The Dick Emery Show

{{Short description|British TV comedy series (1963–1981)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox television

| image = The_Dick_Emery_Show.jpg

| caption = The Dick Emery Show opening title sequence.

| runtime = 25–50 minutes

| creator = David Cummings

| starring = Dick Emery
Pat Coombs
Deryck Guyler
Roy Kinnear
Joan Sims
Josephine Tewson
Arthur English

| country = United Kingdom

| company = BBC

| network = BBC1
(1963-64, 1969-81)
BBC2
(1965-67)

| num_series = 18

| num_episodes = 166(85 missing)

| first_aired = {{start date|1963|7|13|df=y}}

| last_aired = {{end date|1981|2|7|df=y}}

| language = English

}}

The Dick Emery Show is a British sketch comedy show starring Dick Emery.{{Cite web|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b8958285d|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224212735/https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b8958285d|url-status=dead|archive-date=24 February 2021|title=The Dick Emery Show[04/12/64] (1964)|website=BFI}} It was broadcast on the BBC from 1963 to 1981.{{Cite news|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/d/dickemeryshowthe_7772490.shtml|title=The Dick Emery Show|date=2 December 2003|work=BBC Comedy Guide|access-date=24 November 2021|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20040426090831/http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/d/dickemeryshowthe_7772490.shtml|archive-date=26 April 2004|url-status=dead}} It was directed and produced by Harold Snoad.{{Cite web|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9f8801bc|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170411084436/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9f8801bc|url-status=dead|archive-date=11 April 2017|title=Harold Snoad|website=BFI}} The show was broadcast over 18 series with 166 episodes. The show experienced sustained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. The BBC described the show as featuring 'a vivid cast of comic grotesques'.

Frequent performers included Pat Coombs, Victor Maddern, Deryck Guyler, Roy Kinnear, Joan Sims and Josephine Tewson.

The principal writers of the programme were David Cummings, John Singer, and John Warren. Additional contributions were by David Nobbs and Peter Tinniswood.{{cite web|title=The Dick Emery Show|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1192094/index.html|publisher=British Film Institute|accessdate=3 August 2020}} Other writers included Dick Clement, Barry Cryer, Selma Diamond, John Esmonde, Marty Feldman, Lucille Kallen, Bob Larbey and Harold Pinter.{{cite web|title=The Dick Emery Show|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/dickemeryshow/|publisher=BBC|accessdate=3 August 2020}} The American comedy writers Mel Brooks and Mel Tolkin contributed sketches in the early years of the show. The nature of the show with its rapid sketches was initially inspired by the American sketch show Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar that was broadcast between 1950 and 1954 on NBC. Emery later developed his own characters for sketches.

The show became anachronistic with the advent of the 1980s, and has subsequently been perceived as homophobic, racist, and sexist. In an appraisal of The Dick Emery Show the BBC wrote that none of the show's sketches would 'seem out of place' on the 2000s' BBC sketch show Little Britain.

Peri Bradley critiqued the show in the chapter "The Politics of Camp" in British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade. Bradley examined how camp could "operate as a political and liberating force" in the 1970s; and felt that Emery's characters "comprised representations [which] instigated" a "transformation of consciousness" as described by the gender theorist Judith Butler.{{cite book|author1=Laurel Forster|author2=Sue Harper|title=British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=smakBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA125|date=14 December 2009|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=978-1-4438-1838-4|pages=125–}}

Out-takes of corpsing from the series were subsequently included in the show in a section called 'The Comedy of Errors'.