Essay: How does Bottom (1991-1995) activate Genre?

This essay will take the BBC Two television series, Bottom (1991-1995) and analyse how it activates ‘Genre’. The essay will take a look at the series as a whole, and take particular scenes from episodes to emphasise how by factoring in talent – particularly that of actor Rik Mayall – performance style, audience perception and presentation the show aims to demonstrate how these chosen variables lend itself to the Sitcom genre.
Bluntly speaking, genre is a way of categorising the content of which we are presented (Creeber, 2001, pg.1) But therein lies a question, what are the factors that contribute to the show and place it into a particular genre? Lacey argues there are a “’repertoire of elements’ that serve to identify genre consists of character types, setting, narrative and style” (Neale, 2001, p.3 citied Lacey, 2000, pg.13). Essentially, the viewer or audience will come to expect certain features of a programme, which they can relate to how they perceive the content they are watching and categorise it into a certain genre, feeling comfortable in how they respond.
One of the most significant programmes in establishing the sitcom genre, I Love Lucy (1951-57), importantly the show distributed and “edited copy taken from three cameras… contrasting normal appearance, normal situation and moments of calm with bursts of insane energy, childish abandon, and unbridled enthusiasm… there was an absurdist comedy in ‘Lucy’ an Ionesco-like juxtaposition of the commonplace and the mad” (Rose, 1985, pg. 108)
Rose also discusses the characterization, and how comedy rests on it. Having a familiar character type is useful as an audience member as you get used to their behaviours, and are able to understand their thoughts and decision making easily. A characters personality can bring comfort to audiences, without being able to understand their motivations, they can feel uneasy. “This has the effect of making sitcom characters generally warm, friendly, and likeable, even if their point of departure is less admirable (Rose, 1985, pg. 117)
This absurdity in behaviour is a link we can take from ‘Lucy’ and apply to Bottom.
The main characters are not desirable nor do they convey a sense of a role model in any way, however, with the personality traits of the characters, we are able to at least sympathise with them on some level.
Bottom follows the lives of two social outcasts sharing a flat in London, on their quest to escape their down-trodden lives, but they always end up back to being bums (MyLondon, 2019). This idea gets particularly more ludicrous when you factor in the names of our two main characters are Richard (Richie) Richard and Edward (Eddie) Hitler, comically unusual names that if referenced in real life would make you surely double-take.
Importantly it’s the detail of the very lives they lead which must be the most intriguing factor of the series. “They do nothing except sponge off the government, smack each other over the head with frying pans, offend people and most importantly have an absolute laugh. It provides perfect escapism from our busy lives.” (MyLondon, 2019)
From the very first episode, Richie and Eddie walk through the front door of their flat, they are talking about another unsuccessful night trying to ‘hook-up’ with women. As it turns out, they had just been out to a Lesbian bar, and hadn’t realised. The presence of an audience track, also known as a laugh track, is immediately evident. This is a way sitcom allows itself to distance itself from soap/drama television. “The audience track contains applause, gasps, sighs, even whistles… the sitcoms audience track Is another marker of immediate presence as it encourages viewers to experience the program as if they were members of that audience that witnessed it live” (Butler, 2010, pg. 194)
The audience reaction and ability to experience it as if they are within the audience is inherently a very theatre take on the genre.
Bottom is set in the time period in which is broadcast in the 1990s. It was therefore the decision to exaggerate the untidy and unhygienic nature of their living standards to ridiculous levels, all for comedic effect. “The 1990s began with a severe recession… leading to higher unemployment.” (Economics.org). Bottom related this in its main characters living a filthy lifestyle, jobless and without hope for the future.
The description of the show – in particular “they always end up back to being bums” – matches Mintz’s definition of the sitcom “episodes involving recurrent characters within the same premise… each week we encounter the same people in essentially the same setting. The episodes are finite; what happens in a given episode is generally closed off” (Mintz, citied in Mills, pg. 26, 2005). One week they are playing a game of chess which results in them breaking chairs and television sets over each other (Bottom, ‘Culture’, 1992) the next week, they are dealing with such a delightfully named off-screen character as dodgy Bob McMayDay, the most violent travel agent in the world (Bottom, ‘Break’, 1995). “Explosions and fires were also commonplace” (Lewisohn, via RadioTimes, 1998, pg.95) – all without a word uttered about the previous week, next week.
The ‘reset button’ is an ideal way of allowing audiences to engage with the show, many sitcoms utilise this. In the same way that you wouldn’t start a film halfway through, you’d reset and start at the beginning. In sitcoms such as these, there are no long term effects to characters’ lives
Bottom was written by Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson – who play the main characters Richie and Eddie respectively – and by this time had found success in an alternative style of comedy, a style which diverted from more traditional and mainstream styles of comedy at the time – usually featuring sexist and racist material. Mayall in particular lauded for his work “at the centre of Britain’s anarchic alternative comedy scene in the 1980s as he created a series of slapstick comic TV characters” (Shephard, via Britannica, 2014)
Additionally, with the creation of The Young Ones (1982 – 1984) Mayall particularly was able to establish a style of individuality that was just more than an idea for a show. “It gloriously reflected the free-bashing, high-octane, in-your-face, unpredictable quality of ‘alternative’ comedy that turned its back on all the old, established rules and clichés of television” (Lewisohn, via RadioTimes, 1998, pg. 740).
Programmes such as this established an expectations for those fans of Rik Mayall, audiences warming to the idea of the ‘alternative’ comedy scene and an actor who represented it so prominently – Mayall “In his Young Ones incarnation, the character’s snootiness and militancy seemed to sum up the iconoclasm of the whole alternative comedy movement”. (Lewisohn, via RadioTimes, 1998, pg.740).
However important performance is, it’s important to consider talent that is representing the show. Mills notes “Actors such as Ronnie Barker can move from series-to-series… carrying with them not only the connotation of comedy, but also a certain kind of comedy… In Barker’s case this is a much more mainstream, family connotation than an actor such as Rik Mayall” (Mills, 2005, pg. 53).
What’s important to note about this quote about performance is the actor behind that performance. It simply would be distracting to see such an unpredictable and wayward actor such as Mayall taking the role of a loving father figure of three, or even indeed, replacing the irreplaceable Ronnie Barker as the tight fisted shopkeeper himself, Arkwright; it would perhaps be damaging to the name of the actor and the show to include such a miscast, it simple would not appeal. “So while performance is to sitcom, who performs affects the ways in which programmes are understood and the expectations that come with them” (Mills, 2005, pg. 53)
Perhaps most interestingly, is a link in the humour of the show and the famous family-friendly global phenomenon Tom and Jerry.
Rather than a particular actor becoming recognisable for their work and contribution to their specialist genre, this particular link is buried within the style of comedy used in different shows. Slapstick is employed and used repeatedly in Bottom, “they inhabit a cartoonish world or meticulously executed physical cruelty… forever doomed to hit, slice, puncture and set fire to each other” (Medhurst, 2007, pg.124). This could be a quote straight out of a Tom and Jerry show description, but applies to a totally different demographic years later.
With this, Bottom has been able to establish a style that resonates with a period of an audience members life by recreating that sense of cartoon violence they once enjoyed in their youth. “Children see the artifice and excess of cartoon language in a way that enables them to distinguish between the harmlessness of Tom and Jerry’s slapstick violence and the harmfulness of everyday brutalities in real life” (Wells pg.184, citied in Creeber, 2015). Additionally, supporting this claim, “the cartoon violence was just the tonic for someone who felt they’d outgrown Tom and Jerry but hadn’t really.” (Telegraph, 2016).
In addition to this, the casting, performance and slapstick work hand-in-hand to activate the genre as a sitcom. Audiences have come to expect violence on a cartoonish level to be usually portrayed by male actors. “Punishment to the male body is forever funny, and is at the core of slapstick (Dale, 200, citied in Mills, 2005, pg.118).
It would be a very different show to see one man and one woman in Bottom rather than two men, and Bottom embraces it’s physicality and slapstick, taking it to extreme levels “narratives conceived to allow as much physical abuse between the characters as possible…Violence towards Women, enacted by another character, is rarely presented as funny, and certainly not an inoffensive comic staple as it is for men” (Miles, 2005, pg.118)
Moreover, the show utilises it’s awareness of the audience and genre is by incorporating drag into one particular episode. “The fact that a man in a dress is funny itself, without any necessary narrative contextualising and justification, shows how ingrained and normalised masculinity is” (Mills, 2005, pg.120)
In the episode Break (1995) Eddie (Ade) is required to wear drag after the two steal a hotel reservation meant for a man and a woman. The once womanizing, binge-drinking, foul-smelling, Eddie Hitler is now all of those things, but is now trying to conceal his identity as a lady – hilarity for the audience – and of course, the show carries on as normal.
This links back to sitcoms routes in theatre as actors in Shakespeare comedies “dress as the opposite sex” (Mills, 2005, pg.119)
Although in this particular example we do have context as to why Eddie is having to wear a dress, the unexpected, and unpredictable nature lends itself well to the characters world of having such ludicrous things happen.
In conclusion, Bottom activates the sitcom genre by its use of well-established talent such as Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, combining them with narrative tropes that connect with an audience that are well acquainted with their style of comedy. Plus, the wild and wacky cartoonish delivery of violence may remind them of classic cartoon entertainment.
Utilising an audience track, it distinguishes itself from soap-opera television, and allows the audience to feel included and up-to-date.