I love Lucy

Being the Ricrados is currently showing on Amazon Prime. The film is written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as her real-life and on-screen husband. Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing has always been interested in politics and so the film focuses on the moment when it is revealed that Ball declared on a form that she was a Communist. While a fascinating story given the anti-communist hysteria of the time, this is a springboard to celebrate Ball, her talent and her ground-breaking show.

Ball, like most actors, was not an overnight success. She had been a model and then a studio actor playing roles that never did her justice. I Love Lucy changed all that.

She was a superb physical comedian. If there was any doubt about that watch the clip above with Harpo Marx. Ball is his equal in comic dexterity and timing.

The show ran for six seasons and was hugely popular. It laid down the rules for how to do a sitcom and is built around a woman, Lucille Ball. A woman married to a band leader from Cuba. All of this was unprecedented for American television. While Ball’s character is a housewife it takes on social issues without hectoring its audience.

Ball continued to innovate after the show ended with her production company making several popular television shows including Mission Impossible and Star Trek.

Ball’s contribution to popular culture was widely recognised but her brilliant sitcom no longer gets shown regularly on terrestrial television. It would be a tragedy if her show and what she did was forgotten.