‘I’d never seen anything like it’: How Caroline Aherne changed comedy

I always think too much happens in sitcoms, because people are funny, aren’t they?” If you were to try to sum up Caroline Aherne’s comedy credo, you’d struggle to do better than this soundbite from the woman herself. It features in the opening moments of a new Arena documentary celebrating her life and work.

Too much happening is not a charge you would ever level at her most beloved TV creation, The Royle Family, a show that barely ventured out of Jim and Barbara Royle’s front room in Wythenshawe, Manchester, playing out almost in real time. Canned laughter and zippy punchlines were out, replaced by banal questions (“Have you had your tea yet?”) and long pauses.

It was revolutionary. Ushering in a more naturalistic era for British comedy, it influenced everything from The Office (which borrowed its documentary style of filming) to Shameless (set in a similar Manchester milieu) – and pretty much killed off the traditional studio sitcom in the process. Its abiding image of the family gathering round to watch and critique the telly (who could forget Jim Royle’s pithy verdict on one of Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen’s Changing Rooms home makeovers: “Stencilling, my arse!”) lives on outside the comedy sphere in Gogglebox, which Aherne briefly narrated.

But  is just one part of the rich legacy explored in , which airs seven years after Aherne . A genius (with an IQ of 176) whose life was often blighted