The sitcom, "Miranda" - a certain kind of Englishness

The first series of the BBC sitcom Miranda came to an end last night on BBC 2, which will leave a bit of a hole at 8.30 on Monday evenings.  If you missed it, you can still catch the last episode on BBC iPlayer, they’re bound to repeat it on BBC1 soon (it was a BBC2 programme), and a second series has already been commissioned. I should think so too.

It’s hard to imagine a funnier, goofier, more charming three hours of television. Miranda Hart, who writes and stars in it, is simply brilliant – a large, gawky clown’s body, perfect timing, and the ability to use the camera to connect directly with the audience that I’ve never seen done so convincingly. 

The programme is devoid of cruelty, testosterone, or smut. In fact there’s a positive kindness in its treatment of even the most irritating characters - Patricia Hodge as Miranda’s mother and Sally Phillips as an old school acquaintance who insists on addressing Miranda as  “Queen Kong”. It’s a reminder of the kinder, gentler, more tolerant Britain reflected in Porridge andAre You Being Served?, without being in the least bit twee or winsome or anachronistic. 

The UK has produced at least four other brilliant sitcoms (Britcoms, as they’re known abroad) during the past decade – The Office, The Thick Of It, Green Wing and Extras. Unlike Miranda, I imagine they’d be punishing to watch with your parents or your children – too much swearing, too many crude allusions to sex, and too much cruelty. 

What Miranda shares with Green Wing Is a plot which centres around a woman desperately in love with one of the main male characters, and afraid to reveal it – in Green Wing, it’s the superb Tamsin Grieg’s Dr Caroline Todd in love with Julian Rhind-Tutt’s lion-maned Dr McCartney, while Miranda is in love with the chef, Gary, played by Tom Ellis. (A similar plot lies at the heart of The Office, of course, only it’s the chap who can’t bring himself to show his true feelings).  Coincidentally, Miranda Hart and Tamsin Grieg are both brilliant at playing gawky, accident-prone girly girls who don’t come across as the least bit wet.

There are two other TV stars currently heading up the National Treasure charts at a fair old lick – James May and John Sergeant. What they both share with Miranda Hart – at least in public personas that may, for all I know, bear no relation to reality – is old-fashioned Englishness. Sergie knows he’s a bizarre-looking toad of a man with a face that sometimes resembles (in his own words) a mad fish. James May is a geeky, anally-retentive, obsessive Englishman of a type we all recognize. He is quiet, irritable, awkward in public, embarrassable, and utterly unpretentious. He is without side. 

All three appear to be acutely aware of what they are, and how they look. There’s something innately comic about all of them, but they’re not silly. What they someone manage to do is convince us is that certain types of Englishness haven’t been completely destroyed by the rise of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and their ilk. There’s nothing remotely comic about either of them - but they are massively silly.