British TV comedies : cultural concepts contexts and controversies Introduction: the aesthetics and politics of British tv comedy The 1950s and 1960s: beginnings of the British sitcom and the satire boom. Richard Kilborn (Stirling): A golden age of British sitcom Hancocks half hour and Steptoe and son Bernd Lenz (Passau): Your little game : myth and war in Dads army (1968 1977) Alexander Brock (Halle Saale): The struggle of class against class is a what struggle Monty Pythons Flying circus and its politics Mary Irwin (Northumbria): the rag trade: everybody out! gender politics and class on the factory floor The 1970s and 1980s: new loyalties histories and collective identities: post familiar paradigms. Nora Plesske (Braunschweig): Sambo and Snowflake : race and race relations in Love thy neighbour Paul Davies (Passau): You snobs! you stupid stuck up toffee nosed half witted upper class piles of pus! Basil Fawltys touch of class and other hotel matters in Fawlty towers Jürgen Kamm (Passau): Ignorant master capable servants: the politics of Yes minister and Yes prime minister Eckart Voigts (Braunschweig): Zany alternative comedy : The young ones vs. Margaret Thatcher Gerold Sedlmayr (Dortmund): The uses of history in Blackadder Deirdre Osborne (London): With some additional information from Stephen Bourne (London): Black British comedy: Desmonds and the changing face of television The 1990s: (un)doing gender and race. Jochen Petzold (Regensburg): Laughing at racism or laughing with the racists the Indian comedy of Goodness gracious me Rainer Emig (Mainz): Exploding family values lampooning feminism exposing consumerism: Absolutely fabulous Lucia Krämer (Hanover): Comic strategies of inclusion and normalisation in the Vicar of Dibley John Hill (London): Subverting the sitcom from within: form ideology and Father Ted Marion Gymnich (Bonn): The lady of the house speaking : the conservative portrayal of English class stereotypes in Keeping up appearances Angela Krewani (Marburg): Family life in front of the telly: The Royle family Brett Mills (Norwich): Old jokes: One foot in the grave comedy and the elderly The 2000s: Britcom boom new Britain = cool Britannia  Anette Pankratz (Bochum): Spin swearing and slapstick: The thick of it (2005 2012) Philip Jacobi (Passau): Life is stationary: mockumentary and embarrassment in The office (2001 2003) Joanna Rostek and Dorothea Will (Passau): From ever lusting individuals to ever lasting couples: Coupling (2000 2004) and emotional capitalism Oliver Lindner (Kiel): The comic nation: Little Britain and the politics of representation Stephan Karschay (Passau): Laughing in horror: hybrid genre and the grotesque body in Psychoville