Funny men behaving boorishly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/funny-men-comedy-boom-intelligent

Version 0 of 1.

Are we witnessing a return to the bad old days of British comedy? This week found the impressionist Rory Bremner criticising the BBC panel show Mock the Week (in whose first two series he starred) for becoming "highly competitive and aggressive". Billy Connolly followed suit, branding "standups ... gurning on panel shows" a threat to the artform.

Then there was the row over Channel 4's Big Fat Quiz of the Year, broadcast last weekend, which attracted complaints to Ofcom after co-hosts Jack Whitehall and James Corden got drunk on air and made loutish remarks about Susan Boyle and the Queen. Not for the first time, UK comedy stands accused of boorish machismo, a throwback to 90s lad culture – or even to the chauvinism of the 1970s that alternative comedy was supposed to have swept aside.

So how has it come to this? Back in the 1980s the point of alternative comedy, in part, was to challenge the patriarchal – and prejudiced – worldview peddled by Bernard Manning's generation. The movement was blamed for imposing political correctness on comedy – which may be why, when 90s "lad culture" was in the ascendant, its comedy manifestations were mild. Men Behaving Badly was tame compared to today's Frankie Boyles and Jimmy Carrs. Frank Skinner and David Baddiel were blokey and low-level sexist – but next to Corden they look like PG Wodehouse.

The laddism of the 90s was characterised by irony: its proponents weren't really old-school sexists, they were just pretending to be. That's how 70s attitudes crept back into comedy, too. Their acts may have curdled in recent years, but Carr and Boyle started life as skilled provocateurs, playing at being unpleasant, needling at the margins of the acceptable. "I've got a friend whose nickname is 'Shagger'," ran one Carr gag. "You might think that's pretty cool. She doesn't like it." At its best, this brand of comedy takes sexist – and even racist – tropes and plays inventive and revealing games with them. Richard Herring does that, with the get-out clause that "I'm not like Bernard Manning because I'm being postmodern and ironic … But does that make me better than him – or much, much worse?"

As long as the old -isms were handled with care, they had their playful place. But the extraordinary comedy boom of the last decade has created a demand that can't be filled by intelligent and skilful acts alone. And so it has seen the revival – all irony now having fled – of old-fashioned gags about 'er indoors (a favoured subject of BBC1 star John Bishop) and – as per a notorious Jimmy Carr quip – Gypsies. Of course, this is a laddish agenda – it's no surprise that the Big Fat Quiz of the Year starred five male comedians and no female ones. That's par for the course on panel shows, which consign women to the margins and treat male clubhouse banter as if it were Wildean wit.

I interviewed the standup Ross Noble recently and he darkly predicted the rise of a new model comedian, a lobotomised combination of Frankie Boyle and Michael McIntyre, both casually chauvinist and populist. That is coming to pass, as a generation reared on alternative comedy dispenses with that movement's politics, but retains its confrontationalism and "new rock'n'roll" stylings. It's encouraged by a ravenous-for-comedy media, which has more space for quick-witted loudmouths than for nuance or innovation – far less ideology.

Whitehall's short but stellar career is a case in point: he's now developing his own panel show and chat show for TV. Other new panel shows for 2013 include Sky's trivia-based format Duck Quacks Don't Echo, hosted by Lee Mack, and the BBC's patriotic quiz I Love My Country (team captains: Frank Skinner and Micky Flanagan). This cheap, complacent brand of TV shows no signs, alas, of running out of steam. There's no shortage of creativity, novelty and imagination in UK comedy: this year's Edinburgh comedy award shortlist was the weirdest and most wonderful one yet. But as long as blokey panel shows dominate the schedules, the armchair comedy fan won't get to hear about it.