Transgressing Later Life Sexualities in British Sitcoms: : Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Ageing and Later Life Franziska Röber Bloomsbury Academic

Transgressing Later Life Sexualities in British Sitcoms

Description

Based on close readings of three major sitcoms, this book unpacks how sitcoms understand later life sexualities and focusses on how they represent sexually active older adults.

Focusing on three representative sitcoms - Waiting for God, The Old Guys and Vicious - it demonstrates the ways in which sitcoms specifically enable and restrict representations of later life sexualities. Tracing how transgressive portrayals of sexually active older adults are couched in comedic terms, it opens up new critical perspectives on later life sexualities that will critically inform public debates and academic research – in Britain and beyond.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Opening Sequence
1.1 Understanding Later Life
1.2 Understanding Later Life Sexuality
1.3 Later Life Sexuality on Screen
1.4 Materials and Aims

Chapter 1: Conventionally Unconventional: The Sitcom
2.1 Ordinariness and Domesticity
2.2 Humour and Laughter
2.3 Seriality

Chapter 2: In The Back Of A Mini: Waiting For God And Later Life Sexualities
3.1 Wouldn't Look Good in the Papers: Sexuality in Waiting for God
3.1.1 The Top-Dude: Basil Makepeace
3.1.2 A Middle-Class Dugout: Diana Trent
3.2 Mostly Talk, Some Action: Conclusion

Chapter 3: Pretty Fly For Two Old Guys: Homosociality And Later Life (Male) Sexualities
4.1 Good, Clean, Dirty Fun: Sexuality in The Old Guys
4.2 I May Swing a Bit: Queered Sexualities in The Old Guys
4.3 90% Straight: Homosociality and The Old Guys
4.4 A Sexy Blitz: Sally as the Idealised Woman
4.4 All Talk, Little Action: Conclusion

Chapter 4: Walking Into Elton John's Closet: Vicious And Queer Sexualities
5.1 Let's Get This Straight: Queering Later Life
5.2 Broad Tastes and Over 40: Framing Violet Crosby
5.3 It's Like Living in Disneyland: Framing Freddie Thornhill and Stuart Bixby as Respectably Queer
5.3.1 Queer Spaces: The Sitcom
5.3.2 Keeping it Respectably Queer
5.4 Some Talk, Even Less Action: Sexualities in Vicious

Chapter 5: Closing Sequence
6.1 Domesticity and Later Life Sexuality
6.2 Laughter, Comedy, and Later Life Sexuality
6.3 Seriality and Later Life Sexuality
6.4 End Credits

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Films
Series
References

Product details

Published	24 Jul 2025
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	248
ISBN	9781350473508
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations	10 bw illus
Dimensions	234 x 156 mm
Series	Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Ageing and Later Life
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

This highly rewarding book offers fresh insights for any reader concerned with ageing, sexuality and screen representations. Offering a well theorized and thoughtful study of British sitcoms, the book's explorations of comedic performance effectively refute the reduction of sexuality to heteronormative penile penetration and highlights a wide range of physical intimacies enacted between and within gender categories that effectively transgress established expectations of older characters.

Dr Josephine Dolan, Independent Scholar, Founding Member of ENAS (European Network of Aging Studies), NANAS (North American Network of Aging Studies) and WAM (Women, Ageing and Media Research Group)