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Paul Whitehouse's Happiness (BBC 2) is part of that newish genre, the situation tragedy, or sitraj as I think of it. Other recent examples include the excellent Roger, Roger and How Do You Want Me? Of course all sitcoms had elements of tragedy. Hancock, we knew, would never find gentility. Steptoe Jr would always be a rag-and-bone man. The unspoken joke behind Dad's Army was that if the Wehrmacht had landed they would have cut down that lot like a lawn strimmer meeting a family of dormice.
But in a sitraj, the misery is right up there in the foreground. Whitehouse's character Danny is one of those middleaged men who is facing a genuine midlife crisis, or eight. His second wife has just died, run over on a zebra crossing by a milk float. (Even that is a little shameful, reminiscent of Graham Greene's story about the man who can't tolerate the fact that his father was killed by a falling pig.) As the writer and the voice of Dexter, a kick-boxing, nursing, Plasticine bear, he is constantly upstaged by his own creation. The dysfunctional friend or family member is an important part of sitcom (Sid James, Steptoe Sr, Hyacinth Bucket's brother-inlaw) and in sitraj you need plenty of...