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A new book claims that many of America 's top television shows followed a leftist agenda. Could it be equally true in the UK?

The news that a publishing division of Rupert Murdoch has accused American TV surprised a book released liberal bias sounds deep. The belief that NBC, CBS and NBC to promote values ??closer to Democrat beliefs than Republican views is long, hard to dispute through objective observation and has been performed under the U.S. 's \ TV-free market system in which rise of Murdoch 's Fox News as a deliberately conservative opposition.

But prime-time propaganda, Ben Shapiro, who deserves more attention, because she does not consider the traditional ideological battleground of news and factual programming, but fiction and comedy M * A * S * H, Friends, Happy Days, and so on. And on this occasion, the charge of intentional left spin is not only a right-wing commentator claimed, but apparently accepted by the makers of the programs. Shapiro speaks with dozens of executives and show runners who cheerfully admits as that engaged in social engineering to justify, for him, quoting the subtitle: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.

Among Shapiro's revelations are that M*A*S*H (1972-1983), the long-running comedy set among US military doctors in Korea, and Happy Days (1974-1984), the sitcom about teenagers in the 1950s, were, by the admission of their producers, pursuing a deliberate pro-pacifist, anti-Vietnam agenda.

In the first case, it is little surprise that the comedy is set during the Korean conflict as has been closely associated with Vietnam. In fact, if it hadn 't been for the clear metaphorical connection with an actual war, the spin-off from Robert Altman' s might have also flopped movie.

Have the approval of Happy Days writer Bill Bickley, he's used a "whole subtext" against Vietnam something obvious, but understood most of the audience instinctively that Henry Winkler 's rocker heroes The Fonz a rebel to resist likely the army was to design.

And both of these examples show the risk of explaining entertainment retrospectively. In the final years of the Vietnam conflict - during which the first three seasons of M*A*S*H and the first year of Happy Days were screened – to be anti-war was a mainstream position, uniting left and right, President Nixon and folk-protest singers, just as opposition to the Iraq war rapidly became cross-party in Britain three decades later. What has happened is that a modern revisionism in some sections of the right about Vietnam – redefining it as a necessary and even glorious war – is now being applied to TV shows that grew from the majority mood of their times.

Shapiro 's thesis, but should not be dismissed immediately, especially by viewers in Britain, where the statutory and regulatory requirements, the balance to make the kind of prejudice he writes theoretically impossible. The work of Aaron Sorkin, for instance, is explicitly a liberal manifesto. While The West Wing, one of the highest achievements of the television drama, his policy is strangely fascinating. From 1999 to 2006, NBC broadcast a portrait of U.S. President, who was one result perfectly true intellectual genius (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics), although the two fictional administration of President Jeb Bartlett overlaps with the end of the Presidency of the sexually defiled Bill Clinton and the first five years of stumbling, inarticulate George W. Bush.

But while The West Wing was clearly a liberal fantasy alternative to the real politics of the time it was implicitly anti-Clinton than anti-Bush. Sorkin and his successor as show-runner, John Wells, for example, finds a clever and subtle metaphor for the lies and evasions in the Clinton White House over the Lewinsky affair, with Bartlett and his staff covered by the voters the fact that he had multiple sclerosis, a detail that will finally reveal the best of motives, from his wife.

There is never any doubt that the show is written from a liberal perspective - the biggest threat to President Bartlett 's security comes from white racists, extremists, to the fact that his daughter from an African-American object - but such stories are justified: the future historians will certainly indicated by the extent to which the racial politics of the series to be impressed with both the support and opposition to President Obama.

A recent hit NBC show, Tina Fey 's sitcom 30 Rock is another example of a series with a liberal agenda, which is more complex than it appears at first glance. Produced by the entertainment division of NBC, 30 Rock is set in a satirical approach to such an outfit. The ultimate leader of the liberal comedy writer Liz Lemon, Fey plays the character, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is a senior at GE, which owns the network, on-and off-screen. Donaghy is a rabid Republican who has several lines \ by referring to as "the recession of the Democrats \ causes". If so, how much run the rumor, Baldwin plans for mayor of New York, Shapiro will have new ammunition for a second edition.

But 30 Rock should be interpreted by Shapiro 's prism, more liberal agitation against the U.S. law, or is it an example of a good satirist' s ability gags in every aspect of a situation to be found? Donaghy is a conservative comic, but it is a caricature of liberal and feminist Lemon and above all brave American in a modern context, Tracy Morgan plays a comic-strip African-American entertainer. Gives each character in the comedy it at an acute angle to reality.

Non-American readers by Shapiro 's book will inevitably be tempted to test, to his thesis against their own drama and sitcom schedules. It is easy to fake British version of prime time propaganda, which means that Dylan the rabbit in The Magic Roundabout, a subversive ad for dope-smoking pacifism was argued, could imagine was the Liver Birds, an attempt, "normal" before sex of marriage and the hotel owner in Fawlty Towers stirred up anti-German feeling at the time of the creation of the common market.

Seriously, though, as the charge of bias has left a long time from what is done against the British broadcasting, it is interesting to see whether hidden agenda can be detected in our entertainment programs. Interestingly, it is immediately clear that a remarkable number of the most memorable British comedy characters - Alf Garnett, Terry and June Medford, Captain Mainwaring, Margot Leadbetter, Basil Fawlty, Del Boy Trotter - explicitly or implicitly Tory voters have been: it is even from Terry and June episode in which he finds shocked that they vote for the Liberal plans at the next election. It also seems likely that David Brent in the office, after a possible flirtation with Blair 's Cool Britannia would have made conservatism, while Alan Partridge is a natural Thatcher. It is true that would be chosen, though, because their ratings have success, millions of Tory voters they have observed with great pleasure with the possible exception of the Medford and Mrs. Leadbetter, none of these actors by Conservative Party Headquarters appear on posters. And most clearly defined left-handers in the British comedy - Peter Capaldi 's Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, and Robert Lindsay' s revolutionary in Citizen Smith - were objects of disgust and pity each.

This is how British TV comedy have a hidden conservative agenda corresponds to the haunting liberalism Shapiro recognizes in U.S. schedules? The problem is that the policy of a comedy are very complicated. Both The West Wing and The Thick of It can be used as examples of the leftist critique of the left can be seen and therefore can be enjoyed by the Conservatives. And this despite the opinion of the author and the characters are often defined objectively, they are then filtered through the subjective reaction of the audience, so that is known to Alf Garnett, a satire on bigotry, was so taken by members of the audience a confirmation of it. And dad 's Army, now a national TV treasure, and seemingly the most comfortable of the franchise, can be considered - and when it was launched - as a subversive piece of work.

If the history of Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard was started in 1968, said voices within the BBC and outside (in newspapers and Westminster) serious concern about the propriety of seeking jokes in a conflict that only two decades ago and ended immediately was the most affected families in the country. Actually would be an equally daring project in a U.S. context, when M * A * S * H ??during the Vietnam War was set.

A British Shapiro might also note, for some reason, it now seems strange that while one of the coolest time of the Cold War, one of the country 's most popular television shows was the representation of British military defenses how funny amateurish, although the major victims of this metaphorical connection made later out on the left side, when the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock suggested that during the 1987 elections, that Britain free of nuclear weapons would be Russia's invasion resist by Captain Mainwaring-like Home Guard.

But is not the explanation for this fascinating sub-texts in British and American comedy so that political subversives were in the comedy department, the Los Angeles and London (although, even if it shows the implicit law-and-order agenda Dozens of police officers per year in the two countries are prepared to offer conservative balance).

A central source of comedy is an attempt to claim authority, and efforts to resist it. U.S. networks found these relationships in a Korean Army Hospital, Milwaukee coffee bar and the expensive homes of friends improbable characters. British shows picked these stand-offs in a voluntary defense force, a West Country hotel and a trading company Peckham stage.

But while good comedy often about power struggles, the references are to the political power, in most cases, secondary or subliminally by the authors to transfer and certainly for the audience in this way. The only task of M * A * S * H ??and dad 's Army and the other comedies is far from secret: the humor in situations that are historically specific, but also how their success has proved universally human .