before there were sitcoms there was an early fiction form called the comedy of manners. Some of Georgette Heyer's fiction fell between the two categories called comedy of manners and regency romance and I've been reading those and laughing my ass off. The young hero type (as oppossed to the male protag) just awoke in the night to discover he can't get his door open and decided the villian locked him in so he's yelling and screaming thinking the villian is running off with the women, but the aging governess tied the "hero's" door to the "villian's" door with some clothesline so that if the villian woke up and tried to get out in the night it would wake the young guy up, and he'd protect them. But she neglected to tell anyone and scared the bejesszus out of everyone and then it all got complicated by her mastiff dog. It's set during the Napoleonic War and I laughed until I had tears running down my face.