TV comedy

Television comedy had a presence from the earliest days of broadcasting. Among the earliest BBC television programmes in the 1930s was Starlight, which offered a series of guests from the music hall era, which often included singers and comedians. Similarly, many early United States television programs were variety shows including the Texaco Star Theater featuring Milton Berle; comedy acts often taken from vaudeville were staples of such shows.

The range of television comedy is extremely broad to the extent that anything under the heading comedy can be put before an audience through the medium of television. However, it is true to say that certain genres of comedy transfer to the small screen more successfully than others.

The situation comedy, or sitcom, has been the most common, successful and culturally significant type of television comedy. As the name suggests, these programs feature recurring characters placed in humorous situations. The first television sitcom was Pinwright's Progress, ten episodes being broadcast on the BBC between 1946 - 1947. Since the early 1950s with I Love Lucy in the U.S. and Hancock's Half Hour in the UK, sitcoms have always had a special place in the hearts of viewers and gathered highly devoted followers, as the familiar characters often become beloved. Often performed before a live audience (or, in some cases, a simulated live audience in the form of a laugh track), usually filmed or taped with a multiple-camera setup, and almost always a half-hour in length, sitcoms are seldom presented as realistic depictions of life but often generate honest humor through the relationships between and ongoing development of characters. Since the debut of I Love Lucy television has never been without sitcoms and they have often been the most popular and lucrative of all program types. Even in the early 2000s, the cast of the NBC sitcom Friends were among television's highest paid performers.

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