition alive on primetime television.

Alternative comedy, 1980s

• The Comic Strip and the Comedy Store rejected the club circuit's mother-in-law jokes.
• The Young Ones brought punk energy and property damage to the sitcom form.
• Blackadder showed a sitcom could be verbally dazzling and historically literate.
• Victoria Wood and French and Saunders built observational comedy out of everyday British awkwardness.

The 1990s and 2000s

• Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses at its peak, and One Foot in the Grave defined mainstream sitcom.
• The Fast Show and The Day Today pushed sketch and spoof-news formats.
• The Office in 2001 introduced the mockumentary style that much of the world then copied.
• Peep Show and The Thick of It took British comedy into discomfort and profanity respectively.

Where it is now

• Panel shows dominated the 2010s and made stand-ups household names.
• Fleabag and This Country reintroduced sincerity alongside the jokes.
• The Edinburgh Fringe remains the industry's audition room.
• Short-form video is doing to comedy now what radio did in the 1940s: lowering the cost of trying something.

Browse funny cards

How to write it so it lands

• Nearly every British sitcom is about someone trapped somewhere they cannot leave.
• The tradition renews itself wherever production is cheapest - radio, then video, now phones.

Where to shop next

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• A short history of British comedy
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• Feel good days of the year
• World Smile Day
• International Day of Happiness
• April Fools' Day
• Random acts of kindness ideas
• Gifts to make someone smile
• Funny one liners
• Growing up in the 80s and 90s
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• How to make a balloon arch
• Photo booth prop ideas
• All guides

Frequently asked questions

What defines British comedy?

Class, embarrassment, failure and wordplay. The recurring British hero is someone with ideas above their station in a room too small for them.

What is the most influential British sitcom?

For international reach, The Office. For structure and craft, Fawlty Towers. For proving sitcom could be serious, Steptoe and Son.