Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Scream

Horror-Comedy cross-over, or 'Homedy', seems to be very popular at the moment. And it's obviously going to be popular in the next week or so, since Halloween seems to be a big thing now.

It just wasn't like that when I was growing up in the 80s in England. In this regard, at least, the 80s were simpler times. Overall, society seemed to think it was reasonable not to scare children out of their wits, so that they wouldn't spend the following months unable to sleep.

In those days, Halloween was a bit naff or camp, and was a warm-up to the more exciting Bonfire Night, a few days later: a celebration of the attempted-mass-murder of MPs with hot dogs, fireworks, sparklers and the possibility of a trip to A&E. What's not to like?

Halloween was no big deal, and if you wanted suspense, the incessant adverts about the dangers of fireworks were the most frightening thing you could see on TV in late October.

You can probably tell I'm not a fan of halloween. It's partly because I'm a full-on God-botherer (and, as usual, I'll be cheerfully celebrating Reformation Day on 31st October). It's also because I've never seen any horror films. None of the Freddie films, or the Jason ones or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I have to say the title put me off the last one.

As far as suspense and mystery goes, my upper limit is early episodes of the X-Files. Yes, if horror was a curry, I'd be sweating over the Chicken Korma and wishing I'd ordered the Butter Chicken instead. (Oddly, on curry, I'm at the other end of the spectrum).

Horror and Comedy

I mention this because I'm interested between the interplay between Horror and Comedy. In some ways, they are very different genres and in others they are very similar. I thought it might be interesting to dig into this for a moment. (If it isn't interesting, here's a picture of a cat dressed as the pope).

The reason I'm nervous about mixing the genres is because they are trying to do totally separate things. Horror is trying to get you to jump in fear. Comedy is (or should be) trying to get you to laugh out loud.

Horror is giving you as little information as possible to keep you in suspense, wondering what's going to happen next. It's trying to confuse you and create mystery. Readers of this blog and my book will know I always say that confusion is the enemy of comedy. If an audience is confused, it can't laugh. One of the reasons I dislike horror, apart from the obvious, is the feeling of continually being confused and wrong-footed.

And yet, comedy relies on wrong-footing your audience. It involves giving them limited information, or sending them in one direction, before pulling them into another. Both are like magic, telling the audience to look in one place, before surprising them in another. Comedy and horror both rely on surprise. Except in horror, it's more of a shock, than a surprise. (I'm hoping to pick this up in a forthcoming book I'm writing on the ethics of comedy and jokes).

Do these similarities in construction mean that horror and comedy go well together? Or are they oil and water? At the moment, I'm not sure.

What It All Comes Down To

However, for me, the main problem with Homedy is not the mechanics, but the execution. It's the fact that the jokes and plotting often lean heavily on referencing specific horror films - films that I haven't seen and will almost certainly never see. This is where the League of Gentlemen began to lose me. To me, Series 1 is one of the funniest TV series that has ever been. It was out-and-out funny. (Remember: there was an audience laugh track.) But then the show drifted away from dark eccentricity and grotesque and closer and closer to horror, and I began to drift in the other direction.

There is nothing intrinsically funny about recreating a scene from a horror film in a comedy. I see this a lot in sitcom scripts that I sometimes get sent and have to script edit or provide notes. Quite often the writer has to perform implausible leaps to get to that spot, and then spend too long once they are there. And I have to ask the awkward question: What's the joke? Why is it funny that our regular characters are re-enacting a scene from The Shining (which I've not seen), The Omen (which I've not seen), or Poltergeist (not seen) or IT, Amityville, Last House on the Left or I Spit on Your Grave (also not seen, not seen, not seen and not seen). As I say, I like laughing. And sleeping well.


These things can be funny for a beat or a moment, but they are not, what I call, load-bearing jokes. Echoes of other genres are fine. Homage to classic film moments can be satisfying. But they're not actually funny. We had a couple of Casablanca references in one episode of Bluestone 42 which, I think, were jokes in their own right. But less is very much more on this.

The Paucity of Parody

Most comedy writers my age probably started out writing a sketch for their friends or colleagues that was a parody of Blind Date. Fifteen years later, it was all Big Brother Sketches. Then is was X-Factor sketches. These work fine but they are ultimately derivative. The format is clear so the jokes work well. And parody is a great place to start, but it's not aspirational comedically. And yet Comedy-Horror seems to be a genre in which lots of people seem to aspire to, and it is often little more than parody. This might be why I find it even more unsatisfactory.

But each to their own. I've no problem with people like horror. I don't understand the fascination or the appeal, but then I don't understand the appeal of horse-racing, ballet or fishing. But that's okay. It takes all sorts to make a world go round. Perhaps that's what Halloween really teaches us. (It doesn't. It really doesn't. But I needed a neat-sounding ending)

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If you want to know more about my rules for writing a sitcom, or your struggling with your script, get my book, Writing That Sitcom, which is available for the Kindle/Kindle App via Amazon.

If Amazon or Kindle is not your bag, it's also available as a bog-standard PDF here.

People seem to like the book, found it useful and have been kind enough to say so: 

"first-hand information on what it's like to write for major British sitcoms and get your own one made." Amazon Review

Why Would You Even Bother With Studio Sitcom?

On a recent Sitcom Geeks podcast, Dave Cohen and I interviewed Pete Sinclair, who wrote Bad Move (right) with Jack Dee for ITV having previously written Lead Balloon together. Both of those shows are single camera shows, but Pete's previous sitcoms were both studio shows (Mr Charity and All Along the Watchtower).

In the podcast - and in a written interview on this blog here, here and here - Pete goes through just how difficult it is to make a studio sitcom work. There are so many factors to get wrong. And even if you have a great script, a fab cast and get it right 'on the night' of the studio recording, that is no guarantee that it will work on the small screen in people's living rooms.

I remember Paul Mayhew-Archer, a few years ago, telling the story of how Chalk ended up on TV - and how at the cast read-throughs and rehearsals, everyone just laughed and laughed and laughed. No-one had any idea how people would take against it - and it isn't clear why they did.

On the podcast, the story is told of how Steven Moffat, the writer of Chalk, was said to be so relieved when his next sitcom, Coupling, went down well since he was then confident that he would no longer go down in history as the clown who wrote Chalk.

It's so easy to get studio sitcom wrong. So why bother?

Good question. Especially given that you can achieve so much more with a single camera show.

The studio format can be so limiting. My show, Bluestone 42, could simply not have existed in a studio setting. And the pace of a single camera show can be so much faster. Look at Modern Family or 30 Rock for sheer rapidity of gags and development of story. And you can do achieve amazing or cute effects when you're no longer confined to a studio - like the Modern Family episode that is mostly all on FaceTime.

So the question remains. Why would even bother with a studio sitcom?

I only have one answer to that question:

People love them.

In the Past
Firstly, look at the Top Ten Sitcoms from the 2004 BBC Britain Best Sitcom poll. Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life, Yes Minister, One Foot in the Grave, Porridge, Only Fools and Horses, Open All Hours, The Vicar of Dibley and Dad's Army. Not to mention the next ones on the list: Father Ted, Keeping Up Appearances, Allo Allo, Last of the Summer Wine, Steptoe and Son, Men Behaving Badly, Ab Fab and Red Dwarf.

ALL of theses are studio shows. And you have to wait 'til Number 19 before you get to the Royle Family. And then you're back to To The Manor Born, Some Mother's Do Ave Em, and The Likely Lads.

Not only are these shows classics, they are remembered fondly, they are still available and still enjoyed and watched on UK Gold, DVD and YouTube. Dad's Army is still repeated on BBC2 and outperforms every other sitcom on BBC2 and Channel 4 almost every single week.

From America
Let's not forget how TV schedules have been propped up by hours and hours of American studio comedy. I've noted before how Channel 4 often starts the day with Everyone Loves Raymond, King of Queens and Frasier. That's a lot of studio comedy. Why, then, would people say it's out of fashion? I simply can't see how that's true.

In the Present
There is no doubt that BBC's biggest comedy hitters are studio audience shows, mostly obviously Mrs Brown's Boys, along with Still Open All Hours. Citizen Khan also does very respectable numbers. You may not like these shows, or assume they are just shows for old people and families and assume studio shows aren't for the young. But quite often the most watched studio sitcom on TV is on E4. And it's Big Bang Theory.

Look at the data. Studio audience sitcoms tend to do better. And the highly acclaimed nuanced single-camera shows tend to do worse in the ratings - or delight smaller numbers of people. We live in a world when you can have both. So why not have both?

So why would even bother with a studio sitcom? People love them. They enjoy their broad brush strokes (ooh, there's another one, Brush Strokes) and the feel of togetherness you get from the style of comedy and the studio audience laughing along. We're all included.

Of course, if you don't like the show, the sound of laughter is irritating, but so what? You don't like it. Walk away. There is no need to decry the form. But people do, and I'm afraid Ben Elton's right about the snobbiness that is around about 'trying to make people laugh'. (And you can listen to our discussion of Ben Elton's Lecture right here!)

Stephen Moffat, a great sitcom writer, walked away from studio sitcoms (see also Joking Apart). Can you blame him?

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If you want to have a go at writing a sitcom, or your struggling with your script, get my book, Writing That Sitcom, which is available for the Kindle/Kindle App via Amazon.

If Amazon or Kindle is not your bag, it's also available as a bog-standard PDF here.

People seem to like the book, found it useful and have been kind enough to say so: 

"first-hand information on what it's like to write for major British sitcoms and get your own one made." Amazon Review