Dumb and dumber: These characters are why TV is sometimes called the idiot box
By Ben Pobjie
Stupidity is a staple of television, as it is a staple of all art – after all, the tendency of human beings to suffer moments of intellectual malfunction is at the same time relatable, amusing and a great way to set stories in motion. But the classic comedy idiot has gone out of fashion in modern TV. There was a time when no TV comedy was complete without one character who wasn’t just prone to stupidity, but who was defined practically entirely by their feeble brain’s inability to process the world around it. These idiots were wildly entertaining, and frequently the most loveable and popular characters on their shows. Nowadays, it’s vanishingly rare to see a true all-round moron lighting up the screen, and you can’t help but feel we’ve lost a little of our culture in the evolution. So in the interests of nostalgia and the remembrance of a golden age of televised stupidity, here are TV history’s seven greatest idiots.
Baldrick in Blackadder (Foxtel, Britbox)
Tony Robinson as Baldrick (left) with Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder.
In the first season of Blackadder, Baldrick (played by Tony Robinson), the servant of the weaselly Prince Edmund, was no fool – indeed he was probably the smartest character on the show, way quicker on the uptake than his master. But when the show was retooled to make Blackadder a sarcastic mastermind, Baldrick was fashioned anew, and as generations of Blackadder sunk lower in the social ranks, generations of Baldricks became ever more imbecilic. From Elizabethan Baldrick’s scheme to disguise a mad bull as a chicken to win a cockfight, to Regency Baldrick’s belief that his first name might have been “Sod Off”, to World War One Baldrick’s inspirational poem “The German Guns” (“Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom”), this much-put-upon dogsbody travelled throughout history, each cunning plan dafter than the last, establishing the gold standard for stupidity.
Rose Niland in The Golden Girls (Disney+, Stan)
Betty White (right) with her Golden Girls co-stars Bea Arthur (left), Rue McClanahan (back) and Estelle Getty.Credit: AP
Betty White was originally meant to play the man-eater Blanche, but was more interested in essaying the part of the adorably dim-witted Minnesotan farm girl Rose. In doing so, she created a character for the ages. Rose was kindhearted and sweet, but so dumb she drove her housemates to distraction. With an inability to grasp any situation that arose, and a habit of telling agonisingly long-winded and baffling tales of her youth in the world Idiot capital, St Olaf (a particular highlight: the mystery of Grunella Ulf, Sven Bjornsen and Ingmar von Bergen, “St Olaf’s meanest ventriloquist”), Rose’s greatest attribute was her iron-plated self-esteem: no matter how many times her friends gave scathingly honest appraisals of her intelligence, she’d keep voicing her uniquely brainless perspective. The combination of Rose’s cluelessness and the acid tongue of Bea Arthur’s Dorothy was the show’s core strength.
Woody Boyd in Cheers (Foxtel Now, purchase on AppleTV)
Woody Harrelson (front left) and the Cheers cast.
It’s strange to think that acclaimed and versatile movie star Woody Harrelson got his start playing a sweet-natured Indiana halfwit on Cheers. Woody replaced the character of Coach, a prize idiot himself, after Nicholas Colasanto, who played Coach, died, and quickly established himself in the upper echelons of the pantheon of TV fools. Like Rose, Woody was a small-town farm kid transplanted to the big city, and a certain naivete in the ways of the world would be expected. But Woody’s failure to comprehend anything going on around him went way beyond naivete: as the rest of the staff and barflies traded quickfire comic barbs across the tavern floor, the hapless young bartender stood confused and bewildered, never really knowing what was going on, but always glad to be a part of it.
Alice Tinker/Horton in The Vicar of Dibley (Stan, Britbox)
Alice Tinker (Emma Chambers), Vicar Geraldine (Dawn French) and David Horton (Gary Waldhorn) in The Vicar of Dibley Christmas special 1997.
When Geraldine Grainger (Dawn French) took the post of vicar in the village of Dibley, she found the parish almost entirely inhabited by idiots, but the bonehead par excellence was her verger, Alice Tinker (later Horton, after she married kindred spirit and fellow twit Hugo). Like many of the best idiots, Alice (Emma Chambers) was a pure soul, filled with love for her fellow humans, but almost too stupid to breathe. Every episode ended with her utter failure to understand a joke told by the vicar, and that’s the energy she brought to every interaction: Alice constructed for herself a fascinating inner world based on her complete misinterpretation of everything she saw and heard. From a belief that Jesus was born “in Dunstable” to her eye-opening philosophical musings on the nature of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Alice was a true original thinker – if “thinking” was the right word for what was going on inside that head.
Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted (purchase on Apple TV)
Ardal O’Hanlon (left) as the dim-witted Father Dougal in Father Ted.
As childlike (although, to be honest, his intelligence was closer to a chicken’s than a child’s) priest Dougal, Ardal O’Hanlon breathed life into a character that was stupid even compared to the other idiots on this list. Dougal genuinely was so stupid it was hard to know how he remembered to stand upright, let alone how he became a priest – though in the surreal world of Father Ted, priesthood seemed more like a kind of alien race than a profession. Among Dougal’s greatest hits were his failure to grasp the difference between small cows and cows that are far away, his fascination with the legendary Spider Baby (“it has the body of a spider, but the mind of a baby”), and his joyous amazement when he learnt that rocks come in different sizes.
Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (purchase on Apple TV)
Ted Baxter was the role of a lifetime for Ted Knight (right), pictured with his Mary Tyler Moore Show castmates Ed Asner, Betty White and Mary Tyler Moore.Credit: AP
The exemplar of the preening, egotistical, but entirely vacuous celebrity, Ted Baxter (the role of a lifetime for Ted Knight) was the newsreader on Minneapolis’s WJM-TV, whose newsroom staff’s most important job was disguising Baxter’s inexhaustible reserves of ignorance. The original template for Ron Burgundy and any number of other empty talking heads since, Baxter became less obnoxious and more cuddly as the series went on, but he never got any smarter. His over-inflated sense of self and firm belief in his own brilliance just made his hopeless flailing when asked to use his brain all the funnier.
Harry Solomon in 3rd Rock From The Sun (Stan)
In 3rd Rock From The Sun, French Stewart’s (right) Harry Solomon would have struggled on his home planet.
The entire Solomon family struggled with basic concepts, being newly arrived aliens trying to fit in as ordinary Earthlings. But French Stewart’s Harry, with his perpetual squint a visual representation of how difficult the universe was to decipher for him, was an idiot even back on his home planet. Only part of the mission because of the “thing in his head” that allowed communication back home, Harry’s stupidity exasperated his fellow aliens, but left unsuspecting humans almost in awe, as they never knew how dumb a person can be. Harry never did get the hang of being human, or even of being alive, as evidence by the immortal exchange: “I can’t see through my eyelids!” “Open them.” “Oh, they’re manual!”
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