Beauty queen Barbara Parker wants more from life than a hometown crown. She wants to be on TV, to make people laugh, to be the next Lucille Ball. So she leaves the backwater of Blackpool for London to make it happen.
So begins Nick Hornby's Funny Girl. You can see why I thought it'd be about Barbara and her thoughts and feelings. But it's about something much bigger, namely pop culture and fame and how it all changed in the '60s.
A true ensemble, Funny Girl follows Barbara's -- or, rather, the newly christened Sophie Straw's -- TV family though the ups and downs of showbiz and life. Poignant, nostalgic, and sparkling with wit, it captures the excitement of being young and hungry -- and, in the end, the realization that the best part was those early days and their struggles.
Because from the start, they knew their show was special. Hornby describes the magic through script writer Tony, reminding us why sitcoms have our hearts:
"It was the . . . promise of next week, another episode, another series (season); it couldn't help but offer hope, to its characters and to everyone who identified with them. Tony didn't think he would ever want to write anything apart from half-hour comedies. They contained the key to health, wealth, and happiness." (198)
Exactly. Sitcoms make the world go 'round.
So let those reruns ring.