Linehan's sitcoms put small, furious people in rooms they cannot leave and watch them make everything worse. The jokes are built like clockwork, and the two programmes he is remembered for, Father Ted and Black Books, were written with someone else at the desk.
Fi1m perspective
A Graham Linehan episode begins with a small vanity or a small lie and ends with somebody explaining to a full room why none of it is their fault. The characters are not clever enough to escape the situation and not humble enough to stop trying, and the comedy is in the gap. In Black Books (2000) the room is a bookshop and the man who cannot leave it is Dylan Moran's Bernard, who hates his customers, his friends and the daylight in roughly that order. The insults are the bit everyone quotes. The better bit, as we said when we reviewed it, is the sight gags, which are given exactly as much care as the lines.
He came to television from journalism, at the Dublin magazine Hot Press, where he met Arthur Mathews. The pair spent the 1990s writing sketches for other people, including The Fast Show (1994), The Day Today and Brass Eye, before Father Ted (1995–1998), a surreal comedy about Irish priests that made his name. Big Train (1998) kept the partnership going in sketch form. After that the collaborators change: Black Books with Moran, then The IT Crowd (2006–2013), a workplace comedy he wrote and directed himself and his longest solo run. He co-wrote the first series of Motherland (2017) and directed its pilot.
What works is the machinery. His ensembles have clear, fixed dynamics, and a running gag will be paid off three episodes after you have forgotten it. He also writes for supporting players, and The IT Crowd in particular did a good deal for the careers of people who were not its leads. What does not always work is knowing when to stop. Watching Black Books we laughed a great deal, and then caught ourselves waiting for Moran's next outburst rather than following the scene in front of us, because the episode had decided that the only way forward was further. Tamsin Greig is the corrective: she keeps an exchange alive while the men are shouting, and the programme is better whenever it remembers she is there.
The sourness travels well. Motherland is fast and unkind about the school gate and has, as we put it, no heart to speak of, which suits his method exactly. The weaker patches have been the projects since Mathews, some of which have struggled to find the same chemistry; Count Arthur Strong (2013–2017) is the usual example. Linehan has said as much himself: "I don’t think I’ll ever have as pleasurable a writing experience as I did writing with Arthur."
Start with Black Books, two episodes at a sitting. The third is where the escalation starts to feel like a tic, and it is kinder to the programme, and to yourself, to come back tomorrow.
Biography
Graham Linehan is an Irish comedy writer and director. Born in Dublin in 1968, he began his career writing for television in the early 1990s, often in collaboration with Arthur Mathews. He co-created and wrote the sitcom Father Ted (1995–1998).
Linehan co-created Black Books (2000–2004) with Dylan Moran and created The IT Crowd (2006–2013). He has also written for The Fast Show, Brass Eye and Big Train (1998–2002), and contributed to Motherland and Count Arthur Strong. He has received multiple BAFTA awards and an International Emmy Award.
