Luddite! the sitcom I can't get right
Brief musings on comedy with a historical setting
In 2021 when I was working my way through James Cary’s online sitcom course, I had an idea for a Luddite sitcom. By which I mean a sitcom set in the West Riding of Yorkshire — probably the Spen valley — in 1812, involving a group of ‘followers of Ned Ludd’ who were vandalising the new textile machinery that threatened to take away their skilled jobs. I couldn’t quite get it right so I went back to my initial idea (which became Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays, which I made two series of) but Luddite! continues to whisper at the back of my mind.
The basic idea was as follows1: Ann is a middle-aged, unmarried, home-based hand-loom weaver; her independence is threatened by the new-fangled ‘manufactories’ and particularly by their mechanised production methods. Her sole remaining brother John has done a fair old stint in the navy and is now a shopkeeper in the village they grew up in. Ann revels in the excitement of covert machine-breaking activity and the problem-solving that’s required for all the organisation; John prizes respectability above all things, and has a strong aversion to anything that might result in broken shop windows or disrupted supply lines. Crucially, John can’t imagine any kind of mechanical replacement for his work, and is thus happy to tell Ann she’s pointlessly trying to hold up the inevitable march of progress.
Does that sound familiar from recent discussions about the fears writers and artists have voiced about the dawn of generative AI? I don’t remember AI being a widely talked about threat in 2021, but I was already aware of the encroachment of technology in other spheres, like self-service supermarket or library checkouts2. I say ‘encroachment’ because it usually replaces someone’s job, the means they had to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. In an ideal world we’d mechanise the repetitive or injurious3 stuff but without dumping hundreds of people onto the dole while we did it. My thoughts on Universal Basic Income can wait for another day, however.
In the long list of ideas for Luddite! I had things like John trying out a recommendations system (You like bread — have you considered biscuits?), or keeping a note of what the customer bought last week, which he sees as emblematic of the personal touch but we of course know can be automated, because we’re used to shopping online. At the risk of sounding pretentious it’s that duality that is one of the key ingredients of historical comedy. Ideally there’s something funny happening, which we get an extra laugh out of because of how it makes us think about the politics, customs, daily life etc in our own time.
Revolting People, a BBC Radio series written by and starring Andy Hamilton and Jay Tarses, is one of my favourite historical sitcoms and was undoubtedly an influence on the idea for Luddite! Set in eighteenth century Baltimore as the American War of Independence is brewing, it features a shopkeeper who has British soldiers lodging with him, but one of his daughters is part of a rebel group. If you have access to BBC Sounds, there’s quite often an episode or two to be found there4, although it’s nearly 20 years since the final series was broadcast. They quite often make a knowing reference to something from the future (future from an eighteenth century perspective, that is) in a ‘who knows what may happen someday, this weird and far-fetched thing could even come true’. I like it when they do it, but I wanted to avoid that in my own sitcom.
We all love Blackadder, the BBC TV sitcom set in several periods of English history. Each series makes good use of its historic setting, but I think one of its biggest strengths (apart from the boatloads of funny, quotable lines5) is the way it shows the constants of human nature and connects us to the eras that came before. Greed, shirking, idiocy, cowardice, the threads run through the generations; maybe the consequences are different when you’re in the sights of an autocratic queen with no qualms about using the death penalty, but the motivations are all pretty much the same.
That point about consequences is an important one. In 1812 Britain was at war with France. There were shortages and riots, the government was worried, and it had both the army and local militias at its disposal — think of Peterloo a few years later. Luddites were risking transportation or hanging, if they were caught, and violent clashes even if they weren’t. It doesn’t feel like a situation that lends itself to comedy. And yet Blackadder Goes Forth is set in the trenches of the First World War, and until the last part of the final episode it’s funny, even when Blackadder is facing a firing squad or they’re reduced to eating rats. Clearly it can be done, but possibly only by writers with more experience or ability than me.
Of course there are several very funny World War Two sitcoms that spring to mind, but for the most part they don’t feel as horrific. James Cary’s 2000s BBC Radio series Hut 33, set among the codebreakers at Bletchley Park — the main characters rarely seem to be in immediate jeopardy, unless they’ve got on the wrong side of their Polish colleague Minka. In the classic 1960s-70s TV series Dad’s Army, again the war often seems distant apart from the odd episode where there’s an air raid or a rumour of invasion. And then there’s 1980s favourite ‘Allo ‘Allo, where cafe owner Rene is serving Nazis in the bar while reluctantly working for the resistance and hiding British airmen upstairs. There are definitely consequences in ‘Allo ‘Allo, I’m pretty sure Rene has to pretend to be his own brother in series two because he’s supposed to have been shot by the firing squad at the end of the first series but somehow got away.
Much more recently I’ve run across Plebs on ITVX, a sitcom set in Ancient Rome about three lads living the single life in the big city. Like Blackadder it’s got the ‘human nature doesn’t change’ vibe, and Plebs often feels like it’s modern life in costume. In fact each episode starts with a black screen, and you can hear dialogue that could be modern, there’ll be a caption e.g. Nightclub 11pm, and then as the scene appears and it becomes clear this is not the here and now, Rome 23BC is added to the caption. It’s clever and it’s historically informed, but it does bend the historical facts where necessary to fit the humour (don’t get me wrong, I love Plebs. Grumio in particular is excellent).
Those of you who know me in real life or have been here a while will know that I’m fond of family and local history research. I have ancestors who lived in the right villages and had the right sort of occupations to have been Luddites. They would certainly have known people who were Luddites, even if they were not Luddites themselves; I’m not aware any of my ancestors were arrested for it. I gave Ann and John the surname Greensmith because that’s the surname of my most likely Luddite ancestors. I am deeply invested in this history and I’m a natural pedant. It is incredibly hard for me to blur this, gloss over that and conveniently ignore the other for a punchier plot or a funnier punchline. Sometimes though, it needs to be done.
In summary this is my historical sitcom checklist:
historical accuracy but not so accurate as to bore the audience or strangle the jokes
hold a mirror up to modern society, but not in a heavy-handed way
don’t trivialise the death and starvation, but remember this is a comedy
above all, remember this is a comedy — wring every last bit of funny stuff from the situation and its idiosyncrasies.
One of these days I might get the pilot script of Luddite! right and send it somewhere. Or write a version of the script that I can make myself, like I did with Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays. Or possibly, write a version of the story that isn’t a script, that I can put online for people to read. Watch this space. But don’t hold your breath.
If you feel like fuelling the rewrites, you can always contribute to my teabag fund…
If you’re tempted to steal this idea, please do introduce yourself — any other weirdo who wants to write a sitcom about actual Luddites has surely got the makings of a friend of mine
The Guardian obligingly ran a relevant article the day after I started writing this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/21/robot-packers-and-ai-cameras-uk-retail-embraces-automation-to-cut-staff-costs
Sister Number One fractured her arm by lifting a special offer extra-large box of washing powder one-handed, back in the days of typing the price into the till, so you’d be surprised
Avoid series 3, it’s all film parodies and gets a bit odd. Apologies to Messrs Hamilton and Tarses; maybe I haven’t watched the right films.
When I was in 6th form there was a lad in my year I thought was hilarious. Then I rewatched all of Blackadder and realised everything remotely witty he’d ever said was a direct or adapted quote from his favourite sitcom. That’s how well-written and universally applicable Blackadder is.