Can Miranda Hart and Sarah Millican finally prove women are funny? Jennie Pritchard splits her sides finding out.
The past couple of years has seen the emergence of some great female comics: women taking centre stage in British comedy, outside a token appearance on Mock the Week or QI. The US also has more than its fair share of spectacular female talent, from 2011’s film Bridesmaids, to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s riotous hosting of the Golden Globes, not to mention the phenomenal Girls which has just started its second series on HBO.
However, women in the public eye are also facing a barrage of abuse and criticism. Comment threads following videos and interviews with women in the media, particularly funny women, are usually cesspits of unfunny insult-slinging, or downright sexist abuse. Disliking a certain style of comedy is personal taste, but female comedians and comic actors seem to provoke a certain kind of venomous, hateful vitriol. And of course there’s that archaic, insulting question which never ceases to be asked: are women as funny as men?
Miranda Hart and Sarah Millican are currently proving the question redundant. Hart’s show Miranda is in its third series and Millican’s The Sarah Millican Television Programme is another welcome blast of originality. Yet Hart has recently come under fire, accused of misogyny. That’s right, Andrew Billen of The Times deemed Miranda misogynistic and founded in self-loathing, because… Why? The central character has faults? How odd that all the hundreds of sitcoms which feature a flawed male character are rarely, if ever, accused of being offensive to men.
Miranda may be lots of things, but misogynistic is not one of them. For many Hart’s gloriously silly slapstick is a ceaseless joy, an antidote to the cynicism and irony of many sitcoms today. Sure, Miranda is tall, socially inept and unattractive by the FHM definition, but she is also exhilaratingly confident. It’s a relief to see a programme where it is the women who are allowed to act like idiots and get laughs, while the men look on, rolling their eyes. Patricia Hodge, playing Miranda’s controlling mother Penny, is sensational: one of the best representations of a woman over forty currently on TV. It’s just fun – ‘such fun!’ Admittedly the show might be a little repetitive, but people falling over will always be funny, and Hart’s warmth and wit will surely continue to endear her to the masses.
Sarah Millican is yet to be accused of a fictional offence against womankind, but is often tarred with the sweeping generalisation that she only talks about being a woman. What’s on television is actually more her concern and she makes fond yet filthy jokes at the expense of her guests, the likes of Noel Edmunds and Shane Ritchie.
Unlike some male interviewer-comedians, this is all done with an overarching sense of complicity; when Millican makes fun of her guests, she also criticises herself with a mischievous giggle and an infectious grin. So what if she occasionally mentions “woman stuff” in her stand-up? It’s actually incredibly refreshing to have someone on telly joke about the things you laugh about with your friends, however unladylike and crude.
Ultimately Hart and Millican possess something which is absent from the demeanour of many male comics; they give off a humble appreciative air of being allowed to have their time in the spotlight, of having the opportunity to make people laugh. They acknowledge the rarity and value of being women with a voice, and they bloody well make the most of it.
Miranda is on BBC One on Mondays at 9pm.