Little Miss Jocelyn

Besides the rugby jerseys I asked a friend of mine to pick up during a recent trip to London, he scored a little jewel of British comedy on DVD to share: Little Miss Jocelyn. We recently spun through Season 1 over a couple pitchers of guavaberry piña coladas and a plate full of Banbury cakes. (Mmmm... Butter! Sugar! Currants!)

It's a recurring-character sketch comedy show, written by and starring Jocelyn Jee Esien, that aired on the BBC in 2006. It's over a year old across the Atlantic but relatively unknown here in the States. Esein was one of the performers in a hidden-camera stunt show called 3 Non-Blondes. Here she is in some sketches. (That series also featured Tameka Empson, who played the Mama Cass-obsessed neighbor in the coming-out-story charmer Beautiful Thing.")

She's a little French and Saunders and a little Little Britain and a little Dave Chappelle. The show has the added distinction, I have also learned, of being the first of its kind in either the United States or the UK to be written by and to star a black female comedian.

My favorite characters:

• Madam President, the first Black female President of the United States, looking eerily like an austere Condoleezza Rice, who answers questions from the press with a string of quotations from reductive and vaguely exploitive African-American cultural references.
  
• Florence, the overweight weight-loss nurse who treats her patients with ridiculous voodoo cures, always telling them they are beyond hope and "this is your last appointment." She spits on their paperwork to punctuate some sort of hex and chases them out of her office, calling after them "Save yourself! Save yourself!"
  
• Fiona, the only black woman in a typical office setting where she does some sort of typical office job. She is convinced that no one knows she is black, and she goes to such lengths to keep her "secret" that she lashes out at all other black people she interacts with, bringing herself to the point of nausea, tossing out horrifically racist accusations, which she reduces to politically correct euphemisms when she thinks she might be overheard. This clip features hottie British actor O.T. Fagbenle.
  
• Helen, perhaps my favorite, who appears normal by all accounts until she suddenly drops to the floor or the sidewalk and begins dragging her butt along the ground. She looks up at her incredulous companions or astonished strangers and shrugs, "I've got worms."
  
• Sheson, a bus driver whose Nigerian-flavored Cockney accent betrays her attempts to learn English in a pub. She sings hymns while driving and berates riders for standing too close or asking for directions — or ringing the bell to request a stop. "I'm not an A to Zed!" she'll say. She berates a gay couple who boards the bus in one sketch for not saying thank you. "'Eh!" she calls. "Sodom and Gomorrah!"
  
• Lillian, the territorial hairdresser, whose salon is across the street from a bitter rival. One often visits the other to start a hairdo duel, which always ends in a spaghetti western style, revealing their customers' overwrought hairstyles as if they're drawing their weapons. Lillian always wins, causing her rival to choke back shock and curse her until they meet again.
  
• Jiffy, a Nigerian immigrant who works as an overzealous parking attendant so desperate to be seen as a loyal subject of Queen Elizabeth II that she constantly reminds the recipients of her many parking tickets that she works "for queen and country." She wears huge swaths of bright blue eye shadow and an oversized uniform, and her officer's cap sits jauntily to the side of her afro. She sometimes shows up in unexpected places, such as the screen of an ATM or the glove box of a parked car, to issue guerilla tickets.
  
• Julia, whose social awkwardness causes her to behave in wildly inappropriate ways in serious situations, totally ruining the moment — licking the face of her friend's mother at her husband's funeral or biting her brand-new boss on the nose.

Esien is of Nigerian heritage, and most of the sketches clearly seem to poke fun at Nigerian immigrants. I'm not sure many American comics could get away with the tricks she pulls. Diaspora comedy like hers treads a delicate border. The self deprecation is so obvious and obscene, she's as much making fun of the people who uncomfortably laugh at it (e.g., me) as she is the cultural establishment that led to the creation of the stereotypes she is lampooning. Laughing at myself rarely feels so good.