The push for a global audience could be a catastrophe for British sitcoms

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/20/catastrophe-british-sitcoms-global-audience

Version 0 of 1.

Pulling, Sharon Horgan’s sitcom about three venal women in Penge, south London, was so good it got you evangelical. I bought the boxset for friends and had to explain it was because it was brilliant, not because it reminded me of them. It was funny and unfiltered and bleak enough to take your breath away. So while I’m cheered that she’s got a new show on television, the rave reviews for the first episode make me feel like a teetotaller at a lock-in. I just don’t get it. Pulling was a classic British sitcom in that it was riven with self-loathing, and its situation – the gap between its characters’ desire to pull and their capacity to do so – inherently fraught and fruitful.

In Catastrophe, Horgan plays a woman who gets pregnant after a brief fling with a visiting American, played by the standup Rob Delaney. Already, this feels Working Title-ready: a sit- that more readily begets rom than com. Then there’s the detail.

In, say, the similarly plotted Knocked Up there was some tension over whether a groomed high-flier and an unemployed stoner would be able to make it to the delivery room. In Catastrophe they seem ideally suited from the get-go. He’s a successful businessman who wants to move to the UK, marry her and sit through awful suppers with her friends. They are a happy couple expecting a baby. They have hot sex and give each other justifiable compliments. This is not how I want my British sitcoms to be.

I don’t want them to be like Friends – soaps in disguise, scripted by a crack squad of gag writers. I don’t want them to be Americanised; to be glossy and hopeful. I switched over to Catastrophe after my first encounter with Broadchurch, whose bath/bathwater/kitchen sink plotting – and its makeover job on Dorset – suggest similarly transatlantic influences and ambitions. But it did at least feature Olivia Colman weeping her way through some horrible intercourse: a dash of Peep Show in an hour of wacky trash. The export market is important. Telly and films are some of the things we do best. But it’d be a shame if our eagerness to sell overseas was a slippery slope. Palatable doesn’t mean losing flavour.

A vegan welcome

I love the smell of kebab in the morning; it smells like home. I live in a largely Turkish part of north London famed for its grand parade of grill restaurants. The carcinogenic whiff wanders all the way up the side street to our house; smoke fuelled by the appetites of those who come from all round town to guzzle the meat feasts (top tip: Gökyüzü’s jumbo platter – stuffs six for £44).

But over the past few years the area has had an influx of non-Turkish types – vegetarians, vegans even, who, while they can have a (delicious) charred aubergine in the restaurants, aren’t massively catered for by the shops. The 24-hour grocer has a massive halal display as its front counter; two doors down is a great Greek butcher with a hopeful window sticker: “Pork. Go on, give it a try! It’s tasty!”

Last Monday, everything changed. A new independent store appeared to plug the gap precisely. There is quinoa. There are multiple types of Italian pasta. A range of challenging beans. Staggeringly expensive organic baby food. And an array of tofu products and mushroom-protein burger mixes. For a long while now, I’ve felt there is no better place to live than Harringay, a model of cross-cultural tolerance and integration. Now, even vegans are welcome.

Goodies, baddies and babies

The big movie debate at the moment is over American Sniper, Clint Eastwood’s gung-ho Iraq drama. Does its whopping box office (and six shock Oscar nods) indicate a creeping Islamophobia? Or simply how out of touch liberal Hollywood is with mainstream American taste? People have protested that the Iraqi soldiers are treated like chess pieces, mere ciphers, cannon fodder. This is true. But it is not limited to the film’s baddies. Clint has also attracted criticism for cutting corners and using fake babies rather than troublesome real ones, resulting in some conspicuously plastic offspring for Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. This is just what film directors do. For them, everybody is basically a superannuated dolly.