British TV – Bitch Flicks

‘Desmond’s’: Roots, Culture, and the Black U.K. Experience

What makes ‘Desmond’s’ unique is its layered and often nuanced portrayal of immigrant Afro-Europeans and their assimilating progeny that are more closely connected to their African roots than any African American TV show I’d ever seen. It also has a cross representation of class in Black British society by showing retired, working class, upper-middle class, college-educated, college-bound, and not college-bound Black people interacting together all the time. Not only are different classes intermingling, but there are also four series regulars who are white, and their whiteness is not the punchline of tired racial jokes.

Desmond's: DVD Collection Seasons1-4 — *Desmond’s*: DVD Collection Seasons 1-4

Written by staff writer Lisa Bolekaja as part of our theme week on Black Families.

The first Black family sitcom (with under-aged children) I ever saw on TV was Good Times. For the majority of Black Americans raised in the 70s, The Evans Family was supposedly America’s first real exposure to a Black nuclear family on television, albeit one in extreme poverty living in the projects. I distinctly remember my mother and step-father sitting down with me to watch people who looked like us eating grits, turnip greens, or ribs on an old second –hand kitchen table the way we ate our own regular southern foods. Black families were such a rarity on television that Good Times became event viewing–the original must-see-TV in my neighborhood. The Evans family wasn’t as rich as The Brady Bunch, but they did go through comedic shenanigans that were solved at the end of the episode.

At the time I wasn’t aware of the problems actors James Amos and Esther Rolle dealt with trying to focus more attention on the family and not the stereotyped antics of J.J. (White producers and white writers wanted to up the ante on the clownish, uneducated, slapstick behavior of J.J, who eventually became the main focus of the show.) Good Times still had a nostalgic place in my heart. I used to own a Jimmy Walker J.J. Evans doll where you pulled the string in his back, and the toy would yell “Dyn-o-mite!” back at you. Even today, if TV Land or Centric plays re-runs, I will stop and watch it. On the heels of Good Times, came What’s Happening? and of course, the 80s brought the NBC savior/juggernaut, The Cosby Show, the 90s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and in the new millennium, The Bernie Mac Show, Everybody Hates Chris, and now Black-ish.

But I’m going to write something that may hurt some Black Americans’ feelings.

The best Black Family sitcom in my non-humble opinion is a little-known gem from across the pond that debuted in 1989. A show about a Black British/West Indian family running a barbershop in Peckham, London, it was called Desmond’s (created by Trix Worrell) and you need to buy it on DVD and watch it right now.

Desmond’s on the surface looks like any early 90s family comedy that served up plenty of corny jokes, familiar plots we’ve seen in similar family shows, and raucous studio audience laughter. What makes Desmond’s unique is its layered and often nuanced portrayal of immigrant Afro-Europeans and their assimilating progeny that are more closely connected to their African roots than any African American TV show I’d ever seen. It also has a cross representation of class in Black British society by showing retired, working class, upper-middle class, college-educated, college-bound, and not college-bound Black people interacting together all the time. Not only are different classes intermingling, but there are also four series regulars who are white, and their whiteness is not the punchline of tired racial jokes.

West Indians and West Africans on the same show. Porkpie (Ram John Holder), Desmond (Norman Beaton) and Matthew (Gyearbuor Asante)

I was lucky to catch Desmond’s in the early 90s when Black Entertainment Television (BET) started airing re-runs in the states. I was cooking a box of mac ‘n cheese and flipping channels when I saw some Black actors I didn’t recognize. I had to turn the volume up to hear their voices because their patois sounded like the Jamaican folks I partied with at my local reggae dancehall. I watched every single episode BET aired.

Desmond Ambrose (Norman Beaton) was a popular calypso singer back in his native Guyana who immigrated to England with his beloved wife, Shirley Ambrose (Carmen Munroe). Desmond’s plan was always to work and live in England and then retire back to his native Guyana and build his dream home. Once settled in Peckham, Desmond and Shirley had three socially mobile children who were part of a wave of first generation Guyanese/Black Brits.

Tony (Dominic Keating), Desmond Ambrose (Norman Beaton0 and Shirley Ambrose (Carmen Munroe) — Tony (Dominic Keating), Desmond Ambrose (Norman Beaton) and Shirley Ambrose (Carmen Munroe)

Shirley Ambrose has spent more than half her life in Peckham, and has no desire to return to Guyana. Her children are British, and she often fusses with Desmond about not sharing his dream of returning back home. Home is with her children in this new country. Their oldest son Michael (Geoff Francis) is a bank manager, a Buppie, and social climber. He fancies himself cultured, classy, and sometimes above his West Indian Roots. The middle child, Gloria (Kim Walker) is a college student, fashionista, and later in the series a professional writer who always calls Michael out on his pretentious behavior. Then there’s the youngest son Sean (Justin Pickett, my favorite), the first black teen geek and computer coder I’d ever seen on TV. What makes Sean special is that he is a computer whiz without being the cliché nerd, and he is a rapper and a D.J. He is smart, cool, and respectful of his parents and culture. Imagine Will Smith’s Fresh Prince combined with Carlton sans the corniness of both characters and you get an authentic Sean. So refreshing.

Sean (Justin Pickett) explaining coding to his father Desmond on those big ass old school desk tops in the 90's. — Sean (Justin Pickett) explaining coding to his father Desmond on those big ass old school desk tops in the 90s.

Desmond’s takes place inside a barbershop in a sometimes rough working-class neighborhood. The Ambrose family (without Michael) resides in an apartment above the shop, and three of their regular friends (and occasional customers) hang out there most of the day with them. One regular is Desmond’s Guyanese childhood friend and former band mate Porkpie (Ram John Holder). Another regular is Lee (Robbie Gee), a boxer and unofficial adopted son who often peddles goods inside and outside the shop. Still another drop-in is a West African from Gambia named Matthew (Gyearbuor Asante) who brings in his African culture and a grand sense of African pride. Matthew is also a university student who never seems to ever finish his studies, although he has been a student for many years. What I enjoy about Matthew is a new view of African characters. Often in Black American shows (especially the early TV shows in the 70s) African characters are made fun of, whether it is their names, food, or skin color. They are often depicted as being poor and overly grateful to be away from their homelands. Not Matthew. He has a superior air about him and comes from a wealthy family. He’s always chiding the West Indians that they need to respect their elder culture (Africa), while at the same time giving off the impression that he is delighted that West Indians have retained so many Africanisms in their own New World culture.

Matthew sharing an old African saying with Desmond, Shirley and Sean.

Desmond’s allowed me a peek into the world of my Black cultural cousins who wound up in England instead of the States. I learned West Indian history, I saw how Blacks over there also code-switched their language when they spoke among themselves and among outsiders. One minute the family would speak British Standard Vernacular English, and the next minute, flip into Guyanese patois, or even Black British Rude Boy Slang. This code-switching reminded me of my own people in the States where many of us speak Standard American English at work, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home or among friends, and can also slip into Southern Creole languages like Gullah (Geechee), or New Orleans Creole.

While Desmond’s was re-running in America, I was listening to a lot of British neo-soul music like Soul II Soul, Sade, Loose Ends, Tricky, Omar, The Young Disciples, and especially the songs of Caron Wheeler the singer whose voice put Soul II Soul’s sound on the map. Listening to Caron Wheeler’s album U.K. Blak, which was the title track, I was given a mini-history of how so many new West Indian immigrants landed in English ports. Caron Wheeler sang:

Many moons ago
We were told the streets were paved with gold
So our people came by air and sea
To earn a money they could keep
Then fly back home
Sadly this never came to be
When we learned we had just been invited
To clean up after the war
Back in ’49 never intended to stay here
Who could afford to leave these shores

UK Blak, ending the silence now
UK Blak, letting you know that we’re about

The opening credit sequence of Desmond’s shows actual black and white film footage of Blacks from the Caribbean on large British ships sailing into English ports after WWII. I watched Desmond’s, listened to Caron Wheeler sing some history to me, and felt an immediate connection to the characters on the show. I love Desmond’s more than most popular Black American shows I grew up with. It tells me more about my own history and roots from the viewpoint of my figurative cousins across the big water. Think about that for a minute. Every African American from enslaved America was merely one random port stop from being British, Brazilian, a Caribbean Islander, or a North American. Like Desmond’s people, African Americans migrated too, going North and West within America, leaving family back home in the deep south. Like Desmond’s people, we have strong roots in the south that some of us want to cut off and forget, and some of us have actually returned to retire there. A reverse migration. A returning to the old culture that sustained so many of us in the dark days from the Civil Rights struggles and back beyond that.

The younger siblings, Gloria and Sean, showed me that there was a cultural exchange of Black music and styles from the U.S. From the posters on their bedroom walls of Ice Cube, The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff, Whitney Houston, and mentions of Michael and Janet Jackson, to the Malcolm X hats and T-Shirts that marked the debut of Spike Lee’s X. Rap music mixed into the ragamuffin sounds of Black England. The cultural cousins have been keeping in touch. As young Blacks in the States were calling out sexism and homophobia in rap culture, an episode of Desmond’s demonstrated that it was an issue in British rap too. Sean has to push back on his best friend Spider for selling rap/dancehall mash-up music that is sexist, misogynistic, and homophobic, making Sean’s openly gay university buddy Bernie feel uncomfortable around the school. Sean demands a safer space for his gay and female friends, even if it means cutting Spider out of his inner circle.

Gloria (Kim Walker) and Sean listen to their father impart West Indian wisdom to their Bicultural upbringing.

The show itself is available for purchase on DVD, but for only Seasons 1-4. A few years ago I was hunting for any copies of the series last two seasons. Luckily, I found Seasons 5 and 6 on YouTube. Desmond’s was a show that could’ve gone on for at least three more seasons. Unfortunately, the star of the show, Norman Beaton, died on a trip to visit his family in Guyana. There was an attempt to keep a part of the Desmond’s legacy alive with a spin-off series called Porkpie with Ram John Holder, but it was short-lived, lasting only two seasons.

Actor Norman Beaton (Desmond Ambrose) passed away after Season 6.

Ram John Holder was given his own spin-off series called "Porkpie" — Ram John Holder was given his own spin-off series called “Porkpie”

Just to entice any potential new fans, you will spot some familiar faces in some of the episodes. The very cute white barber/ stylist Tony was played by Dominic Keating who later went on to star on the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise.

A brother-in-law of Gambian forever-student Matthew was played by Joseph Marcell, who later gained American fame playing Geoffrey the butler on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

And for some real fun, if you watch an early episode called Veronica, you will see the child actress Amma Assante who grew up to direct the phenomenal movie Belle from last year.

Bet you didn't know Amma Asante, director of "Belle" was a child actress who appeared on "Desmond's" — Bet you didn’t know Amma Asante, director of *Belle,* was a child actress who appeared on *Desmond’s*

Do yourself a favor. Come ‘round the shop and listen to some Soca. There will be tea and toast and good times. I promise.

Tea, toast, and good times with the Ambrose clan and their extended family.

‘Chef!’: The Perfectly Imperfect Marital Eroticism of Janice and Gareth

Gareth does not “happen to be Black”; the pressure on him to conform to white culture, to avoid limiting his own narrative, mirrors the show’s own need to conform to that culture, to avoid limiting its audience. This conflict is slyly embodied in plausibly deniable food metaphor.

Janice and Gareth's stressful ideal — Janice and Gareth’s stressful ideal

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Black Families.

If I had to point to one screen marriage that shaped my childhood ideas about marriage’s potential as positive partnership and intense intimacy, it would be Janice and Gareth Blackstock on the first two seasons of the British sitcom Chef!. The original writer, Peter Tilbury (working from star Lenny Henry’s concept), left after two seasons, and the final season’s crude divorce drama only highlights what made Tilbury’s vision so brilliant. In the final season, Janice is not a fully rounded partner, but an obstacle and challenge for Gareth. Where her constructive criticism was a form of protective support, it is now scornful nagging and abandonment. Her desire for a child is now her main motivation and source of conflict with Gareth. The third season’s Janice is the irritating, castrating and baby-crazy screen wife that viewers have seen a thousand times before; the contrast illustrates everything that was subtle and human about Janice’s original characterization.

From a racial perspective, Chef! might be compared to The Cosby Show, as portraying an exceptionally talented, sophisticated, and wealthy Black family. But where the Huxtables effortlessly “have it all,” somehow combining two careers and a large family with inhumanly minimal friction, the Blackstocks acknowledge that their lifestyle demands real sacrifice. Janice had to leave a flourishing career in the city to accompany Gareth, after his promotion to head chef of a prestigious, rural restaurant; she is outspokenly frustrated and eager to work again. When the restaurant has financial problems, the couple must sacrifice their house and car to buy it, admitting that the resulting tension “feels like you’ve eaten a lorry-load of All-Bran.” They are childless, and the conflict between their workaholic careerism and their hopes for children is openly explored. Each has a defensive facade of toughness and hyper-competence, but their scenes together explore the toll that this facade takes and the vulnerability it conceals. The sitcom’s central comedy is the farcical exaggeration of Gareth’s intimidating facade – “totally driven. We’re talking severe personality disorder here” – and its contrast with his inner softness. The perfection of Janice and Gareth’s marriage is not based on a perfection of their lives or personalities, but on their shared concept of marriage as a space of solidarity that accepts flaws and conflict.

That model of acceptant marriage is the bedrock of the show. In the opening credits, the lyrics “I’m the best, so do not test, the top of my profession” play over a montage of Gareth’s hyper-competence – working out and preparing the immaculate tools of his culinary trade – broken only when he briefly strokes the glossy picture of Janice that hangs in his locker, as though for reassurance. This image of her face comes before Gareth’s own face, underlining her importance to the show. Janice’s character can be read as rewriting the Sapphire stereotype, exploring the loving foundations of constructive criticism and the emotional intimacy of openly expressed frustration. Gareth’s farcical posturing can equally be read as parodying hypermasculine models of Black manhood, as much as bad-tempered celebrity chefs, while his sensitivity and capacity for nurture is his character’s true strength. The show’s unusually erotic portrait of monogamous marriage compares with the marital eroticism of Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” which, along with the self-identified feminist’s proud adoption of Mrs. Carter as a title, radically rejects stereotypes of absent fathers in the Black community. John Legend’s “All of Me” video showcases similar aesthetics of marital eroticism, while that song’s description of loving “perfect imperfections” is a good summary of Janice and Gareth’s relationship. But reducing their relationship to a cultural trend of Black marital eroticism would be far too limiting: it is, quite simply, television’s most perfectly imperfect marriage.

As well as the strain of hyper-competence, Chef! confronts the cultural tensions in narratives of Black exceptionalism, mainly through Everton, Gareth’s never-really-liked-you-anyway-probably-flush-your-head-down-the-toilet-as-soon-as-look-at-you old schoolmate, who shares Gareth’s working class, British Caribbean background. Though Janice and Gareth help Everton, by offering him an unpaid apprenticeship in Gareth’s kitchen, it is clear that this is owing to the restaurant’s desperate finances, with Gareth particularly reluctant to take Everton on. On the surface, Everton fills the familiar role of goofy sidekick. Actually, although his unfamiliarity with restaurant etiquette causes some farce, he is capable and acquires skills steadily as the series progresses. The comical embarrassment that Everton causes Gareth is less a reflection of his foolishness than of his culture.

Gareth squirms at Everton’s pride in Caribbean cooking, having fully internalized cultural messages about the superior prestige of French haute cuisine and frequently boasting of his two Michelin stars. He automatically assumes that Everton is a “dope-head” (the marijuana belongs to a white co-worker) and fiercely attacks him for it, separating himself from that cultural stereotype with a barked “I hate dope-heads!” Gareth’s intense rejection of his own culture is rooted in personal conflict with his parents. Again, this tension is expressed in culinary terms: his mother’s neglect is illustrated by her incompetence as a chef, or perhaps by Gareth’s bitterness over that incompetence, while his father abandons the family for a short-order cook. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, young Gareth answered “an orphan.” Janice becomes insecure when Gareth shows admiration for the cooking skills of pretty, blonde sous-chef Lucinda, though he is otherwise “Mr. Monogamy.” Dominant stereotypes of Black life – absent fathers, neglectful mothers and attraction to blondes – are all slyly embodied by the show’s cooking metaphors, giving complicated symbolic resonance to Gareth’s determination to master society’s most prestigious cuisine.

Gareth’s broadly accented Caribbean father is introduced in the first season’s “Rice and Peas” finale, goading Gareth into trying to cook Caribbean food. The master chef is humbled by being forced to learn from Everton, highlighting his detachment from his roots, while Everton reveals a genius for Caribbean cookery that rivals Gareth’s own skill at haute cuisine. By the end of the second season, Everton has become a confident chef who combines Caribbean influences and haute cuisine, unapologetically owning his cultural identity but refusing to be limited by it. However, this is only made possible by the opportunity the Blackstocks have given him; their strained and self-conscious hyper-competence is a necessary first step to wider cultural change. Through Gareth’s complex relationship with Everton, Chef! foregrounds the tensions of so-called “choc ice” (British for “oreo”) cultural positions, without simplistically condemning them. The show’s Wikipedia entry commends Chef! as “a landmark programme in the sense that Henry plays a character who just happens to be black; the fact of his blackness does not limit the narrative or the audience the series reaches.” This misses the point. Gareth does not “happen to be Black”; the pressure on him to conform to white culture, to avoid limiting his own narrative, mirrors the show’s own need to conform to that culture, to avoid limiting its audience. This conflict is slyly embodied in plausibly deniable food metaphor.

Back to Janice. Janice is all kinds of awesome as a character. A brilliant businesswoman, she is practical in all the ways the flamboyant artist, Gareth, is not, but shares his preoccupation with status. Janice is hilariously open about her materialism, yet prepared to sacrifice everything for Gareth if absolutely, absolutely necessary. Both Janice and Gareth are self-conscious social performers, but the basis of their relationship is their shared recognition of that performance’s artificiality, by no more than a quirk of a smile or a raised eyebrow. Their affinity, beautifully shown in their common flaws as much as in their virtues, creates the deep understanding between them. Janice is strong, but this doesn’t prevent her from admitting weakness: “I’m going to be brave in a minute. But, just right now, I’m going to break down completely, OK? I don’t mean a dignified tear or a trembling lip, I’m talking wet, snotty bawling!” With a sharp-tongued wit of her own, Janice may often play the foil to Gareth’s shrieking manbaby, but she is allowed to be his equal in comedy as well as in business. Gareth is also allowed to be Janice’s equal in emotional vulnerability: “I’m not going to cry because I’m a big boy now, but if I wasn’t, or if I was a ‘New Man,’ we could be talking wet, snotty bawling here.”

The Blackstocks’ relationship is physically intimate; Janice’s frustration is a running gag as Gareth’s workload leaves him too tired for sex, but the couple’s sex life remains “well above average.” Indeed, jokes about Janice’s sexual frustration only highlight how much more sex she’s depicted getting than other sitcom wives. It is less spectacular intimacies, however, that make the relationship convincing: Lenny Henry and Caroline Lee Johnson capture the subtleties of body language that convey affection and mutual reassurance in long-term relationships. Secure in this foundation of bodily affection, the Blackstocks are free to argue and vent their frustrations openly. Much of their relationship’s conflict springs from Janice’s sense of being neglected by her workaholic husband; that is, it is fundamentally rooted in the pair’s deep love for each other. When the final season’s (male) writers attempted to create drama by escalating the couple’s rows into full-blown separation, they could do so only at the expense of Janice’s character, flattening her into unsympathetic coldness. While this season shows how important Janice is to Gareth, through his devastation when she leaves and his desperation to win her back, that demonstration was unnecessary. Chef! wasn’t another clichéd show about a man who doesn’t appreciate what he has until it’s gone. The co-dependence of Janice and Gareth was fundamental to all their interactions.

Such co-dependence may be criticized. Janice would struggle to pass a Bechdel test, as she relates so exclusively to Gareth, though I see this as reflecting her rural isolation and the sacrifices she has made for Gareth’s career. Janice regularly complains about her loneliness, career frustrations and feelings of neglect; the insufficiency of a life that revolves only around her husband is core to her role. Such a portrait, of female frustration with the confines of a dependent role, can be as valuable as portraits of ideal female solidarity and independence. Janice needs a sense of vocation, which she gains by managing Gareth’s restaurant. Janice also needs friends and interests beyond her husband, which is explicitly addressed in the Tilbury-scripted episode Private Lives. In the finale of Chef!, Gareth’s underlying issues, his cultural identity crisis, and neglect of his private life, are tackled as he must sacrifice a trip to Paris to fly instead to Jamaica with Janice and work on their relationship. But the (so very male) writers of the final season are mistaken to interpret Janice’s relationship as the source of her frustrations. It is Janice’s life that is constricting, as she shares Gareth’s conflict between her materialist ambition and her emotional needs. But her marriage is a model of mutual support and open communication.

This is classic “patriarchy hurts men, too”: if a woman is understood only in relation to men, this means her male partner must be unfairly burdened with sole responsibility for her entire psychological well-being. The fact that the (oh so painfully male) writers could see no solution to Janice’s problems but a choice between divorce or more sex, with a romantic holiday to Jamaica thrown in, points to deeper problems in our concept of relationships and female roles. A chance for Gareth and Janice to grow as individuals, within the supportive framework of a relationship that needed no repair, would have been the more perfect ending for this perfectly imperfect marriage.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVBSKVsr0a0″]

Janice and Gareth: they’re the best, so do not test.

Brigit McCone has unrealistically gendered catering expectations, since her father was the chef at home. She writes short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and she now lives off baked potatoes.

The League of Gentlemen: Drag and Transmisogyny in British Comedy

Written by Max Thornton.

Do you remember Work It? If you’ve spent the last year and a bit trying to scrub all memory of it from your brain, I don’t blame you and I’m sorry for reminding you of those ten excruciating days in January 2012 when ABC was airing a sitcom “about” (to quote its Wikipedia entry) “two men who must dress as women in order to keep a job in a bad economy.”

ABC president Paul Lee justified this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad show by saying: “I’m a Brit, it is in my contract that I have to do one cross-dressing show a year; I was brought up on Monty Python. What can I do?” His epic wrongosity on many levels notwithstanding, the man is right about one thing, and that is Britain’s bizarre, confusing obsession with drag. I am never quite sure if the cross-dressing that permeates British culture, from Python to Christmas panto, is a Rocky Horror-style celebration of diversity and queerness, or the basest form of “LOLOLOL A MAN IN A DRESS!!” transphobic humor. TV show The League of Gentlemen exactly straddles this line.

This is a local shop for local people. There’s nothing for you here.

The League of Gentlemen aired three short seasons and a Christmas special on the BBC between 1999 and 2002. I first encountered the show in late-night reruns and the 2005 feature film, which between them fueled an obsession strong enough for me to keep the theme music as my ringtone for a couple of years. It’s been a while, though, since I gave this show any thought (other than appreciating the creators’ nightmare-inducing follow-up project, Psychoville) – until last week, when I stumbled upon the happy knowledge that BBC Worldwide has made all of season one available on YouTube. LoG, though an influential powerhouse of modern comedy back in Blighty,is unfairly little-known outside of its country of origin, and I’ve had no luck hunting down seasons two or three (curse you, DVD box set that I for some reason left at my parents’ house!). However, the three hours that constitute season one provide quite enough fodder for reflection on their own.

The show centers on the strange, sinister, often very sad inhabitants of fictional Middle England town Royston Vasey. The unifying master plot of season one is the “New Road,” a highway being built to connect Royston Vasey with the wider world, and the range of responses from the locals; but really the focus is on the locals themselves, with their bizarre quirks and quiet desperation.

Nearly every character in Royston Vasey is played by the three performing members of the League (a fourth, Jeremy Dyson, stays off-camera): Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss, and Reece Shearsmith. Each adopts an impressive variety of personae, from creepy butcher to embittered vicar to obnoxious teen horror buffs to the iconic shopkeepers Tubbs and Edward. Almost all of the characters are grotesque (except for one or two of those played by Shearsmith, aka the good-looking one) – it’s not something that’s confined to the female characters for nasty transmisogynistic laughs, and frankly Shearsmith makes almost as attractive a woman as he does a man.

Reece Shearsmith: yep and also yep.

In a fascinating decision for a show whose entire female cast is played by men, one of the characters is a trans woman. Going into my rewatch, I was concerned about the handling of Royston Vasey’s local taxi driver Barbara (voiced by Pemberton): in 2013, the mainstream British media is still rifewith transmisogyny, and how much worse would it have been in a sitcom in 1999?

And at first it does seem like the only joke is going to be “HAHA A TRANS WOMAN, ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS??!!!” In Barbara’s first appearance, we see her cab’s exterior and hear a gruff voice speak. In the course of chatting with her passenger, she casually reveals that she buys dresses (laugh track!) and that she takes hormones and they have intimate effects (laugh track!). These early jokes are pretty grossly offensive: the camera pans over Barbara’s high heels, jewelry, and extremely hairy chest (for fuck’s sake), and we don’t even catch a glimpse of her face until the final episode of the season. Meanwhile Barbara cheerfully overshares details of her forthcoming bottom surgery to whoever happens to be in the cab. The cumulative effect is dehumanizing, othering, and pathologizing, reinforcing both the laziest transmisogynistic humor – she has a deep voice and a hairy chest (because trans women always just hang onto unwanted secondary sex characteristics), but she also wears dresses and heels! Hahahahahaha! – and the transphobic notion that trans people are somehow obscene, through being particularly inappropriate and overly obsessed with surgery and genitalia.

Lots of shots like this, but heaven forfend we see her face. We might think she was an actual human being.

But. If half the characters on your show are actually men in dresses, and if you’re making them funny by actually writing jokes for them, the hypocrisy and comedic paucity of relying on ugly “man in a dress” mockery of your trans character quickly become apparent. Although the transmisogyny never fully leaves (I suppose each week you want to catch new viewers up on the HIGH-larious conceit of a trans woman existing), the jokes definitely take on a kinder spirit as the season goes on. Witness this exchange, when Barbara tells snooty Mrs. Levinson about the “beast of Royston Vasey”:

Barbara: “They dug something up working on the new road.”

Mrs. Levinson: “Oh, Barbara, stop it. You’re giving me the willies!”

Barbara: “Well, you’re very welcome to mine – it’s coming off in a fortnight anyway.”

That’s a genuinely funny, non-hateful trans joke. What a shame the League didn’t write more like that.

On the upside, as much as Barbara’s propensity to graphic oversharing is played for transphobic laughs at her expense, the residents of Royston Vasey never seem that fazed by it. They are shown to be thoroughly accepting of Barbara, much more so than you might expect from a Middle England village on TV in 1999. When petty-minded Geoff, having been the butt of a homophobic joke he didn’t quite get, asks Barbara for clarification, he sighs, “I don’t know why I’m asking you – you’re a woman.” (Of course, that little moment of acceptance is promptly ruined by Barbara’s reply, “Not quite, Geoff. They’ve got to open me up first, along the base of the scrotum…”)

And the inevitable scene of awkward sexual encounter between Barbara and out-of-towner Ben is written with surprisingly little transphobia. I mean, it still relies on some pretty disgusting tropes of trans women’s supposed excessive sexual aggression and obsession with genital configuration, but Ben’s dialogue in the scene is remarkably free of trans panic. In fact, every line he speaks could be recontextualized without change to a scene with a cis woman to whom he wasn’t attracted.

These are minuscule successes, but then I have very, very low expectations for mainstream media depictions of trans women – especially in a comedy, especially in the last century (the last 14 years constitute a long time in the advance of trans rights). The thing is, The League of Gentlemen is at its core not a hateful show (unlike certain of its imitators). There’s a sketch portraying the relationship between a pampered rich woman and her maid, which skewers British class relations at the expense of the privileged. There’s a character whose specialty is finding people with disabilities and talking well-meaning but appallingly ignorant drivel at them until he’s dug himself deep into a chasm of offensiveness. There’s an acting troupe whose educational play on acceptance of gay people is a masterclass in cluelessly paternalistic fauxgressive claptrap. In general, LoG excels at zeroing in on Middle England’s most small-minded, unexamined fear and hatred of difference, particularly when it’s coated with a misguided and sanctimonious belief in one’s own tolerance. The case of Barbara is striking because it’s a rare failure to ridicule the right target.

But I sill love the show, and you should still watch it.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.