Scottish sitcoms: should national jokes be shared with the entire UK?

Is the best comedy necessarily the most universal? Hackles have been rising in Scotland recently over the seeming refusal of the BBC in London to screen three hit comedy series south of the border. The sketch series Burnistoun and Limmy's Show and the sitcom Gary: Tank Commander are all popular BBC hits above Berwick-upon-Tweed. The corporation's apparent reluctance to give them a wider profile led to accusations of prejudice – as reported in Scotland's Sunday Herald a few weeks ago – with comedy promoter Tommy Sheppard blaming "people from the Oxbridge set who are controlling our broadcasting".

The subsequent announcement that Gary: Tank Commander is indeed to be screened Britain-wide may be seen either as proving that Sheppard is wrong, or – given the haste with which it followed his comments – that the BBC is highly sensitive to that criticism. Is he right? Is the BBC obliged to roll out local hits across the whole territory? I sympathise with the desire of the comedians in question to have their work seen by as large an audience as possible (as Brian "Limmy" Limond told the Herald, "ideally, I want it on TV around the world 24 hours a day"), but I also think local comedy cultures are a good thing, and am all for comedy that needn't thrive beyond its immediate constituency.

From what I've seen of the three shows – which is minimal: I live in London – they might all be enjoyed by non-Scots. Greg McHugh sitcom Gary: Tank Commander is about a squaddie in Iraq and Afghanistan – not an exclusively Scottish subject. And if there's anything exclusive about Limmy's Show it's Limond's dark, offbeat humour, not his nationality (although the thick Glasgow brogue might take a little deciphering). Sheppard's comments about "the Oxbridge set" did, however, remind me of hearing Limmy recently on Matt Lucas's Radio 2 show And the Winner Is ..., when his accent and un-genteel humour struck a very incongruous note against the show's clubbable middle England tone.

With comics such as Frankie Boyle so associated (until recently) with BBC comedy, allegations of anglo- or Oxbridge-centric programming don't ring entirely true, even if certain areas of the Beeb's comedy output continue to sound home counties. But I don't see it as a given that local (or in Scotland's case, national) hits should be given UK-wide exposure. There's a place for comedy that finds humour in specific references, that brings people together by laughing at the things that unite them – and only them. It's usually preferable to the opposite – comedy that strives to appeal to absolutely everybody, and blands itself to death in the process.

Of the three shows in question, Robert Florence and Iain Connell's Burnistoun is the most obviously Scotland-centric, with talk of "mutton bridies" and "two-litre bottles of ginger". That needn't scare off the Sassenachs: Burnistoun's most famous sketch, about the awkward clash between Scottish accents and voice recognition technology ("if ye don't unnerstaun the lingo, awa back hame tae yer ain country"), has been watched two million times on YouTube. But Florence and Connell proudly claim to "make Burnistoun for people in Scotland" and, in an age when so much culture strains for mass global appeal, that's surely to be celebrated.