ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the extent to which characters in The Catherine Tate Show (TCTS) challenge and subvert stereotypical ways in which women have been represented in television comedy, and explores how the constructions of feminine identities intersect with other spheres of identity, such as social class and age. It reviews the ways in which comedy is manifest in two of Catherine Tate's main characters: Lauren Cooper and Joannie Nan Taylor. Lauren Cooper is a comprehensive school teenager played by Catherine Tate. The chapter argues a number of changing sociopolitical conditions. The television sketch show seems to hold a position of inferiority in academic debates about television comedy. Sketch comedy is, however, an established cultural form in British broadcasting. Television sketch comedy is particularly important given comedy's significant sociopolitical role. Gender politics continues to be symbolically exercised in television comedy in complex ways. Tate's characters in TCTS offer a number of representations of gender in contemporary British society.