The question about stereotypes isn't easy. While many execs bang on about a script containing stereotypes and may use this as a means to reject, they fail to realise (as pointed out above) that many characters in sitcom are stereotype. However, execs and society do have particular 'images' of a type of person or group. If you then present them with a character out of the box or accepted 'range', it doesn't gel with the social image and the character may not be accepted.
Oddly, it's the media that often supplies the stereotype it then accusses society of holding.
Plus people (worldwide) tend to think of masses in stereotype. Stereotype is funny when used right. The Germans are seen as domineering and efficient. But all stereotypes have a basis in fact. We would never come to think of the Germans as efficient and domineering if many of the Germans we met didn't come across with those 'qualities'.
I think in comedy a stereotype is a useful tool. Why the PC brigade get upset is where a stereotype is transferred into the area of discrimination and used a reason for negative discrimination (but oddly not in cases of positive discrimination which is just as evil.)
The PC brigade is the type that want to rewrite history. They have us apologising for the slave trade when it was Britain that began the move to end it. They even presented John Newton as a upholder of the slave trade. He was a slaver in his youth, however, he was actually recognised in his day and 'til recently as the key person in effecting public change in attitudes to slavery.
The PC police want to remove or distance us from characters like Humphries because they seem to think stereotyping is a particularly British disease when in truth we are one of the most accepting and forgiving communities in the world. Only an idiot would believe that people like Humphries actually existed and needed protection from such public lampooning. This probably says more about the PC brigade than the society it seeks to purify and insulate from the perceived 'sins' of its past. The past is the past, only people like Hitler and Stalin couldn't accept the Greek line that "not even God can change the past," and attempted to make it more palatable by editing the history books.
My comments re: Humphries at the top were aimed not at him being a 2-D gay stereotype but simply one of many 2-D characters with careers built on a single memorable line.
I liked Wrong Tale's poigniant line above, the comment about him being free finally.
