New Britain, new comedy.

A little-noted casualty of the rise of New Labour in the UK was a generation of alternative comedians who had built careers opposing the Tories. In the 1990s, the targets of alternative comics--Thatcher, student politics (The Young Ones), monarchy, empire and colonialism (Black Adder), Thatcher again, Major and the Murdoch press (A Bit of Fry and Laurie), sexism, neo-liberalism, Thatcher and Major once again, chauvinism, war (Comic Strip Presents, The Man from Aunty)--looked to be on the back foot.

Ben Elton turned to writing musicals with Andrew Lloyd Webber, while keeping up a steady stream of books. Stephen Fry, a friend of the trouble-prone New Labour architect Peter Mandelson, moved on to movies and books, as did his comedy partner Hugh Laurie. Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall continued, but ditched the political overtones of The Young Ones and Comic Strip Presents for the cartoon violence and gross-out humour of the three-episodes-are-more-than-enough Bottom. While continuing to write for Absolutely Fabulous, Dawn French's most successful on-screen comic role was The Vicar of Dibley, which had roughly the equivalent satirical bite of an armchair and a nice cup of hot cocoa. The arrival of New Labour in government seemed to have deprived such comics of anything to say.

And since New Labour seemed more than capable of satirising itself, most professional satirists seemed to go into early retirement, or at least quietism, satisfied that their job was done. A more visceral approach has since emerged, evident in The Office, Nighty Night, The League of Gentlemen and the lighter, though equally absurd, Little Britain.

The Office's David Brent--a frustrated TV personality trapped in the body of a middle manager who wants his staff to treat him as 'just another guy'--is the perfect foil to Tony Blair--a frustrated TV personality trapped in the body of a Prime Minister who wants voters to treat him as 'just another guy'.

Brent's mangled reasoning and passing familiarity with the current management buzz-words also fits perfectly with New Labour's rhetorical style.

Take the comments of Tony Blair some years back at a meeting of Third Way leaders in Washington, hosted by former US President Bill Clinton and attended by, among others, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In an attempt to explain his approach to politics, Blair declared that what he and New Labour were on about was: An agenda of values and principles that ends up with practical policies that make a difference to the people whose lives we're looking after and trying to help. The policy content is driven by these ideas and values. In the end what is important is to give a sense of vision in which the values, the principles, and the policies form one seamless line.

This is not a million miles from the tortuous attempts at spin by David Brent. Indeed, if he were a little savvier and a bit smoother, one could well imagine Brent being hired as a consultant to oversee the reform of the Civil Service.

Where The Office's portrayal of work in late-capitalism is an expression of a more general culture, The League of Gentlemen, Little Britain, Shameless and Nighty Nightare, by contrast, distinctively British, presenting characters and communities who have descended into new and strange forms of barbarism.

This is a UK inhabited by inbred shopkeepers who kill their customers; sociopaths who use their husband's terminal illness as an opportunity to launch new relationships; job club leaders who belittle their unemployed clients and actively thwart their efforts to find meaningful employment; diet club leaders who force-feed their clients, whole families on welfare and so on.

In their different ways, such shows present hilarious counterpoints to New Labour's empty paeans to the virtues of community, presenting a gothic underside in contrast to the cheery and productive shiny people imagined by New Labour's PR people and think-tanks to inhabit Britain's countryside.

The forerunner, and in many ways the connecting thread between these comedies and those of the 1980s, is Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French's Absolutely Fabulous. Rather than targeting politics overtly, Ab Fablampooned a culture obsessed with celebrity, money and spin.

But whereas one always kept laughing with Ab Fab, which at least hinted at an alternative world, the current crop of shows are utterly nihilistic in their trajectory. They frequently go beyond funny to plain disturbing. The town of Royston Vasey, the surreal setting for the brilliant The League of Gentlemen, in particular resembles a village whose social fabric has been comprehensively destroyed and replaced by bizarre forms of savagery and perverse thuggery.

The only alternative that seems possible for such comedians is to reflect the absurdity of the present. And whereas absurdity has always been a feature of British comedy, from the Goons to Pete and Dud to Monty Python to The Young Ones, it is now infused with utter bleakness. The clear targets and seemingly straightforward alternatives of the past have given way to nihilism. The new crop of comedies reflects a reality where there seems to be no alternatives--or, in the case of Blair's New Labour, the alternative turned out to be a different species of spite.