UK sitcoms that mock intelligent people

[letsgobrian]

Seymour-era Last of the Summer Wine relied a lot on puncturing the character's status achieved by his education. And his misguided attempts to educate others.

[mjwilson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi5SJKI6RpU

[Captain Z]

Fresh Meat, maybe?

[ajsmith2]

Arthur Rudge from On the Buses is surely the most intelligent regular character, but gets mocked a lot (only slightly less than his wife does) on the show. Ok you could say it was mainly his pomposity getting pricked rather than intelligence per se but in the grimy, base Busesverse, intelligence and pomposity are pretty much conflated as the same thing.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

You see, a lot of these examples demonstrate that there's a fine line between sitcoms puncturing pomposity and pretence and taking the piss for being brainy.
" Fresh Meat" was mainly having a go at the student lifestyle,  although there were some genuinely clever types amongst the characters; that Scots Nerd and Vod, for example.

[Mister Six]

Are you talking about Uk sitcoms that mock the behaviour of different types of upper orders (including nouveau riche) or shows that directly mock intelligence or intellect of any character as being somehow unworthy and undesirable for ordinary people?

I'm talking about shows that undercut and mock intelligent characters, with their intelligence being their primary trait. I suppose it's often tied up in class/status stuff though. Things like Martin or Roz outwitting/undermining Frasier, or Penny (?) cutting through Sheldon's overthinking with common sense in The Big Bang Theory. Comedy that comes from the position that the intelligent aren't like "us" and are therefore figures of fun, and even if they're the protagonists and sympathetic, they need to be cut down to size by their ostensibly less intelligent colleagues and friends.

UK stuff seems to be more caught up in figures being pretentious and not as clever as they think they are (Mainwaring, as someone corrected me above) or being brought down because of their class (where intelligence is secondary but assumed - an upper-class politician or doctor). Intelligence isn't the primary comic trait or the main reason they need to be brought down a peg.

[mippy]

I was thinking Adrian Mole, but in the end he failed his A-levels and never went to university, unlike Pandora.

[Jumblegraws]

I'm talking about shows that undercut and mock intelligent characters, with their intelligence being their primary trait. I suppose it's often tied up in class/status stuff though. Things like Martin or Roz outwitting/undermining Frasier, or Penny (?) cutting through Sheldon's overthinking with common sense in The Big Bang Theory. Comedy that comes from the position that the intelligent aren't like "us" and are therefore figures of fun, and even if they're the protagonists and sympathetic, they need to be cut down to size by their ostensibly less intelligent colleagues and friends.

UK stuff seems to be more caught up in figures being pretentious and not as clever as they think they are (Mainwaring, as someone corrected me above) or being brought down because of their class (where intelligence is secondary but assumed - an upper-class politician or doctor). Intelligence isn't the primary comic trait or the main reason they need to be brought down a peg.

I think this hits upon why I find your premise a bit shaky, since I think of Martin, Roz and Penny (to the extent her character is kept consistent) as intelligent, but simply having different life priorities to their academically-inclined foils. I nominated Blackadder as an example of a character whose intelligence is frequently undercut by his circumstances, but I also think he has more in common with Roz than Frasier.

[dissolute ocelot]

I guess intelligence in British sitcoms is so tied up with going to the right school and being posh/middle-class, with class being such a big thing in British comedy. So, in The Inbetweeners, Will (Simon Bird) is certainly ridiculed for being studious, but that's connected with being comparatively posh and going to a public school (although posh and stupid also seems a common archetype these days - the English kid in Derry Girls seems pretty dim). There are also characters mocked for doing nerdy jobs like accountant (e.g. in Man Down where being an accountant is apparently nerdier than being a drama teacher).

And a lot of modern British shows don't put a lot of focus on intelligence: Fresh Meat has been mentioned, but despite characters with a wide range of backgrounds and social skills, they're all at university and if they fail miserably it's not because of their brains. Likewise something like Dead Pixels which is about nerds makes fun of their lack of social skills not their intelligence.

I guess as mentioned the scheming genius like Blackadder whose plans always fail pathetically is quite an archetype, but there you're mocking hubris not intelligence. (Although Frasier is as much hubristic as intelligent.)

[Jumblegraws]

Yeah, tbh I'm struggling to think of how you would send up intelligence in a way that wasn't also mocking arrogance, complacency, pompousness etc. But then I'm not very bright.

[Mister Six]

I think this hits upon why I find your premise a bit shaky, since I think of Martin, Roz and Penny (to the extent her character is kept consistent) as intelligent, but simply having different life priorities to their academically-inclined foils

Mm, it's true, there's an episode of Frasier where Martin keeps winning at chess and mocks Frasier's incredulity that a an ex-cop (ex-detective?) might possibly be rather good at thinking tactically.

[Tony Yeboah]

One Foot in the Grave perhaps? Jean Warboys is very good at Trivial Pursuit and chess but lacks some social awareness. Patrick Trench is meant to be quite smart I think, but often mocked by his wife for his arrogance and pettiness.

[An tSaoi]

The Professor in Time Gentlemen Please. He looks like a typical comedy boffin with his specs and tweed suit, he's always coming out with useless, pedantic trivia, and he's generally portrayed as a weirdo. He turns out to be

Spoiler alert

a gay serial killer

[close]

, but I suppose that's not specific to his intelligence.

The main characters in Lab Rats were all boffins. I can't think of any particular examples, and I'm certainly not going to rewatch it.

[Kelvin]

Fraser isn't attacking intelligence at all, it's attacking pretention. Fraser and Niles' are extremely talented psychiatrists and they're constantly shown to be helping their patients / callers. It's only how they view themselves and others that is criticised.   

[olliebean]

Frankly I'm not sure how you'd go about mocking intelligence itself, rather than the trappings such as pomposity or nerdishness that are stereotypically associated with it. Certainly a character could mock another character's intelligence, but surely that would just show up the stupidity of the mocking character.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

I feel like an amount of perspective is doing the heavy lifting here. Any British examples are dismissed as actually being about other factors, when the same could be done with the US examples. Intelligence isn't a particular risible trait, whereas misapplied intelligence, arrogance, pomposity and hubris all are.

[Ignatius_S]

I feel like an amount of perspective is doing the heavy lifting here. Any British examples are dismissed as actually being about other factors, when the same could be done with the US examples. Intelligence isn't a particular risible trait, whereas misapplied intelligence, arrogance, pomposity and hubris all are.

Spot on.

Also, there's a question of what is considered as intelligence. There will be a tendency to think of well-educated characters, like Jeffrey Fairbrother in Hi-de-Hi! but in that sitcom, Ted Bovis is in many ways could be seen as intelligent person and certainly has much practical intelligence that Jeffrey lacks.

[An tSaoi]

Intelligence isn't a particular risible trait, whereas misapplied intelligence, arrogance, pomposity and hubris all are.

To be fair, the title says "intelligent people" not "intelligence".

[Mike Upchat]

Fair point, if it was Intelligence people it would have to be "The Piglet Files".

I would put in a shout for the character that Kenneth Williams played in the original batch of Carry On films, and possibly "Shelley" if we are sticking strictly to TV sit-coms.

And of course there are a whole batch of campus based shows over the years, "A Very Peculiar Practice" springs to mind.

[Autopsy Turvey]

There is an episode of Man About The House where Karl Howman takes Jo to a Stockhausen concert. Afterwards, she confesses she didn't like it. "Perhaps it was his exploration of the spatial possibilities of the twelve note idiom, and his use of variant states breaking together that confused you, eh?" Jo: "That was it, yes."

Below the YouTube clip of this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnXCaMAYDQY), the uploader notes: "Laughter emerges from the studio audience as the boy attempts to defend Stockhausen by explaining the twelve-tone system. The tragic here is that they don't laugh about what he says, but because the idiom he uses is uncommon for someone with such a very strong Cockney accent - apparently working class kids are not expected to speak learned words."

Is this 'a tragic'? I'm not sure he's right that they're laughing at his accent. It seems more likely to me that the audience are laughing because someone is saying this to Jo, who we know is a ditzy airhead character on whom this sort of defence of Stockhausen will be lost. Also, even if that is the source of the mirth (and these audience members will be overwhelmingly working class themselves), hifalutin intellectual reference points in a broad working class accent is half the appeal of early Alexei Sayle. Of course you don't expect to hear a broad Cockney accent discussing this sort of phenomena, even in those days of polytechnics, council house autodidacts and rigorously intelligent documentaries reaching a mass audience.

Not a sitcom, but it should have been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUvf3fOmTTk

Also, there's a question of what is considered as intelligence. There will be a tendency to think of well-educated characters, like Jeffrey Fairbrother in Hi-de-Hi! but in that sitcom, Ted Bovis is in many ways could be seen as intelligent person and certainly has much practical intelligence that Jeffrey lacks.

Absolutely!

[Jockice]

Graham in The Goodies?  Actually, 'boffins', in general, are often figures of ridicule. The shorthand being they wear thick glasses, have no fashion sense, are emotionally detached, and usually speak in a dull monotone voice referring to theorems or equations.  My father who was a scientist loathed the term 'boffin' and used to get quite peeved about how his tribe was represented in comedy. He'd grumble 'you lot should show a little respect to all us silly folk in our boring lab coats because without us you'd still be scratching each others' arses in a cave.'.  Logical.

We were banned from using the word at the paper I worked for.

[Andy147]

Not a sitcom, but it should have been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUvf3fOmTTk

Also from Beyond the Fringe: Jonathan Miller as Bertrand Russell.