Written by Katie Coxall; edited by Morgan Forbes
Rent prices in modern-day London are well and truly through the roof; turning the act of finding a normal, affordable place to live in the city into an absolute hellish nightmare. It’s an incredibly serious issue off the back of the current UK housing crisis and is seemingly affecting every person hoping to move or even stay in their current housing situation. It’s a very bleak time to live in London. Against all odds, writer and actor Jamie Demetriou identified this major crisis and transformed the subject matter into a brilliantly light-hearted sitcom about the letting agents that have been either willingly or unwillingly thrown in the middle of this wide-scale disaster.
Stath Lets Flats first premiered on Channel 4 on the 27th of June 2018, and since then has gone on to win three Baftas off the back of its three-season run. Following the relatively incompetent letting agent Stath (Jamie Demetriou) as he goes about his day-to-day life, the show introduces us to a collection of strangely loveable characters, most of whom work in the drab Michael & Eagle Lettings office. Demetriou himself has labelled the show “hard to sell”: on paper, the premise sounds bland , especially when considering the actual context behind the show’s primary joke is that the state of the housing market in the UK is laughable. However, it only takes one episode to convince you Stath Lets Flats is worth your while.
Whilst the concept is relatively mundane, mirroring shows such as The Office in its workplace-centric formula, the narrative and storytelling of Stath Lets Flats is genuinely rather absurd. Jumping into a river “for charity”, chasing a pigeon around a front room and slicking down his co-worker’s (Al Roberts’) hair for two hours are some of the more normal tasks Stath seems to take on at his father’s lettings agency. What makes the show seem almost Lynchian is the complete desensitisation demonstrated by the entire cast of characters to Stath’s storylines: when new manager Julian (Dustin Demri-Burns) falls off a roof at the local letting agents awards and unfortunately passes away, the plot point is hardly acknowledged and instead the business migrates out of the office and into Stath’s father’s kitchen.
A main element for the show’s ability to instantly engage an audience is Demetriou’s intricate writing; ‘Intricate’ in the sense that every stutter, every mispronounced word, and every badly-timed smirk is completely intentional. The show is ridiculously quotable; ‘Stathisms’ fill every line of dialogue and create an entirely new language that seamlessly populates each scene. Phrases like “oh my crump” and “blerdy gerdy” are uttered with such normalcy that, after a few episodes, you can’t help but integrate them into your own vocabulary. Demetriou claims that “99.9% of the dialogue is written in a broken way”, yet the ensemble cast’s ability to fully immerse in this “broken” language creates a space that is so rich with internal understanding that it deserves to be labelled a cinematic universe.
There are background elements to the initial production and creation of the show that shed light on how this awfully cringey realism came to life. Casting actors personally close to Demetriou such as Ellie White (fellow University of Bristol alumni) and Natasia Demetriou (Jamie’s real sister) ensured a shared sense of humour and thus created a space for Demetriou’s written intricacies to be played out as envisioned. Fast-paced quips and background facial expressions come together to create an entire mise-en-scene of stupidity; a level of stupidity that has clearly been orchestrated with a high level of intellectual anticipation.
Demetriou stated in an interview with the Guardian that whilst writing the show he purposefully “manufactured slapstick in his own flat by leaving things out to trip over”, giving an insight into
his desire to replicate the truest form of physical awkwardness. In fact, “Is Stath Lets Flats improvised” is one of the most Google-searched questions in relation to the show. Stath’s ability to appear so painstakingly awkward is the key to its electric connectivity with audiences.
We all know a Stath or an Al. These are characters written to absolute perfection through the refinement of their flaws. Even minor characters are all too familiar if you inhabit a London-esque cityscape. Demetriou leaves no detail without a degree of cringe , and it’s this recurring element of clumsiness that truly highlights their familiarity. Creating such a broad range of characters and uniting them through both physical and verbal clumsiness creates a sitcom founded on one of the purest forms of lighthearted comedy: silliness.
References
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/apr/11/jamie-demetriou-awards-stath-lets-flats-baftas
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/stath-lets-flats-series-3-jamie-demetriou-b1941996.html
https://play.acast.com/s/filmstobeburiedwith/jamiedemetriou-filmstobeburiedwithwithbrettgoldstein-57
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