Alternative Comedy and Resistance to ‘Thatcher’s Britain’

Abstract

This chapter foregrounds a central dilemma between the ‘success’ of alternative comedy in promoting certain values in the mainstream of UK political culture, e.g. equality, political correctness, and a potential for ‘recuperation’ of such resistance as the critical edge is superseded by TV friendly irony. Here comedy takes on an avowed sense of political identity, questioning social attitudes and orienting against neoliberalism.