Turkey Dinosaurs and Double Dinners: This Country’s Everyday Lives in Rural Gloucestershire

Abstract

This Country (BBC 2016–2020), set in an unnamed village in rural Gloucestershire, is written and performed by Cirencester-born sister and brother Daisy May and Charlie Cooper. It chronicles the aimless daily lives of disaffected unemployed twentysomething cousins Lee ‘Kurtan’ Mucklowe (Charlie) and Kerry Mucklowe (Daisy May). This Country is richly illustrative of the Coopers’ own very personal experiences of the day-to-day reality of early twenty-first century rural life and covers topics including the impact of austerity politics, the unanticipated significance of the local church and the importance of the enduring support to be found in family and community. Brett Mills describes the sitcom as “a genre often perceived to be of less worth, of less invention, and of less social value than any more serious forms of programming” (Mills, The Sitcom. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, p 2, 2009). The Coopers’ work in both the freshness of its perspective on country life and, in particular, its thoughtful and reflective engagement with the socioeconomic context of This Country challenges the stereotypes and generalisations Mills raises and that so often characterise any critical judgments made of the sitcom.