Until recently--with the likes of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler achieving dazzling success with 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation--popular entertainment has rarely featured women comedians in leading roles. Can comedy on television harbour elements of gender transgression or subversion? And if a man is permitted to be 'funny peculiar'--playing the underdog or misfit--does a woman seem stranger in his place? Mapping examples from British and American comedy television over the past sixty years, from I Love Lucy to Roseanne and Absolutely Fabulous to...