ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The best comedy is, at heart, an exploration of our anxieties. A form of catharsis via other people's embarrassment. To steal from Mel Brooks: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Being an urbane gent, I'm very fond of sophisticated humour and satire, but nothing will ever crease me so powerfully or reliably as the public misfortune of others. Yes, Fleabag is edgy and honest and brutal, but have you seen that YouTube clip of the ageing rocker tipping over on his office chair?

The Goes Wrong Show, returning to BBC One this week, expertly mines that streak of hilarity through disaster. The premise is genius: an amateur theatre group stage a series of plays each week, soldiering on despite the sort of technical screw ups that would close most major theatres. Spun from a smash hit stage production, it's savvy take on the age-old popularity of the blooper reel, the writers understanding that we will always find it easier to identify with glorious failure than brilliant success. Most importantly, it's frequently the sort of funny that makes a grown man cry. (It's also the sort of funny that a grown man can share with his kids, with only the occasional moment of bawdy awkwardness.)

This is a precious thing in our current cultural moment, where comedies often seem to worry more about getting their audience onside than provoking them to laughter. As Stewart Lee put it in Content Provider, audiences used to laugh at his material, now they just agree furiously. In an age of microaggressions and language as violence, there is a wariness about the perceived cruelty inherent in comedy.

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