It’s always the stupidest questions that stick in your head. Does Vin Diesel mean “Wine made out of petrol” in French? Do Shetland ponies feel inadequate compared to regular horses? Do Henry Bolton and his racist girlfriend actually exist, or are they just very active figments of Nigel Farage’s imagination? The one that has been going around my head recently is one that’s borne out my own insecurities about my career choices, and it’s one that’s been nagging at my brain since I caught the last few minutes of the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special this year: what’s the point of sitcoms today?

The sitcom is not dead – we just need to get its reputation out of the 70s

That’s unduly mean to Mrs Brown’s Boys, really – I know that Brendan O’Carroll has worked hard developing the character of Mrs Brown, almost as hard as the rest of the cast has worked on developing ways to avoid the British tax system. The existential “what is the point of sitcoms” crisis was less triggered by the quality of the episode, and more by the achingly traditional end credits, where Mrs Brown leads the cast in bows to the studio audience.

For all of its weirdly subversive touches – Mrs Brown frequently breaks the fourth wall, seemingly aware that she’s a character played by a man trapped in a BBC One sitcom, like a particularly confusing episode of Black Mirror – the show is inherently old-fashioned, with most of the jokes coming out of broad stereotypes. It mimics the old 1970s and 80s sitcoms of Are You Being Served or Hi-De-Hi in joke structure, characters and set pieces, and that reinforces a pernicious idea: that sitcoms are something that belong to the past, a relic of a bygone era like flared trousers or consequences for politicians who lie.

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This is a perception that isn’t exactly challenged by the BBC. In 2016, they launched the new Sitcom Season with a promotional campaign that harked back to the past – complete with Michael Fish inspired weather backdrops and cheesy font. All that was missing was a couple of hushed-up sexual assault cases and we would have been right back in the 1970s for real. The retro style was to “celebrate” the fact that the BBC was rebooting a bunch of old sitcoms – Are You Being Served, Porridge and Keeping Up Appearances, among others – in a move that definitely didn’t make the sitcom feel any younger. There’s nothing quite like being told that the industry you’re attempting to crack into belongs in the 1970s. Which of course is why I decided to focus on working for the business of the future – writing for print media.

So then, what is the point of sitcoms today? On the surface, this is relatively simple to answer – to create new and original comic characters, and to spawn a series of catchphrases that look good on mugs, T-shirts and adverts for taxes (unless you’re Mrs Brown’s Boys, obviously).

But in recent years, comic characters and catchphrases that permeate the national consciousness haven’t come from sitcoms, but from reality TV like Gogglebox and Love Island. June and Leon were effectively a classic comedy duo that eclipsed most sitcom couples, while Chris and Kem’s rap was the Let’s Get Ready To Rumble of 2017. What is the point of the sitcom if we’re getting all our jokes from competitive baking shows and programmes where Jo Brand watches a competitive baking show? What if British society’s desire for dumb stories, outrageous characters and silliness for silliness’s sake is being sated by Joey Essex and that guy from Made In Chelsea who sounds like he always has plums in his mouth?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Derry Girls is just a wonderfully funny show packed with so many gags.’ Photograph: Adam Lawrence

As a result, many sitcoms seem to be shunning the concept of jokes altogether. Three of the most brilliant “sitcoms” of the past two years have been praised for being dark, compelling and dramatic, ahead of being funny: the pilot for Fleabag ends with the revelation that Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s best friend is dead; series three of Catastrophe is an unflinching look at the devastating alcoholism and infidelity of Rob Delaney’s character; and arguably the most celebrated episode of Inside No 9 (Sheridan Smith’s heart-wrenching performance in The 12 Days of Christine) has more mystery, intrigue, sadness, heartbreak and pain more than it has actual jokes.

These are all fantastic programmes, but if a show is making you cry more than it’s making you laugh, is it still a sitcom? Are we destined to have two types of sitcoms: one with jokes, but stuck firmly in the 1970s; and one modern, but really more of a drama where people occasionally say funny things? Does the joke-heavy, modern sitcom have a place in the world?

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Just as I was asking myself these pretentious questions about my own craft, in danger of thinkpiecing myself into oblivion, I watched something that reminded me just what makes sitcoms so great. Derry Girls, the new Channel 4 sitcom by Lisa McGee, appears at first to be a gritty look at life in an all-girls Catholic school during the Troubles – but in reality it’s just a wonderfully funny show packed with so many gags (particularly those centred around the suspected bomb on the bridge that ruins everyone’s commute) and beautifully written characters (the best being Michelle, who watched Pulp Fiction over the summer and declares that saying “motherfucking” is her new thing). It wasn’t afraid of making jokes, or being dumb and over-the-top – in fact, it embraced it, because it knew that the characters and the writing were strong enough to pull them off.

In the end, the simplest answer is the best one: the point of a sitcom is to make people laugh, and create hilarious characters that you could watch do pretty much anything and still be entertained. And in reality, there are plenty of recent British sitcoms that do that: Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum, Roisin Conaty in Gameface, Charlie and Daisy May Cooper in This Country, Guz Khan in Man Like Mobeen and Asim Chaudhry in People Just Do Nothing are all unique and brilliant comic creations that can only exist through sitcoms. The sitcom is not dead – we just need to get its reputation out of the 70s and celebrate the great writing and performing talent we have today. Now I’m off to pitch that “trapped for eternity in Mrs Brown’s Boys” idea to Charlie Brooker for Black Mirror season five.

• Jack Bernhardt is a comedy writer