Introduction

The introduction establishes the volume’s aims to examine a genre often maligned as the nadir of British film production and marginalised as a last resort for the financially bereft industry during the 1970s. It offers a definition of terms (setting parameters that exclude adaptations of sketch comedies—such as the much-analysed Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and sets out the methodology of study (a brief summary of the source text, then the spinoff’s production history, commercial and critical reception and textual analysis). It traces the sitcom’s history from its origins in wartime British radio to a staple of television scheduling. It argues that this history is in concert with British film production, as the genre constitutes a persistent and important presence from the 1940s to the present day. It also posits that, with such longevity, the British sitcom spinoff film can be interpreted as following a generic ‘life cycle’. Thus, chapters will explore the ‘formative’ or ‘primitive’ stage where the genre’s characteristics are first established; then its ‘classic’ or ‘mature’ stage where, with its qualities refined, the genre is adjudged at its most secure for form and content; and finally its ‘mannerist’ or ‘decadent’ stage, when the genre adopts a consciously self-reflective and satirical mode. It is also argued that, as well as constituting a viable genre study, the sitcom spinoff film is a viable source for social history, with the often-stereotypical re-presentations of characters and events an (often blatant) ideological metonym for the concerns of wider British society, notably in issues of class, race, gender and sexuality.