Alma’s (Not) Normal: Normalising Working-Class Women in/on BBC TV Comedy

Minor, LJ

Abstract

This article examines the BBC sitcom Alma’s Not Normal and its representation of white
working-class femininities in/on British TV comedy. After The Royle Family creator Caroline
Aherne’s death in July 2017, the BBC created a bursary in memory of the comedy star,
awarding £5,000 to the successful applicant to develop a pilot comedy script. Though open to
people of all backgrounds and genders, the three winners so far have been working-class
women – Sophie Willan, Amy Gledhill, and Kiri Pritchard-McLean – an important shift from
the recent success of female-fronted and female-authored middle-class comedies on the BBC
such as Miranda and Fleabag. This paper examines the award’s first winner: Boltonian
Sophie Willan and her series Alma’s Not Normal. While Phil Wickham argues that
contemporary working-class sitcoms in Britain display the ‘hidden injuries of class’,
something that is felt but no longer acknowledged, I contend that Willan exposes class
wounds by explicitly referencing and drawing attention to social issues in her TV show. More
specifically, I argue that, as a working-class woman in the North West, Willan uses comedy
to interrogate the intersections of class and gender. This textual analysis will then be used as
a framework to conceptualise the labour of working-class women in British television
comedy because class has been overlooked as a social category in contemporary scholarship
on feminism and humour.

Citation

Minor, L. (2023). Alma’s (Not) Normal: Normalising Working-Class Women in/on BBC TV Comedy. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 20(2), 137-161. https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2023.0665

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 6, 2022
• Publication Date: Apr 4, 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 30, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 20, 2023
• Journal: Journal of British Cinema and Television
• Print ISSN: 1743-4521
• Electronic ISSN: 1755-1714
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 137-161
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2023.0665
• Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2023.0665
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in the Journal of British Cinema and Television. The Version of Record is available online at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/jbctv.2023.0665