Homer Simpson, it can be argued, plays the role in our contemporary watching habits that the equally rolly-polly William Claude Dunkenfield - alias Otis Cribblecoblis, Mahatma Kane Jeeves or the more recognizable W.C. Fields - once played.

High Strung Family Man

Perhaps that means that every generation since the advent of talking images has needed one: the high-strung family man prone to periodically puncturing the pretense in which he is forced to live, desperate to kick, strangle or otherwise impulsively abuse a morally superior wife, a misbehaving child, or an officious boss - in short, to incarnate the "quiet desperation" of the average working male with the broadest, meanest postures possible.

The Legacy

From Fields, the original, we move on Jackie Gleason with his threats to send poor Audrey Meadows to the moon, to Britain's Basil Fawlty with his long-limbed nervosa, and finally, to Homer.