Hancock, British television comedy's great pioneer.

Hancock’s Half Hour is a big turning point in British television comedy. Prior to this, variety and sketch shows were commonplace and some radio comedies existed which we might recognise as closer to sitcom than sketch, especially if you squint. But writers Alan Galton and Ray Simpson came to realise that the more they grounded the Hancock character in real life, the funnier and the more relatable the stories became.

The transition from radio to TV helps enormously. Anthony John Hancock (who played Anthony St John Aloysius Hancock) was an immensely skilled performer, and he understood instinctively the way that a television camera could look into his eyes and transmit the depths of his frustration, resignation, humiliation or joy. Regular supporting players like Kenneth Williams and Bill Kerr didn’t make the transition to television, and eventually a neurotic and anxious Hancock sacked Sid James as well.

Galton and Simpson’s depiction of the little man, who strives for glory (especially social advancement) but who is eternally defeated by his own shortcomings, became the template for countless other fondly-remembered characters such as Harold Steptoe (from the same writers), Captain Mainwaring, Basil Fawlty, David Brent, Alan Partridge, and Mark from Peep Show.

It was genuinely new when Hancock did it in the late 1950s, but it didn’t feel ice-water fresh because of the way the show gradually evolved, from much sillier beginnings. In an early episode of the TV series, Hancock survives a fall from a passenger plane through a series of absurd coincidences which he happily relates. In the final series, he and the writers wring an entire half hour out of his boredom and frustration while stuck at home on his own. But nobody had a plan to rip up the rulebook and start again. Everyone was just following their nose.

As is often the case, the Americans got there first, and more spectacularly. Comedies with ongoing narratives had been popular on the radio since the 1920s (Amos and Andy, The Goldbergs, Jack Benny) and many of these translated smoothly to television. But while Hancock was still on the radio, one television comedy show ruled the roost in America – I Love Lucy, which thanks to Lucille Ball’s insistence on shooting the whole thing on 35mm movie film could be sold all over the world.

While Galton and Simpson might well have seen Lucy (which came to the UK around the same time Hancock transferred to television) they took their stories in a different direction, one which again set the template for countless future iterations. Episodes of Lucy begin with a problem for Lucy to solve and by the end, the status quo is reaffirmed. Episodes of Hancock begin with an aspiration and end with dashed hopes. Maybe that’s why British television viewers were so keen on Frasier and then Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. They’re the two modern American sitcoms which cleave most closely to the UK model.

To find out what American stand-up comedian Abigoliah Schamaun made of a seventy-year old British sitcom, tune in to the latest episode of All British Comedy Explained.