Book review: British Television Animation 1997–2010: Drawing Comic Tradition

Animation Studies has arrived. More accurately, Animation Studies arrived some time ago, and there is little doubting the maturity and health of the discipline now, with the many hundreds of animation courses offered internationally, the wealth of scholarship published in blog, book and journal form, and the long-standing nature of those formal pillars that support such activity: ASIFA (since 1960), the Society for Animation Studies (since 1987), the fully Open Access and peer-reviewed Animation Studies Online (since 2006) and this journal (since 2006), to name but a few. But you already knew this. However, it is worth restating, because with such shared disciplinary confidence comes the individual conviction to pursue lines of enquiry beyond questions of definition and form. It is within this well-supported context that Van Norris sets out to cast critical light on what has been an underdeveloped area of study: contemporary British television animation. ¹ Pleasingly, and in characteristic fashion, Norris wastes little time in getting down to business.

Within the pages of British Television Animation 1997–2010: Drawing Comic Tradition (2014), this business relates to a mapping of the changing commercial televisual landscape, and attendant pressures that became increasingly pronounced in Britain in the late 20th century. Norris notes how during this period, ‘the British television industry was adjusting to the possibilities offered by the arrival of a non-terrestrial channel, Sky TV, in February 1989, and the opening out of the existing four-channel framework’ (p. 5). Consequently, what developed was ‘a notably more free market-style emphasis on the “viewer”, now cast more as “consumer” and from this reorganisation came more strain on the extant public service channels – Channel Four and the BBC – to justify their remit’ (p. 5). These factors, coupled with the genuinely paradigm-shifting impact of The Simpsons (1989–present), prompted a change in register for mainstream British television producers who were falling short of the levels of ‘sophistication, organisation and execution on display’ (p. 5) in The Simpsons, as well as many of the other animated and live action US comedy imports of that time. Norris neatly highlights the double-edged nature of this impact, with the success of The Simpsons affording both ‘revitalisation and containment for the television animation industry’ (p. 7). It is this notion of containment that proves most compelling throughout Norris’s study, and is evident in various forms in the featured case studies: Bob and Margaret (1998–2001), Crapston Villas (1998–2001), Stressed Eric (1998–2000), Monkey Dust (2003–2005), I Am Not an Animal (2004), Popetown (2005) and Modern Toss (2005–2007).

While there is not the space to provide a detailed breakdown of each chapter (rather, I encourage you to seek out Norris’s book in order to enjoy the full nuance of his work), it will be useful to sketch out their overarching ambitions. Chapter One offers a historical framework for interpreting the evolution of British television animation since the 1950s, with Norris identifying three overlapping and interlocking ‘Waves’. First Wave Animation is described as being characterised by a sense of fragmentation and functionality, whereby ‘“Individualists” liberated through the freedom of “poverty”’ (Bendazzi, 1994: 25 quoted by Norris, p. 23) operated across cinematic and televisual screens. Second Wave Animation, which Norris sees as an explicit reaction to First Wave Animation, ‘favours auteur-driven, politicised, independent work – in ethos and through its relation to industry – and, to wildly varying degrees, it bears an explicit imprint of a modernist, avant-garde impulse’ (p. 29). While, Norris argues, Third Wave Animation develops from the shows listed above and is reflective of the heavily marketised, politically acquiescent and nostalgically ironic mood that dominated the British television industry – and the wider British socio-political landscape – in the new millennium, it is this Third Wave that provides the main focus of Norris’s study.

Chapters Two through Five tackle a series of subjects and how they inform the development of animated British televisual comedy during the period in question. Chapter Two looks at the changing shape of the family in comedy shows leading up to and during the Third Wave. Here, Norris charts the centrality – and fetishisation – of the mythic, nuclear family unit to the situational comedy genre, through the live action transition from patriarchally-stilted sitcoms of the 1950s, through the more progressive yet still largely heteronormative sitcoms of the 1970s and 1980s, to the often fragmented and dysfunctional sitcom families of the present – arguably best represented in animated shows such as Daria (1997–2002), Duckman (1994–1997), King of the Hill (1997–2009), South Park (1997–present), and, of course, The Simpsons (p. 59). Clearly influenced by the familial formulas evident in The Simpsons, Norris notes how British Third Wave Animation shows returned on more than one occasion to the subject of dysfunctional families in a bid to replicate the success enjoyed by Sky’s US import.

Chapter Three places the emphasis on race and nostalgia, drawing on the example of Monkey Dust as a show and the newly launched BBC3 as a channel that, while being far from perfect, both sought to challenge social and political prejudices, through edgy scriptwriting and a commissioning ideology that promoted risk-taking, respectively. Norris remarks how in rejecting ‘the New Labour project, Monkey Dust was one of the few shows to express direct dissatisfaction with a political system and that marked it out as a unique project in a time of conformity’ (p. 113). However, in equal measure, the humour throughout Monkey Dust ‘was detailed from a resolutely prescribed male voice and lent the show a regressive tone’, which, although undesirable, ‘perfectly complemented the period’ (p. 98). This joining of dots, linking the shows in question and the prevailing socio-cultural and political contexts at the time of their production, is a real strength of Norris’s book and helps to anchor his analysis throughout.

In Chapter Four, Norris continues his juggling act, simultaneously analysing the metamorphosis of Channel Four as a champion of television animation, while at the same time considering the ways that contemporary male identity has been rendered more complex as a consequence of the positive gains made by the feminist movement throughout the late 20th century. Furthermore, Norris writes:

… if the early 1990s animation at Channel Four symbolized the tail end of Second Wave production where support was offered to both male and female authorship in an atmosphere of progression, inclusion and experimentation, then Modern Toss also exemplified a marked pulling-back of those particular impulses. (p. 117, emphasis added)

Much like Monkey Dust before it, for all of the superficial swagger, Modern Toss lacked depth and struggled to capture a reliable audience share, which ultimately could only result in one thing: cancellation. This pressure to sustain an audience – and profit margin – applied to all of the shows discussed, and Norris embraces this mode of analysis throughout, supplying useful measures such as licensing costs, production costs, and audience shares.

In Chapter Five, Norris identifies a crucial tipping point for mainstream animation production in Britain: Popetown – a show ‘defined in retrospect mainly through narratives of failure’ (p. 142). Produced by BBC3 at a cost of £2 million,

not only did the show never adequately exploit the freedoms afforded to its form as a political commentary, but its lack of critical, financial and ratings success meant that Popetown has since become significant though its role in effectively drawing to a close a period of institutional support for animation within British mainstream television. (p. 142)

What is hopefully clear from this very brief synopsis is that Norris maintains objectivity throughout, and his project is not one of canonisation or hagiography, but rather important historical reclamation and articulation.

Norris has produced an excellent book and it discomforts me to waste words on what are minor criticisms, but, in the hope that members of the academic publishing community are reading this review, it is worth noting the book’s lack of illustration. As a fellow author, I know very well the costs faced when attempting to secure image rights; however, Palgrave seem to be a particularly bad offender in this regard, and I wonder if, for the sake of an infinitesimal dent in their profit margin, financing the acquisition of a small number of illustrations might make their eye-wateringly priced publications more palatable. This theme of publisher thrift is also reflected in the number of typographical errors present in Norris’s book – which, to this reader, feels more like a misstep on the part of the copy editor rather than the author (again, my own work provides a record of this, and I raise this point in the hope that it might prompt publishers to re-invest themselves more earnestly in their chosen business).

In the conclusion to his study, Norris remarks: ‘In narrative animation contexts certainly, the deployment of non-indexical work appears to be (very briefly) in recession’ (p. 180). While this is an accurate picture of the more adult-focussed animation scheduling on British television, such a narrow view excludes the wealth of children’s animation that populates daytime British television, ranging from the more moralistic/didactic adventure comedies such as Peppa Pig (2004–present) and Toby’s Travelling Circus (2012–present), to the more anarchic comedy of Danger Mouse (1981–present) – which was re-launched in 2015 after a 23-year break. However, Norris’s attention to more adult-focussed mainstream animation is well founded and confronts the reader with an important characteristic of the mainstream: ‘It is a pertinent area that needs to be regulated, observed and quantified. Mainstream supplies a picture, often through the absence as much as the inclusions, of our culture, our society and our history’ (p. 3). Such words ring particularly true at this present moment when the mainstream media feels more like a perpetual carousel of misinformation and veiled xenophobia.

Unsurprisingly, given the book’s title, what you will find contained within its pages should you buy or borrow (or steal) it is a history. Furthermore, this is an important history: many of the shows discussed in Norris’s book are now increasingly difficult to access. Perhaps predictably, given their limited commercial success during their respective first runs, it is a challenge to find these shows through paid on-demand streaming services, DVD/Blu-ray and other physical media, full episodes and series on YouTube, and repeat screenings on television. So while these shows might feel like very recent history to some readers, for others, Norris’s words (and the low quality fragments that can be found on YouTube) might be the only point of access to this important period of British television animation. British Television Animation 1997–2010: Drawing Comic Tradition is an ambitious, well-researched and rewarding book; Norris should be proud of his work and you should certainly make the time to read it.