Slapstick for our times

In this crazy age of rushing around from job to home to bed, eating on the run, our comedy tends to fall into several categories:

• the cynical: knowing critiques of the contradictions of modern life (e.g. Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week,
• the realistic: inclusive insights into family and/or business life (e.g. Outnumbered, Gavin and Stacey, The Thick of It, Lead Balloon)
• the stagey: safe shots of comfy television nostalgia (e.g. My Family, Live at the Apollo, Miranda, Handle With Prayer, Benidorm)
• the surreal: quirky yet intelligent snapshots of lateral thinking (e.g. QI, Would I Lie to You? The Graham Norton Show, Psychoville, We Need Answers, Harry Hill's TV Burp)

But, reflecting on a birthday present I bought my father, where has the silly yet deadly serious slapstick gone: the likes of Jacques Tati's M. Hulot, Marty Feldman, Peter Sellers' Inspector Clousseau, and Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean? Deceptively simple comedy for our complex times, yes please: especially where dialogue is almost irrelevant. We spend far too much time talking and communicating online, so I slice of visual tomfoolery would go down very well.

Who would be the contenders for such an enterprise? Rowan Atkinson, of course, Harry Hill, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Lee Evans, Stephen Fry, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey?

And there is ripe material for exploitation ... say, a slapstick take on Doctor Who-style science fiction (Mr Bean in space with CGI effects might be fun), a sitcom based on the lives of mime artists (e.g. Marcel Marceau types), storylines where visual gags are included giving disabled actors central roles and the best lines. Give your brain a stretch.

In a world gone mad, slapstick would be a perfect antidote, and some playwrights have ventured into the field already (e.g. Enron)