In previous blogs, I've noted that there's an awful lot of decent drama around. I've recently been loving The Night Manager and The People vs OJ. And when Hugh Laurie was finally despatched, along came Line of Duty to take it's place. I'm being well served by drama. No question about that.
If we look at the ratings that are churned out by various agencies, we will see that drama is dominant, and if we squint a little, we may be able to make out a victory dance.
I've been poring over these numbers as provided and filtered by Broadcast magazine in their 'Consolidated Figures' list, which includes catch-up, PVRs and the like, and I've been trying to arrange them into something useful. So here's something: if not a snapshot, then a slightly longer exposure than that.
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| Look out. They've spawned a monster. |
Call the Midwife (10.89m), Happy Valley (9.34m), Night Manager (8.56m), Death in Paradise (8.09m), Silent Witness (8.4m), War and Peace (7.4m), Vera (7.3m)
Only one sitcom is competing with these murderers and midwives. That would be the one with our Granville: Still Open All Hours (7.88m).
In that same time period, there are 5 more dramas that have done some very decent numbers (5m+):
Midsomer Murders (6.47), Grantchester (6.3), Endeavour (5.94), Shetland (5.8), Doctor Thorne (5.7)
Only two sitcoms are competing with these: Benidorm (5.95), Birds of a Feather (5.34)
Now maybe this is an unfair time period. If we went back to 2015, we'd be able to include Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas Specials, Car Share and Count Arthur Strong. But then we'd also be including dramas like Downton Abbey, Broadchurch, Doctor Foster, Sherlock, And Then There Were None, Doc Martin, New Tricks, The Syndicate, Partners in Crime, Inspector George Gently, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Ordinary Lies and Poldark. Another very respectable list.
So why is this happening in mainstream, when there's probably as much comedy on TV as there's ever been looking across all the channels? What's happened to the mainstream sensibility? Why are household names like Steve Coogan and Harry Enfield still making comedy for BBC2, not BBC1 or ITV? And why are these highly acclaimed, well-made, award-winning shows on BBC2 and C4 rarely beating reruns of Dad's Army? Why are great British comedy writers winning EMMY's for Veep and not BAFTAs? Why is the writer of Men Behaving Badly, Simon Nye, writing The Durrells, and not a sitcom? Why aren't big stars queuing up to be in sitcoms any more?
I really and truly don't know. I don't even know if it's possible to know.
Maybe I'll get some compelling theories at the conference. I hope to share the thoughts of the assembled comedic throng soon.
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A few thoughts on the question of "why is Simon Nye, writing The Durrells, and not a sitcom".
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of writers whose early careers are in half-hour comedies gravitate towards longer-form pieces as they get older. Plenty of examples: Steven Moffat, from "Coupling" to "Doctor Who" and "Sherlock" is just one that comes to mind. Other writers who stay in 'comedy' start producing work that is more complex with shades of drama - Louis CK for instance. It's comparitively rare to see established drama writers make a permanent shift to writing sitcoms however. I'd guess that the reasons are many and varied but I'd include:
1. Writing half-hour comedy might become intellectually limiting. Writers, if they're flexible, want to explore broader territory.
2. Writing comedy is harder than drama! And if you've mastered writing scripted comedy then you have all the skills needed to write drama, only without the pressure to be funny. As a bonus, commissioners LOVE drama writers who know how to do comedy properly. So comedy-skilled drama writers find themselves in high demand...
3. Drama is better paid, with longer orders and greater rewards if it becomes long-running. A decent drama writer is paid at least £50K per hour (off a script fee of £25K) for an hour of BBC terrestrial drama. For an eight-part drama that means a pay day north of £400K if they write the whole thing themselves. Not many sitcom writers are making that per series!
4. There is simply more drama than comedy and it is perceived as being more 'stable' in terms of channel demand for it. Comedy seems to suffer more 'trends', which may de facto exclude certain types of writing for periods. There is also more jobbing work in drama, writing episode 9 of series 14 of long-running returners like Doc Martin. There is much less jobbing work in sitcom, as the shorter runs tend to mean creators write it all themselves. Taken together, drama is perhaps the more reliable area to work in.
5. The criticism of drama seems often (not always) less brutal than that of comedy. People complain that they find a bad drama 'boring' or 'cliched' and turn off. But comedies they dislike are treated like atrocities. "Bad comedy" makes people angry. Related to that, as we know, comedy is seen as the poor relation of drama when it comes to awards. As a writer getting garlanded for your drama writing might be rather nice after your sitcom gets a kicking!
6. The ratings thing matters. New comedies often take longer to 'bed in' with audiences than new dramas, and it takes a confident channel to support new comedy when it initially does poorly against slot averages. This only adds to a writer's anxiety that their endeavours in comedy may suffer an earlier death than their drama might.
7. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of comedy strands are perceived as "young writers" terrain. With some noble exceptions (Paul Whitehouse and pals, for example) most of the sketch shows in the last decade have been written and performed by younger people. This is not true of drama. Sitcom is more varied in terms of writer demographics than sketch, but I think it probably still skews to being perceived as the turf of younger writers.
Interested to hear your thoughts on the above, James!
Some excellent points there. I wish I'd thought of them.
DeleteJust a couple of comments on yours as they occur:
"I think that a lot of writers whose early careers are in half-hour comedies gravitate towards longer-form pieces as they get older. Plenty of examples: Steven Moffat, from "Coupling" to "Doctor Who" and "Sherlock" is just one that comes to mind. Other writers who stay in 'comedy' start producing work that is more complex with shades of drama - Louis CK for instance."
And of course, Roy Clarke! Still writing sitcoms at the age of 86. 86! Amazing. And let's be honest, they haven't gone dark. But he is the exception, for sure.
"New comedies often take longer to 'bed in' with audiences than new dramas, and it takes a confident channel to support new comedy when it initially does poorly against slot averages."
Yes. Critical kickings aside, sitcoms are all about familiarity and knowing the characters, which makes them much harder to launch. Whereas a drama requires some huge transgressive at the start (like a bank robbery, and they take of their masks, and hey, it's a bunch of kids! (or something. Mind you, that's not a bad idea...)) and then you keep them hooked with story more than character. Tricky one. Because a failing sitcom and a slowly succeeding sitcom can look very similar.
Keep them coming everyone!
Read this just as I was sitting down to mull over writing something along the same lines about comic novels. Which is another story, but I saw the parallel.
ReplyDeleteMy 2p's worth might be along the lines of 'media fragmentation has been particularly unkind to comedy'. We stuck with things that we didn't immediately love because there was nothing on the other channel; our instant 'that first joke wasn't funny' reaction makes comedy particularly vulnerable to the multi-channel environment in a way that drama might not be.
Our folk memory of comedy is often as a universally shared experience - the nation gathering round the wireless for Hancock yadda yadda - and I think that plays its part also. Something's lost without that big critical mass. Essentially, my going round the playground doing a bad Frank Spencer was embarrassing enough as it was, without other kids looking blankly 'Frank Who?'