Sir Humphrey Appleby Meets Jesus
And is told to be born again. Awkward.
As a sitcom-writer, I often get asked what my favourite sitcom is. That’s easy. No contest. Yes, Prime Minister, a sitcom about the well-meaning but pompous would-be populist Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Jim Hacker, and his smooth, supercilious chief civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby.
It’s brilliantly calibrated so that in each episode, Hacker is trying to fulfil election promises and be popular while Sir Humphrey explains why it will take too long and cost too much. It is the ‘Political Will’ against the ‘Administrative Won’t’.
Yes, Prime Minister is West Wing but with jokes that actually make you laugh out loud, rather than Aaron Sorkin jokes that make you smirk and feel clever that you got the reference.
Sitcom Perfection
I also love the sitcom because it’s perfect. As a sitcom writer, sitcoms can make me itchy. When a scene doesn’t quite work, when a joke doesn’t quite land, when a line doesn’t quite have the right rhythm, an alarm goes off in my brain and I want to fix it. That alarm is silent when I’m watching episodes of Yes, Prime Minister.
Nicodemus at Night
Have Sir Humphrey in mind when you read John Chapter 3. It’s a good example of not needing a smart Alec like me messing around with the text to make it funny. Just read John’s account.
Nicodemus, a member of the ruling classes, comes to Jesus at night to work out what kind of teacher Jesus is. Is he coming at night because he’s sympathetic, but ashamed and doesn’t want to be seen? It seems more likely, given how the themes of light and dark play out in John’s Gospel, that it’s night because Nicodemus is spiritually in the dark.
This would lead some to say that ‘John set this event at night’, implying some kind of fabrication or bending of the truth. Of course, if you believe in an all-powerful God who is outside time, it’s not hard to believe that this event actually took place at night and this symbolism is God’s, not John’s. This stuff never seems to occur to Bible scholars and those who look at the minutiae of the text.
Either way, Nicodemus says nice things to Jesus (who has just threatened to nuke the Temple in John 2:19) by calling him ‘Rabbi’ and saying “we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Well, that’s nice.
Jesus rebuffs his Sir Humphrey-like diplomatic and flattering comments by telling him straight: you must be born again.
What? Okay. Erm.
Nicodemus’s brain is immediately scrambled. It’s like when Sir Humphrey realises he’s been outmanoeuvred by Hacker and he starts stuttering and blinking.
Maybe there’s an embarrassed silence before Nicodemus says, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?”
Well, duh. The fact that this is not physically possible means that you shouldn’t take Jesus literally. And yet this is what folks like Nicodemus repeatedly do.
Born Again
John 3:1-15 is a funny scene. We don’t see it as comic today because we’re either used to it, or because we’re terrified of the notion of being a ‘born again Christian’. Mild-mannered, middle-class Brits don’t like that term for a variety of cultural reasons. There are all kinds of negative associations with exuberant, demonstrative, emotional Christianity, possibly imported from American preachers who seem to shout a lot. All that seems, well, not very British. Certainly not Anglican.
Sir Humphrey is sceptical of any overt religious fervour. In one of my favourite episodes, A Conflict of Interest, Sir Humphrey does a brilliant character assassination on a potential new Governor of the Bank of England, Alexander Jameson, by using his faith against him. Sir Humphrey cheerfully labels Jameson “the lay preacher”, implying the fact that he’s the kind of churchgoer who is so keen, he preaches in his spare time – as opposed to the clergyman who is paid for it. It’s a clever tactic.
John moves the scene on after this brief discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus. We fade into another scene. But one can imagine Nicodemus going home red-faced with his brain hurting, muttering to himself, wondering why he took the risk of going out at night, and what Jesus could possibly have meant by what he said.
Nicodemus Returns
Nicodemus crops up again at the end of John Chapter 7, suggesting that the authorities should not be hasty in their judgment of Jesus and that he is entitled to due process. This immediately invokes scorn from his peers. What’s going on with Nicodemus? Have the words of Jesus been slowly taking effect?
Probably. By the time Jesus has been crucified, it’s obvious that Nicodemus has been transformed. He’s there in John 19 with Joseph of Arimathea, with spices, tenderly wrapping up Jesus’s body, probably more confused than ever, pondering what it meant to be born again, when Jesus himself was dead. Can you imagine Sir Humphrey doing that?
For Nicodemus, the resurrection must have been the most wonderful surprise and night gave way to glorious day. The joke had been on him, but he would not have minded one bit.
For further reflections and funny routines based on the Gospels and Acts, as well as some side swipes about Pilgrim’s Progress and how Christians are represented on TV, get hold of my new book, The Gospel According To A Sitcom Writer from SPCK. And while you’re there, why not drop a copy of The Sacred Art of Joking into the basket too?
A friend of mine got a robot vacuum cleaner the other day. He explained he could have spent more on a smart one which learns the route which I presume would save the robot time. But why should I want to save a robot hoover time? What else is the robot meant to be doing? If it could hoover down Tesco Express to buy milk and then put the rubbish out, I’d be interested. On Cooper and Cary Have Words, Barry and I talk to Ben Clube about the gulf between humans and machines, and how technology changes us. Ben has thought a lot about tech, and not just as a way of justifying spending months playing Doom, Quake or Final Fantasy VI. Also, I mention That Hideous Strength. Again. Have a listen here.