Sex and the Sitcom

Early sitcoms of the 1950s were family-orientated,eschewing sex and even the permissiveness of the Swinging Sixties did not extend to the genre,even though 'Till Death Us Do Part' featured adult issues. By the 1970s sitcoms usually dealt in double entendre (exemplified by 'Up Pompeii'),the exception being the short-lived 'Casanova 73' with Leslie Phillips as a sexual predator. 'George and Mildred' presented a frustrated wife whose husband was scared of sex,setting the stage for the likes of 'Butterflies' and 'Reggie Perrin',which,for all their farcical bases,had a serious tone. 'Ab Fab's Patsy and 'Birds of a Feather's Dorian were women in sexual control,like the girls in 'Men Behaving Badly',whose boyfriends were immature and desperate. Come the twenty-first century the likes of 'Gimme Gimme Gimme','Him and Her' and 'The In-Betweeners' show that anything goes and that comedy now probably pushes boundaries more than drama with regard to sexual matters.