Thursday, January 6, 2011

Why I'm (what I call) excited, for Miranda Series Three

A little while ago a very small and gentle TV revolution took place. You probably didn't notice, or if you did you probably thought, 'who is that large unusual looking woman, why is she on TV, and who is letting her try to make jokes?' Certainly, my initial thoughts were mostly that, dressed up in 'this really isn't funny'... 'this is really obvious humour', and other, similar rebuffs often used to denigrate women in comedy. Then I got to the sitting-on-whatIcall-the-sofa-every-Monday-waiting-for-Miranda-point, and it's been plain sailing ever since.



Since Season Two ended a couple of weeks ago TV hasn't been the same. Why is Miranda so great? I'll tell you why. Miranda is great because it is a tiny crack in the facade of one kind of humour presented as the only kind of humour that otherwise permeates British comedy. The fact that Miranda has somehow got on to our screens with a female-led, knowing, whimsical slapstick is nothing short of a miracle. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of mainstream comedy shows like 'Peep Show', 'Mock the Week', 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks', 'QI', &C &C, which as far as I can tell invariably feature men who think they are very funny and clever sometimes saying quite funny and clever things whilst the token women/woman laugh(s) appreciatively. I'm also a fan of many of the male stand up comedians around at the moment, though I can't actually think of any examples. Maybe it goes without saying that I'm a much bigger fan of any of the female comedians that make it onto the little screen - but not since Smack the Pony has there been a genuinely wonderful female-driven comedy that has been as hugely successful as Miranda is. (Though there have been many wonderful female-driven shows which haven't made it so big, particularly Beehive)

By the time we reach about fourteen, or leave our girls-only schools for the mixed world, I reckon it's fair to say that most people have internalised this idea: Women-Aren't-Funny. What that means is, of course, that even when women are funny (i.e. it would be funny if a man said it), they aren't, because nobody finds them funny, because women can't be funny. Any time someone female is making a joke in a public forum there's a kind of bracing in the audience, as if to say, this better bloody be good if you expect me to find this funny. Women comedians/comediennes(?) face a wall of subconscious resistance that men do not face, before they can convince anyone - little wonder that so few make it onto the television at all.

More, as women aren't funny, men get to define what's funny all by themselves. Unsurprising then that humour is still so dominated by celebrations of masculinity, and that a staple of comedy is still the denigration of anybody outside the white-man box. I used to think Frankie Boyle was good on Mock the Week, but the fact that in 2010 somebody decided it would be cutting-edge to give him a television slot solely to say the most offensive things possible for an hour at a time, is as mystifying as it is puerile. Toy trains being orally raped by station owners (cue hilarious floods of semen) is surely not funny to anybody over the age of twelve, or anyone who understands anything at all about rape. Boyle's 'controversial' humour comes across to me as a bit like a bloke on a stage waving a flag saying 'I've found a niche market full of people who think that political correctness spoils their privileged and God-given entitlement to make fun of the less privileged! Those people run television! Go me!'

Which is why Miranda is so great. Miranda doesn't need to play the childish 'haha I done a taboo' card because Miranda is actually a clever, witty and observant writer. Miranda makes humour out of amping up the small awkward moments beyond all reasonable proportion, which has been done many times, but she doesn't it from a pretty much untouched perspective, that of an engagingly normal woman. She opens up a new kind of subjectivity in the field of situation comedy. Women doing slapstick - whatever next?! Woman flirting with the camera, but as a friend not a lover? I've not seen so many excellently timed raised-eyebrow actor/camera/audience moments since Frankenfurter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Women inside a joke shop singing brief snatches of M People to a conveniently placed Heather Smalls mask? Definitely haven't laughed so hard at that before.

It's not just the character of Miranda who gets the laughs either. Patricia Hodge as Miranda's, what I call, mother, is just SUCH FUN!* Frankly, if you have a mother, and if your mother is even slightly overbearing, you will understand how her character can be both sharply observed and completely overplayed. One brilliant episode from the last series is thirty minutes of Miranda and her mother trying to look normal in front of an unflinching psychiatrist. I think I have never laughed so hard. And that's not to mention the wonderful but brief appearances from Sally Phillips ('bear with...bear with...') as the old school friend with a penchant for the most irritating slang possible.

Look, the fact is that you won't appreciate Miranda if you approach it confrontationally. If you whack it on thinking, ok, this better be good, frankly you probably won't laugh. Sit down to your computer with an open mind, watch a couple of episodes, and tell me if you don't think that this wonderful, whimsical, gentle show isn't exactly what British comedy needs a Season Three of. Such fun.





*Please see show for references

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