Clare in the Community is a BBC Radio 4 sitcom based on the comic strip of the same name by Harry Vennin and David Ramsden. The series stars Sally Phillips as Clare Barker, a self-obsessed busybody social worker at the Sparrowhawk Family Centre, who's a lot more invested in solving other people's problems than she is in solving her own. She's white and heterosexual, but doesn't like it when people point that out. She's also very blatantly middle-class, but insists that she's from working-class roots since her "grandfather was a Geordie coalminer."
The series also features Alex Lowe as Claire's beleaguered partner Brian; Andrew Wincott as Brian's womanizing friend Simon, Nina Conti as both trainee social worker Megan and Clare's Eastern European nanny Nali; Richard Lumsden as Ray, the only male employee or the Sparrowhawk Family Centre; Gemma Craven (later Liza Tarbuck/Pippa Haywood) as Professional Slacker Helen, Ellen Thomas as team leader Irene and Sarah Kendall as Irene's later replacement, Libby.
Clare in the Community ran for 12 seasons and 74 episodes from 2004-2019, making it one of BBC Radio's longest-running comedy series.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Expansion: The comic strip is a three-panel gag strip and the series is a half-hour sitcom, so this trope was pretty much unavoidable. Most of the episode plots have been invented wholesale for the series.
- Audio Adaptation: It's a radio version of a comic strip. Harry Venning, who created, wrote and drew the comic strip,
is one of the co-writers of the series. - Control Freak: Clare wants perfect control of every part of both her professional and personal life. She usually fails at it.
- Epunymous Title: The title is a pun on the phrase "Care in the community," which was the buzzword de jour when Britain decided to close down most of their psychiatric hospitals and support — or at least try to support — the mentally ill in their own homes.
- It's All About Me: Clare wants to present herself as selfless, self-sacrificing and socially conscious, but she's primarily concerned with how everything affects her and how she looks while dealing with other people.
- Mistaken for Gay: When Clare accompanies Megan to birthing class, the instructor assumes they're a lesbian couple. Clare, who likes to be seen as an oppressed minority, goes along with it, despite Megan's protests.
- Never My Fault: Clare will always blame everyone else when things go wrong, especially Brian, even when it couldn't be more blatant that she fault is entirely hers.
- Professional Slacker: Helen is frequently accused of being this by her coworkers, though she keeps denying it.
- Straight Gay: Ray, who's openly gay but to Clare's annoyance doesn't at all conform to any gay stereotypes.
- Soapbox Sadie: Clare will go on about any popular social issues if you let her, while ignoring the actual people those social issues affect.
- Time Skip: Season two ends with the birth of Megan's daughter Brenda and the marriage of Helen and Colin. In the first episode of season three, Colin and Helen have broken up and Brenda is old enough to talk.
- Twofer Token Minority: Irene is a black woman who later comes out as a lesbian.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Clare could give Hyacinth Bucket a run for her money when it comes to self-obsession, frantic keeping up appearances and total delusional ignorance in how much she gets on everyone's nerves — though where Hyacinth desperately tries to appear like an upper-class Grande Dame, Clare wants to be seen as the hard-working and self-sacrificing saint from working-class roots.
