Sitcom Geek

What I Learnt in Casting

2012-02-13T03:55:00.000-08:00

I have recently spend many days in casting for a show. This is a fairly new experience for me. I've done some casting before, but this amount casting this many parts is new to me. Without dwelling on the details of the show and the people we saw, here are some comments about what the write can gain from casting - and some things to look out for.

The Joy of the Jokes
One of the most exciting things about casting is hearing dialogue read aloud by someone who knows what they're doing. A script that has been sweated over and tinkered with for weeks, months, or even years, is finally being taken for a brief test drive, by someone who at least knows how to drive, even if they're not the Formula One star you'd been hoping for. Even though you, the director or producer are reading in other parts, just hearing it read aloud is a wonderful experience. You hear some of the jokes, which is a relief, but the process also exposes hitherto hidden flaws: lengthy dry patches without jokes; lines that are funnier than was first thought; and bits that just sound wrong or confusing. After a few days of various actors reading in different parts, my writing partner and I found there were already enough issues raised to produce a new draft of the script. This made the script stronger. Rejoice.

The Refinement of the Character
Seeing and hearing a decent actor read a part will help you define the voice. Sometimes, you think a character should be played posh, but when you hear it read posh, or very posh, the character becomes insufferable and you've learnt something. Or an actor reads a part in a completely unexpected way that sounds wrong, but it's good to hear it that way because it confirms what you already thought about that character. Or opens up a new direction. This is hard to conceive because lots of writers have a very fixed idea in their head of what a character should look like and sound like - and they can expend much energy arguing for someone who most fits that brief, even if they're not the funniest or the best. In reality, another actor might breathe life into that part and make it more interesting, much as a writer would hate to admit this.

One for the Back Pocket
You often see actors who are funny and interesting but not right for the parts on the table. But you need to remember these people, because you might need them in the future. When you're writing a one-off part, or even a new character, in a future episode or a different show entirely, your writing partner or director might say "Hey, remember that actor we saw? With the odd hat? Who did that thing? They really had something about them. Could this character be right for them?" And then you're creating a part that you're pretty sure will be brilliantly executed which, in the chaotic throes of a TV series, is a useful short cut to the funny.

The Stars Are In The Sky For A Reason
Writers are drawn to unknowns. For several reasons. One is that unknowns have less experience and therefore more likely to do what they are told, and perform the show as written. (Writers like that). If/when the show does become a success, the script stands a greater chance of shining because critics are less like to attribute the success to a new actor (Writers are obsessed with critics, even though they think they're idiots). Writers are not attention seekers, and tend to think less of people who seek the limelight. Stars are very happy with attention, and writers tend to think less of them for this. But let's be clear about this. Stars are often stars because they're really good. And when they audition, they tend to sparkle. An experienced star brings more than just their name and reputation to the show. They bring so much more.

Overall, the casting process is a useful reminder to the writer that, much as they would hate to admit, comedy is a collaborative process, especially in television. An good actor brings experience and insight to this creative process which I hope, in our better moments, we would acknowledge. The best shows are usually a happy accidents of teamwork, rather that the ruthless execution of one person's vision.

The God Particle

2012-01-26T01:17:00.001-08:00

It's no coincidence that many great British sitcom actors of our age tend to be theatrical stars rather than movie stars. The likes of Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Penelope Keith, Peter Bowles and Felecity Kendall were rooted in the British theatre. Sitcoms, especially studio audience ones, are probably more like theatre than any other medium. The tone and tempo are similar - and the audience are asked to buy the contrivance of a set, which never quite passes for 100% real. Reality is heightened, time is compressed and then there is the sound of audience laughter - which you really do not get in real life. At least, I don't.

This link with the theatre poassibly explains why I've had a lot of fun writing a play called The God Particle. Apologies for the shameless, thinly disguised promotion of it on this blog, but there it is. Come and see my play. It's on at St Peter's Church in Fulham on 4th & 5th Feb. Details below.

So What's It About?
It's a romantic comedy about a vicar and a quantum physicist who are brought together by circumstances, and they bicker and argue about life and religion like Maddie and David from Moonlighting. It's all based around a quotation by one of my favourite writers, GK Chesterton who said "The point of having an open mind is the same as having a open mouth: to close it on something solid." This sounds witty but is it true? The scientist would argue not. What is it to have an open mind? Does that mean never believing anything? The play looks at all that. With jokes.

Ticket info
The Saturday night 8pm show is already sold out. There are three other shows, though, at 5.30pm on Saturday 4th February (book here), and 4pm (here) and 8pm (and here) on Sunday 5th February. There is one more date in Burford, Oxon on 18th Feb (here).

Titles for Shows

2012-01-19T04:04:00.000-08:00

Here's my experience of show titles. A title for the show turns up at the very beginning, or you're really going to struggle to think of one you like.

I have a few shows swirling around at the moment. One has a working title that needs to be changed. And another has a title that I don't like any more. Trying to re-title a show is very very hard for a reason I can't quite fathom.

It's worth spending a moment thinking about the point of show title. What is it for? Ultimately, it's the audience's first contact with the show and so needs to be an attention-grabber. But if it's too smart or clever, or too cynically trying to do this, it might sound false or contrived. It should, in some way, encapsulate the show - ideally having a double meaning. But this is easy to get wrong. A slightly lazy way of doing this is using the surname of the 'hero' of the show (eg. Prisoner's Dilemma - John Prisoner is a regular who is always ending up in tricky situations... See? Awful.)

With my radio projects, titles just turned up early on in a fairly pleasing way. Think The Unthinkable was the show title from very early on and conveyed a sense of people advocating change purely for its own sake which is what the show was essentially about. My Bletchley Park sitcom, Hut 33, came along quite easily. Early versions of the show were called Hut 6 (where the likes of Alan Turing worked during World War Two), but then I realised out of respect for those hero-boffins, I wanted a hut that didn't exist and was clearly full of also-rans on the edges. Hut 33 scans quite well and, after I chose it, realised it subconsciously reminds you of of Catch 22. No bad thing (even though Catch 22 is a comedy, but it's such a cultural icon, it feels safe to refer to it in that way). My other short-lived/failed radio sitcom, The Pits, equally came at the start - about musicians in an orchestra pit who were discontent with their lot in life.

In general, it's a nightmare if you have to spend too much time on it. You need a title that sounds exciting and intriguing and is distinctive, but not too weird. But not too bland. I have to say 'New Girl' is a really bland title for a very quirky and interesting show. Felt they could have pushed that harder. But what do they care? The show's a hit.

How do others find this who area of thinking up titles? What are the rules? What are the notable failures, or resounding successes?

(Let's not get sidetracked on episode titles which are largely pointless, and purely to tell them apart in TV listings. That said, the Friends 'The One where...' is pleasing, as is the Big Bang Theory's insistence of using words like Conjecture and Hyphothesis - but they're surely going to run out of abstract nouns sooner or later.)

The Royal Bodyguard

2012-01-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to iPlayer (possibly the best use of licence fee money since hiring David Attenborough in the 60s) I finally managed to watch the new BBC1 sitcom, The Royal Bodyguard. I'd tried to avoid too much press before seeing it myself, but saw that some people were saying slightly curious things about it, comparing it to Jonny English, as if that were a bad thing. Daft physical comedy is the oldest, most enduring, most globally successful kind of comedy there is (ask multi-millionaire Rowan Atkinson). Some people just don't like that kind of thing. Fair enough.

It's also worth bearing in mind that The Royal Bodyguard is written by Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni, who wrote the excellent Worst Week of My Life. They have proven that they are decent writers, especially of farce and physically comedy - and are more successful than sitcomgeek. Noted.

Caveats done. So what did you think?
I saw Episode 1 and I'm not into it yet. It's early days, and my concerns with it may well end up being addressed. Here's my main observation. The show is all about the central character. Completely and totally. Other characters in the show are all played very straight - even the wonderfully funny Neil Edmond, and the cartoonish villains. I personally would have made the peripheral characters funny and given them lots of jokes. Geoffrey Whitehead really knows how to nail a joke, so its a pity he didn't have much to get his teeth into.

Now because the writers are good, the star of the show has nothing to prove as a comedy actor, and the production company are the mighty Hatrick, there must be some reason as to why all involved are not being carried shoulder-high through the streets of Shepherd's Bush. It feels like it was a conscious decision to focus the comedy on the central character, so the pressure is all on David Jason as the Royal Bodyguard to do every single one of the show's jokes. To sustain that level of scrutiny, the character needs to be completely watertight. But water is, I fear, seeping in. Or out. (which every is the bad way round).

Who is Hubble?
So who is this Hubble character? My main beef is that after watching him for half an hour, I still don't really know. I'm not after backstory. (Remember, backstory is comedy death) I need to understand what he wants. Is he incompetent, stupid, clumsy, unprofessional, hapless or out of his depth? These all overlap, but they're not the same thing.

First Impressions
And when we meet the character for the first time, we form our initial impression of him. And here is a confusing signal because at the very beginning, the Queen is getting into the coach. He picks up a crisp packet and explodes it in the face of a guard. Really? What an extraordinary thing for even a lowly royal car park attendant. He must be a really prankster. Or a live wire. Like Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura. Or massively unprofessional - in which case he wouldn't try to rescue the Queen. Who is he?

His exchange with the Hotel guy (Neil Edmond) doesn't quite establish him. We don't know whether he realises he's been massively overpromoted or not. It would be useful to clarify that. One way to go would be to make him pompous/Mainwairing-like and think its about time he was in charge, and this will give him the respect her craves. This could explain why he genuinely thinks that female assassin is attracted to him, because at the moment, that bit feels implausible. He would surely realise that he, as head of security, is a prime target for a femme fatale?

He is obviously fairly stupid. But how stupid? It sounds picky, but again, it would be useful to know exactly how stupid or, indeed, why he is so stupid. What desire or life-goal is hampering his judgment to badly? We encounter different types of stupid in the same show and we can tell the difference - think about Kramer, George and Newman in Seinfeld. In Dad's Army, Pike is stupid because he's young. In Allo Allo, the policeman is stupid because he's foreign/English. People often appear stupid ebcause they want something. What is it?

In the hotel room, Hubble seems surprised by someone who is obviously a hotel porter and a maid in the bedroom. Is he really that stupid? It's okay if he is. Very stupid is funny. But then he later, he correctly realises that leg of the assassin was different (and this thought is not triggered by anything). So he's not that stupid? And yet this is the man who didn't realise he was being seduced. And somehow didn't feel his key being taken from out of his sock.

English & Clouseau
Now I couldn't answer any of these questions in the case of Johnny English and/or Inspector Clouseau. And yet it feels like Atkinson/Sellars know in their hearts what their characters are like and what really makes them tick. And when The Royal Bodyguard really shows us who Hubble is, what he wants and why he can't have it, we'll have some serious comedy on our hands.

Central Character Needs Work

2011-12-22T04:37:00.000-08:00

I've been working one particular sitcom idea for a few of years. It's a silly, jokey, studio-based show, rather than a searingly satirical non-audience piece. More Black Books than The Thick of It. The show has slowly moved around from one thing into another, losing one of the main characters and shifting focus, even though the tone has remained the same.

But all of the above has happened at such a slow speed that I've failed to notice that the key character is not clear enough. This has been pointed out to me by an exec (they're not all bad) and I've failed to properly address this, even though the script is on draft 6. If I'm honest, I have to admit that the comedy at the moment comes too much from the situation and the jokes - and not the key character at the centre of the show is based. We want to root for the guy - but we don't know how to because we don't know who he really is and what he really wants.

Some shows get away with this. I'd cautiously suggest that even one of my all time favourites, Seinfeld, has this failing. Jerry Seinfeld's character isn't quite sharp enough or focussed enough - but Elaine, George and Kramer cover that up well, as does a set of stand up at the beginning and the end. By the time the show was established, none of this seemed to matter. But they got lucky. (FYI Genius = luck + hard work + experience).

Anyway, before Christmas hits, I shall be asking myself these questions about my central character, which you may like to ask yourself of your characters that aren't quite working:

What does he want? Why? What does he think he wants? What does he actually want? How does this differ from what he actually needs? And what he gets?

What stops him from getting what he wants? How do the other characters stop him from getting what he wants? How is it ultimately his own fault?

How does he see the world? How does the world see him? How do the other characters see him? How does this differ with how we, the audience, see him?

If you don't answers for most of these, you've got a problem. So, if it's really not working, let's think the unthinkable:
Should he be a she? How does that change things?
Should he be something else completely?
Should he be deleted altogether? (I've already scrapped one character without replacing them - and it made it better).

Answer all of the above without resorting to tedious backstory. Backstory is comic death (because it's all reported) and doesn't move things forward. In sitcoms, characters need strong drives and clearly-defined quests and achievable goals - so that we know whether they are succeeeding or not. Whether they achieve them or not is up to you. But the more specific and defined the goal, the easier it is to understand. And if the audience isn't confused or baffled at any point, you stand a fighting chance of making them laugh. And that's what it's all about.

Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

2011-12-20T14:47:00.000-08:00

This show was also going to divide the viewers - into the group of those who like jokes and those who find jokes rather insulting to the intelligence. I am obviously in the former group. And tend to find critics in the latter.

I don't intend to dwell on the Bleak Old Shop of Stuff for long - only to say that it was a lovely, silly romp with lots and lots of jokes. Yes, a little too much CGI, and maybe an hour isn't quite the right length for this, but when somebody points out a church is called 'St Weddings', who can resist?

Well, some critics obviously. Mixed reaction, as one would expect. Now, one cannot blame someone for not liking something. There are plenty of shows out there which are not to my taste but people like them, and I must accept that. But the critic who falls into the trap of saying 'No one can find this funny' is skating on thin festive ice.

Criticiquing Critics
I mention this because Zoe Williams' response is baffling and slightly comical. She hates the show. Fine. She insists on relaying the jokes she hates. It really is the way you tell them. And then, it being the internet, people leave their comments. Some agree. Some disagree. Occasionally, the critic gets lured back into making comments. If you're a critic reading this (or a writer for that matter), can I suggest you don't get lured in message-board debates? Typing out a reaction and hitting 'send' or 'post' often does not end well. You may end up saying something exactly like this:

I don't think humour is subjective. I think some things are funny and some things aren't, and this wasn't, and people who think it was are misguided.

I hope that's a joke, and that the tone has not come across. Otherwise, that's a worrying statement from a critic who seems to have access to mythical equipment that tells us what is objectively funny and what is not. Can we all have a look at this equipment Zoe? Some of us could really use it in our day-to-day writing work.

Then Ms Williams makes the mistake of assuming that anyone who disagrees agrees with her must be in some way a relative the the writer. "Are you serious?" she writes. "Are you this writer's mum?" Cheap shot.

Come on, Ms Williams. You're a professional journalist and you're better than this. I'm sure you are. (I don't read the Guardian, but I assume so, since it seems to be a decent publication).

I'm making a fuss about this because the way critics write about comedy, and sitcoms in particular, has changed the way sitcoms are perceived and even commissioned - especially within the industry. But that is a topic for another blog post.

Now, please do post your carefully considered comments...

Send in Reinforcements

2011-12-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

I finally got round to watching Sky 1’s Spy the other night. I had all six episodes on my Sky+ box and was assuming I would begin with episode 1. But decided not to. There are number of reasons for this. The main one is that first episodes are often, sadly, full of set-up and backstory, which normally fights against the comedy, and I didn’t want to sit through that. I wanted to get to the funny.

But secondly, I was putting the show to the test – can you pick up the show from episode 2? Or 3? If you can, have a proper sitcom, which is about regular characters in repeating scenarios. You can, of course, have story arcs, but they have to be very slow and cleverly explained by a character in a line or two near the start of each episode; or you can 'cheat' and use a voiceover by Ron Howard (Arrested Development), or a whimsical Gordon Kaye sitting in his café talking directly to camera (Allo Allo).

Let us remember that confusion is the enemy of comedy. An audience that is baffled won’t laugh. You can baffle an audience if you like – that’s called a mystery or a thriller – but it won’t be all that funny.

Now, I had an unfair advantage on this show. I’d heard some months earlier about this show and what the premise was, but I put it out of my mind, and put on Episode 2. What I found was nice, zippy dialogue, quite a lot of jokes, some good characters and some brilliant performances - most notably for me, the consistently fabulous Tom Goodman-Hill, as well as the ever-brilliant Darren Boyd. Robert Lindsay and Rosie Cavaliero were funny too.

But, sadly, I was a bit confused, which slightly got in the way. The show opened with a session of mediation. Darren’s son lives with him, but the son’s mother is trying to get custody. The son is ice-cool and old before his time (cards on the table – I find this super-smart portrayal of children really tiresome, but now’s not the time). The son was hypercritical of his father, and his father seem to play this down and shrug off the criticism. So it wasn’t clear why the son wasn’t just living with the mother which would be more normal.

The biggest problem was there was no sign of any affection between the son and the father. At all. Why was the father trying to keep his high-maintenance son around when he was such a cold fish? I was confused. And this got in the way for me. Maybe these questions were answered in Episode 1 – but if so, that’s cheating. It all has to be in there in Ep 2. As well as 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Send in Reinforcements
For the first two series, I’d say, begin every episode assuming the audience haven’t really seen the show, or have completely forgotten what happened before. It’s a fair assumption. After all, their lives don’t revolve round your show. Only yours does. By all means, stick in jokes for hardcore, die-hard fans, but bear in mind that even after several series, lots of viewers (myself included) can’t remember names of most of the characters, and, when explaining a show, describe their favourite characters as ‘You know, the short one’, or the ‘dappy one’ or ‘the guy with the shirts’.

The key is to make sure each character is doing and saying stuff in character from the start of every episode – not doing neutral, uninteresting things that anyone could be doing. Rebuild characters each week. Clarify relationships. Use props and visual cues to reinforce. It may feel cartoony and clunky, but you can pull it back if you need to. But if it’s not in the script, it won’t be in the show – and it won’t be clear and they won’t laugh. And that, friends, is your job as a comedy writer.

Tone
There were some other bits of confusion which, for me, got in the way. The show was, at times, cartoonish. I love cartoonish (eg. Black Books). But at times, it was much more nuanced and played straight. So it felt lumpy. I couldn’t quite work out how seriously to take some bits so again, I was a little confused. I’m sure that’s fixable in Series 2, if there is one. (It would seem harsh to recommission Trollied and not this show)

Also, for some reason, Robert Lindsay’s character looked exactly like Alan Sugar. Identical. It was weird. I kept wondering if that was intentional which, again, got in the way for me. His interplays with Darren Boyd were very funny, though. But it’s worth noting that if something isn’t a joke, but looks like a half-joke, get rid of it. (For on that stuff, see here)

In the end, I watched episodes 2, 3 and 6. Another highlight for me was a cameo from Dominic Coleman in the last episode as a judge who’d just got back from travelling round Indonesia. Again, it stretched credibility, but he was hilarious.

Opening Schtick
The other thing I really liked, that is worth learning from, is that after the opening credits each time, Darren Boyd would press a button to enter MI5 and there’d be a different joke about it each time. Lovely, clear and funny which really set the show up and made you feel like everything was going to be alright – and that is no small thing.

The Big Readthrough

2011-11-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was weird day. But readthroughs are weird.

Just to clarify our terms, a readthrough is when a cast sit and read a script aloud to a bunch of TV execs to see if there's a show there. They can be hastily assembled, rough-and-ready affairs to see if the script is up to much. Or they can be more polished, semi-rehearsed events in which the show is being essentially pitched as a possible contender for a pilot or TV series. Yesterday was more the latter than the former, which was fairly exciting.

The exact details don't much matter for the purposes of this blog post. But it's worth noting one or two things that the sitcom writer has to deal with on such an occasion - and I'd be interested to hear the experiences of others in the comments section below.

So, I showed up at 10am for a day with the actors - and a director - building up to a formal readthrough in front of the powers that be at 4.15pm. It sounds like a long time, but in no time at all, it was 3.30 and the hour was nearly upon us. And so, it sounds daft, but the script really needs to be as tight as possible because there simply isn't time to make all that many changes on the day, or 'find it in rehearsal'. There is no time to rewrite sections or pages. Only time to tweak lines, cut bits out or throw in extra jokes.

We read the script once at the start, and there were some notes, and tweaks, nips and tucks - and questions from the cast about certain lines that weren't clear. Your job as the writer is to listen, not be defensive and focus on making the show as good as it can be. This may mean sacrificing your favourite joke because it's in the way of some other jokes that have plot attached to them. Remember that the shorter, sharpier and snappier the readthrough is, the funnier it will appear to be. It's better to be 26 minutes and really funny, than 32 minutes with fog patches.

After reading the script once and feeding back, we then marched through the script more slowly, stopping and starting and trying to fix other bits that don't quite fly. I did my best to ensure I was making suggestions via the director, who is in charge of all this stuff on the day.

The temptation is to change things again and again and again - right up until the final moment. It's best to avoid this. By the readthrough moment, the actors' scripts will be covered in crossings out, new lines and changes. Too many will be confusing, create errors in the readthrough and completely ruin the atmosphere you've been trying to create. As the hour approaches, it's better to commit to what you have and be done with it. Endless changes 'til the very end will undermine confidence and that might create unease in the cast - who might start to panic. I've seen panic (not yesterday, mind) and it ends in either actors starting to get louder and bigger; or going faster and faster; or going quieter; or inserting swearing that wasn't there before. It's not pretty, and usually not funny.

And then, it starts. And it ends. And there's nothing else to be said.

If you've written the script as well as you could, and stuck to your guns and offered the show that you want to write, you've done well. And it's now out of your hands. The show will be commissioned or turned down for a boatload of reasons that will never be explained to you. The official line may be 'Well, it was just so funny, we simply had to have it'. The actual reason may be that something fell out of the schedules and one of your cast is flavour of the month. It really doesn't matter. And you can't control this bit, so go home, have a curry, sleep well, lie in, wake up - and think of a brand new show.

Should I do a free show at the Edinburgh Fringe?

2011-11-14T01:35:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I posted about the benefits of putting on a show at the Edinburgh Fringe (here). I was thinking about this over the weekend after I'd suggested doing Edinburgh to some fledgling funny folks on Friday. The Free Fringe, I said, since it really is what it says on the tin. Free for performers to put on shows. It was pointed out, however, that producers were reluctant to scout at these shows and venues.

This got me thinking. It is undoubtedly true that the Pleasances and Udderbellys get a lot of attention from press, wider media and talent scouts. The reasons for this are obvious. There is greater screening and filtering for these venues, and so the overall quality is higher. That is not to say that every show at these big venues is superb, crafted and hilarious. Far from it. But producers are lazy, just like writers - and don't work all that hard to unearth new talent. Unlike writers, producers are very busy and hard-working and when you only have three or four days to 'see stuff' and find new talent, it seems like a more promising pool to fish from.

So why do a show at a Free Fringe venue?
So why do a show at a Free Fringe venue? Or a very cheap, unrecognised one? Here's the thing. Producers are in town for a few days at a time. But fellow performers are in town for a month. Impressing your peers in Edinburgh is as important as impressing the industry. Let's be honest, you're first outing at Edinburgh is unlikely to be picked up a producer at Big Talk or Objective and thrust onto E4. The main reason for the show is unlikely to be all that good. It may be fresh, have flashes of brilliance, and be sporadically hilarious - or consistently amusing without ever quite taking off. But bear in mind that there are a few dozen comedians and writers who are a little less fresh, with a few more years experience who are about to generate more frequent flashes of brilliance which are more consistently hilarious.

But other performers at your venue might see your show - and like it. And tell other people about it and bring you some audience. Or tell someone who has a 'best of' show that you could do a spot at, at which a producer might be in attendance. Equally, you might see someone else's ramshackle show, and like bits of it and realise they are good at things that you're aren't so good at. And that you could help them. You might work well together either now or in the future. They might do well, get some interest but want some help and could pull you on board. You might join forces, pool resources and come back the following year with something better, leaner and stronger.

The Loneliness of a Long Distance Comedian
The reality of writing and performing is that it is a lonely business - especially if you're not a gigging stand-up comedian - but for one month in Edinburgh, you're surrounded by similar people to you and this can be rather a nice thing. You feel like you belong. Okay, after a fortnight, the novelty wears off and everyone's tired, broke and angry. But you'll have forgotten that by November and be back next year, invariably with something better. After doing that for a three or fours years, maybe you'll finally be that an overnight success we keep reading about. And when those opportunities come, you'll be able to handle them and make the most of them.

The Business of Getting an Agent

2011-10-25T02:32:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the UK Scriptwriters' Podcast the other day and was interested in their discussion about agents. It was very interesting and I recommend downloading it and having a listen. I realised this is something I'd never mentioned on this blog before. So, briefly, here are a few thoughts on agents with sitcom specifically in mind.

How I Got An Agent
Firstly, I got an agent via a very odd route. I was a temp at the agency, filling in for someone and typing letters. I was writing bits and pieces for radio shows and a bit of TV (Smack the Pony and Rory Bremner) and had, unwittingly, built up a CV that was interesting to an agent. When they asked if I, as a writer, wanted representation, I was genuinely surprised and agreed pretty much on the spot.

The reason I was so happy to get an agent was not primarily because it made me look and feel like a proper writer (although it did), but because I hate talking about money and asking for more of it. I am quite capable of getting angry about not being paid properly (see here) but when confronted with the issue face-to-face, I immediately say everything's fine and that I don't really need the money right now. I'll say anything to make that conversation end.

Having an agent was brilliant because I had someone on my side who would ask for more money, chase it up and pore over contracts - and understand them. An agent, then, is a wonderful ally in a lonely business; someone who is looking out for your interests. And I've stuck with the same agent for my whole career as I like being represented by her - and I like the way she operates on my behalf. Sometimes people can use their agents to be unpleasant and unreasonable so that they themselves don't have to be, hiding behind them to get more money in a rather nasty way. I'm not into that at all - and want my agent to be my genuine representative in discussions about money, rights and conditions.

Why do you want an agent?
For those trying to break into the industry, it's worth asking yourself why you want an agent. I understand that it's very hard to get a novel published without an agent. Publishers, it seems, now use agents to sift manuscripts and do not take unsolicited work. I couldn't comment on movies and drama.

But sitcom and comedy generally doesn't work like that. Agents are not the key to getting work or getting noticed. If you want to break into the industry, there are plenty of routes. Write for open-door shows on Radio 4 (eg Newsjack) or television. Send sketches to producers who make sketch shows. Put on comedy shows, make them good and then put them on in Edinburgh, and try and get them noticed. Write a really good sitcom script - and keep rewriting it until you're really happy with it, and then send it to producer who makes programmes you like. If the production company says they don't accept unsolicited scripts, I would ignore that. But don't plague them with calls either. In short, write funny and show it to people.

You'll notice an agent doesn't feature in any of the above. And the fact is that if you're a really good comedy writer, it is only a matter of time before you will succeed. Good sitcom scripts are rare. If you write a good one, you will get meetings and some interest, although it make take ages to come anything. When it does, an agent will be a great help, in terms of taking care of money and contracts. They will also be much easier to get by that stage. They may also be able to set up introductions to new producers or contacts. But pinning your hopes on getting an agent as the 'way in' is misguided when it comes to writing comedy for TV and radio.

Finding You Work
Some agents get their writers short-term jobs on panel games and entertainment shows - mine doesn't, but then I've never asked her to because I'm hopeless at that sort of comedy writing. I'm a narrative guy. And my agent understands that and is always on the look-out for opportunities in that area. And that's what an agent will do for you - help you. But they don't make or break you. You and your jokes will do that.

That's my take on agents. I'd be very interested to hear the views of others.

Scripts are Like a Flowing River

2011-10-19T05:09:00.000-07:00

The other day, without thinking, I described the script of a show to a producer as being like a flowing river. I’m not ensure what – or who – possessed me to say such a pompous thing, but I’ve been thinking about what I meant ever since. (That’s pretty much my modus operandi – speak first, ask questions later). But I think I meant that a script is a moving, flowing thing.

The Block of Ice
A script is not a big impenetrable block of ice, or glacier, that cannot be altered or change. This is an easy trap to fall into . When you lock yourself away to finally write that darned script, you can emerge some days or weeks later, squinting in the natural light, clutching something that is, in your considered, unbiased opinion ‘perfect’.

It isn’t.

Even Hemingway said ‘the first draft of anything is shit’. Hemingway said that. Not a hack writer who cranked out prose by the yard. Hemingway. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1954. First drafts are shit.

This is a really important lesson to learn. Your first draft isn’t very good. Yours and mine. With experience, your first drafts tend to get incrementally better. I like to think my first draft now, having been writing professionally for twelve-ish years, is equivalent to a second draft ten years ago. No great achievement as my second drafts ten years were also atrocious.

But one can be seduced by this improvement. Writers do tend to get better and better as they get older (especially novelists). The trick is to do just as many drafts as you did when you were starting out, but this way, you end up with better drafts all the way along the long – and the quality of your work improves.

Sometimes you read or watch the work of a highly successful pro and you wonder whether they felt their first draft was already pretty good and therefore the script didn’t get the love and attention it needed. This can easily happen when writers become executive producers of their own show, or become very powerful. Lines are left unedited. Gaps that need jokes go unfilled. Sequels are very very long and baggy. The quality declines, even though the writer is better and more experienced than they were twenty years earlier.

So, a script is not a block of ice. It has to be pulled around, to ebb and flow at its own pace and find its way from the source to the ocean.

The immaculate script you produced in dimly lit isolation often doesn't seem so clever in the cold light of day. After a little while, plot inconsistencies come to the surface, motives seem muddle, and the set-pieces aren’t as funny as you remember – and turn out to have been done by David Croft thirty years ago, better.

Recently, I’ve just burned through four drafts of a script in less than a month. I thought draft 1 was very clever. But it wasn’t really. It was a perfectably respectable start to the process – like an undercoat on the wall before the proper paint goes on – but it only got good on Draft 3. But if the script is produced (it's just a pilot script for now), I’m sure the script will change significantly several times – once after its been cast and we work out where the jokes really are, then again during rehearsal, followed by tweaks, nips and tucks all the way through shooting, one or two of which might quite big difference to the story, plot or tone.

The Splurging Spray
Given that the script never seems to be finished, the writer can make a different mistake, in which they have no real confidence in any draft at all, starting with the first. Maybe they lock themselves away and produce that draft, but rather than clutching it with ill-advised certainty, they toss it to the producer with a shrug, saying ‘the show should be this sort of thing’. If the script is written with this approach, the temptation is to see the first draft as a splurging spray, some of which may hit the target, but most of which will not. This is a bad way of writing.

Given that most writers are highly strung and care passionately about every single word on the page, this is a less common problem, but it can happen. The first draft is written quickly, or in fits and starts, and then offered around with excuses like ‘I can’t make the ending work, but the beginning’s not right either, so when that’s fixed, I’ll do a new ending’. The obvious – and correct – response to this is ‘So fix the beginning, then the ending and show that to me when you’re done’.

I have mentioned this before – here. It can come about in those starting out because of lack of confidence, when ultimately the writer needs to just ‘man up’ and write what they think is funny to the best of their ability. But it can happen in more seasoned professionals too. All the lines are essentially placeholders, because the real lines, real jokes, real script will emerge in further drafts – and rehearsal. This approach is a high risk strategy, and is either cowardly, hubristic or lazy. The draft you are writing now is the most important draft. And if has to be perfect. And then you'll have to do it again.

Herein lies the dilemma of the writer – to write as if the first draft is the final one, firm in the knowledge that it will probably change beyond recognition, except, in my experience, it is surprising how much of the first draft survives. The first formation or phrasing of a joke you think of is often the best. Little routines sometimes tumble out right first time. Some set-pieces and exchanges can sail through untouched. But then other parts of the script (usually the beginning and the end) are sweated over and endless rewritten. It can be hard, gruelling, exhausting work. But it’s not done down a coal-mine or slum. It’s usually done with a Macbook, Spotify and some hot coffee, so it’s really not that bad.

The script is, ultimately, a flowing river. It can change course with some effort if need be. Changes cause ripples and waves, but it can cope with them. The script is not a babbling brook that easily changes course, or a spray that mostly misses the target. Nor a block of ice that can only be chipped at. Or cracked and broken.

By the way, Jason Arnopp has written a lovely blog post here about the freedom of Draft Zero. I've often done Drafts Zeros and can testify that they are a Good Thing.

Stand Up and Deliver by Andy Kind

2011-10-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest. There aren't all that many books out there about comedy - certainly not British comedy. So when one comes along, it's always worth a look. Andy Kind has written a nice one called 'Stand Up and Deliver'. Not a blindingly original title, I guess, but it does the job. It's about his first year doing stand-up comedy and appears to be a brutally honest account of that year, the euphoric highs, and the chronic lows.

Again, let's keep it transparent. I know Andy a bit, although I've never seen him do stand-up. But here's the thing. I read the book and it made me laugh. Out loud. Quite often. This is a good thing, and therefore a good book. The book isn't a Stewart-Lee-style skewering of the comedy industry and the huge flaws within the stand-up circuit, new act nights and all that stuff. Andy deals with all these things in a very jokey way, with loads of gags thrown in. Like all these things, some hit, some miss. But the hit rate is pretty high. It made me think Andy could cut it in a writers room, gagging up scripts and throwing ideas in. Maybe he's more suited to that than stand-up. But not having seen his stand-up, I couldn't say.

The only other thing that me be bothersome for some is that Andy is a Christian, and is honest about that in his book. The book's publisher is a Christian company. None of this concerned me as I'm a fellow God-botherer. To leave it out, though, would be less than honest of him, and the book is nothing if not honest.

Overall, the book is well-worth a look, especially if you're dabbling in stand-up or live comedy performance. You can get hold of it and read other reviews over here.

Everything Happens for A Reason

2011-09-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

The last forty hours haven't been good for me. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Really. But like my escapade to B&Q last week, I find myself being constantly blown off-course and distracted by the tedious minutiae of life.

The long and the short of it is that my wife has tonsilitis and has been, to use a cricket metaphor, knocked for six. Looking after her is the easy bit. I have two girls, aged 3 and 1, who need looking after and that's been the main task in hand for the last couple of days. It's been fun. Kind of. When I haven't been thinking about all the work I haven't been doing, and the scripts that haven't been started and the other scripts that haven't been finished.

This simply means that in the evening I put the kids to bed. Have dinner. Put my wife to bed. And then work. Except last night I had to attend a PCC meeting because, as I have said before, I'm a church warden. Meetings must be held. Fetes must be planned. Pews must be arranged to be fixed. And so forth.

The Dishwasher. Yes, really.
So last night saw me frustrated, tired and about to start work at 11pm when the dishwasher started winking at me. With a light I've never seen before. And a fault called F11 flashing on the screen. Something was wrong with it.

Let us pass over a number of observations here - and potential for sitcom storylines and scenes. At first, I couldn't find the manual. Had no idea where we kept manuals. Guessed right fairly quickly. Found a bunch of manuals for all manner of appliances past and present, and turned the right page and got to work. Let us pass over the fact that my heart sunk at mere sight of the instructions, which were optimistically written. Let us briefly note that, despite comedy stereotypes and my expectations, the instructions were right to be optimistic. I followed them. Washed out various components. Refitted them. Didn't get wet. Pressed the button to restart the programme. And it worked. Hey presto. Call me Dwayne the Drain. I have troubleshot the problem.

Here's what I thought as I saw the dishwasher was faulty. I thought "For this to work in a sitcom, the malfunction of that dishwasher has to have been my fault". I needed to have ignored the careful instructions of my wife, or tried to fit too much in, or gallantly tried to fix the washing machine next to it despite the protestations of a housemate. In real life, things just break for no reason. But they don't half way through a sitcom. I am the protagonist in my life. If there's a problem that gets in the way and needs fixing - and it's not another person - it should be my fault, or at least another character's fault.

I was watching Downton Abbey on Sunday night and noting how carefully plotted it was - and that every single thing was done for a reason. Nothing just happened. Even more masterful is Modern Family in which a dozen characters move in and out of each other's lives and nothing simply happens or goes wrong that isn't the result of one character doing something in character.

Why is now the worst time for this to happen?
Sometimes, when I'm bashing storylines with people, one of the questions I ask is 'Why is now the worst possible time for this thing to happen?' So let's say our hero has had a run-in with a dry cleaner and his suit is ruined. Why is now the worst possible time for that to have happened? He has to go to a wedding. Great. Escalation. Our character has a quest. But whose wedding? Why are they getting married now? Why does he have to wear that suit? Why couldn't he get it cleaned earlier? Or somewhere else? Why does he have problems getting another one? And crucially - how has our protagonist brought this on himself? The wrecking of the suit somehow needs to be the fault of the protagonist. Or a lead character.

I'm tired. It's late. I have to work. The dishwasher is now broken. Why? What did I do wrong? In real life, things just break. Not in sitcom - where everything happens for a reason.

The Value of Comedy Courses

2011-09-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

So let's deal with the money issue head on: I'm British - and therefore unable to discuss money without acute embarrassment. I'm a writer - and therefore find money an irritating necessity. I'm a human being - and therefore intrinsically greedy. I have kids - and therefore I can justify any paid act as being for their benefit. And I'm a farmer's son - which means I'm frankly lucky to be paid to do anything at all which doesn't involve shovelling cowpats off the diary yard.

Interest Declared. Now Moving On...
With all that in mind, I'm running a comedy writing course with Dave Cohen (Have I got News for You?; Horrible Histories and much more besides), like I did earlier this year. It costs some monies. The first one, on 4th Nov, is about writing Comedy for Radio, which is something I have a fair amount of experience of, having written stuff like Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33, co-written Another Case of Milton Jones and Miranda and script-edited Recorded for Training Purposes. The second one, on 11th Nov, is specifically about sitcom, primarily for television, which, again, I have some experience of (Miranda, My Family, My Hero and those radio sitcoms - as well as a bunch of stuff in development). More details about the course, bookings and Dave Cohen here.

Hang On, A Minute...
A few blogs ago, I questioned the value of writing courses. I was referring mainly to year-long, academic, university-type courses that take ages to teach you everything. I stand-by my statements, not just because I'm proud and pig-headed. I really do think writing is best learnt through, well, reading, writing, rewriting, failing, rewriting, listening, improving and, most of all, living a life that gives you stuff to write about, so that it has that essential honestly and truthfulness about it, even if the entire thing is invented.

Just One Day?
So if year-long courses are to be avoided, what can be achieved in a day or two? Quite a lot. Most of all, it's the compressed downloading of lots of experience, hints, tips and ideas. One or two key bits of advice could make a massive difference and save you days, if not weeks or work that was either unnecessary or needed to be undone. There's no cast-iron secret formula to sitcom we can let you in on. There kind of is. I sort of wrote one here that obviously isn't so secret. And then I slightly unpicked that article here. But talking these things through for a few hours can be really stimulating, useful and lots of fun. (Well, 'fun' to the likes of you and me who want to hear writers and directors talk over DVDs with the commentaries. Most normal people don't want to analyse comedy for hours on end.)

Well, there it is. Bunk off work and join us for the day for some really practical tips about writing comedy and sitcom, as well as some useful industry info - and who knows you might be a Galton and meet a Simpson who's as serious about writing comedy as you.

And what venue could be more fitting and comedic than London's hottest canal museum?

It's all good, really

2011-09-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Today was a rotten day. I woke up feeling groggy and slightly flu-ey and generally under the weather. I felt up to some clerical work and emails just after lunch. A project I've been trying to get through a well-known broadcasting corporation has been delayed again. (other broadcasters are avaialable. At least I hope so).

Then the real fun began. I tried to arrange for a faulty dishwasher at my church hall to be fixed - for I am Church Warden (seriously) and this sort of holy order falls to me.

The dishwasher has a problem closing but is still under warranty, or so I thought. I checked the website of the vendor, by the name of B&Q. I don't know what that stands for. I'm so tired and bored, I can't even think a joke for that (two adjectives beginning in B&Q. Leave comments.) Clearly the idea that one of their products might malfunction is alien to them since there's no information on their website. I phoned a well-hidden number. Ring ring ring ring. Eventually a battery of questions - and then a suggestion I ring the branch where the thing was bought. I didn't buy the dishwasher as it happens. It was bought by the previous church warden. Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring...

I got in the car, realise I was nearly out of fuel, stalled the car, briefly panicked that I'd run out of fuel in a diesel car, which is a real nusiance. Then got going again, refuelled and went down to B&Q in delightful Wandsworth.

And this was where creatively the lousy day was almost redeemed. I walked into B&Q and wondered around looking for someone who could help me - for ages. At one point, it felt like the only member of staff there was the security guard trying to prevent £1m+ worth of good from being stolen. In my foul and furious state, I reckon I could have taken in him on. But that would have made me a common looter (well, a middle-class looter, but a looter nonetheless).

Eventually I spoke to a member of staff, who guided me to a desk where someone was unable to help, who took me to his boss, who asked me questions I simply couldn't understand, who then got the duty store manager, who ultimately said he couldn't help. He explained that the dishwasher was used in a commercial setting (apparently churches are commercial, which is news to me, given the state of our accounts). This meant Indesit wouldn't fix it. That was that. I said that the buyer said at the time that it was for church use. He asked if I had proof. I had none.

I walked away, furious and before I said anything that would bring the church into disrepute. Driving home I realised I had proof - all the delivery notes were addressed to the church. I couldn't go back. I was broken. Finished. But I realised that if I hadn't been so tired and angry, the situation I had been in had comic potential. The eerie lack of staff, the chronic indifference to my plight and the kafka-esque levels of service. All funny now you look at it.

And that is why I mention this mildly dull anecdote. Not because it's especially funny, but because it's an interesting starting point for a storyline. Or a sketch. Or a scene. Or a moment. Back in April, I wrote this about changing the battery on a burglar alarm. This one will go on the list too. It's logged in the memory. That's because sitcom writing isn't just about imagining situations - but experiencing them first hand. And then turning them up to 11 on the screen.

Plus it gave me something to write about on this blog. It's all good, really.

Why You Should Seriously Consider Writing for Newsjack

2011-09-08T06:22:00.001-07:00

After leaving university, I applied for a number of jobs - mostly in advertising and copywriting. I had no idea that I could be a professional comedy writer, although in a way, I must have done subconsciously. I remember being asked in one interview 'Where do you see yourself in five years time?' I answered 'Writing a sitcom for television'. Now, I know there are no right or wrong answers in interviews, but that is a very wrong answer. I should have said something like 'Spearheading an award-winning campaign that changes the way people think about washing powder' or something. But I didn't. The truth came out.

And so I moved to London to do some work experience at a magazine, which I broadly hated. But one lunch time a week, I would turn up to a writers meeting for Week Ending - the open-door Radio 4 comedy show that was, frankly, on its last legs. Nonetheless, in the evenings, I would try and write some topical sketches and after about six weeks, succeeded in getting a few jokes or a sketch on. Can't really remember. I've got it on a cassette somewhere.

It was a really good experience - even though the actual show itself felt way past its best. It taught me to work hard, work fast, turn over ideas, read the newspapers, rewrite, accept failure and, above all, write jokes. These are all key lessons that can be learned 'on the job' (if by 'job' you mean unpaid writing). I also met some other people in my position and was able to swap stories, experiences and contacts, and overall began to 'feel like a writer', which is no small thing.

And so to Newsjack
That's why I would urge all aspiring comedy writers to seriously consider writing for Newsjack, a new series of which starts a week today. I don't work for the show - and never have, but I do know that they read everything they get. And not only that, they want every sketch they are sent to be hilarious. It often doesn't feel that way stuck at home, and hearing another show broadcast in which your work isn't broadcast, but it is true. They want funny. And they can spot funny. And if you're sketch isn't spotted, the likeliest reason is that it's not as funny, or well-executed, as you thought.

I worked on Recorded For Training Purposes, and my approach was the same. I wanted each sketch I was sent to be really funny, fresh and original - and ideally not about Sat Navs, Phone Call-waiting menus and TV producers pitching terrible programme ideas to TV execs, which were topics covered by about 33% of all sketches.

Read the shows instructions carefully - and follow them. It's all here. Think about every sketch you send in - before you send it in. Lots of people don't do this and just send it off unfinished, half-written or too long. (Some thoughts on that sort of thing here)

Ask yourself, is the sketch original? Is it one idea written well, with a nice twist at the end? If so, good. Or is it two ideas whammed together and not really about either? If so, bad.

Is it short/edited so that it's just funny after funny, so that the studio audience is laughing out loud every few seconds? Is the set-up as crisp and quick as it could be?

Does it end properly? THINK OF A PROPER PUNCHLINE - one that is surprising rather than cliched or convenient. Your sketch stands a much better chance of being used if it ends properly, since a script editor won't have to take up precious time thinking one up for you. (Some thoughts on writing jokes here) Also bear in mind the audience are much happier with traditional punchlines than you might think.

Is the sketch easy to read? Don't worry too much about exact formatting, but make sure it's easy to read (see here).

And so, if you can bear to spend the time on it, give this a go with both barrells. Even if you're not interested in topical comedy, you'll benefit from it. Even if you're not interested in sketch comedy, you'll benefit from it. Even if you fail to get a single joke onto the show, you will have benefited from the overall experience, and had a good work out. You may find the task to be thankless, largely unpaid and virtually impossible. If so, welcome to the world of comedy writing.

More info at various links here, mostly by Dan Tetsell who used to script edit the show.

A Dynamic Duo

2011-09-07T14:05:00.001-07:00

I've never been a great movie buff. I've always been more in sitcoms. In some ways, the two forms couldn't be more different. Movies are about characters who go on a journey and are changed by their experiences. Sitcoms are about characters who remain unchanged by their experiences - and that's why they're funny.

Occasionally a movie throws up some comedy characters that are funny in an enduring way. The most obvious example would be M*A*S*H, which began life as a film (based on a book) and become a far more successful comedy, running for many years.

Recently, I've stumbled across another example which contains a cast of superb comedy characters that feel more sitcom-based than anything else. Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams) and Lt. Steven Hauk (Bruno Kirby) from Good Morning, Vietnam. This, for me, is an underplayed relationship in the film which inevitably has to be about the war and all that stuff. Also, Robin Williams is stunning in the film and almost obscures the film with his fast-talking.

But the dynamic of the movie is very sitcom. Cronauer is brilliantly funny, anti-establishment, modest and junior; and Lt Hauk is painfully unfunny, pro-establishment, totally unaware and senior works brilliantly well. You can imagine them in dozens of alternative situations week after week in which they clash over anything and everything. Imagine them co-presenting a radio show; or doing the entertainment for the Colonel's daughter's birthday party. I'm smiling just thinking about those things.

It's worth noting that sitcoms - in order to be successful - need these crackling and fizzing relationships between characters who just drive each other crazy. When it works, and you're writing it, the characters just talk in your head. As the writer, you just feel like the guy noting it all down.

If your show doesn't feel like it's heading in this direction, put on the brakes and rethink. And take a moment to be reinsipired by something great. And then go back to your situation and rewrite, rething, replot and replan until these clashing characters emerge.

Sitcomminess - Second Hand Reality

2011-09-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

Two wonderful things have happened. The first is that I am on holiday. And the second is that I have wi-fi where I'm staying. Holidays tend to exclude internet usage, which is annoying, but not this time. This is an expected bonus. Hence, this blog post on something that occurred to me the other day, that bothers me about sitcoms. It's 'sitcomminess'.

Sitcomminess
Sitcomminess is the thing that people who hate sitcoms hate most about sitcoms. It's that they're so darm, well, sitcommy. It's chance encounters, and wacky neighbours, and dinner parties that go wrong and have hilarious consequences. It's fake, false and phoney.

My argument against this is that the audience are smart, and realise it's a sitcom, and recognise that the show is a contrivance. Audience laughter is does not happen in everyday life, and real life sets are more realistic. The audience know it's not real. And they're fine with it. Critics usually seem not fine with it, or have to apologise for finding a sitcom with a laugh track funny (as most did with Miranda). But overall, the audience realises that a sitcom is not real. The only question is whether or not they buy into it, believe the characters, and want the hero to succeed.

The Realm of the Unreal
But sometimes, even for the most ardent sitcom fan, things can teeter over into the realm of the unreal. I was made aware of this phenomenon a few weeks ago. It reared its head the other day when I was watching a sitcom that is aimed at kids, and I couldn't work out why I didn't like it. Apart from not being a child, obviously. And I worked it out, I think. The show felt phoney: it was aping American culture and reference points in a way that didn't feel natural or honest. Overall, the show felt like it was written by someone who's main experience of life was American television. And therefore, I found myself watching a comedy based on other comedies - rather than reality. As a result, we're watching second-hand reality.

Second-hand reality can still be funny. You can get away with it sometimes. But you're jumping from joke to joke, and there's no reality/empathy to tide your through the bits where the jokes aren't sizzling which, in a 28 minute BBC episode, they won't and can't the whole time. Besides, you need light and shade. Yes, lots of jokes, funny scenes and set-pieces. But also quieter bits, reflection and moments of empathy and emotion which ideally resolve with a joke. Watch Only Fools and Horses. That's a masterclass in how much emotion and comedy you need. Apart from anything else, we won't buy a character if we don't emotionally care about him. So this really is vital.

How does this happen?
This is easily done. It crops up in scenes when you realise you are leaning too heavily on a trope that has no basis in real life. You can attach your character to a lie detector if you want, but don't spend long doing it, as the audience will stop believing it after a while. They've never seen one of those lie detectors before - because they don't really exist. Just on TV. Police line-ups are fine. They happen. But not lie detectors. You get the idea.

It comes about partly through lack of research, understanding or interest in the subject matter. The writing is cynical, as a result, and feels like it's been done by numbers. The only way to avoid this is to do the research, talk to people and listen to stories and experiences. I've been have had my eyes open very wide by some research I've been doing for a sitcom. What you find when you talk to people and read books is a treasure trove of stories that you just couldn't make up, that feel extreme but authentic and grounded in reality. This keeps sitcomminess at bay.

And so three rules of thumb, then:
1. Make sure your show is about something. It needs to be be based on a truth and have a central core to it. More on that here.

2. If you're starting out, I'd suggest avoiding film studies, media and writing courses. I've just met a 16-year-old girl who is about to do A-Levels in English, Film Studies and Sound Engineering (or something). Doing English is fine, but overall she'd be much better off doing two other A-Levels that are about something. And going off and doing stuff. And then making movies. Otherwise, her experience of everything will be through film. And the films she makes may well be derivative of other films. (She may of course go on to win an Oscar aged 23. But I doubt it.)

3. Be brutal on what you've written. If it feels tired and trope-like, delete it, change it, cut it, hide it and rewrite it. If it feels like it's been done before, it probably has. How could it be done differently? How could you create something new and fresh? Change the location, the setting, the motive... anything. Just avoid sitcommy, second hand reality.

It's all gone quiet over here

2011-09-02T01:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been a bit quiet. In August, things tend to grind to a halt. I'm off for one more week. After that, normal service will be resumed, and there'll be a blog post about once a week as usual.

Do please leave comments about anything in particular you'd like me to blog about in the realm of sitcom - both writing and the industry.

It seems there are a lot of opportunities out there at the moment, with BBC1 wanting to broadcast some pilots, BBC3 cancelling a lot of shows to make space for new things, and ITV saying that want to take more risks on comedy (although ITV have said this every 6-9 months for the last 8-10 years). So, it's time to get thinking, plotting, planning and then writing.

Fringe Drawback #1

2011-08-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of thing wrong with the Edinburgh Fringe. I glossed over them in the last post, and I propose to gloss over most of them in this post too. I merely mention the one that is of the most interest to regular reads of this blog, and comedy writers in general.

The drawback in question is this: The Fringe does not reward good comedy writing as much as good comedy performance. If you're a theatre-type, there are Fringe Firsts for well-written plays, and that's all fine and large, as Bertie Wooster would say. But the big comedy prizes are undoubtedly skewed towards the writer/performer, and the vast majority of comedy shows are by and starring writer/performers. Every now and then you get a bunch like The League of Gentleman, which contain a non-performing writer, but this kind of arrangement is the exception, rather than the rule.

This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing. But it is a thing. Okay, probably a bad thing. I guess it happens because the Fringe is ultimately a complete free-for-all - an unsubsidised Hayekian arts festival. No attempt is made to link writers with performers, or performers with writers (and nor should there be).

The result of this is there are dozens of shows put on by performers/actors who aren't really writers. And they struggle to make the standard hour-long format work. Writing a show that lasts half an hour is pretty hard. Writing a show that lasts an hour is very difficult. Stagecraft and experience will get you so far, but it won't quite paper over the cracks. My experience of the dozens of Edinburgh shows I've seen is that the good shows tend to be a brilliant performer making ordinary material sparkle. Sometimes you get a brilliant performer with brilliant material (eg Bill Bailey (see last post) and these types often win the big fizzy liquid prize). But the Edinburgh comedy shows I see are normally okay, but could do with a major rewrite, and serious edit and some extra jokes.

Impact on Television
All of the above, however, does have one big consequence. Producers and commissioners who are looking for the next big thing, they keep seeing writer/performers. This has coincided with a shift towards writing/performing in television terms, and therefore the panel game, sketch show and chat show where comedians talk to other comedians who have been made famous by panel games and sketch shows.

There are dozens of suitable candidates for a seat on the next panel game. But the next Great British Sitcom seems elusive. It's easy to forget that the vast majority of great British sitcoms are written by writers with no interest in performing themselves. I'm sure Clement and Le Frenais, John Sullivan, Esmonde and Larbey, Galton and Simpson, Carla Lane and the like would have run a mile from an Edinburgh show of their own. And yet Edinburgh is a huge engine room of comedy in Britain today. It has also been forgotten that the great comedians of the past had writers and often didn't write much of their own material.

I have no solution to this problem. The BBC do have The Writers Room and are doing their best to encourage new writing. But my advice to writers would be to keep writing scripts, but if you come across a comedian or funny actor, grab them, write for them and make them a star. It seemed to work for Richard Curtis.

Happy Fringe-ing.

Fringe Benefits and other crap puns with 'Fringe' in the title

2011-08-08T02:55:00.000-07:00

And so the internationally acclaimed fringe festival that has been out of control for years has kicked off again. It's over three weeks long. Everyone knows that's too long. It's unsustainable, but staggers on, consuming the life-savings of comedians, theatre companies and entrepeneurs. From a distance the entire enterprise is preposterous and bewildering.

Until you get there.

I've never taken drugs. Seriously. Had one puff of a cigarette and coughed. Never been into booze either. But Edinburgh is a drug - and it's taken me years to kick the habit. My first trip to Edinburgh was for my sister's wedding was in 1993, I think. Just after I left school. I went to see Moray Hunter & Jack Docherty do a two-man show, having seen them on Absolutely. Even though I was huge fans, the show itself was pretty ordinary. It was a fitting start to my Edinburgh experience - hype, expense, excitement and mild disappointment.

I was determined to take my university revue (Durham) there. They had performed at the Fringe in 1994, I think - a show called Toilet Humour which contained the wonderful Alex Macqueen (Thick of it, Inbetweeners et al). And so my rag-bag revue did a show in 1996 called 'The Usual Sketches' at St John's Church Hall (which has been re-branded several times since then) Somehow we broke even. We returned sharper, tighter and funnier in 1997 and did Massive Deja-Vu at The Gilded Balloon and lost a fortune. But had fun. (Hugh Laurie came to see our show.) Then I returned in 1999 with two members of that revue with a show called Infinite Number of Monkeys, which was nominated for Perrier Best Newcomer. Then another show in 2000, Infinite Number of Monkeys Do Gravity, and then a shorter run in 2001, Infinite Number of Monkeys: The Complete Works. (All above starred the artist currently known as Tim FitzHigham who has been a fringe staple for most of the years since.) Then there was a sketch show in 2002, or maybe 2003, called Innocent Bystanders containing Alex Macqueen again, a duo now known as Domestic Goddi and the now-retired Sports correspondent, Jonny Saunders (from Chris Evans's Breakfast Show).

I recall all above with fondness. I have ignored in my mind the hours spent giving out flyers and promoting the various shows. I have ignored the stress, the rain, the resentment at the success of others less 'worthy', the dreadful things I ate and the awful reviews. I remember only things like regularly standing next to a nice young Kiwi chap called Brett who was promoting a little music double-act bizzarely called Flight of the Concords. (What happened to him? Back in NZ now, probably. Just sad.) I remember frisby in the park, a few full houses, some good reviews, a Perrier Newcomer nod and seeing Bill Bailey for the first, second and third time at the George Square Theatre. (I got in free the first two times with my Gilded Balloon pass. To ensure I got in a third time, I bought a ticket with my own money.)

Since 2003, I have only really visited Edinburgh during the fringe a few times. I've planned and plotted plenty of new shows to take up, even to the point of creating show titles, making enquiries and setting up accounting spreadsheets full of wildly optimistic numbers. My wife, rightly, rolls her eyes, knowing full well that professional and personal commitments - and lack of thousands of pounds to lose - will prevented my return with a show of my own anytime soon. But I still get withdrawal symptoms.

In Praise of Edinburgh
There is plenty to be said about Edinburgh - mostly in favour, actually. It forces comedians to write new material annually. Annually! A new hour of material! Most American comedians would look at that as suicidal. For them, it's mostly honing an act over several years, aiming to get a six minute set which will land them a slot on The Tonight Show. And yet the British, and quasi-British, comedians rise to challenge. Similarly, sketch groups throw themselves together to create something that is frequently dreadful, but occasionally inspired. Somewhere, I have a flyer for a show by a new sketch group called 'League of Gentlemen'. It happens. And Edinburgh is often the catalyst.

Finding an Audience
In Edinburgh, new comedians, sketch-groups and theatre troupes alike will find an audience. It may be small, but it will be people they don't know personally. Hundreds of thousands of people turn up to Edinburgh with an open mind looking to see 'stuff'. This is an astonighly rare phenomenon. Put on a comedy show in London, a city of 8 million people, and you will find a far smaller group of people willing to try something new. Almost every London comedy sketch show is only really watched by friends, and friends of friends. In Edinburgh, you get to find out if you really are funny. It can be an expensive, painful experience, but those tend to be the ones we learn from the most.

There's plenty wrong with the fringe, and future posts will, no doubt, bring these up. There's plenty of good new developments too. It is stupidly commercialised in places, but then there's a Free Fringe things, which are a splendid development.

I'm heading up there myself in a week to be part of a BBC panel thing (here) so these shortcomings will be glaring obvious and blog-worthy. But until then, I am saluting the daft vortex of lunacy that is Edinburgh Fringe.

May your venues be full, may your audiences be merry and may your hangovers be short. (And two out of three's not bad.)

Write You Write Upon a Star

2011-07-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, that title doesn't really make sense. It's late. Cut me some slack. Anyway,on with the blog.

Over the last few years, I've had the chance to work on my own shows, where I came up with the original ideas (eg Hut 33, Think the Unthinkable). I've also worked on shows like My Hero and My Family, which were long-running, established shows with a clear separation between cast and writers. But I've also worked on shows that are 'vehicles' for other people. Happily, that vehicle has proved not to be a hearse in the case of Miranda Hart and Milton Jones. (Given my success with 'Mi's, maybe I should try and work with Micky Flanagan.)

So how does writing in this situation work - when you are non-performing writer, and the writer/performer star of the show is in the room? Maybe a few words of advice jump out at me.

Firstly, remember you are not the most important person in the room. The reason the show exists is because of 10-30 years work of building up a persona/character that someone else has put in. In my case with Milton Jones, for example, I began working with him in 2003 on The House of Milton Jones. He had won Perrier Best Newcomer in 1996 and been nominated for a Sony Award for The Very World of Milton Jones. When I sit in a room with Milton, and David the Producer, it is obvious who the most replaceable person in the room is.

Instinct
But this is not about status. This is about trusting the star to know what works for them. Before I worked with Miranda on her Radio 2 sitcom, she had done dozens of different stage shows, and 'been' Miranda hundreds of times in various media, and therefore has a very strong sense of what is likely to be funny for her and what won't fly. Sometimes, it can be explained. Often, it's just instinctive. In the past, I've found myself arguing a joke to Milton saying 'It's the same structure as that other joke you do' and Milton calmly and graciously says that he's not crazy about it, and I retreat. Ultimately the star will win the battle off what ends up in the script, since their name is in the title, they're in front of the crowd and the lights. And if they're heart is not in the joke, they won't make it work anyway.

Sometimes, it works the other way - in that you toss in an idea, the star thinks its hilarious, and you can't quite work out why or how. And then they do it on the night - and it's hilarious. They make it work. Whichever way it works out, remember they get the blame if it goes wrong. Nobody really watches the credits. The only people who care who 'wrote it' are other writers, and that's so they can say '[sigh] Why didn't they ask me?'

The point is the star has a nose for what works for them and what doesn't. So embrace that reality, rather than fight it. If they don't like the joke or scene or idea, drop it.

Your Perspective
But the flipside of this is to not be too intimidated. You have a perspective on the show that is genuinely valuable and necessary - purely by dint of not being the star. And what's more, they hired you so they must care what you think just a bit.

The fact is that you don't see the show through the eyes of the performer but more through the eyes of the audience, which is helpful. You're also not seeing things through the eyes of the producer, who's not just looking at the show, but dozens of other things off camera. So you can spot things that might not work or not make sense or would be better done another way or a different order. Exploit that perspective to make the show better - probably in ways that will never be noticed or fully appreciated.

Your job is to help the star to shine - and this will happen best if all the characters, scenes and jokes are firing on all cylinders. You're a wing man. No, not a wing man. You're a mechanic tinkering with the engine and sending the star out in the car for lap after lap. And yes, the one in the car gets most of the money, all the applause and has to hold up that dreadful trophy that looks like it was designed by a man going through a mid-life crisis. But... I can't remember where this metaphor's going on.

The point is they're the star and you're not. So get over it. And it you don't like it, go off and write your own show. And then in 10-30 years time, you'll know what it's like to be pestered by snarky know-all sitcom-geeks who don't get what you're trying to do. Easy.

What's It All About?

2011-07-17T15:47:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I was asked to write a slightly tongue-in-cheek article about the ingredients of a successful sitcom. The result of that is here. In short, a successful sitcoms needs characters, conflict, confinement and catastrophe. Crucial to success is also casting. And a catchphrase is nice too, if you can bear it.

I'm happy to stand by this. It is true. And it's possible to have a perfectly good and successful sitcom with those ingredients.

But a great sitcom has another ingredient. It's a certain je ne sais quoi. Or a certain something, as the French say. The show needs a philosophy, an attitude or a stance. It needs to capture something about the human condition, or the times in which we live. These are the shows we still want to watch on Dave or UK Gold. The hairstyles may date, and the cultural reference points change, but the show says something.

So What?
I've been thinking about this recently as I've been doodling on a few new ideas for sitcoms, and thinking of characters that seem interesting and funny, and scenarios and situations that feel fresh and fertile. But I keep asking myself the question 'So what?' It's a good question to keep asking yourself because somewhere along the line, someone is going to ask you that question - a comedy executive or a commissioner. They ask questions like 'Why would I watch this show?' or 'What's this show really about?' There's no point getting cross or rolling your eyes. They may not know why they're asking that question. They may have read in a manual that it's a good question to ask that sounds plausible. Or they may realise that good shows are about something.

The Office
The Office was about funny characters, and had good stories, conflict, confinement and all that. It was very recognisable and felt fresh. But it felt like it was about something. About being trapped in a dead-end job and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Or about the lunatics surrounding you. Tim (Martin Freeman) was really the eye of the story and one sensed that he could see his life and chance of happiness slipping through his fingers. It infused every episode. And when Tim did something about it, and finally said something to Dawn, and David Brent himself seemed to change after the love of a good women, the show was, essentially, over.

Just Jokes
If you've only got jokes, you ride or fall by every joke. And when the jokes misfire, as they will surely do now and then, the audience may realise there's nothing underneath, and that the whole thing is artifice. They already know it is, and are willing to suspend their disbelief - because a really good show is about more than characters and jokes. Look at the great sitcoms, and you'll see they're not just confined characters coping with catastrophes: Only Fools and Horses, Yes Minister, The Good Life, Steptoe, One Foot in the Grave, Dad's Army, Reggie Perrin. The list goes on and on. Great shows that said something, and still say somthing.

Friends isn't about Friends
One of the most successful shows of recent times is Friends, which is a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right. It's about six friends. That's it. Well, not quite. The creators of the show spotted there was a strange post-college, pre-family time of life when twenty-somethings relied on friends and hung out with each other, and were wanting to form close-knit groups that functioned like families. They were right. The show captures that, without ever saying it. They also thought that Monica and Joey would be the 'hot couple' for the show, which shows they didn't get everything right.

But you don't need to get everything right at first. You start with a fairly good idea of where the show is and what it's about, and with a bit of luck, an open mind, a good cast and following wind, you might just make a great show.

Hut 33
It is clearly absurd to make a leap to this largely ignored radio sitcom what I wrote, but I can only speak from experience. When I had the idea of setting a sitcom in Bletchley Park during World War Two, it would have been easy to have written a show about boffin odd-balls like Alan Turing doing daft things. Like a 1940s Big Bang Theory. But I felt that would become fairly tiresome fairly soon. And so I wondered about other themes that emerged during World War Two - and remembered my wife telling me that one of the main reasons for social reform after the war was how our nation were forced to work alongside each other, rich alongside poor, elites alongside outcasts. And both sides were pretty appalled.

And so I wondered whether throwing two characters together from different ends of the spectrum could work. Hey presto, we have a posh, highly-educated, elitist Oxford Professor (Robert Bathurst), and a self-taught, working class, Marxist Geordie (Tom Goodman-Hill) Both saw the world through completely different eyes. And both were right. And both were wrong. And it made writing the show a lot easier than writing Enigma jokes. After all, did you hear the one about the German and the Enigma Machine? Me neither.

It's All Lies

2011-06-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Writing dialogue is very personal. Some writers have very distinctive styles that span all the different characters in a show. There are the fast-talkers of Aaron Sorkin's worlds, be they West Wing, Sportsnight or Social Network. There the imaginative comic similes of Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's Blackadder series.

Everyone has their own style, but it's worth thinking about how dialogue works more generally and how we can write it better for individual characters. Two things to mention here without going over what I wrote about dialogue here:

Length
Sometimes I read scripts in which one character talks and talks and talks. A character walks in and tells you what they did that day - and the other characters stand around listening. And then another character talks and talks and talks. Our lives are conversations. We say a sentence or two, and then someone else talks for a little bit. The conversation goes round the room, being filtered and remixed by the various characters and perspectives in the room. That's when it starts getting interesting.

This is the kind of dialogue I'm talking about. It's not uncommon to read this kind of mildly predictable and slightly stererotypical/sexist scene (which I've just made up as I've typed it. It's not real dialogue from something I'm working on.)

INT. KITCHEN. DAY.

MAVIS IS COOKING AT THE HOB, STIRRING A SPOON IN A SAUCEPAN

MAVIS
So, how was your day, Steve?

STEVE SLUMPS INTO A CHAIR.

STEVE
You don't wanna know. It was a nightmare. A total and utter nightmare. The buses were slow - as they always are on our road. The tube was down. Well not down. But stop start all the way into work. And when I got in Wendy was off sick. As usual. That's the fourth day out of the last eight working days. Honestly, the rest of us struggle into work. Why can't she? Then the big meeting started. The Boss droned on and on. Something about targets and marketing. Wasn't really listening because I was thinking about my next meeting when I knew that I was going to be bollocked for the St Albans incident.

Okay. It's not very funny, is it? But hey, most scripts (including mine) aren't very funny. But reading it, it doesn't ring true. He's not having a conversation. He's just talking. And talking. And talking. SHUT UP, STEVE! I now do not care about your life, Steve. You're not a real person, Steve.

So, let's break it up to make it at least mildly humourous and believable. Then we might care. At the very least, how about something like this:

INT. KITCHEN. DAY.

MAVIS IS COOKING AT THE HOB, STIRRING A SPOON IN A SAUCEPAN

MAVIS
So, how was your day, Steve?

STEVE SLUMPS INTO A CHAIR.

STEVE
You don't wanna know.

MAVIS
You're right. What's on TV tonight?

STEVE
(ignoring her) Nightmare. The buses didn't move. The tube was stop-start. And when I did get in, guess what?

MAVIS
They gave you a hand-gun and licence to kill?

STEVE
If only. Wendy.

MAVIS
Off sick? Again?

STEVE
Thank you! The fourth day out of the last eight working days.

MAVIS
But who's counting. Oh hang on. You.

STEVE
(sarcastic smile) The rest of us struggle into work.

MAVIS
Passing round your germs. She should be more considerate and come in.

STEVE
Anyway, the big meeting started. The Boss droned on and on. Something about targets and marketing. Wasn't really listening because I was thinking about my next meeting when I knew that I was going to be bollocked for...

MAVIS
Not paying attention in meetings?

STEVE
... the St Albans incident.

MAVIS
Ah yes. Well, that's in the hands of the police now, isn't it?

Okay, it's nothing special and all very smart-arse, but you get the idea. Get your characters talking to each other. Like they do in real life.

It's All Lies
The other thing to bear in mind, however, is that people frequently don't say what they mean. Quite often say the opposite, or filter it - often because of the opinion of the person standing in front of them. They lie. They delude themselves. The things they say are for their own ears, to reinforce the lies that they're trying to drum into their heads, or block out the noise of the stark reality around them.

How could that scene go with the addition of standard lying and self-delusion? Something like:

INT. KITCHEN. DAY.

MAVIS IS COOKING AT THE HOB, STIRRING A SPOON IN A SAUCEPAN

MAVIS
So, how was your day, Steve?

STEVE SLUMPS INTO A CHAIR.

STEVE
Fine. Great. Perfect.

MAVIS
Good. What's on TV tonight?

STEVE
(ignoring her) The buses didn't move. The tube was stop-start. And when I did get in, guess what?

MAVIS
They gave you a hand-gun and licence to kill?

STEVE
If only. Wendy.

MAVIS
Off sick? Again?

STEVE
I know. She's got some medical condition. It's sad. Really sad. And she's good. When she's actually around.

MAVIS
Ooh, you hate her.

STEVE
I do not. I don't hate anyone. It's just she's, you know, not been around much recently. And I just think missing four days of the last eight working days should require a doctor's note or something.

MAVIS
Could she bring in a blood sample, maybe, to be independently monitored?

STEVE
(sarcastic smile) The rest of us struggle into work.

MAVIS
Passing round your germs. She should be more considerate and come in.

STEVE
Anyway, the big meeting started. The Boss give his speech about targets and marketing strategy...

MAVIS
You have no idea what he said do you?

STEVE
I was distracted by thinking about my next meeting when I knew that I was going to be bollocked for...

MAVIS
Not paying attention in meetings?

STEVE
No. The St Albans incident.

MAVIS
Ah yes. Well, that's in the hands of the police now, isn't it?

From this we learn that Steve isn't as nice as he'd like to think he is. And no as good as his job as he's like to think he is. And that Mavis realises this. Now where getting somewhere.

How Much Should I Write?

2011-06-24T03:59:00.000-07:00

Previous posts and comments have thrown up yet more questions. Let's start with this one:

When should I stop rewriting my script?
In the last post, Dave Cohen sagely advised caution before sending out scripts, and urged writer to hold off sending it out until it was really and truly ready. A while ago, I made the point that this is especially true for script competitions. It is generally worth holding back until you really are sure that the script is as good as it can be - bearing in mind it can still be better and will need to be rewritten depending on casting, rehearsal and technical considerations.

And so when to stop? How do you know when it's good enough to send? You don't know. And yet you do.

If you're sending a script out 'to give a potential producer a rough idea of how the show might look', it's not ready.

If you're sending a script out 'even though the ending still doesn't quite work, but since I'll have to rewrite it anyway, I'll do it then', it's not ready.

If, when rewriting it, you're painfully aware that you're not making it any better, but just changing the words, it might be ready. Put it away. Leave it for a few days - longer if you can - and return to it. You'll see bits that aren't right straight away. Try and explain the plot simply to a spouse or long-suffering friend. If you can do that, it might be ready.

Then Dave said that maybe it's time to stop work on that and start on the next episode. Good idea. But Griff says:

There's a danger of getting to the point when you're saying to producers "I've written the first twelve episodes and a Xmas special" and they start scanning the room for exits. So I guess however many episodes you've actually written, only ever send one out and let the others be your dirty secret?

So:

Should I write more than episode?
Let's take a step back here. One script takes ages. Or at least it should. Working nine to five, five days a week, coming up with a storyline and getting it right could take a week. Maybe longer. The first draft will take a week. Maybe two. Then drafts 2 and 3 might be another week or two. That's a least a month of solid work before it's worth sending to anyone. And then do it again? On spec? Does anyone really have time to take longer than that for free? It's well worth having outlines up your sleeve for future episodes. While you wait for responses, work up two or three of those, maybe into longer scene-by-scene breakdowns. Doing this will reveal whether your show has legs, and whether the characters really are working, or will demonstrate that some of your characters are not generating interesting stories.

If you really have nothing else to do, and no children to read stories to or no hobbies to pursue, you could start to write another episode. But it's likely the first script will, if it is progressed at all, require seismic thoughts and rethinking, so a second script might not be of much use, or be better started from scratch much later.

If I were a producer and someone sent me a script with a note saying 'I've already written six episodes', my heart would sink because I'd assume that the writer thinks that writing sitcom scripts is easy, and not extremely time-consuming. The alternative is that this writer has spent months of their own time, unpaid, writing these episodes - at the exclusion of all other things and human relationships. And this would be a worry, because comedy is all about all those other things and those human relationships.

Is that harsh? Or fair? Bad advice? Do leave comments.

Where should I send my Script? Part 3

2011-06-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

I've run a few sitcom course with the highly-experienced comedy writer Dave Cohen. We do plan to run some more in the autumn so look out for dates. But in the meantime, Dave's got some useful thoughts following up some recent posts here on the blog. And it's probably the best advice of the lot.

So here, in a sitcom geek first, is a guest post from Dave Cohen:

Hello, thanks for having me. Recently James posted two excellent pieces attempting to answer the question ‘where should I send my script’. And there were several very helpful suggestions, all of which I would broadly agree with. He did however, overlook one very important option, which is this:

Don’t send it. Hang on to it. Seriously. Okay, look me in the eye, or at least stare at the following questions on the screen and answer them honestly: is your script brilliant? Does it leap off the page? Is it absolutely stuffed full of brilliant gags? Are they made even funnier because they give us an hilarious insight into our leading character or characters’ flaws? Does the plot flow, with twists and turns that are entirely believable, and again determined by the actions of your lead character?

I’m not trying to bring you down here, I’m just being realistic. I’ve done it myself, sent out a spec script to a friendly producer, knowing deep down that there were problems with it. I’m sure I thought it was as good as I could make it, I may have even thought it was great, but I always knew there were one or two flaws that would give the producer an excuse to say ‘sorry, not this time.’

So why, you may ask with some justification, is there so much mediocre comedy on TV? The answer is that, once upon a time, the writer of that mediocre show sent out a script that was so brilliant, leapt off the page, stuffed full of gags etc etc, that the script got made, and the writer was successful. It’s never easy to get a commission, especially these days, and you have to put yourself in the producer’s shoes. If they have to choose to push one script, and it’s between your pretty good one, or the mediocre one by the person with a proven track record,they’ll usually choose the latter.

Brilliant scripts don’t happen very often. Micheal Jacob, who was for many years the BBC’s TV script editor, reckoned only a few of the thousands he read were really good. I can’t claim to have anywhere near the experience of Micheal but I’ve read hundreds of new scripts and not many have made me go ‘wow’. Depressingly, the best script I’ve ever read was about four years ago, by a successful working writer, and it still hasn’t been made.

So why don’t we write brilliant scripts? Almost invariably, the answer lies in one word: preparation. Before even a word of the script is written, there is so much groundwork required to make your show work. This is the most difficult, and most creative period in writing your show. It’s difficult because you’re starting with nothing, and you don’t know where your characters are going. The urge to start writing a script gets stronger as each day passes.

It’s a horrible dilemma. No working writer is ever 100% satisfied with the script they hand in, but the reality of a deadline concentrates the mind. Fake deadlines you set yourself are just never quite terrifying enough. But if I was allowing myself three months of spare time to create a spec script with new characters, I would expect to spend at least two thirds of that time in preparation.

When I’ve given in to that urge to start writing before having an absolutely clear sense of what the show is about, my script has not been good enough. Some people argue that it is only when you start writing the script that you begin to see where the characters are going. Very well, start writing: but make that script be part of the research you can use… when you begin writing the brilliant script.

Thanks Dave. Do leave comments below.

Writing those lines that, you know, the audience laugh at...

2011-06-20T03:42:00.000-07:00

... what are they called, again? Oh yes. Jokes.

I like jokes. I like laughing. Out loud. I quite like smiling. And I quite the like feeling of having spotted something really subtle. But I think I like laughing the best.

I fully appreciate that some people don't like laughing. Somehow, some of them are TV critics. It's understandable to some extent. Most comedies wouldn't seem all that funny when played on a preview disc at 11am in a brightly lit lounge on a Tuesday morning. Also, some critics simply consider laughing to be beneath them. AA Gill is one, as I pointed out here. Let us remind ourselves of why he liked TV series Lead Balloon:

This series is part of a new trend of comedy shows that don't make you laugh; you just nod your head and mutter, "That's really funny." It's a Darwinian improvement on the tyranny of the set-up-gag guffaw, and I approve of it. Laughter is ugly and common.

Thanks, Mr Gill. I'll bear that in mind for all your futures reviews about comedy.

I mention all this because I'm in the throes of writing another radio series with Milton Jones who, apart from being a most delightful and kind human being, writes some of the best jokes in the English-speaking world.

The show we write for Radio 4 is called Another Case of Milton Jones which can you sample/buy here. In general, it is a show that will go anywhere or do anything for a joke. But the show has a strong narrative, as well as some regular characters, and it's far from a case of connecting up a series of Milton Jones' superb one-liners, although they are extremely useful to have in the armoury.

Writing the show is always a bit of a work-out for me. I have to be at the top of my game to keep up with Milton, joke-wise, but my main skill is seeing beyond the next joke, to the next scene, and all the way to the end, shaping the story and ensuring the whole thing makes sense, so that when the Czech Grandmaster is trapped inside a cage made of Twiglets and fed to an angry mob of penguins, we know why it's happening, and therefore why it's funny. (Confusion is the enemy of comedy)

Odd Conversations
During the course of writing the show, Milton, the producer David Tyler, and I end up having bizarre conversations about jokes, working out specifics about what colour or which animal is funniest, whether a scene should take place in Mexico or Panama, and what words should be omitted. It takes hours. We ensure that each script is given our full attention for two whole days (with the script having been broadly written and reworked before we start that process). Some days we're there for 12 hours, meaning some scripts after given 24 hours of careful attention from three of us. And then Milton has another pass at the script, filling in gaps, and deleting stuff he's only 50/50 about. In short, it takes ages. But at the same time, it's great fun because at the end of it, we've got some really funny jokes that make us laugh in the room - and we're excited about telling them to the audience so they can laugh too. This is comedy, remember.

Let us note, then, that writing comedy is hard. It's not just a question of natural ability. It's natural ability plus graft. The British love the idea of an effortless genius. It's broadly a myth. There was of course Peter Cook. But that was it. The rest of us just have to take our talents and work our guts out.

Writing Jokes
In the process of the above, however, there are a few things that crop up when trying to write or polish a joke that I pass on to the possible benefit for reading several. Three things as a starting point.

Clear a space - make sure the joke isn't being compromised by things around it. The audience are expecting jokes. Don't give them the jokes they expect. But at the same time, don't confuse them or make their life harder. Earlier, I mentioned about whether to set a scene in Mexico or Panama. In the room, we might say 'Oh, let's not do Panama. They'll be expecting a joke about a hat or a canal, and we're not doing those jokes. Can't it be Mexico?' It's all about expectation and stereotype. These can help you when they're part of the joke, but they can get in the way if the joke's about something else. Remove words in the set-up to the joke that are in themselves funny-sounding, if they're not the joke. In short, clear a space for your joke. No distractions.

Rhythm and Bounce - make sure the joke is sayable and has a natural rhythm to it, (unless of course the joke is about jarring words, or expectations). Shakespeare's so memorable and easy to say because of the iambic pentameter. He did okay. Discordant, jerky sentences tend not to work. Let us not forget some of the all time great one-liners from Blackadder eg. 'Your brain, for example, is so minute that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn't be enough in side to cover a small water-biscuit'. 'Water biscuit' much funnier than 'cracker', which is shorter, but not as nice in that spot. Also, cracker can mean other things, lik Christmas cracker, and a cracker is also a sort of joke. Delete cracker. Use water-biscuit. Think about rhythm and flow. Say it out loud. If you can't say your line, why should the actor be expected to?

Zing and Sting - make sure the funny bit is at the end, so it zings. Sounds silly, but I watch plenty of comedy where the funny bit is drowning in a soup of words around it. The funny line, the punchline, the pay-off, should come last, so the audience can then laugh. They won't laugh if you're still talking. They're very polite. They'll wait 'til you've finished, by which time the laughter will have dissippated. This is the bit our American friends are really good at. (I always say that 'American English is the natural language of sit-com' Discuss)

Also, make sure it is actually a joke. Some lines feel like jokes, because of their shape, clarity and rhythm, but, on inspection, there's nothing there. It's an ersatz-joke. It's just someone talking. It may get a laugh, but it doesn't help you. Cut it. Or turn it into a joke. Or use it as a set-up to a new joke.

Some would say all of the above is against the principles of 'naturalism' that you get in comedy now. Shaky cameras and people mumbling, stopping and starting. It's quite fashionable at the moment. But that kind of comedy hides the fact that when that stuff is done well, you don't notice that jokes are clear and the lines are sayable. You're thinking 'people don't talk like this in real life' because it's all flowing well and you're too busy enjoying it.

All of the above takes time, especially if you do it on every line in every scene. But that's okay. You're a writer. It's what you do. And always remember - it beats real work.

Where should I send my Script? Part 2

2011-06-15T02:56:00.000-07:00

Given the enormous interest in the last post (largely thanks to a RT by Mr Linehan), I thought it might be worth following up some specifcs questions that arose.

The producer works for a company that says it doesn’t accept unsolicited scripts. Should I send it anyway?
It’s up to you. If you do, it would be unreasonable of you to pester them with phonecalls and emails subsequently for feedback. I would says there’s no harm in sending it. But, given their pre-stated policy, don’t expect anything back. Personally, saying you don’t accept scripts is a bizarre policy for a comedy company to have, given that scripts are where the jokes/money come from. But given there are tens of thousands of sitcom scripts floating around the UK at the moment, and thousands more generated every year, you have to draw the line somewhere. (Also, as someone has helpfully commented, send the script to a particular person, not a company.)

Should I send my script to agents?
Yes. You can. You probably should – especially if you feel you’re running out of options. But my experience is that agents tend not to get involved if you don’t have ‘stuff going on’. Many are good-hearted and want to encourage new writers, but they have to make a living like the rest of us. But agents are, by no means, a magic wand. Their good allies, and not bored by contracts and money, but tend not to get you sitcom work. (Some get you day-rate gag-writing work, but that's an area I'm not all that familiar with.)

Isn’t it all about relationships with producers?
Yes it is. One or two tweeted that they thought that writing sketches for shows was the way in – and this is the tried and tested formula. The likes of John Sullivan, Richard Curtis, David Renwick and Andy Hamilton to name a few started this way. In one sense, a sitcom is a series of sketches, so getting the craft of economic funny writing is probably the best foundation you can have. And through it, you develop relationships with producers, with whom you can develop longer narrative scripts. But many writers have had other routes into sitcom. I believe Simon Nye wrote a novel that he was persuaded to turn into a sitcom, and he happened to be brilliant at writing sitcom. Lee Mack has come through live performance. But sketch comedy is the best way for most, I think.

Should I send an electronic or hard copy?
I’d say hard copy. My reasoning is thinking about it from their point of view (or mine!) If I get an email, I have to print it out myself at my expense. And then put it down somewhere where I’ll remember to read it. Most likely, I'll fail to print it out, and then the email disappears off the bottom of my list, and it’s all forgotten. (I’ve forgotten to read plenty of scripts this way from people whom I know personally and like (Sorry)).

I shouldn’t bother asking where you can send them a script first out of politeness. It’s just more admin. If a script is already printed out and sitting on a table, it might get picked up and read very quickly. Especially if the first few pages are actually proper funny – which is rare. And if it ain’t funny, it goes in the bin and their day continues. We’ve all had scripts thrown in the bin. The solution is to send it someone else, or write another one.

Is it worth sending to producers as well as BBC Writersroom?
Yes. I know one of their readers very well and he knows stuff and can spot funny. You can send it to BBC Producers too – one or two – but try the Writersoom. They are mandated and paid to find new talent and encourage it. That might well involve you.

Should I send a pilot ‘set-up’ episode or a typical episode?
Send a funny episode. The debate about whether to write Ep 1 as a set-up or whether to do it in the first five minutes and then move on, or just write a typical episode is not something to worry about at this stage. Really and truly. When you are sending a script to a producer, you are primarily showing what you can do with a half-hour script. The odds of the script being turned into actually TV are truly tiny. There are so many hoops to jump through first. A script is a calling card – in the hope of developing a relationship with a producer. They get sent hundreds of pilot episodes, and plenty of typical episodes – but they don’t get sent many funny, fresh, original versions of either. It really is all about the funny at this stage. The cold-hearted planning of how you can take over the world with your sitcom comes later.

Could I send a script to you, Sitcomgeek?
I’d rather you didn’t. Sorry. I do get asked now and then. Reading a script properly – as I would like my script to be read – takes half an hour. Then you have to read it again. Think about it. And then write something useful. That’s probably a 3-4 hour job. No offence, if I’m giving away my time for free, I’d rather give it my three-year old daughter (whom I only invoice occasionally) There are script reading services available at relatively low cost. You could try the excellent and experienced writer Dave Cohen, or the delightful Hayley McKenzie.

I’m not getting anywhere at all. What should I do?
Write something else. If you’re a writer, you’ll like writing for it’s own sake – and that is the thing that gives you pleasure. But given the lack of manufacturing and an increasingly graduate population, an awful lot of people want to be writers. It’s hard work out there, and it can be slim pickings at times. And if you’re pitching a sitcom to BBC2, you’re competing with Paul Whitehouse, Steve Moffat and Ricky Gervais. You’re in with the big boys. Quit whining, and turn that into something funny. (I hasten to add I regularly ignore my own advice and whine with the best of them.)

Please feel free to ask other general questions about sitcom, industrial or scriptorial – maybe on the comments below or via twitter – and I’ll try and get to them via the blog over the coming weeks.

Where should I send my Script?

2011-06-13T14:36:00.001-07:00

This is a question I get asked a lot. You can send it in to script competitions. No harm in that. (I write about that here) You can send it nebulous corporations who have a public service remit and will genuinely read it eventually. Better than leaving it in a drawer. I shouldn't bother sending it to an agent (unless it's a movie script or novel).

But for sitcom, I give the same answer every time. Send it to a producer who makes programmes you like - and whom you think will 'get' what you're trying to do. Print it out, put it in an envelope, spell their name correctly, write a polite covering letter that doesn't make you look like a nutjob, a stalker or a precocious 12-year-old (even if you are, hide this fact). Then wait.

If it's really good, they'll call you. Really and truly. Most scripts aren't any good, including those written by experienced professionals. So if you've written something that isn't even broadcastable, but shows promise and talent, they'll call, email and contact you somehow eventually.

Bear in mind they have work do, a job in hand and it doesn't really involve you - but they need shows to produce, and every time they open and envelope, they fear the worst, but hope for the best.

If you don't hear back ever, and you've sent it three different producers, maybe, just maybe, the script isn't as good as you thought it was. In which case, do what all decent writers do: do it again. Rewrite, edit, change, delete, type, scream, delete, type, read, simmer, pause, read again, edit then send. If you're not prepared for any of the above, may I recommend another job?

Any producers on the receiving end, please feel free to confirm or deny any of the above, but that's my experience and recommendation.

Rookie Errors No. 231 - Bagginess

2011-06-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

I learnt a lot about writing sitcom for television on the fondly-remembered, critically-disliked sitcom, My Hero. I wrote six episodes in all, over three series. And this was done under the tutelage of some wonderful, kind and patient men who had made an awful lot of comedy between them ranging from May to December, through Game On to Vicar of Dibley and Alexei Sayle's Stuff.

Each draft of each script was read by the producer, exec producer, director, script editor and show creator. All these notes and thoughts were collated, interpreted and fed back by the producer, Jamie Rix, as truly delightful a human being as you could hope to meet.

The Baggy Draft
I remember one time I was having trouble with a draft of a script - so I sent in a draft that was very baggy indeed. Scripts for half an hour of telly are normally about 6000 words for me. Ideally a shade under. If you're playing around and have the luxury of time, a slightly longer script of 6500 is okay. (For radio, I tend to write slightly long, knowing that there isn't time to rewrite on the day, but there is time to make cuts, even before the recording itself). Let's cut to the chase. This draft of My Hero was c. 9000 words, and I sent it in.

My reasoning was simple. There were lots of options on the script. Lots of ways to go. A number of possible funny routines. And ultimately, I didn't know what I was doing. And they did. So I was turning it over to them to decide where the funny was. In way, I was being humble and unpretentious.

They were perfectly nice - but profoundly unimpressed. And immediately I realised what an idiot I had been. It was never said out loud, but could and should have been pointed out, that I was being paid good money to write a script and decide where the funny was, what the story was and 'which way to go'. They suggested that I wasn't clear on what the story was and exactly what this episode was about. And they were right. I had no idea. And I'd abdicated my responsibility to write the darned show. I wasn't being humble and unpretentious. I was being lazy and spineless. And therefore unprofessional.

The iciness in the room thawed. They were gentle with me. More so than I deserved. But the moment stayed with me.

With My Other Hat
And now I experience this bagginess from the other side. Not often. But sometimes. I get sent things that are way overlength for the show I'm script-editing - either a sketch or script or whatever - with an accompanying email saying 'I wasn't really sure what worked best, so I put it all in so you can decide'. Whenever I read that email, my heart sinks.

The first reason it sinks is I recall my own shame of doing this. And how it demonstrated my inexperience and laziness. I'm not saying that's why all people do this, it's sometimes just sheer lack of confidence and a desire to 'show your working' - and is essentially a quest for approval.

It also makes my heart sink because I realise that this is going to be noticeably more work for me. I'm going to have to read a longer draft - twice - think about it for longer, feedback on more script, and ultimately think about 'which way to go' which takes up time and brainspace. Then the rotten part of my heart kicks in and I think 'Hey, I'm not being paid to this. The writer should decide which way to go' and then the good part of heart feels bad, but ultimately agrees. And I'm tired, cross and feeling guilty. Maybe other script editors are more patient, magnanimous and understanding. But that's usually my reaction.

I'd rather read a tight script where the wrong choice has been made, and it's been seen through and slaved over, than a baggy script where every choice and no choice has been made - and I'm effectively reading a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book.

So, my advice is don't turn in hopelessly long drafts. Decide. Work out what the episode/sketch is about and stick to it. If it isn't working, fix it. If it still isn't working, talk to your script editor/producer in advance and ask for help before the deadline. This means - hey - not leaving it all to the last minute.

But don't, please, send in overlong drafts. (Unless you're a successful novelist, obviously because they you have carte blanche to write an 800 page children's book.)

PS. Sorry this post is longer than usual. I couldn't decide whether to include the My Hero anecdote at the top or not, so I left it in. But you can skip over it if it's boring. Or just read bits. (Annoying, isn't it?)

Responding to Notes like a Pro

2011-05-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

A little while back, I thought about notes on this blog. And I've been thinking about them again. In particular, I have been thinking about how writers respond to them. And how they should respond to them.

It is fashionable to laugh at people who give you notes, ignore or challenge them. Especially when there are stupid or come from a talentless exec or chinless script editor. And it's funny when Rob Long talks about it. But he's sucked up his fair amount of notes in his time, and written episodes of Cheers. So he gets to talk like that.

So how does the young writer respond to notes? Learn the mechanics of writing is one thing. But what's etiquette. How does it work?

I've been a script editor on a several series of radio and a few series of children's TV - and given a fair amount of notes, as well as being on the receiving end of them. Before a few specifics, here are a few general points.

Bear in mind this. The script writer wants the same thing as you: a funny show. He (or she) doesn't want to make the show worse. And he (or she - you get the idea) doesn't want you to remove good jokes. He wants you to remove bad jokes, or cut things that get in the way of the jokes. Or streamline things that are confusing. Or ensure that everyone's motivation is clear and defined. He may be wrong about some of these things, but not all of them. So assume he's write about some of them. Maybe even most of them.

The script editor doesn't just want the show do be funny. He wants the script to be ready as fast as possible, so we all get to go home early. When I'm reading sketches or episodes of things, I want to be able to say 'Yup. All good.', and close the file, go home and watch the Test Match, just as much as you do. If the script isn't right, it's more work for me. I'm only going to give a note on something if it needs fixing.

The script editor is busy. He may be editing multiple episodes. CBeebies do runs of 26. (Hey, it's like working on an American show!) I may make a mistake in your notes. I may remember something incorrectly. This may be the ninth script I've fed back on today. So if the notes are little non-sensical, or contain errors or contradictions, try cutting them some slack.

If they don't find a joke funny, they can't help that.

And if you're going to be a writer of any kind, be it for TV, radio, film or books, you'll get notes. Get used to it - and remember that most notes make things better.

So here are a few of specifics:
Don't give notes on the notes. You don't need to go through them all on the email and say whether you agree or disagree with them - or give the lines a backstory. I'll go further. Don't do that. It's really annoying. Don't defend lines or bits with non-specific lines like 'You told me to cut that bit but I really like it. I don't know why. Just feels right.' Just read the notes and act on them.

Ignore some of the notes, if you know what you're doing. But think twice before ignoring a note completely, because there's probably something in it. Even the silliest most deranged note (like 'Hey, could the hero die on page 1?') is worth considering. A script is a moving, mushy thing. Nothing is set in stone until it's actually broadcast and out there. At least try it their way, even if you end up switching it back.

Don't crow. It's quite likely that a script editor will suggest something after draft 1, and then suggest removing after draft 3. He's forgotten that it was his idea. But then, he's read 2 drafts of 25 scripts since he gave that note, so maybe he's forgotten? Cut him some slack and don't make him feel like an idiot. When he's dishing out extra commissions, he might remember your notes on his notes and decide to go with someone else.

Do question notes, politely. Do say 'I'm confused by this note, because...' or 'I'm struggling with which way to go on this. We've talked about two ways and I'm still not clear why you favour the second option... etc.' A dialogue for clarification is fine.

There's lots more than can be said constructively in this area. I'd love to hear your experience of giving and receiving of notes. If you keep it good-natured, polite and professional, there aren't usually any problems. But you may prove me wrong...

John Sullivan - Some Perspective

2011-05-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

John Sullivan is a titanic figure in comedy writing - and his death is tragic. There is no 'but' to this. No caveats or clever angles. The man was a superb writer. This is a man who wrote four extremely memorable and diverse sitcoms, namely.

Citizen Smith (1977-1980) - 4 series; Only Fools and Horses (1981-1991) 64 episodes, plus numerous specials; Just Good Friends (1983-6) 22 episodes; Dear John (1986-7) 14 glorious painful episodes.

I mention this because I was sad that there was only a half-hour documentary knocked together in his honour. In one sense, it was great that it was on prime time BBC1 - which he ruled. Many experienced, senior, cherished actors were highly complimentary of Sullivan's scripts, authenticity, attention to detail and perfectionism. But the brief running time did not even begin to do justice to the Herculean achievements of this writer.

Sullivan gives us perspective. The greats of today have a long long way to go. Ricky Gervais is today's much-lauded saviour of narrative comedy. The Office was wonderful, brilliant and important. Extras, frankly, I wasn't that excited by but did well. But in total, that's about 27 episodes of telly. So far, Gervais & Merchant are about 100 episodes behind Sullivan - and that's not including Sitting Pretty (1992-3); Over Here (1996); Roger Roger (1996-2003);
Micawber (2001, comedy-drama); The Green Green Grass (2005-9); Rock & Chips. (Most of us mortal writers would be very happy with one or two of these 'also-ran' hits or spin-offs as their greatest achievements.)

John Sullivan was a truly great writer. There are plenty of good writers around today. Most of us are hoping to be in that pantheon one day. But until we are in our sixties and looking back on significant body of work (rather than 'getting out at the top') we won't be able to tell. In the meantime, let's enjoy greatness for what it is.

Take the Rest of the Day Off

2011-05-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I watched the Hallowe'en episode of Modern Family - in which Mitchell ends up hiding in a toilet cubicle dressed as spiderman. And acting like spiderman. For good, story-based, character-fulfilling reasons. It's utterly, wonderfully hilarious - the kind of scene which, if I'd come up with it, I'd have thought to myself 'Well done. Take the rest of the day off.'

'Take the rest of the day off' seems to be a fairly standard expression among the comedy writing community, at least. It denotes an over-whelming feeling of pride and satisfaction at a comic masterstroke that it merits time off. It's a joke, or scene, or line, that is the perfect blend of character and story.

The Perfect Line
What I mean by that is this: A sitcom is only half an hour - 21 minutes if you're American. You don't have long. And it needs to be tight because the audience is expecting jokes. Therefore, as many lines as possible should be jokes. Or set-up to jokes. Those that are neither should be expositional - and all of the above should be done in character.

So, as a rule of thumb, if a line of dialogue isn't a joke, or a set up to a joke, or a bit of exposition, or character development, it should be cut without question. It's a waste of words and breath. The best lines are mega-jokes that move along the plot in character. Or they're just show-stopping, scene-topping jokes (eg. 'I'll have what she's having' see here)

The Awful Truth
But what is the implication in 'take the rest of the day off'? The subtext is 'Wow. That is the kind of joke that would normally take several painful, frustrating hours to come up with, but you came up with it just before lunch - so, hey, take the rest of the day off!'

And there's the rub. Those flashes are rare. And they don't just happen. They come through hard work. It would be easy to think that the writer of that Modern Family spiderman scene is just amazingly, effortlessly funny, oozing natural talent. That way, I could always assume that I would never come up with anything so good, because I'm not a genius, and so why try? Just do your best, and leave it at that.

And yet every so-called genius says the same thing: it's just hard work. Talent, yes, but mostly hard work. Thomas Jefferson apparently said, "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." These are surely sage words. It's about putting in the hours. The fact is, that the Spiderman scene probably turned up in Draft 4, or didn't quite get the zing 'til then. Stuff that is that neat and clever normally leaves a trail of destruction and devastation in its wake. There's a hard-drive strewn with old drafts and a whole batman/catwoman sequence that should have been hilarious but just wasn't for some reason. Then the flash of genius comes.

There is no substitute for hard work. Redrafting, rethinking and rewriting. Identifying problems and fixing them. And the more we do those things, the more ideas we turn over, the more combinations of words, plots and characters we put together for a brief moment, the 'luckier' we'll be. And we'll say to ourselves, 'Take the rest of the day off', grab a coffee, and then get back to our desks to work hard enough to get lucky again.

The First Two Minutes

2011-04-27T01:44:00.001-07:00

I'm not a particularly big fan of Dad's Army. It's a show hugely respect - but not one I especially find myself wanting to watch. (Hi-De-Hi was the rising show as I was growing up and getting into comedy.) But I watched the opening of the episode that was on BBC2 on Saturday (why make new comedy when you could repeat the 70s sitcom about the 40s?). Sadly it's not on iplayer, so I can't link to it. It think it's the Brain vs Brawn episode from Series 5. The first two minutes were very impressive from a writing point of view, and worth stopping to think about for a moment.

The show opens at a Rotary club. Mainwairing is there, receiving a sherry from a waitress, who says he can only have one because of rationing. Wilson arrives, who is there as Mainwairing's guest. Mainwairing points out the President of the Club and encourages Wilson to ingratiate himself with him, but Wilson turns his back to talk to the waitress, complimenting her on a pretty brooch. She is flattered and says she'll try and find him some extra sherry. Then Wilson meets the President - and it turns out he and Wilson were at school together and shared a room for a little while. Mainwairing tries to reassert supremacy by saying that Wilson works for him, but Wilson and the President walk off together, leaving Mainwairing behind - and the president says cheerio to Mainwairing, getting his name wrong. The entirety of Dad's Army is summed up beautifully in that little scene. The two main characters do their thing, and perform a mini-sketch, with nice jokes that sets up the rest of the show.

The opening of any show is, obviously, critical. I'd argue that, as the writer, you have two choices for that opening. Both are about building a relationship with your audience.

Choice One is go down this Dad's Army route, in which we re-establish the key characters leaving the audience in no doubt as to who the show is about and what the show is about. The only drawback with choice one is the sometimes it's a nice opening, and neat and clever, but not barnstormingly hilarious.

If were finding this choice a hard one, it may well be because we don't really know who the show is about, who they are in conflict with and what they are trying to achieve. We can't encapsulate the show in an opening sketch if we don't know what the show is. More work on the treatment, the characters, the outline and the stories for you, I'm afraid.

The thing to bear in mind with this choice also is that you cannot assume your audience know the characters - unless you're on Series 7 of your hit sitcom, in which case, you wouldn't be reading this blog (and if you are, can I have a job, please?) Always re-introduce your characters. Give the audience a hand getting a handle on them. This can slow things down or get in the way, which is why you could plump for:

Choice Two, which is to create a brilliant set-piece scene with a thwacking joke at the end. This might be done at the expense of re-introducing the characters to your audience, but it at least builds confident with the audience that this is going to be a funny show.

If you can pull it off, don't choose. Cheat. Do both. Miranda does this very successfully. She immediately builds rapport with the audience, establishing herself as a character, highlighting the potentially troublesome relationships in the show (with Penny, Gary, Stevie or Tilly) - and cutting to some big strong visual jokes to get the show moving comically.

If you watch the first two minutes of action (post titles) of Episode 1 of Blackadder Goes Forth (here), you learn that Blackadder is cultured (reading a book and listening to music), clever and cynical. You learn that Baldrick is very stupid, and the George is fanatically patriotic - and that Blackadder feels he's above the whole thing. That's the show. Then George produces a service revolver, and the story begins. That's how you start a show.

Script Competitions

2011-04-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

I've never been keen on sitcom competitions, script initiatives, new writing prizes and all that.

Given that the BBC Writers Room get sent thousands of script a year anyway - ever single one of which is read - there seems little need to spend money on competitions and executives to manage them and readers to read the scripts. You could simply pay writers who show promise a little bit of money to make their scripts better.

But I've been warming, slightly, to these competitions recently since they encourage people to write - and finish - scripts. Many people respond to a deadline, so the fact there is a clear date, a prize and the promise of the script being read.

There is, however, a downside to this. Writing a decent half hour script takes ages. Especially a pilot script for a new show. It involves coming up with characters, honing them, storylining, honing the stories, writing, re-writing and editing. It's the kind of thing that would take me at least three weeks before I had anything I could bear to show to another human being who wasn't genetically programmed to love me unconditionally. That's three weeks of Monday-Friday, ten til six. I can do that because it's sort of my job.

Most people don't have this luxury, because they're holding down a day-job, or raising kids. Therefore, the whole process is done in evenings, or at weekends. This sounds really hard to me. That kind of bitty process probably lends itself to sketch writing, but not writing a half hour scripts. (It normally takes me 90 minutes to really get into a script for a day.) And so writing a script this way will take months. But most people don't have this sort of time, or hear about the competition late, or just don't knuckle down early enough. And therefore the script is half-baked, and sent off anyway.

This seems to be a widespread problem. I was interested to read this post on Chortle about Jon Plowman's session at the London Comedy Writers' Festival. Jon Plowman always says very sensible things about comedy and is a good egg, so anything he says should be given great credence. For me, the telling line was "a recurring theme of the festival [was that] writers [should] think carefully before sending off a script."

This chimes with my own experience. In recent weeks, I've been meeting a number of new and aspiring writers, and many of them said similar things about the last bunch of sitcom competitions. Something along the lines 'I entered the competition, but the script was a mess. I couldn't really get the ending to work, and one of the characters isn't funny. But I thought I'd send it anyway'.

People say these things for all kinds of reason. It might be because it's true. It's partly emotional insurance and a fear of failure, which is completely understandable. It's probably lack of confidence too, along the lines of 'I have no idea what works, so I may have written something good without realising it.' But let's be honest about this. It seems unlikely that a script that even you think isn't working would win a scriptwriting competition. So why send it in that state?

Given the proliferation of these competitions, it might be better to wait until the next competition comes round. Take that extra time to make the script good. Or really good. Put the script to one side for a month and then come back to it fresh. Be brutal. Go through each line. Does this line need to be here? Is it a joke, a set-up to a joke, or developing plot/character? If not, delete it.

The reality is that if you write a decent script, a really decent script, you don't need a competition to succeed. This is simply because there are hardly any decent scripts out there. Micheal Jacob, in his last blog for the BBC, writes:

I must have read - taking competitions and College of Comedy applications into account - maybe 10,000 aspiring scripts or part scripts. And the depressing fact is that no more than 100 were any good. The tragedy of comedy is that many people think they can write it and hardly anyone can.

If you can write - and you also write a superb script (not the same thing) - producers will want to meet you and stuff will happen. It's all about the script. Don't sell it short. Don't let it go off half-cock. Plan it. Mull it. Research it. Filter it. Replan it. Write it. Rewrite it. Edit it. Put it to one side. Forget it. Then get it out. Read it. Re-read it. Edit it. Then put in some more jokes. Then cut some of them out. And check it over again. It might then be ready to send.

It takes ages. Even if you're talented. Perhaps the proliferation of competitions gives people the idea that anyone can have a go because writing is easy. It is true that anyone can have a go. But it isn't easy. I've been doing it for over ten years professionally and only now am I starting to think I might have the beginnings of a clue as to what I'm doing. But I do know this. Talent is fine. But there is no substitute for hard work.

Bored To Death

2011-04-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

One of the best shows of recent times is Damages. It is truly compelling storytelling with monstrous characters and a brilliant script. It's full of lying liars lying their heads off. It is brilliant.

It is also possibly the least funny things I've ever watched every episode of. I find straight drama hard work since life is often funny. Anything that has every joke extinguished and every pun snuffed out is automatically less true to life, not more so. But for me, one of the revelations of the series was Ted Danson. Star of ever-popular Cheers, and the perfectly decent but much unloved Becker. But his performance in Damages was way better than anything to date.

And so I was awaiting Bored to Death with some keen anticipation. I taped it off Sky and watched it last night, hoping this would become regular viewing in my house alongside Modern Family, 30 Rock and House, MD.

Let's cut to the chase. I didn't like it at all. Ted Danson wasn't in it much. But that really wasn't the problem. It was quirky and stylish and 'aspirational', kind of. But overall, I was very confusing.

Firstly, our hero is a novelist, which is a bad start for me. I'm just not ever going to feel sympathy for a novelist or a screenwriter, even though I am a screenwriter and a failed novelist. (It also explains why I didn't really go for Episodes). He isn't a very appealing character, or especially compelling, or funny enough to get away with being neither appealing or compelling. Which is a pity. His redeeming quality is that his bearded friend is even worse, from what I could tell.

At the start of the show, our hero-novelist is dumped by his girlfriend who moves out because he won't stop smoking pot. He begs her to stay. But she leaves. (I'm with her) He wants to win her back. And write his second novel. And so he reads a Raymond Chandler novel - for some reason. When he wakes up, he advertises himself as an unlicenced private eye on Craiglist, and within seconds, gets a case.

Aha. We have a case. A quest. Good. Maybe this case will teach him something, I thought, about why he should give up pot and therefore win back his girlfriend. Or spark another novel (if you must). Or at least stop being so self-pitying.

But he solves the case without any great difficulty, jeopardy or comedy. He is also arrested, but there are no consequences to it. Overall, the case is unrelated to his own situation and he learns nothing through it. At the end of the episode, he is still single, still smoking pot and has nothing for his novel and so his 'quest' appears to have benefited nobody, and there are no upsides or side effects.

The writers and producers of this show are clearly experienced and talented. There were plenty of names I recognised on the opening titles. And people with experience can break rules - and maybe all six episodes form a complex and interweaving story with loads of quests and victories and consequences and failures and character-based plotlines. It didn't seem that way from the first episode.

Experienced writers - and lucky inexperienced writers - can break rules in comedy, and often get away with it. Half a dozen cracking jokes, one funny peripheral character, a wig and a breathe of zeitgeist can salvage a show that technically shouldn't work. But it seems that we, in 2011, are unlikely to overturn the guidelines laid down by Aristotle hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

Maybe the show is willfully breaking all the rules and revelling in ennui and existentialist despair - hence the title, Bored to Death. In which case, good luck to them. It's never going to chime with me, as I'm not an pessimistic existentialist but a contented Calvinist. I guess that's why I'm so preoccupied with story structure and the hero having a clearly defined destination...

Alarm Bells

2011-04-07T03:02:00.000-07:00

So today, I’m going to be screaming at a burglar alarm. And my 3-year-old daughter will probably be joining in. And my little baby too. It’s going to be awful. But potentially very useful. Let me explain. And it does relate to sitcom-writing. I promise.

I live in a rented house with a burglar alarm that I don’t understand, with a manual written by someone who’s never met another person. We’ve lived in the house for 18 months, and have never switched the alarm on, mainly because I can’t face looking at the instructions. They are so annoying, unclear and counter-intuitive, they make me both drowsy and furious simultaneously.

But now it’s starting to bleep occasionally because one of the batteries is flat. And this looks ominous and potentially noisy. So I must take on the task of getting my head around it. And while I’m minding the kids while my wife goes out for a couple of hours later today, I’m going to try and do it then. I’m already doomed. I can’t be with my kids and achieve anything else at the same time. But let’s pass over this mild delusion. That’s not the point.

The point is this: I am embracing this situation in the hope that jokes and comic situations will be forthcoming. I am going to learn the ins and outs of burglar alams. Or at least one burglar alarm. And this may come in handy one day. Maybe along these lines:

Int. Writers Room. Day.
Eight writers are sitting round a large table in an airless, windowless room. There is a problem with this week's script. The story isn’t working. Our main character has to break into his own house for some hilarious but subtley contrived reason – but it’s not as funny as it could be. After a third coffee, Sitcomgeek’s brain finally kicks in and he speaks.

Sitcomgeek: What about the burglar alarm?

Writer 2: They don’t have one.

Sitcomgeek: Maybe they should have one.

Writer 3: But are burglar alarms? Are they funny? Really?

Sitcomgeek: They are if you don’t know how they work and you have to learn very quickly.

Writer 3: But you just punch in the code, surely? Every one knows their code. Who’s not going to know their code?

Sitcomgeek: I don’t know my code.

Writer 3: How could you not know your code.

Sitcomgeek: I never use mine. I rent. It was fitted before we moved in. It’s a hassle. And we have kids and I mostly work from home, so we’re always in.

Writer 2: So how does that help?

Sitcomgeek: I had change the battery on one of the movement sensors once. While I was minding the kids. Disaster. Kind of. It could have been catastrophic, though. It would have been if I’d had to have worked it out at night. Like our hero would have to.

Writer 2: That could work.

Sitcomgeek: Do you have any idea how hard those things are to work if you don’t know what you’re doing? The manuals are written by droids and pretty much everything triggers the alarm. It’s a nightmare.

Writer 4: When did this happen?

Sitcomgeek: Ages ago. I remember thinking at the time that this experience could be useful. It was the same day that I went to the gym, got out of the pool and discovered someone walked off with my towel and key. But that’s another story.

If you’re a sitcom writer, the upside of personal catastrophe is that you might be able to use it. Embrace that. Everything you do, the every day trials of life, are material. Go to gigs you might not like. Agree to do stuff that you might hate. Live life. And if possible, write it down. Keep a list that you can refer back to when the stories aren’t flowing. They might trigger something. And alarm bells might start to ring. Except in a good way.

The Answer Was There All Along

2011-03-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

This evening I watched Big Bang Theory. The episode was called 'The Pants Alternative' (Season 3, Ep18), the climax of which you can see here. It won Jim Parsons an Emmy for his performance.

Let's make no bones about this. Big Bang Theory is a funny show. It's a good setting, the characters are well-drawn and the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny. I like it. I don't love it, for reasons I'll explain. For me, the writers have allowed Sheldon to become too dominant. The show, for me, should be about Leonard, as he is our 'way in' to the world - and someone we can identify with. I, personally, would have made it a will-they/won't-they with Penny and ran that for a few years. But then, Chuck Lorre really does know what he's doing. The house I live in would probably fit into the downstairs bathroom of his house.

Clear Quest
But I felt 'The Pants Alternative' episode had a strong positive and a strong negative that was worthy of note. And some annoying niggles. The big positive is that the quest of the characters is pin-sharp, easy and clear:

Sheldon has to give a speech. Why? Sheldon has won an award. But a condition of accepting it is giving a speech to a large room of people.

Problem: Sheldon physically cannot give a speech to a room of people large enough to trample him. (Funny joke - but hides the fact that I don't quite believe this. Sure, Sheldon could give a speech. He is surpremely self-confident, but I'll got with it).

Solution: The other characters take it upon themselves to get Sheldon through it, and prepare him to give a speech. Penny takes him shopping for a new suit. Leonard tries psychiatry. Rajesh does meditiation. It provides three decent set-piece scenes. Seems odd that no-one has mentioned what he's going to say, but again, I'll go with it. So far, so good.

No New Information
Leonard steps up to introduce Sheldon at the dinner for the speech - but in Leonard's speech, Sheldon gets nervous. So what happens? He has a drink. Sheldon doesn't drink, apparently. This hadn't been mentioned in the episode before. Then Sheldon gets up and, hammered, gives an inappropriate speech, leading to losing his trousers.

Here's the big negative: Why are we introducing alcohol to the story? For me, the third act, leading to the climax, should contain no new information, or anything that hasn't been feature in the episode. The quest is clear. The problem crops up. We think we have a solution. But it doesn't work. We need another solution - and it should be something that was there all along. Otherwise if feels that the characters are not to blame for missing it. It feels like a deus ex machina.

I can well imagine plenty of viewers have no problem with the episode - and laughed at Sheldon's drunken antics. And I'm just being picky. But I really think that episodes lose momentum when they introduce new elements too late in the story.

All that said, Sheldon, giving a speech drunk, was funny.

But it wasn't as funny as it could have been because it didn't have any consequences. Nothing was really at stake. The award was not withdrawn - which, granted, wouldn't have been funny. Nothing else happened. The episode just ended. Now, I'm all in favour of swift endings. Writers often labour over epilogue scenes which tie up all the loose ends when the audience just don't care. But in the case, I cared. And it didn't seem to matter. Which is why, ultimately, I don't love it.

Bleep My Dad Says

2011-03-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

It can be depressing watching American comedy. My current favourites are 30 Rock and Modern Family that are so good, they sometimes makes me consider giving up since I don't feel I will ever reach those heights and that level of comic perfection.

And therefore it's very heartening and encouraging to watch other American comedies that aren't so good. So scan the cable/freeview channels for shows that don't walk off with all the Emmys.

Recently, I watched Hot in Cleveland and found myself cringing. It had the tempo and feel of Will and Grace (which is a good thing), but the whole show felt like set-ups for jokes and outrageous moments. I believe the show has been unfavourably compared to Golden Girls, which is a show I very happily watched growing up in the days that Channel 4 were happy to show that kind of thing. But the show seems to have found an audience and doing okay in the USA so it's clearly good enough.

But watching these shows is also educational and useful, since one can watch them and wonder what the problem is, or at least why they're not working for you. A Channel Five spin-off channel, bewilderingly called 5* is showing $#*! My Dad Says - a much-hyped sitcom based on a Twitter account in which a guy just tweeted stupid and vaguely offensive stuff that his dad came out with. It's a perfectly decent starting point for a sitcom - and revolves around a larger than life character. But when I watched it - episode 2 about getting the internet connected - I didn't find myself laughing all that much. And I pondered why - and what we can learn.

One problem is that the Dad, played perfectly well by William Shatner, didn't seem to have a reason for his permament state of mild anger or intransigence. I shouldn't have bothered me. I shouldn't have need to ask why - but I was asking because it felt like this character didn't really have anything to do except rant, or complain about his son. What is his quest? What does he want? How do we know when he has that thing?

The other problem is that the other three characters weren't characters but foils, or people talking about stuff. Having watched an entire episode, I couldn't not name a single characteristic of any of the other characters. And this is episode 2, so they really should be hammering this stuff.

My guess is that there was a great deal of worry that the Dad was so brutal and offensive (which he isn't) that the other characters needed to be 'likeable'. But 'likeable' can easily lead to 'bland'. As I've said before in previous posts, characters don't have to be 'likeable' but compelling. And so the episode I saw was three nice characters dancing around one central unlikeable character, trying to get him to do what they wanted him to do.

Two of the characters in the show had clear quests: the daughter-in-law was worried about a rash on her breast which sparked a comment that the other son couldn't shake off... but there was nothing at stake. It didn't really make any difference to anything. It put her husband off-lovemaking. But so what? Surely the stakes could have been raised by this being a particularly good time to try and conceive a baby.

The clearer quest was the son who lived with the dad trying to get his dad to agree to having the internet connect - but because this son was so loosely drawn and a 'writer/blogger' of some kind (urgh. Don't you just hate writers who blog?), I didn't care if he succeeded or not. And his dad simply irrationally stood in his way.

Overall, it was an unsatisfactory experience, but a useful one. When you are setting up a new show, it's always worth asking whether your characters are well-drawn enough, clear enough to be understood quickly. If they're nuanced too much, or make 'likeable', it won't much matter how clear their quest is, because we just won't care.

You want clearly drawn characters? Just watch the opening titles of The Golden Girls - the opening theme of which tells you that it's about friendship. But when you see the characters, you immediately know what drives them and what they are like.

So Seventies

2011-03-14T04:47:00.000-07:00

Last night, I finally got round to watching Part 2 of The Story of Variety with Michael Grade. Part 1 was excellent, interesting and surprising - full of stuff about the thousands of variety acts criss-crossing Britain to play the hundreds of variety. Part 2 was a little bit rubbish and covered the well-trodden variety acts who ended up on TV. Twenty minutes on Morecambe and Wise isn't really necessary given the dozens of docs they've been covered in before.

Why did they include all that footage of Morecambe and Wise? Because they know we love it and never tire of it. And Tommy Cooper, Ken Dodd and all those old-fashioned acts that are still funny, partly because they're so beautifully crafted, and also because they are experienced. But their comedy is universal and timeless.

I mention this because it struck me that one criticism levelled at shows like Mrs Brown's Boys is that they are so dated, and so seventies. That was the over-riding complaint on Twitter as the show was first broadcast. It's in some of the reviews too, but the point is not whether or not Mrs Browns Boys is so seventies - but the question 'Why is this a bad thing?'

Mumford and Sons are, essentially, a folk band. Aren't we done with folk? Isn't that so 1670s? Apparently not. Some people love them - and now they are popular, some people have decided to hate them. But why hate them? Because it's folk? Not really. Music combines old and new. Why is comedy different?

Specifically, comedy from the seventies is still shown on television very regularly today. Cable channels are full of it. At Christmas, they still repeat Morecambe and Wise. So why is it bad if, comedically, something seems very seventies? Certainly comedy has moved on for some people. Our tastes change. But comedy itself hasn't progressed. Just moved in a direction we call forwards because that's the way it looks from where we're standing.

A show is no better or worse for harking back to the old days or having a feel of a by-gone era about it. Miranda has attracted praise for being old-fashioned. But that is precisely the reason that some people hate it - or more specifically say daft things like "I shouldn't like it but..."

Mrs Brown's Boys
While we're on the subject of Mrs Brown's Boys, I should declare an interest in that I know the producer and the script editor, so use that to filter whatever I say on the subject. But I'll say this: I wasn't expecting to like the show given that I don't find drag especially funny, and the style of humour is not to my taste at all. I watched it out of professional interest and courtesy, and discovered I liked it much more than I thought I would. I don't love it, because it's not my thing. And yet, I laughed out loud several times - significantly more times than I did at cooler, hipper Channel 4/BBC2/BBC3 shows we could mention that pride themselves on being very now. I don't care what people say: Taizering yourself by mistake is funny:

Annoying People & Boring Bits

2011-03-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

This week, I watched an episode of Red Dwarf Series IV that somehow I had never seen before. I am a huge fan of Red Dwarf and Series V and VI, especially - a really good blend of characters, gags and sci-fi imagination. But I missed the Waxworld episode all those years ago and never caught up.

Let's be honest. It's not the best of the episodes. The story is a bit wobbly and the location shooting is pretty ropey (which is a blog posting for another time). There are lots of unfamiliar characters that get in the way. But the episode starts with Rimmer telling a long boring story about a game of Risk that he played years earlier. The gag is that Rimmer is going on and on and has no idea how boring he's being. But, it's not really funny at all because it's, well, boring. Jokes about boredom, shaggy dog stories and anticlimaxes are often disastrous in shows, especially when shot in front of audiences. They don't usually play very well because they are boring, pointless or anti-climactic.

Non-audience shows can make a feature of these, and nuance them to perfection, as they did in The Office and People Like Us - making many others think they can do them. But my experience as an audience member, and as a writer, have taught me to avoid doing jokes along these lines.

A similar phenomenon has arisen in Friday Night Dinner. Mark Heap brilliantly plays a really annoying next door neighbour. But he doesn't make me laugh. He just makes me annoyed. The character is clearly sociopathic and doesn't realise when he's not wanted, and thus hangs around and causes embarrassment, and it's very true to life. People often don't get the message. It's believable. But I wonder how laugh-out-loud funny the character is.

There is certainly mileage to be had in these boring/annoying characters. But most of it is in the lengths the other characters have to go to in order to avoid being stuck with the annoying/boring character - and that this has comic consequence. In the Christmas episode of Miranda, she says that she finds carol singers annoying, because you just have to stand there while they sing and it's very awkward. And so, at the distant sound of carol singers, she pretends not to be in - and has to get all her customers to hide, which is, I think, rather funny. And even better, in so doing, she misses the van delivering her package in the process.

There are ways of doing this. But my general word of warning is to ask yourself whether you annoying character is funny - or just plain annoying. If it's the latter, delete, avoid, kill or rewrite.

Friday Night Dinner

2011-03-02T07:07:00.000-08:00

Let us begin with a few caveats. The first is that SitcomGeek is in awe of Robert Popper, the writer of Friday Night Dinner. The man was, in no small part, responsible for Look Around You, the first series of which is possibly the funniest television in many years. I always describe it as 'unnecessarily funny'. In one, sense this makes me biased towards him, but also increased my expectations.

Given this, the second caveat is that Mr Popper probably knows exactly what he's doing and, frankly, whatever I say he already knows but he's gone his own way anyway. Fair enough.

The third caveat is to mention that the show really is very similar in set-up to Grandma's House, but that this doesn't really make any difference to anything. They were probably commissioned at about the same time, and it's an unfortunate coincidence, but so what? I'm not sure which I prefer. Given I didn't really buy Simon Amstell's performance in Grandma's House, even though he was playing himself, I would probably veer towards Friday Night Dinner, which has no weak links in the cast. They are all fab to a man. And woman. But I don't have to prefer one or the other. And I don't think the audience cares. They'll make up their own minds whether to watch, one, the other or both. Given the tiny amount of new comedy narrative on TV generally, they'll probably want to watch whatever is put in front of them as long as its half decent.

The four caveat is that there's not all that much point judging a sitcom, and it's success, appeal and longevity, on the basis of one episode.

Therefore, I'm just going to focus on the boring mechanics of that one show and examine why, for me, the show never quite got going, and therefore didn't quite do it for me, even though I'll be back for more.

I liked the nice quirkness of a dad being hot and stripped to the waist - and that no-one bats an eyelid at this. I liked the pace of the show and the dialogue - and the fact that it felt real. The brotherly bickering and banter was believable, although it never quite gave me a chance to get a handle on either character.

But, if I were handed the script asked to comment on it with a 'script/story editor' hat on (wow, you should see that hat in real life. It's quite something) I'd say that I don't really feel I know any of the characters. But most ofall, I don't feel the consequences of the stories quite deliver or escalate enough in this episode.

The New Scientist Magazine storyline was a nice one - and rang true - but where did it end? The Dad was caught out trying to horde them with his son, whilst buying more. Mum tuts and despairs. And that was that. I didn't really backfire on the dad in any satisfying way. I rather liked the implication at one point that the magazines were pornographic. Exploiting that with the sofa-buyer could have been fruitful.

The sofa-bed got stuck, but why? In sitcoms, things need to go wrong for a reason - ideally a character-based reason. None of them were being stubborn or causing the problem, so it just got stuck and it didn't seem to be anyone's fault. (Funny bit when they kept saying "slowly") And then it got stuck for no good reason – and then the consequences weren’t very funny. They climbed out via ladder. A bit of groping by the neighbour. Then back inside and sofa falls and breaks the banister. Is that so bad? Obviously it's annoying to have your bannister wrecked, but what's at stake for the characters?

Finally, the sofa-bed buyer, Chris Parker, presented good opportunities. Gotta love Matt Holness. The fact that he needed the loo and that there was uncertainty was very funny, but it didn't really escalate. It was just an awkward situation. The dad had confused the dates he was coming - but why had he? And then Holness's discovery that his dad had died was good timing, but the fact he no longer needed the bed was quite funny. Should the dad not have kept trying to 'sell the bed' while the man was grieving? Putting a positive spin on it? And then the presence of salt in two drinks was an odd way to go in pushing him over the edge.

It feels like all the ingredients are there, and things are being set-up but not paid off. If I can use a cricketing metaphor, it's like getting to 250 off 40 overs, and then ending up with 295 off 50, rather than going on and getting 325+. I'm sure that's made everything crystal clear.

This show also highlights one other thing. People, critics especially, are very sniffy about mainstream BBC1 comedy, and like to fawn over Channel 4 stuff because it's different, edgy and young. But this is a very mainstream comedy. It's about a white nuclear family - and the storylines were dad hoarding stuff, mum wants to watch the Masterchef final, prankster brothers, a wacky neighbour needing the toilet, and a sofa gets stuck. That could be My Family. I don't say that's a bad thing at all. But it is a thing.

A Big Silly Thing

2011-02-28T03:37:00.001-08:00

Okay, enough talk about money and courses and radio. Let's do some script nitty-gritty: the time, A Big Silly Thing.

Sometimes, when sitting in a room storylining Miranda, we talk about big silly events happening - those big farcical moments that stretch the laws of probability and credulity, but are undoubtedly funny.

When that happens, you need to ask two questions. Is it funny enough to justify this stretch in credibility? It may well do. A big clear physical joke that does not contravene character is fine. You can bend the laws of Physics as much as you like, ironically. But when a character behaves implausibly for the sake of a joke, the audience won't like it. So play with Newtonian physics by all means, as long as the joke is consistent with the characters and the story. But don't mess with the characters.

But even then the timing might not be right. And here is the second question. Where is it happening in the script? Once or twice, I've found myself saying out loud 'It's okay - it's the end of the show so we can do it'. I've been trying to work out why I say that - and let's remember this is an art, not a science - but this big silly events can happen at the end of the script, but not in the middle.

Maybe it's because everything in a sitcom needs to have consequences, right the way to the end. If someone does something miraculous in the middle of the show, the characters would have to respond to it in some way, which could knock your story out of shape. There would be 'fall-out' from the story. But if this silly thing happens at the end, we're spared all that reaction. Besides, know that the slate is wiped clean and we begin again next week with everything back to normal.

So, a Big Silly Thing is essentially a 'joke for free' - or something that tops a set-piece scene or moment. Almost like a punchline. I shouldn't really matter. And it certainly shouldn't be a plot resolver - or it may look like a Deus Ex Machina, which is essentially a resolution to a story that none of us could have seen coming and isn't merited by the characters. (See Measure for Measure for Shakespeare's lousiest ending when a Duke appears out of nowhere and wraps it all up. I've not read it or seen it, but it sounds dreadul.)

The characters are the key - they get themselves into messes, and they have to get themselves out again, or at least overcome characters flaws in order to accept help.
I'd be interested to hear the views and experiences of others.

In Praise of Radio

2011-02-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt that TV is where it’s at. Every new sitcom that comes out is reviewed by all and sundry, generates a thousand tweets and opinions.

This happens for a few reasons. The first is that we love sitcom and, as a nation, there aren’t that many on any more. Therefore any show purporting to be the next Only Fools and Horses or Blackadder is pounced upon like a piece of ribeye steak thrown to a starved lion. Secondly, television is an arresting medium. The images are so powerful they create an enormous impact on the viewer. Then, the next day, on the radio breakfast shows, presenters talk about last night’s television and begin the national conversation.

The aspiring comedy writer, then, could be forgiven for overlooking radio. But they’d be missing out on acres of opportunities.

A Great Place to Start
Many people say that radio is a great place to learn your comedy trade, pointing to all the writers who spend many years in radio before going on to television. This is true enough. Most writers over the age of 35 have a long radio CV, which will almost certainly include the mothballed Weekending and the defunct News Huddlines.

Plenty of shows were indeed tried out on BBC or discovered there – most recently ones being Miranda, Little Britain, People Like Us and a bunch of others. Going back some time, the classics practically defined the genre there, as the nation stopped for Hancock.

Also, there are open door shows on the radio designed specifically train up writers into the discipline of gag- and sketch-writing. I myself started as Weekending was finishing – and had the occasional bit on The Way It Is, sharing a table with likes of The Thick of It’s, Simon Blackwell. And this experience gives a fledgling writer a big boost in terms of morale. There’s nothing that can beat the buzz of hearing your joke(s) going out on national radio – especially if you wrote the joke that week. And especially if the joke is actually funny.

Some time later, I had the privilege of conceiving and script editing four series, Recorded for Training Purposes (yes, I did come up with name, how sweet of you to ask), which was conceived as show to encourage and train new writers. We found plenty. Now there’s BBC7s Newsjack. These shows simply don’t exist of television.

A Great Place to Write
All above is true enough. Radio is a great place to start. But I see radio as an end in itself. It’s a great place to write. It’s interesting that a number of writers come back to radio because of the creative freedom it affords. One notable example is Andy Hamilton – who wrote the wonderful Million Pound Radio show with Nick Revell from 1985-1992. Then had his monster Channel 4 hit Drop the Dead Donkey – but comes back to radio to do Old Harry’s Game and Revolting People, two shows that couldn’t really happen on television. And even while he is writing another monster TV hit in Outnumbered, he comes back to radio again and again.

What is it about radio? The medium itself is certainly intimate. If TV is like being yelled at, radio is like a pleasant side-by-side conversation. It’s more like reading a novel, where the pictures are in your head – where the special effects are so much better, and far more memorable.

But the business of writing for radio is wonderful, especially compared to television – where there are so many people in the way. In radio, it’s mostly you, the producer and a broadcast assistant. There aren’t really any execs or suchlike floating around making your life more complicated than it needs to be. The audience of two hundred or so will keep you honest on that front. And then there’s the cast.

A note here about casting, which is so much easier for radio, since it requires comparatively little rehearsal, no make-up and no line-learning. Assembling a really good cast is comparatively easy. Through radio, I’ve had the thrill of working with some superb actors who have significant profile. Apart from that, they have real experience and talent and can really lift the script with performance.

The Script is King
But if the characters and jokes are not on the page, they won’t appear. Because the process is so pared back, the script is everything. In television, the writer can feel like a small part in a big machine – and this can tempt one into thinking that the script is only part of the process. It isn’t. The script is king. Radio teaches you that in a hurry. There’s no hiding in radio – and so as a radio sitcom writer, you learn fast. If the show misfires, it's unlikely to have been a technical fault. Most likely, it's a script-error, a string or duff jokes, a confusing plot turn or a badly defined character. ie. your fault.

I'm very grateful for having had this education. Ten or twelve years, I was very hungry to get a sitcom on television. But now, having written 45 episodes of half-hour radio scripts, and co-written another 26 with Milton Jones, I now know how hard it is, how much work it is and what to expect. Now, to have my own solo TV show would be rather scary. Back in 1999 I was no way near scared enough.

Even better, the opportunities are there in radio, especially Radio 4 – which puts out comedy every week night at 6.30pm, and often at 11pm, and 11.30am. It’s at least 12 half hour slots a week, 52 weeks a year – to say nothing of the 200+ afternoon plays that are on every year. It’s not like television where there might be two or three sitcoms on per week across four BBC Channels, if you’re lucky. And everyone is scrapping for those slots. You're competing with Paul Whitehouse, John Sullivan and the guy who came up with Friends. On the radio, it always feels like you’re in with a chance (even though I’ve just had two shows turned down in the last Radio 4 offers round!).

A Great Place to Fail
The fact that radio is lower in profile, as we said at the start, is a good thing. And this makes it a great place to fail. We all fail as writers – and even if the scripts seem funny and the cast seem right, the show might turn out to be a bit of soupy mess. Success is all very fine and large, but failure is your friend. You learn through failure – humility as much as anything else and that is no bad thing.

A while ago, I had a nice show running on Radio 4 called Think The Unthinkable, starring Marcus Brigstocke and David Mitchell, among others. I tried to get a new show up on its feet called The Pits, set in fictional British Opera Company. It starred Paula Wilcok, Phil Cornwell, Lucy Montgomery and John Oliver. I thought it was okay and could have developed into something – but Radio 4 didn’t like it. The press completely ignored it and it vanished without trace. Google it. You won’t find it. It’s not even on Wikipedia. But on TV, the press, I’m sure would have torn it to shreds. But then again, it would never have happened on TV because there probably weren’t any slots.

It’s all happening in radio, my friends. It's a great place to start, to work, to learn and return to when you're rich and famous because it's a lot of fun.

The reason I mention this is not because I work for BBC Radio Comedy - because I don't - but I am running day about writing comedy for the radio with the veteran writer, Dave Cohen. It’s on Friday 25 March at The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) 13 Haydon Street, London. Details here. Sadly it’s not free or funded by the licence fee, but it's reasonably priced. If you’re looking for some tips on where to start, or how to progress in radio, this is definitely worth a look – maybe for you or someone you know.

Interest Costs Nothing

2011-02-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

This is the last post I'm going to do about money - for now. And the reasons for that are simple: It's too painful, it doesn't get you anywhere and there's no sign of things changing. (And I've blogged on this twice before, the last of which contains an amusing and cathartic Youtube clip of Harlan Ellison here that I highly recommend.)

Let's just summarise the basic problem: scripts should be free. That's the common wisdom around in Radio, TV and Film that writers have to put up with. No matter how many 'script initiatives' that various TV channels run, the assumption is always that the initial script, the one that takes someone at least A MONTH to write, should be gratis, free and without cost. Except to the writer, of course. He'll still have to pay his rent, gas bill and all that.

I realise that these script initiatives are there to attract new talent. Even though there aren't even enough comedy slots for the existing and experienced talent according to the BBC's Head of Comedy last month. Even though this new talented writer will need a fair amount of help from old or existing talent. And the channels love the idea that somewhere out there, they'll find the next writer of Only Fools and Horses - even though the writer of Only Fools and Horses had already written sketches for The Two Ronnies, and 30 episodes of Citizen Smith.

The art of writing sitcom takes about 4-10 years to crack. Asking all-comers to do it seems about as sensible as asking someone to 'have a go at being a surgeon'. Actually, the cost of the damage (c.£1-2million) is about the same. Constantly, annually, quarterly, begging new writers to send in scripts seems to me a curious way of finding the next sitcom hit, especially when dozens of experienced writers can't even get a Comedy Lab onto Channel 4.

It's a free country. Channels and corporations are free to do whatever they like with the money at their disposal, of course. But the problem is that it is now normal to expect any writer, regardless of experience and to go without payment for at least a month, so that a script can be browsed, commented on and then, most likely, discarded - because it's cost them nothing.

When I was a real rookie, I was with a producer at an indie who mentioned that a channel was interested in a show he was developing. I was enthusiastic and said something that conveyed I was excited. He looked at me blankly and said 'Interest costs nothing.' I've never forgotten that moment.

But nothing seems to be changing. The channels and controllers seem hell-bent on assuming that some comedy genius can re-invent the sitcom from a standing start and has a month free to write a script. Or that some existing experienced comedy writer with a mortgage and two kids is going to risk repayments in order to write a script of an idea which will be thrown into a pile with 2500 other scripts.

Naturally, the experienced writer has some advantages, and can perhaps progress things further and quicker (except one sitcom idea I have in with the BBC is over two years old, and it hasn't even had a read-through yet). But even the experienced writer normally has to do weeks of work unpaid. I had a meeting with a theatre producer a while ago who said he was doing me a favour by not paying me - in case the script wasn't as hoped and he'd end up trying promote something he didn't 100% believe in. And, for a split second, like a schmuck, I believed him.

But this kind of talk gets us nowhere. Things are, senselessly, as they are. Apparently it is better to pay a development producer £56k+ (inc NI/Pension & benefits) a year to persuade 7 comedy writers to write scripts for free than it is to just pay 7 comedy writers £7-9k each to actually write 7 scripts between them.

This is why I'm not going to whine about this any more (although that felt good). I'm just going to write scripts. Dialogue, jokes and that. Characters. Write and write. That's what I do. I am good for little else. I shall stop blogging about money - and get back to the boring technicalities of comedy writing.

So, back to work, everyone.

Constructed Reality: The Script

2011-02-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

A producer, writer and a TV exec are shooting the breeze and talking about TV in general after a meeting in which writer is being told that there’s no money to make his well-written, carefully observed sitcom. The Producer leaves for another meeting, while writer remains behind, unsure of protocol.

Exec leans back and stretches.

Exec: So tonight, it’s the big show.

Writer: Big show?

Exec: Masterchef.

Writer: Oh.

Exec: Not a fan?

Writer: (shrugs) I like food. And competitions. Just not sure I want to see it on television?

Exec: Ha, ha, ha. (Beat) Seriously?

Writer: Also, you can’t taste what they’ve made, so the key experience is missing. Like porn with very bad lighting.

Exec: Ha! That lighting is hard to get right.

Writer: I’m sorry?

Exec: (Cough) The point is that this is event TV. Unmissable. Insanely popular. Sitcom is all very well, but this is Reality.

Writer: Is it? But is the entire thing not total artifice? When do total strangers normally cook competitively with each other and then told off on national TV for not sufficiently devilling the kidneys?

Exec: Okay, fair enough. But the people are genuine.

Writer: They are, but they’re carefully chosen.

Exec: Yeah, and it’s really important that the casting is right.

Writer: You just called it casting.

Exec: No I didn’t. Beside, everyone know it’s not real reality. But some kind of…

Writer: Fake reality?

Exec: It’s not fake. Anymore. A lot of my close personal friends had to resign over that. Some of them were out of work for several weeks.

Writer: Sorry.

Exec: It’s called Constructed Reality.

Writer: Ha. It’s funny what TV does to you, isn’t it? I mean, it makes you say things like ‘Constructed Reality’ without laughing straight away afterwards.

Exec: (Beat) Why would you laugh?

Writer: Well,… because… No reason.

Exec: The other trick is spending enough on promoting the thing.

Writer: Really?

Exec: Hell, yeah. They really have to make it count because it’s not cheap to make. These celeb judges cost a fortune, and you should see the riders these people insist on. Plus the bespoke tense music. That’s pricey. And then the advertising.

Writer: Advertising?

Exec: Yeah. If you’re shelling out that kind of money, you have to make sure you’re getting bums and eyeballs.

Writer: I thought you said it was insanely popular.

Exec: It is. It is. It’s just sometimes you have to remind people how popular it is.

Writer: I see that.

Exec: Plus you have to get it all on the first showing and the cheap spin-off discussion show afterwards. You can’t repeat this stuff, or sell it on DVD. You get peanuts for re-runs on UK Food 3: Leftovers. We tried ‘Masterchef: Reheated’ but it just didn’t fly. It’s not like you can show it again and again forever like Blackadder or the Vicar of Dibley or those, you know…

Writer: Sitcoms?

Exec: Yeah, whatever. Listen, I have to go. It’s a celeb restaurant opening. I’ll try and steal you some bread rolls.

Exeunt. (Exec via door. Writer via 4th floor window)

Dissolve to several months later. BBC4 shows comedy biopic of sitcom writer who jumps from 4th floor window.

Too Many Notes

2011-02-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

The venerable Sam Bain has written a very helpful blog about giving and receiving notes here. I agree very much with what he's written, and can add my tuppence to anyone who cares to listen.

It's worth thinking about why receiving notes is so painful. There are a few reasons that spring to mind. The first is that writing a script is an emotional process. The script is like an offspring that bears one's own DNA. Your characters are almost like children. It's impossible to receive criticism of one's offspring and not take it personally. Any attack on them stings.

The second is a more pragmatic source of pain. When the notes get going, and you realise there are problems to be fixed, you know that this is going to mean work. Cutting, editing, losing your favourite jokes and scenes, and thinking of something new, original, clever, funny and suitable to go in their place. This will take hours. And you know that these new scenes and lines in themselves will be subject to further notes.

These two things lead to grumpiness - and can easily tip over into resentment, especially if you're not impressed with the script editor's credentials. I personally find it hard to take notes from producers and script editors who haven't made any comedies that I really like or respect. (It is worth pointing out that you need to be careful not to believe every note you are given.) But in general, one needs to just suck it up and judge each note on its merit, not on the CV of the note-giver, and consider if there's anything in it. There usually is. Even the silliest or most spiteful criticism has a grain of truth at the centre. Most notes are not silly or spiteful, so listening to them really shouldn't be all that hard.

So what I have to do is remember one thing - that every rewrite makes the script better. Draft 1 is always a messy over-written jumble. The notes help draft 2 to be a more focussed bit of writing that still needs a good kicking. Draft 3 should be in decent shape, but still needs cutting down and punching up, so that Draft 4 is at least readable by actors. And then you do Draft 5.

It's easy to take your foot of the gas half-way through Draft 3 or 6, and start ignoring the notes, or assuming your cast will 'do something with that bit'. At that point, you need to remember a feeling you'll have in a few weeks time when the script is recorded in front of an audience, or broadcast on television - it's a little stab of disappointment of seeing your cast perform some lines of yours that you know in your heart of hearts aren't quite right and could be better. Remember that feeling. Take the notes. Put the hours in. Do it again. And again. And again. And again. If you don't, the biggest loser will be you.

A Course with Yours Truly

2011-02-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

Can comedy be taught? You can be the judge. On Friday 25 March, I'll be joining forces with experienced comedy guru Dave Cohen for a day of teaching comedy writing for radio. A week later, on Friday 1st April, we'll be in the same place thinking specifically about sitcom for television.

As you can imagine, teaching people how to funny is impossible. That said, there are lots of mistakes and common pitfalls that new writers make, which are easily avoided, both in writing comedy and trying to make your way in the industry. Dave and I hope to impart some knowledge on those fronts to give your work the best chance of success. Given the overall size of the event, it should be fairly intimate, so there'll be plenty of scope for interaction and Q&A.

If that sounds of interest, the details are below:

WRITING COMEDY FOR RADIO - Friday 25 March
WRITING SITCOM FOR TV - Friday 1 April

Award-winning writers Dave Cohen and James Cary will guide you through the do’s, don’ts and maybe’s of writing comedy specifically for radio: from one-liners, through sketches, all the way to sitcoms. Everything except how to come up with the jokes – that’s your job. The following week they will take you one step at a time through the process of creating your TV sitcom: character, plot, dialogue and visuals, creating a believable, funny world that audiences will want to return to each week. Everything except how to come up with the jokes...

Writing Comedy for Radio - 25th March 2011
Every year, BBC Radio broadcasts hundreds of hours of scripted comedy and comedy drama – far more than all the other TV channels combined. The opportunities in radio are considerable, but writing comedy is slightly different from writing for television, film or the stage.

Radio has always been a writer's medium, with hits that have become part of the fabric of British society – Hancock, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue… hit TV shows that began on radio - Little Britain, Goodness Gracious Me, People Like Us, Miranda Hart’s Joke Shop, Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner... and where writers and performers love to return to create shows that could never be done on TV –Lenny Henry, Andy Hamilton, French & Saunders.

Above all it's where new writers are given their first broadcast opportunities – Weekending, News Huddlines, Recorded for Training Purposes, Newsjack.

Writing Sitcom For TV - 1st April 2011
After a period in the doldrums the audience show is back in fashion thanks to IT Crowd, Not Going Out and the BBC’s latest award-winning hit show Miranda. Also a number of non-audience hits have revived the form, notably Channel 4’s Peep Show and Inbetweeners, and BBC1’s Outnumbered. But sitcom is a notoriously difficult form to master, and requires several different skills to be applied simultaneously.

We’ll look at the difference between writing for audience or non-audience, for the BBC and for the commercial sector, for mass or specialised audiences, and writing for one of the three growing Sitcom Writing competitions – Sitcommission, Sitcom Saturday and The Sitcom Trials.

The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) 13 Haydon Street, London, EC3N 1DB - Map here.

Writing Comedy for Radio: 25 March 2011, 10am-4pm Writing Sitcom for TV: 1 April 2011, 10am-4pm The cost per day is £75 +VAT (Total cost £90) – this includes tea and coffee, but not lunch.

PLACES ARE VERY LIMITED SO BOOK EARLY!

SPECIAL OFFER: Take part in both courses and pay £125 + VAT (Total cost £150) for the two days.

For further information about booking and how to pay write to davecohen58@googlemail.com

Dave Cohen has written for dozens of radio shows including News Quiz, Dead Ringers, Sunday Format and Jammin. He co-created and has written six series of 15 Minute Musical, which won Best Radio Comedy at the 2009 Writers’ Guild Awards. He wrote and starred in two series of Radio 1’s Songlines, and his solo series Travels With My Anti-Semitism. He writes for Not Going Out on BBC1 and has written for numerous BBC sitcoms including My Family and Life of Riley. He is a regular writer on Have I Got News For You and songwriter for Horrible Histories, voted Best Sketch Show at the recent Channel 4 Comedy Awards.

James Cary won a Silver Sony Award for Think The Unthinkable, starring Marcus Brigstocke and David Mitchell. Since then, he has written Hut 33, and co-written Another Case of Milton Jones, Miranda Hart’s Jokeshop and Concrete Cow. He also script edited all four series of Recorded for Training Purposes. He writes for the award-winning Miranda on BBC2, and has also written episodes of My Family and My Hero, as well as numerous TV Pilots, and Radio 4 sitcoms, Think the Unthinkable and Hut 33.

Choosing Wisely

2011-02-01T04:15:00.001-08:00

Last night, I finally got round to watching The King's Speech - and was relieved and thrilled that it was as good as the hype suggested. Colin Firth's performance really is stunning, and his on-screen relationship with Logue (Geoffrey Rush) was electrifying. This is a film with no fireworks or special effects, camera tricks or plot gimmicks - just characters talking. The power of the words really is stunning.

Here's one thing I take from this movie: What a great choice of story. David Seidler could have written about any number of things - and struggled to make it cinematic or shootable. He chose a story that lends itself to a strong central relationship with a clear climax. Bertie, the Duke of York, has royal duties but cannot speak in public. There is the toe-curling opening scene in which this is made obvious. His quest is simple and comprehensible. We know he will be king because of his feckless brother, and he will have to overcome this disability. And it will be obvious to us when he does. The radio broadcast at the end is the clinching victory. And because the story is so straightforward, we can revel in this fascinating and extraordinary relationship between King and Speech Therapist, Logue. There is, of course, the extra moment when Logue calls Bertie 'Your Majesty' and offers him the approval and respect that Bertie craves - and has truly earned.

In a way, it seems like the writer is cheating. The story almost writes itself. (It doesn't, and never does, but you get the idea). But how many of us beat our heads against a wall trying to tell a story clearly and simply, when it doesn't want to be told? There's something inside the story that attracts us, but sometimes the nut is too tough to crack. In which case, look for another nut.

A while ago, I read a management book for research. It talked about some people in business whining that their competitors are cheating. Big airlines whinge that the lo-cost airlines are making easy money because they are cheating, with cheap hubs, cheap planes, profitable routes and luggage restrictions. If someone talks like this, ask them this. "So why aren't you cheating?"

It may be genuine fascination with a story, a relationship or even a fact. But it may be that you've invested so much time in it that it simply has to be made to work. If you're in a hole, stop digging. Move on. Choose another story or character or situation.

I have a number of scenarios and ideas for sitcoms that I keep coming back to. I'm sure that they should work, or can be made to work, but they're just too complicated, require too much explanation or have other related problems. I need to stop digging and move on. Maybe you do too. It may be that a light is switched on and the idea is transformed and I know how to tell that particular story. But until that moment, I need to spend my time elsewhere, finding characters and stories that can be beautifully and wonderfully told - like The King's Speech.

Getting Arrested

2011-01-31T01:51:00.001-08:00

Since the show started, I've always been a big fan of Lee Mack's BBC1 sitcom, Not Going Out. In fact, I was so keen that I pestered them to allow me to write for it. It never quite happened, although I ended up writing a storyline that they used in Series 3 called 'Speech', for which I am bizarrely credited as 'Additional Material'. If we definite a story is 'additional', we have some problems.

I pitched that story in particular because I wanted to give Lucy a strong story in which she could be really funny - a speech for a business awards-type thing would be a big deal for her charcter and something she would take very seriously. And therefore Lee would have take it seriously too in order to stand a chance with her. I'm not sure how successful I was in that, but since I merely submitted the storyline rather than wrote the episode - I wasn't even 'in the room' - I'm not sure what the other writers thought the story represented.

I remain a big fan of the show and I watched the show again the other night, catching up on the first episode - and laughed out loud, very loud, several times. But I was wondering why I still didn't love the show. In some ways, the show isn't dissimilar from Miranda, being big, brassy and silly. The show is also told from one character's point of view in which the character's name is the actor's name. Despite the similarities, Miranda seems to have invoked an affection that Not Going Out hasn't yet managed - although Not Going Out, being a BBC1 show, has the larger audience.

The missing ingredient is, I think, pathos. Dave Cohen has written an excellent piece on Chortle on this subject here. He is kinder to Not Going Out than me saying that Lee's "character’s attempts to win his flatmate evoke sympathy as well as laughs". That is right. But for me, this relationship and quest for Lee is never quite consistent enough. In the first episode of this latest series, Lucy is away for the whole episode, which removes that strand of pathos - and it became a farcical (in a good way) caper between Lee and Tim.

Lee and Tim are a really strong duo. They play off each other really well. But perhaps the drugs story might have had more resonance if Tim, playing very prudish and respectable, had a particular reason not to be caught in possession of drugs. Daisy's disapproval was funny and provided some character-based context for the story - and silly cartoon-ish ending involving a nail gun.

Getting Arrested
The 'getting caught' story crops up in many sitcoms, but for some reason getting caught by the police doesn't have enough comic punch. Being arrested isn't funny in itself. Being arrested by a child is funny. Or an ex-wife. Or a policeman who's arrested you nine times before is funny. There always has to be a reason why this particular arrest is funny. Or perhaps our character doesn't want to be arrested because his Uncle Tom is a magistrate. Or it means our hero will be asked to leave the golf club that he has finally been allowed to join. You get the idea.

Cue Music
But let's just end with more pathos for a moment. It can, and should, start with the opening music. Not Going Out has a brassy, upbeat opening theme, very much in keeping with the upbeat, gag-heavy nature of the show. Miranda has a lovely, cheerful theme too, by the splendid Alex Eckford - but Miranda has pictures of her growing up and we begin the theme of family embarrassment and we're already beginning to invest in her emotionally.

Some sitcoms, especially in the 1980s, ladelled on pathos with opening titles. So let's finish with a few of real humdingers, where pathos is positively gushing out of the television.
Here's Ever Decreasing Circles. Yes, this bizarre, complex piano solo really is the opening music for a mainstream, BBC1 comedy show.

How about this one? Hospital comedy, Only When I Laugh (can you imagine ITV1 commissioning this show, let alone allowing this opening sequence?):

And finally watch a man's life fall apart in the opening titles of the extraordinary Dear John:

Give 'Em What They Want: Sitcom

2011-01-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

So, lots of media pundits are reacting, or being paid to react, to the news that BBC1 would like a 'blue-collar' sitcom. It isn't clear exactly when, where and how Danny Cohen said this, although he's made no secret of this desire over the last few weeks. But rather than fly reporters to North Africa and report on armed uprising, our media has decided to talk about situation comedy.

Why wouldn't Danny Cohen want a down-to-earth working class sitcom? Another Only Fools and Horses, Bread or Royle Family. Let us not forget that at its peak, Bread pulled in about 22 million viewers. Let us also not forget that To The Manor Born pulled in 24 million viewers. Was it the same 20-odd million watching both programmes. Probably. I used to watch both of them. I didn't care. They were both brilliant.

And this is point that rings loud and clear from all the media chats and discussion: as long as its funny, no-one much cares where the comedy is set, and how rich our characters are. So far so predictable.

Moreover, Danny Cohen isn't proposing to jettison middle-class settings for comedies too. He's not going to commission a factory canteen sitcom by Harry Northerer and not commissioned a boutique hotel sitcom by Harald South-by-South-East. But here's the thing. There's so little situation comedy on television that he may have to chose between.

I find this whole area very hard to understand. The audiences love sitcoms. They adore them. It's interesting that Miranda won the King/Queen of Comedy award at the comedy - against Harry Hill, stadium-filling Michael McIntyre and ever cheeky Ant & Dec. And David Mitchell is probably more associated with being a panellist and all-round good egg than Mark in Peep Show. But from almost a standing start Miranda Hart went and won.

Sitcoms sell DVDs - and decent ones continue to sell years after transmission. People are still buying Blackadder, Yes Minister and Porridge. They are not buying '1994 Compilation Have I Got News for You', or 'Call My Bluff: The Arthur Marshall Years - Uncut and Uncorked'.

And yet, the TV channels seemed determined not to make scripted narrative comedy - even though there are endless other scripted narrative things like soaps, hospital 'dramas', detective shows and those things that aren't really anything (I'm thinking Hotel Babylon?).

Let's look at the evidence. BBC1 tonight showed no comedy at all. None. Or last night. On Sunday night, there was a repeat of Gavin and Stacey at 10.30 (how many repeats, now?). And repeat of My Family at 4.25pm. On Saturday night, Come Fly With Me - a repeat from Thursday. On Friday night, a panel game and a chat show. On Thursday, Not Going Out. That's not a lot of comedy - and I wouldn't be able to tell you when I could regularly tune in to a sitcom. It used to be Friday night at 8.30. Not now. So when?

Over the same time period, BBC2 have finally repeated the wonderful The Great Outdoors from BBC4, and launched a new panel/improv game and shown a new series - Episodes. And that's it. And Buzzcocks on Wednesday.

So, between BBC1 and BBC2, in the last week, new episodes narrative comedies are: Episodes and Not Going Out. And Come Fly With Me (which is more of a sketch show in one setting)

Come on, BBC. More sitcom, please. I love cooking shows as much as the next man, but I'm pretty sure that everyone who wants to learn to cook has learnt by now. Can we have some funnies now?

Maybe I'm just being overly biased in favour of narrative comedy and want everyone to like what I like. But let's not forget that on Saturday night, after a repeat of Dad's Army, BBC2 also repeat a retrospective of Allo Allo - for an hour and three quarters. Now, I love Allo Allo. All 80-odd episodes of it. But I continue to be staggered at the sheer number of documentaries, re-enactments and pickings overs the bones of old sitcoms like Allo Allo. It reinforces my point about sitcoms being what people really want, since they are so powerful and memorable.

So my plea is not for more working class comedy, or middle class comedy - but more comedy. It really is what the viewers want. It's why they made Miranda their comedy Queen. And why they'd rather talk about Del Boy and Steptoe than uprisings in Tunisia.

They're Nice And All, But We Don't Care

2011-01-18T02:27:00.000-08:00

And so we reach the age old debate about 'likeable'.

I've heard it said (either by Goldman or Long) that networks want a Mickey Mouse. But comedy writers want to write Bugs Bunny. Let's not beat about the bush on this one - Mickey Mouse just isn't as cool, as funny or even as 'likeable' as Bugs Bunny, who torments, frustrates and bullies his assaillants and walks off with lines like 'Ain't I a stinker?'

Bugs is cowardly, brutal and mean. And yet, as a child, every time cartoons came on, I would cheer if it was Bugs Bunny and switch off mild-mannered-middle-of-the-road Mickey Mouse. Unless Donald Duck was around who as, at least, a comically hyper-charged ball of rage that would at least pass the time.

Let's keep going with this. One of the most appealling characters of British TV of the last ten years is Gene Hunt - a sexist, homophobic, xenophobic throwback to the bad old days of dodgy policing. He was literally head and shoulders above all others in that show because his character was larger than life in every way. Five series later, he's bigger than ever.

Previously I've blogged about the wonderful Damned United (here) in which the incorrigible Brian Clough is portrayed, a man who got under your skin and intentionally set out to annoy people - like Gregory House, MD. Or, for that matter, Gordon Ramsay on his TV shows.

And yet, in a way, we care about Bugs Bunny, Hunt, House and Clough - even though they are sadistic monsters. In pure sitcom, we have the likes of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave. In 30 Rock, we have Jack Donaghy and Tracey Jordan who are both rich and arrogant monsters in their way.

In my own limited experience, we have Penny and Tilly in Miranda who say and do outrageously unlikeable things, but we love them all the same. In writing Hut 33, I created a character called Professor Charles Gardiner, ultra-conservative Oxford don who was on first name terms with Rommel and Von Ribbentrop when war broke out. Played by the delightful Robert Bathurst, he often had the best jokes and zingers, and was a lot of fun to write for. In fact, the most popular character of that show was the Polish psychopath called Minka, voiced by Olivia Colman. She always brought the house down with her tales or threats of sustained and imaginative physical violence.

The common stereotype of the TV Commissioner is that they want someone 'likeable'. Or think other people think they want someone 'likeable'. This is sadly often true. But let's not confuse 'likable' with 'engaging' or 'absorbing' or 'charismatic'. The audience and the commissioner want the same thing - characters they keep coming back to. We need compelling characters, not necessary likeable ones. Miranda is very likeable. So was Del Boy. But Gregory House isn't likeable. He is an utter jerk, and cruel to anyone who shows love or affection for him. And yet, I've seen every single episode up to the middle of Series 6.

Conversely, the problem of Episodes is that we have a perfectly likeable couple at the centre of the show - but we don't really care about them, as I said here. They're nice and all, but we don't care.

Ultimately, we live with a paradox. We are able to love people we dislike. (Think of your own family). The skill, the trick, the art of writing is to make characters compelling, so that we have sympathy for them. It make be that we make them Mr Nice Guy. It may be that we can relate to them. Or it may be that we understand them, see the world through their eyes, but realise we would dislike them if we met them - but we just can't look away. eg. David Brent, Captain Mainwairing, Victor Meldrew, Tony Hancock.

It seems surprising that writers keep being asked for 'likeable', when that is not, ultimately, what the audience, the commissioners or any of us want.

Of course, Mickey Mouse made Disney and lots of other people hundreds of millions, so we can probably ignore all of the above.

But come on, who wants Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Pluto, when you can have Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and Elmer Fudd?

Episodes

2011-01-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

So, Episodes.

Let's begin with the caveats. Let's bear in mind that my opinion doesn't matter to anyone; I'm an inexperienced comedy writer compared to the stupidly experienced David Crane who co-writes Episodes; I've read no reviews of Episodes and have no idea if it's already deemed a hit or a smash, so my opinion may be way off those of others, or blandly the same. My instinct is that critics will broadly be in favour of Episodes because it's about the media and they love self-parodying, industry stuff, even though most TV audiences show themselves to be consistently uninterested in this kind of thing. There. Caveats done. (and yes, 'caveat' is 3rd person present iussive subjunctive, and yes, I do have an A-Level in Latin and yes, I am keen to use it.)

Let us recall that scene in Seinfeld when Jerry and George pitch the idea for the show. George says it's about nothing. And the exec says one of those incredibly annoying things that execs say which is 'Why am I watching this show?' George tersely replies, 'Because it's on TV', implying that people will watch whatever's on.

Except George is wrong. And, it pains me to say, the exec is kind of right. "Why am I watching this show?" is one of those annoying questions to ask, but there's something in it.

And so I ask myself the question, Why am I watching Episodes? Well, I'm watching it because it's new, so I ought to watch it. It's written by one of the creators of Friends and bunch of other things. It's got Stephan Mangan and Tamsin Grieg in it - what's not to like? And, most of all, it's sort of about my job. There are four or five reasons right there.

And I'm glad I watched it. The performances were good. There were some jokes that made me laugh out loud. And before I had looked at my watch, it ended, which is a good sign.

But am I going to keep watching it? Am I excited about watching it again next week?

I have mentioned William Goldman's The Year of the Comet before on this blog. It was, apparently, the next screenplay he wrote after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Goldman knows how to write a really decent movie. And yet, he wrote The Year of the Comet, which vanished without trace. Why? Because nobody cared. Why did nobody care? Because it's a romantic comedy about a couple who are trying to track down a bottle of wine. Seriously. The trailer for it is here: (sorry if there's another ad first)

YEAR OF THE COMET: Movie Trailer. Watch more top selected videos about: Movie Trailers, Year of the Comet

Have you seen the trailer? Doesn't it look dreadful? 'From the writer of The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy' says the voiceover... William Goldman laughs about it now. He writes about it in his excellent and compulsory follow-up to Adventures in the Screen Trade called Which Lie did I Tell? But the point is this: Who cares about a couple who's quest is a valuable bottle of wine? Could we be made to care about them? Maybe. Do we? No. And I think this is my main problem with Episodes. I don't really care. And that makes a big difference.

Caring about these people is going to be a tall order, since this is a sitcom about wealthy successful people, who are about to have mildly annoying things done to them buy even wealthier more successful people. And the problem is what I'm really meant to care about is an abstract sitcom. This sitcom of theirs is set in a boarding school and Richard Griffiths is in it. It's won some awards. That's all I know about it. I don't get any sense that this is a prized and loved thing that I should care about. This sitcom should be their baby. It should be a part of them. Changes to it should be excruciating. But I don't quite buy that the characters really care about their baby all that much.

Maybe their sitcom should be based on themselves in some way - about a married couple - or some personal experience - and therefore tampering with it causes serious personal trauma and pain, and a clash in their relationship. The cabbie who took them home from the BAFTAs could have quoted a line or a catchphrase from the show or something. Please, just make me care about the things the characters care about. Otherwise, all they're going to do is walk away quite wealthy and slightly tanned from a failed american sitcom.

I'm sure I shall watch next week - but partly because I want to know more about the original show of theirs, just like I've always wanted to see Ricky Gervais write a whole episode of When The Whistle Blows. Writing comedy about the comedy industry is one thing. Writing a character-based sitcom for a mainstream studio audience is another. Crane can obviously do that. His awards and record prove that. He probably has two personal assistants, three homes and four yachts to prove that. This is not a bad show at all. I laughed along, and it was easy to enjoy. But I don't love it. Yet.

What I learned from Seinfeld

2011-01-11T09:09:00.001-08:00

Occasionally, I watch a TV show that is so good and perfect that I'm at a loss to know what I can learn from it. It's like looking at a Picasso or, my personal favourite, Claude Lorraine.

I mention this because recently, my latest TV treat has been Modern Family and I have almost nothing to say about it. It's an astonishing piece of work, reviving the family sitcom like a whiff of smelling salts. It has all the verve and brio of Arrested Development, and all the heart of, well, Arrested Development. And yet it's a domestic family sitcom, split over three households, with familiar storylines, retold in a stunningly original way.

Some time ago, I had similar feeling about Seinfeld. I've got every single on DVD (or at least I did until my friend Luke lost my Series 7, even though he swears I loaned him Series 5. It's okay, Luke. I forgive you.) I'm a huge fan and was always sad that BBC never committed to showing it at a decent time on BBC2, when the show has such British anti-sentimental sensibilities ('No hugging, no learning'.)

After multiple viewings and thinking about things, I spotted one thing that Seinfeld has the courage to do that no-one else seems to do. It makes peripheral characters funny. Really funny. In most comedies, the regular cast are the funny ones, and anyone else who is brought in for the week is normally played, or scripted, very straight. Harrassed shopkeeper, or disgruntled customer or whatever.

A good comedy actor knows the importance of playing straight, so that the comedy in the established funny character is heightened. But Seinfeld showed that his doesn't always have to be the case. Who can forget the Soup Nazi? Or the Bubble Boy? Or the infuriating Bania? Or Kramer's insane lawyer Jackie Chiles? Some of the characters, like Bania or Chiles, were so strong, they could recur again and again. And many recurred in that final (ill-advised) courtroom episode and we had no problem remember who any of them were and why they would be happy to stitch up the regular characters.

In some ways, the strength of these minor characters is typical of the show. Despite being a successful comedian, and having his name on the show, Jerry Seinfeld did the smartest thing he could have done: he effectively gave the show away to George, Elaine and Kramer - and to the comic genius of Larry David. Jerry is almost the straight man in the show, since he is always reluctant to get involved in Kramer's schemes or humiliate himself. The comedy world revolves around Jerry - his parents, his Uncle Leo, his nemesis Newman among others. You know you've got a hit on your hands when you create a 'world', and find yourself smiling when you even start thinking about it. (How many people reading this thought to themselves 'Hello Newman'.

There's no doubt that creating this kind of world is easier when you're doing 26 episodes in a run, and after four years find yourself shooting episode 100. But it is still easier said than done. Conventional wisdom says that all comedy should be focussed on the regular characters, since they are the ones that the audience have invested in. This is true - but there is another way. If you can get it to work.

So that's what I learnt from Seinfeld - and one day, I'll learn something from the flawless Modern Family.

In the meantime, here's Jackie Chiles in all his glory.

The Business of Not Getting Paid

2011-01-03T02:26:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, I retweeted a link to an extract of a film about Harlan Ellison - in which he talks about many things, but in the clip he talks about how writers are often treated.

In America, writers seem to be held in far higher esteem than over here in the UK. In America, writers don't just write, but produce and cast and everything and make a ton of money. And yet American writers still have stories of injustice and being cheated out of money. They even go on strike. The extraordinary thing is that they're often legitimate complaints, and their money is being creamed off by people who have done nothing to make the hit in question such a success.

We have a long way to go over here. If it's not bad form to quote oneself, here's something I've said in a previous post:

The fact is that if you're a writer, you will write. No-one will be able to stop you. And nothing else will matter to you. Getting paid is great. And is essential every now and then. But the money is always secondary to the project - or at least it should be. If you're a writer, money is something you need to help you write.

There is no doubt that this desire to write is regularly abused by our paymasters. Here is my greatest frustration, which I will paint as a generic and regular scenario.

I'm sitting in a small conference room talking about a new idea for a sitcom with a producer, their boss, the executive producer - and maybe an assistant. Maybe I'm at the BBC. Or an indie. It rarely makes any difference, sadly. This is the fourth meeting I've had now. At the first, I pitched the initial idea, which they cautiously said they might like if they could see more of it. At the second we talked about the treatment that I worked up over a few days. I was told I'd need to come up with some more storylines. At the third meeting, having spent two or three more days on storylines, we talked about which channel this show would be suitable for, who could be in it, how to sell it. And all that.

And here I am at the fourth meeting, and it's being suggested that we'd need script samples and that kind of thing. There's talk of a 'taster' tape. And that more work will be needed in order to bring a channel on board. And I can't help noticing that so far, the only one coming up with any ideas, fleshing them out and doing all the work is the only one who has not been paid a penny. Everyone else in that room - who's livelihood depends on writers coming in and pitching ideas that they will go off and be paid to make - is on a salary, gets paid holidays, sick leave and pension contributions. Their office expenses are covered and it doesn't really matter if they bunk of early now and then. And then there's me.

How is that right? No money is ever available for scripts from indies until they've managed to the money off a potential broadcaster. Even multi-million pound companies that have six or seven different series in production, swanky offices in Central London and several layers of management. Trying to pin down the company for an option is barely worth the bother since it's only a few hundred pounds and is a pretty poor deal anyway.

Why more money isn't made up available up front for writers is baffling to me, since it is they who generate the ideas. The current business model for most indies and producers is akin to a pharmaceutical company who are rather hoping a scientist will wonder in and tell them all about their cure for cancer. But that is the insane world we work in.

Anyway, if you've ever had the feeling that I've had in scenario painted above, you'll feel better after watching this clip in which an angry, wealthy, talented writer swears a lot and sticks it to the man. Enjoy.

Good Intentions of Self-Improvement

2010-12-30T01:44:00.000-08:00

And so we'll soon be staggering into 2011. And New Year's Resolutions beckon. What would it be useful to resolve to do as a writer?

Career goals are nice to have. A series of one's own on television in the next 12 months would be the obvious one - but we have no control over that kind of goal. We can write furiously, daily and sometimes amusingly, but what may or may not be commissioned is relatively arbitrary in my experience. Maybe your show will be get picked up and broadcast and maybe it won't. The reasons given for the show being bought or turned down will sound, on inspection, non-sensical. It's almost impossible to know whether or not a show will work until you actually make six of them, at least. It's impossible to know why it will work, if it works. Usually it turns out to be successful for different reasons than those planned. (Friends was written with Joey and Monica planned to be the 'hot couple'. Yes. I know) It's also impossible to know whether or not the Great British Public have the slightest interest in watching it. And even if they don't, the show may yet succeed. (The ratings for the highly-acclaimed Peep Show are pretty dreadful, but Channel 4, to its credit, has stuck with it since it delights its regular followers and it's nice to win awards.) So, in the words of Melchett in Blackadder II, 'Like private parts to the gods are we. They play with us for their sport.' Or, as Goldman says, 'Nobody Knows Anything'.

But some goals are achievable when they are personal ones. We have no control over what is commissioned and what is not. Be we have complete control over the words we write on the pages, what the characters say, how they talk, how they are - and what they want, what stops them and how they overcome those hurdles. How, then, can we improve those words and stories? How can we find better words, a more interesting order for them and a more original plot? Where can we find characters that a real and vibrant?

Reading. No, not by going to Reading - although that may throw up some fairly bleak and powerful storylines. Reading books. I need to read more. Fiction and non-fiction. To be honest, I find non-fiction very easy reading. I'm naturally a facts person, I think. I'm interested in almost everything, which is very helpful. But I need to read more books. And better books.

This has partly been hammered home to me through reading The Venerable Stephen Fry's latest autobiography. It seems like he turned up to Cambridge at the age of 18 having read more books than I have at the age of 35. I've read plenty of books - especially between graduating from Uni and having kids. The books I like to say I've read include most of David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury, Michael Frayn and Tibor Fischer. But there are so many classics to read. And I've not read them. I feel ashamed and embarrassed to reveal that I've not read any Dickens or Austen. No Henry James, Tolstoy or anything of that sort. I read a Hardy at school (virtually at gunpoint). But overall, my reading list is pretty shameful.

There is no doubt that reading decent literature, and just well-written or well-researched books generally, improves one's thinking and writing. It's what all the great writers tell other not-so-great writers to do. I need to do it. But how?

Well, herein lies the poetic agony of the human condition on which the genre of sitcom itself is predicated: character flaws and failure. Sitcom characters turn over a new leaf virtually every week - trying to do something, start something or change. But they don't. They fail and return to how they were. They don't learn. And we laugh because we recognise this tragic quality in ourselves.

So to change we need to be smart. I need to read more. But I have a finite amount of time. I have a wife and two young children that I need to keep spending time with. So I can't save time there. I need to work and earn money for the aforementioned wife and two young children and landlord. So something else needs to give. And I know what it is: television.

Now, I'm a screenwriter, so I'm hardly going to throw the TV out of the window on January 1st. (I don't want to be one of those superior people who work in television but don't own one - with the implication being that TV is vulgar and for the masses. It's part of the myth that clever people and the rich people (often not the same people) enjoy live arts, theatre, opera, books, Radio 4 and Film (not films. Not film. But Film.)).

In order to make more time to read, I need to watch less television and be smarter in what I watch. I can keep watching the really good stuff - like House, Modern Family and 30 Rock. That's all fine - and very inspiring. It's the stuff that just doesn't get you anywhere that I needs to go. And that is, largely, watching panel games, stand-up comedy and tedious documentaries about the making of sitcom.

I don't mean to denigrate these forms of television. Anyone who's developed a panel game will tell you how tortuously hard they are to get right. They delight millions. And that is fine and large. But I don't find panel games nourishing. So they need to go, for now.

Likewise, stand-up is a superbly compelling form of comedy, even through the lens of TV. One man or woman - and a microphone. It's exhilarating stuff. Or can be when the comedian isn't talking about the differences between cats and dogs, or men and women. Or alcohol, recreational drug-use or commercial flights. Of all, at the moment, I find Dara O'Briain to be the most delightful - and I find it very difficult to switch off, even when I've seen it several times. (I love his 'learning to drive' routine. Love it.)

And no-one is more interested in learning about the craft of sitcom from documentaries than me. But they've all the great sitcoms have been documented. Thrice. I don't need to know any more about that chandelier in Only Fools and Horses. Or that bit in Father Ted where he goes up to Richard Wilson and says 'I don't believe it'. I get it. And I'm not thinking that more time has been spent making programmes about these shows than on the programmes themselves. A bit silly, really.

But my plan for 2011 is to stop watching these kinds of television and read more. I'm going to avoid panel games (with the exception of Have I Got News for You, obviously), televised stand-up (will happily go see it live) and comedy docs. Oh, and movies that I've seen before. And I'm going to used that time saved (maybe a few hours a week) to read those book that have been on my shelf for months, or years and just haven't been read. Yes, that stuff like War and Peace, Leviathon, The Koran. (I'm pretty much up to speed on the Bible, if I do say so myself.)

So that's the plan. It's foolproof, surely? Which it needs to be since I, like every man and woman every born, am a fool.

Seriously Recommended Reading

2010-12-20T08:38:00.001-08:00

I am currently reading a book about screenwriting that I can thoroughly recommend - On Film-making by Alexander MacKendrick. It's so good that I'm telling everyone about it and taking it with me everywhere I go. I'm only a third of the way through, and I'm rationing myself, sipping it slowly so I savour every drop of it. (Isn't it dreadful when you finish a wonderful book quickly and realise you can't go back?)

To put the book in context, MacKendrick knew about movies. He only directed Whisky Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Ladykillers (1955) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Soon after, he gave up directing to become dean of the California Institute of the Arts. He died in 1993. But his articles, notes and lectures survive and are in this book. It oozes confidence on the subject, within tipping over into hubris. He freely admits his own shortcomings and mistakes - both in film-making and teaching. And the writing is pleasingly louche.

The book is full of short articles on specific subjects and crafts within filming-making. Lots of it is about writing, storylining and script-editing. It is, in short, a must. I can think of no other book that is 'a must'. (You could sum up McKee's bafflingly expensive paperback in three words: 'Story is character'. Or four words. 'Story is character. Kerching!')

Naturally this book is out of print in this country - otherwise the Brits might get hold of it and get good at screenwriting. But it's on Amazon's marketplace. Go find. Buy. Read. Re-Read. Learn. And do.

What a Waste

2010-12-13T02:14:00.000-08:00

In the last year or so, I've been writing shows with other people. Although the obvious down-side is that less money is forthcoming, the up-sides are considerable. For a start, it's less lonely, more fun, and you feel like you have allies. In fact, it hardly even feels like work. The other upside is that sometimes, your writing partner is working on the script, leaving you free to do something constructive. Or blog.

On top of that, my hands are tied on a number of other projects because I'm either waiting for someone important to read a script, or someone even more important to commission a series, neither of which I'm expecting to happen any time soon. (One idea that is 'in development' has just passed it's second birthday. What a happy day that was. The second script I wrote (free of charge) is still on the big desk of an important person with other scripts waiting to be read. But let's face it, if you were that exec, you'd pick up Paul Whitehouse's script first, wouldn't you? And then there's all those meetings about 'shows in development' to attend.)

And so today is the sort of day I have about every 3-4 months in which I can look through what other projects I have 'on the go' and ideas I'd like to work on. I'm looking at the list of possible shows, ideas and projects from a few months ago and realise that a number have gone nowhere and done nothing. Or that I was waiting to hear back from someone and didn't.

In this industry, people rarely tell you they no longer think an idea has potential. They just tend to stop responding to your emails. And being a writer, you never phone or arrange a meeting because that would put them on the spot. Then, you'll run into them at a drinks thing about six months later and they say 'Hey, sorry I never got back to you about that thing' and you say that you were the one who didn't do anything and that it just felt by the wayside and that it's no-one's fault. Which isn't true. It's mostly their fault.

But getting meetings in which they have to tell you straight that they've gone off your idea is more wasted time - even if it's both gratifying cathartic and crushing simultaneously. A few months of radio silence tells you that they obviously no longer believe in the project so you might as well abandon pursing that project with that producer. (Any producer reading this would protest, and say 'Sometimes we're just busy'. But you know I'm right) But this is where the slowness of the paperwork comes into its own. You probably haven't even signed anything even after all this time because legal departments move more slowly than aged glaciers. You can probably take the idea elsewhere. And go through the same process again. Unless your idea is about chairs, and suddenly BBC1 decides it wants a sitcom about chairs. Or BBC4 is having a 'Chairs season' (it's only a matter of time).

But the fact is that when you look back at the idea, you might have gone off it yourself, or realise it's been trumped by another show. Or that it just isn't funny (which apparently isn't the worse crime you can commit in comedy anymore).

So, today, I'm trawling through the files, reading my old lists and realising that some things are dead in the water and one or two things have a new relevance. But most of it is fine, but not fantastic. Comedy is a wasteful business - mostly in terms of time, but also in ideas. It takes years to get used to it. I'm still adjusting.

Mind the Baby

2010-12-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

This evening, I got round to watching Raising Hope, the comedy comedy from Greg Garcia, one of the guys behind My Name is Earl (which was a show that I liked very much). In fact, it's a cross between My Name is Earl and Raising Arizona. And it's funny. I can't fault the jokes and characters and the pace and the script and the direction and the casting. It's the set-up. In particular, it's the baby. The baby makes me worry.

Let me briefly explain. The set-up of the show, done brilliantly in the first ten minutes, is that a poor young guy, who wants a new challenge, sleeps with a girl who is then convicted of double murder and executed (which is funnier that it sounds). Before she is executed, she gives birth to a baby, who is then given to our hero to look after. He is totally unprepared for it, and his family tell him leave the baby at the fire station to be taken in, but he refuses. He's going to raise this baby. On hi own. And his family refuse to help or get drawn in.

And so we have a guy who doesn't know about car-seats, or nappies or anything to do with babies, trying to raise the baby by himself. The guy is great and good and kind and sensitive. And the baby is gorgeous. But the whole set-up puts me on edge. What is at stake in this story? Theoretically, it's a quest for our hero. But his quest depends on the well-being of a baby. And it makes me worry. And when I'm worrying, I'm not laughing.

I'm sure this is because I have a toddler and a baby of my own, and I'm such a wuss, my heart goes out to any little child on the TV. But there's nothing I can do about this instinctive reaction. I'm unable to enjoy this show. I wish it well. God bless it, and all who buy the boxed set. But, unfortunately, I'm out. (which is fine, really. I have about 17 eps of Modern Family on my Sky+ box. But we'll leave that for another post.)

The Tricky Fifth Episode

2010-12-06T03:10:00.000-08:00

Last night, BBC7 broadcast Episode 5 of Series 2 of Hut 33. It's called Getting Heavy and the official blurb said:
Hut 33's record is the worst in the complex. Charles is mortified with shame, Archie is desperate to prove himself and Gordon wants to impress a girl he has just met. They break into Hut 7b to get extra information on a message they are decoding, which turns out not to be a good idea.

Getting Heavy was easily the mot difficult episode to write of that series. And it happens every series I've ever done. You write episodes 1 and 2 fairly slowly, as you're just character's voices into your head and feeling your way. Then episodes 3 and 4 are written in fairly good time, as the ideas are flowing and the characters are talking. Then comes Episode 5, which is like pulling teeth. It takes lots of drafts and just doesn't want to settle down - leaving you about a week to write Episode 6.

One of the problems for me is that with episode 5, I start writing the script before the story outline is in place. Flush with the 'success' of writing episodes 3 and 4 quickly and con brio, the temptation is to dive in to writing dialogue when the plot doesn't actually work. There's also the desire to save time and cut corners - but this normally backfires and I often end up deleting pages and pages of dialogue.

I'm aware that others write differently from me. One writer I spoke to the other day, who writes a much loved Radio 4 series, starts with a couple of slightly garbled pages of an outline and then writes a very very long script before he starts cutting and redrafting. I tend to start with a fairly long and detailed outline with some key jokes and bits of dialogue in it, so the process of actually starting to write the script isn't too painful. Sometimes, I abandon the ending and come up with a better one en route. But I have to start with something in place.

So Getting Heavy was one of those tricky ones that took six full drafts to crack. It was only in the fifth draft that I deleted a whole plot strand about radioactivity, which is was one of the reasons I wanted to do an episode in the first place. It thought it would be funny if our characters not really understanding Uranium, touching some and then being bundled in a van and taken off to some secret facility where they would be tested, poked and prodded. There was even a part where they thought they might have special super-powers as a result of the exposure to radiation based on Gordon's comic. This sounds rather preposterous but let's not forget that in 1941, not an awful lot was widely known about radiation. The first H-Bomb was still to be invented. In the end, we had a Quarantine episode in a different show, so the idea of being sealed off was covered in the series.

What I was able to retain, however, was the rivalry about sex-lives between Archie and Charles - and then Gordon. Archie is full of bravado, but short on delivery. Charles is aloof and unimpressed by innuendo, but has finally given into Mrs Best's pestering. Then step forward Gordon, who becomes the star of this show. Once he finds his woman, loses his virginity - he thinks - he becomes a man.

Two parallels spring to mind. One is Arnold Rimmer's alter-ego in Red Dwarf who is known as Ace - and says 'Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast' played by the splendid Chris Barrie (who, let's not forget was also Brittas in the hugely popular Brittas Empire). The other is Harry Enfield's whining Kevin character, the teenager who hangs around with Kevin and complains about everything. He radically transforms once he's had sex, becoming polite to his parents and very contented.

Then, of course, comes undoing this transformation since one of the rules of sitcom is that they end up back where they started (unlike in movies where characters are changed by their 'journey').

The Views of the Author
I should add that I don't share this view about losing one's virginity. It doesn't 'make you a man' or turn you into a contented polite person. We're back to the theme of myself as the writer having different views from the characters that I write. I hope, if anything, that this episode demonstrates that the hypocrisy and lying that goes on around sex is rather feeble and very pervasive.

And let's be honest about this. There was War on and people weren't sure when their time was up. So there was a lot of it about. In Hut 33, I was hoping, where possible, to painting a picture of Wartime Britain as it was rather than how we would chose to remember it. If there's no truth in a show, it's just jokes and won't last. If there's no jokes, well, that's another story...

A Monopoly on Comedy - and Character

2010-11-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

Episode 3 of Hut 33 is called ‘Yellow’ (at time of writing being here). And it starts with one my favourite scenes of the series. It throws the character into a simple game of Monopoly.

Our regular three characters, Archie, Gordon and Charles, plus Mrs Best, play this relatively new game and it should be no big deal. But it’s a great opportunity to express character, prejudice, snobbery and general anger. It was useful to the plot of that episode because it highlighted what a terrible Christmas they were having. And therefore the prospect of having to spend New Year’s Eve together in Quarantine would simply too much to bear. (This is what happens by the way. They are Quarantined with suspected Yellow Fever, which gives rise to tunnelling and escape plans.) In the first scene, though, the game of monopoly turns into a large political dispute about the ownership of property which was true to the characters. And the audience seemed to enjoy it – because they were starting to know the characters as well as I did.

In essence, one of the main tricks of sitcom is taking characters out of their comfort zone – without it seeming contrived or ridiculous. (It’s up to you to decide whether I’ve been successful in that.)

Mistakes in Writing Sitcom
Along the way, then, we can note that this is an area where many first-time writers fall down. New writers are tempted to make their characters sit around and say ‘funny things’ rather than get up, move around and ‘be’ funny. Witty characters swapping jokes and witticisms is okay for three pages – Hut 33 attempts to have our characters in the Hut for the first three or four pages talking about stuff to set up the episode and reintroduce the characters – but it doesn’t sustain for forty pages, which is what you need. Plus, they're not swapping straight jokes but revealing amusing character traits.

It's a good test of how well you know your characters. When I was setting up Think the Unthinkable, I tried to work out what sort of coffee each of the characters would order at Starbucks. I didn't actually have them order coffee in Starbucks until Series 3, I think, but you need to know everything about your characters, or at least be able to work it out. Where do they shop? What newspaper do the read, if any? How would they go about organising a hen/stage night? What would happen if they woke up in Narnia or Alice's Wonderland?

This is why my current practice is to think up storylines quite early in setting up a new sitcom. Once I have my characters in some rough shape or another - sometimes it only needs three adjectives - it's worth thinking up scenarios, scenes and sketches, and then combining these characters with other characters in the show. After some time spend doing this, one often finds that one character has nothing to say, or little to add, or just isn't very funny. This character is normally expendable. If your show is focussed around this character, you've got a problem (and no show).

Ban Backstory
Doing this also avoids falling into the trap of backstory and background which is often irrelevant. You have no hope of conveying in a script and is therefore pointless. Characters need to be straining forwards, not harking back (unless their main characteristic is being nostalgic/reactionary). Remember, what did Geraldine do before she became the Vicar of Dibley? We don't know. We never really find out. Only very late on do we meet one or two people from her past. What drives our characters forward in any given situation? That's what we all need to know for all our characters.

A Busload of Quakers

2010-11-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

‘Pigs n Spivs’ is the title of Ep 2 of series 2 of Hut 33 (now on iPlayer here) I'm not convinced this is the best title,since it implies that there is more than one pig and one spiv in the episode, when there isn’t. There is one spiv who sells our starving codebreakers a job-lot of bacon. Which is still in pig form. Unfortunately, they discover the origins of this pig and could be in serious trouble.

The difficulty in writing Hut 33 is always finding our characters things to do that the audience can understand, since they don't really have a hope of comprehending the actual codebreaking part of their work. I've read several books on the subject and I struggle to retain the necessary information in my head simultaneously to put it all together. The chance of doing this and getting laughs is almost impossible. Episodes about codebreaking in Hut 33 are fairly rare.

This is why the theme of Pigs and Spivs is shortages and hunger. It's something that we can all identify with and get our heads around. Food was in short supply for the whole war and an unpleasant reality for all but the wealthiest. World War Two ration were meagre. Most of us today could eat their weekly ration in a day. So it's good to keep coming back to that.

Quakers, Baptists and Jokes
There is one other point of minor interest on this episode. Hopefully my explanation of it will give a small insight into how you sometimes make a joke fit the context. I spotted a comment on someone’s blog about Hut 33. (Clearly during the original Radio 4 transmission of Hut 33, I’m regularly googled ‘Hut 33’ in order to find out what people think of it). This blogger, a wife of a Baptist minister, blogged about her irritation that the writer of Hut 33 seemed ignorant of certain religious groups and their drinking habits. This is particularly poignant as I am not ignorant of certain religious groups, since I cheerfully belong to one myself (yes, I'm a Christian. There. I've said it) and I studied theology at University, so I know a bit about all this stuff.

The joke in question is Archie’s joke in response to his discovery that the pub has completely run out of alcohol. He says “So we’re now standing in the world’s first teetotal pub. We expecting a bus-load of Quakers?”

The audience, as I hope, laughed at this joke. But, in a sense they were wrong to. The blog pointed out that it is Methodists that refrain from drinking, not Quakers. I knew that. Honestly, I did. But I chose Quakers for the joke because I knew it would work. Why?

Shared Knowledge
Comedy relies on shared knowledge and simplicity. If the audience have to think about a joke for too long, or are unsure about any part of it, they can’t laugh. And they don’t laugh. Simplicity and clarity is everything. This partly explains why people get upset about stereotypes. They are a reality in comedy because it relies about compressing information and leaving plenty of things unsaid. (eg. Cab drivers are racist. Builders are Polish. Rich people are dim. In fact, when one breaks a stereotype, that in itself can be the starting point for a sitcom eg. one of the first women vicars in The Vicar of Dibley. The joke was, at the start, 'it's a woman! And not a man! You know, like a normal vicar would be.' I over-simplify naturally. But that's stereotyping for you.)

In this case, I chose Quakers because I’m not sure how widely know it is that its Methodists don’t drink. It’s also the case that many Baptists don’t drink either. How widely known is that? Less so now than before. I judged that the audience would have no problem believing that Quakers don’t drink – partly because in my mind there seems to be some kind of overlap between Quakers, Puritans and the Amish, at least in terms of their public perception. In reality there are vast differences between these groups of Christian believers. The puritans in particular were a remarkable bunch of Christian folk who were nothing like the the adjective named after them - 'puritanical'.

Returning to the joke in question, we have to bear in min that this was a joke for 2008. So I chose Quaker. Even though the joke is set in 1941, when the vast majority would have been clear that Methodists don’t drink.

Add to the equation the fact that characters are the creations of writers – and do not represent the views of the writer, or share their factual knowledge. So Archie, Charles and the team, and especially Josh, say plenty of things that are wrong, or grammatically incorrect. They hold religious, social and political views that I do not. It seems obvious to point this out, but occasionally one needs to.

Incidentally, the Quaker website says:

One testimony that Quakers have had to give careful thought to is our testimony on moderation. In the nineteenth century Quakers saw the bad effects that drink and drunkenness had in society. Along with other Non-conformist Christians they campaigned against alcohol. Many Quakers were active in the Temperance Movement - a movement of people who "took the pledge" (promising that they would never drink alcohol) as a witness against the evils it caused.

So I wasn't that far off anyway, was I?

The tricky part is where joke reinforce stereotypes that are unfair, oppressive or nasty. There, my friends, we have to use a thing called judgement. And then your producer will probably thumb through the BBC Producers Handbook Guide (Vols 1-9) and then just delete the joke.

Guardian Guidelines

2010-11-13T07:34:00.000-08:00

Sitcomgeek is pleased to have written for an institution as august as The Guardian - in the Guidelines section here. It's a breezy and facetious piece about the recipe for sitcom success including the following:

"Writing a sitcom is a black art. Like baking. But without scales. And in the dark. You do what you can, put it in the oven and hope to hell that it rises. If it doesn't, it will invariably be dreadful."

If you've just found this blog because of The Guardian article, hello. This is a blog about mainly British situation comedy - the nitty gritty and the tricks of the trade. The author's credentials are to your right. The idea is to keep things friendly. It's best not to assume that if something is popular that it is bad. Likewise, niche comedy isn't necessarily superior. Horses for courses. Don't be sneery.

You can follow sitcomgeek on Twitter here, which will keep you posted on new articles here, and developments in the British sitcom world. In the meantime, have a look around.

The Inspector Episode

2010-11-08T03:38:00.001-08:00

For a while, I wrote a blog about my radio sitcom, Hut 33. There is an blog post on there that pertains to this week's episode of Hut 33 that was on BBC7 on Sunday (and on iPlayer here). Here it is (with a few tweaks and changes).

The Royal Visitor - the blurb for Episode 1 of Series 2 of Hut 33 is as follows:
A royal visitor is coming to inspect Bletchley Park, but the top brass are worried that this particular royal is a Nazi sympathiser. Hut 33 has to delay him and make sure he doesn't see any of the code-breaking machines.

Since this blog is about the boring mechanics of situation comedy, allow me to fill you in on how and why this episode came together without, hopefully, deconstructing the whole thing into a joyless series of components - although if I do that, so be it.

The Inspection Episode
The 'inspection' episode is common sit-com device and also a very useful one. Characters are sent rushing around getting things ready. Cleaning, polishing and tidying. In the process, skeletons can be found in cupboards, difficult tasks can be comically compressed and plenty of dirt can be swept under the carpet. See the effect of the Inspector in JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls in which the presence and prospect of an Inspector causes lives to unravel.

Another advantage of the 'Inspector' episode its simplicity. Simplicity is everything in comedy, especially in half-hour sit-com. If the audience is confused, even slightly, they can't laugh. In that sense, sit-com is contrived reality, over-simplified and sign-posted. The audience is normally happy with this because they understand the genre and that real life is more complicated. The trick is, within the contrived situation, to make the plot and events seem as organic and uncontrived as possible. We start with something believable, and through a series of believable steps end up somewhere original and bizarre, so we're left thinking 'How on earth did we get here?'!

Inspections are a reality of life - audits, royal visitors, tax men - so we have a believable, clear goal that we can all understand - everything has to be ready for the inspector or special visitor. It's a variation on 'The Boss Comes to Dinner' episode that's common to many domestic sitcoms.

The Twist
The trick of sitcom, then, is to take a familiar situation and push it further, into unfamiliar areas, involving characters that we are familiar with. As you would expect, World War Two threw up plenty of these. And so when I came to consider the inspection episode, I tried to think of what the twist would be. As the blurb of the show suggests (so I'm not spoiling it) what if the Royal visitor cannot be trusted?

This taps into the very real concerns during the war that some members of the aristocracy could not be trusted and were well-known for Fascist sympathies. It is a running theme of the series - partly embodied in the character of Professor Charles Gardiner. As a well-connected Oxford professor, he moves in elevated circles and was friendly before the war with high-ranking Nazis and sympathised with some of their views. Every episode, Archie normally makes jokes implying that Charles played some kind of sport with a prominent Nazi. And Charles has to concede that he was friendly with the Von Ribbentrops, the Rommels and even Mussolini.

And so as I was thinking about which Royal visitor, real or imagined, could visit Hut 33, I stumbled across Prince George, Duke of Kent. If you read up on the man, you will see that he was a very worrying figure for the British Establishment. Given the extraordinarily secret nature of the work at Bletchley Park, the Prince's visit would have to be frustrated in some way. If news of the breaking of Enigma was leaked back to Germany, it would have proved disastrous for the Allies.

German High Command had no idea that the British were reading their messages so a hint to that effect would have been catastrophic for Bletchley. 1941 was a difficult year for the Allies. Britain stood alone against Germany and was on the verge of starvation. The convoys in the Atlantic bringing food and supplies from America were a lifeline. This, then, gives an intensity to the story that hopefully makes it play and gives good motivations for our regular characters who are instrumental in keeping the prince away from the code-breaking machinery.

Hopefully, this creates a twist on the Inspection episode. Our characters frantically prepare for a Royal visitor, making easy-to-understand displays so that the inspection will explain exactly what they do at Bletchley Park, giving our characters a clear and comprehensible focus for their activities in which the comedy can play out. But when it is discovered which member of the Royal Family is coming, they have to frantic undo everthing and obscure that they are doing at Bletchley.

Guest Star
Fans of Radioactive, KYTV and Trevor's World of Sport will recognise the voice of the Prince. He is wonderfully played by Michael Fenton Stevens (who also played alongside Robert Bathurst (Charles) in My Dad's the Prime Minister).

Escaping Our Certain Fates

2010-10-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

I was in a meeting recently when someone who makes more money than me told me not to be cynical, and to hold fast to original ideas and not make my ideas fit into holes that I may have perceived commissioners and controllers think they have in their schedules. It is infuriating to be told this - not least because they were right and one needs to hear this now and then. Even though holding to an artistic vision or a central idea doesn't put shoes on the feet of your children, it is ultimately all writers really have.

I shouldn't have needed to be have been reminded of this since I'd just finished reading Stewart Lee's fascinating and splendid book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate. Lee is rightly held in high regard by comedians, writers and industry folk. He shames many of us by refusing to compromise on his artistic endeavours and the way he would like to do stand-up comedy. The problem is that the way he would like to do it is not the way it is conventionally done - and furthermore, it is not to everyone's taste.

The book is an encouraging story of how a comedian can build up a following and become commercially viable through creativity, persistence and bloody-mindedness. But this comes at a cost personally and financially. The big bucks are to be made in The Hammersmith Apollos all over the country. It seems unlikely that Lee would play the Apollo five nights in a row - or even one night. (He may be able to fill the place, but I'm not sure he would be interested in playing a space which lacks intimacy - unless he was in some way able to turn it into a big joke that ultimately the audience would have been better off not coming and waiting for the DVD, since that would probably feel more personal that sitting six hundred yards away from a man with a microphone.)

Despite his frosty on-stage persona, and air of pretention and disappointment - which he admits is a blurring of an onstage persona and an offstage personality (although I've met him a couple of times and found him to be thoroughly polite and courteous), the book shows the humanity of the man - and a comedian who thinks deeply about his act. He is not motivated by money, although is rightly peeved when he is treated unjustly in the realm of finance. Lee does not really crave the adulation of an audience - highlighting dry patches in his shows which are intentionally joke-free. No-one can accusing of being a crowd-pleaser. He seems, at best, uninterested in the opinions of critics, and sometimes sympathises with their frustrations at his material or shows. He doesn't even seem that bothered by the opinions of other comedians, by whom he is very well-respected (in turn pays homage to others he considers greater or more pure than he). What comes across is that the only person he is seeking to satisfy creatively is himself. And it turns out that he is very hard to please.

We can all learn from this. Stewart Lee keeps pushing himself to find new ways of performing, new routines, turns of phrase and ways of managing audience expectation. I regularly write - and watch - comedy that feels rough, drafty and, at best, sufficient.

We are all in awe of Stewart Lee because he has very high standards. And we know that if we were to have such standards, and cling to our original comic visions, we might be less popular or make less money. When this impacts on spouses and children, it can seem indulgent, but we have to find ways to keep going, keep writing and creating worlds that we want to inhabit, or else, why bother? We'd probably make more money doing something else.

Strange Times for BBC

2010-10-21T03:42:00.001-07:00

We live in strange times.

Yesterday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a long speech about various austerity mesaures, cuts and savings that the government was making. In it, he announced that the Licence Fee would be frozen for six years. What a curious thing to do. Lumping in the cost of a TV Licence with this Spending Review is a serious category error and demonstrates how utterly muddled the thinking is in government about the BBC, government, broadcasting and what the whole thing is for.

Undoubtedly, the TV Licence is a weird anomaly that's a throwback to a past age - like MCC or John McCrirrick. But, unlike John McCrirrick, it is a nice anomaly that most people are prepared to live with.

Comedy writers have to pay close attention to the fortunes of BBC, sadly, since it spends more on comedy than all of the other channels combined. (I've just made this statistic up. I'm not a journalist so that's okay.) It's good to see that Sky are spending serious money on comedy, but when BBC sneezes, we all catch a cold, and then whine about it, although to be fair, we were probably whining already. So I merely mention all of this since it should be of interest to all of us.

Let us leave aside threats about paying for the free licences for the over 75s aside (the irony being that the over 75s are the greatest consumers of TV. And yet are least served by the BBC who, like all the media, are obsessed with the under 30s.)

It seems particularly odd that BBC is now expected to fund the World Service itself. All £340 million of it. No-one outside of Britain pays a licence fee. BBC has no contract with the people of Uganda or Java. There is no doubt that the World Service is a truly wonderful thing that that undoubtedly makes the world a better place. I regularly download their documentaries as podcasts. But BBC itself has no incentive to provide this service. If I were Mark Thompson, I would simply announce that on Jan 1st, The World Service Will End. He won't do this, of course. But he should.

In order to save that money, BBC will probably insist on making the same number of programmes for slightly less money. The good programmes and the bad ones. Already underpaid broadcast assistants and runners will get even less. Creativity will be curbed. Ambition for interesting television will be tempered. And anyone earning over £250,000 a year will no doubt take a long hard look at whether they should really collect their whole bonus this year.

The fact is that BBC could make some very easy cuts that no-one would miss - and do a deal with the private sector at the same time. BBC's daytime schedule, and some of the evening schedule that resemble daytime programmes, is almost totally pointless. A couple of days ago, BBC broadcast the following gems on one day: Cash in the Attic; Bargain Hunt; Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is; Flog it; Escape to the Country; Instant Restaurant; Cowboy Trap; Animal Park; Snog Marry Avoid; Don’t Tell the Bride; Traffic Cops; Homes Under the Hammer. This is six hours of television that do not education, inform or entertain. Why does BBC make them? Given that it's almost impossible to legally make an hour of broadcast television for less than £50k an hour, there's £300k right there spend on lousy TV that is cheerfully produced by the private sector on other channels. In one day. Over one year, that's approximately £109 million or 203JBs (JB = Jana Bennetts). And we've not even touched Doctors or the importing of Diagnosis Murder.

Would we really be so impoverished as a nation if we did not have all these cheaply-made, hopelessly contrived, idiotically conceived, falsely-jeopardied moving pictures? Especially given that they are available on commercial channels, and therefore being paid for by advertisers?

If you really can’t live without Homes Under the Hammer, why not just sit in a branch of Foxtons for half an hour at no expense to the licence fee or the taxpayer? The characters are much more amusingly grotesque, better looking and they might even give you a bottle of mineral water. You may be talked buying a three-bed semi in Deptford but that’s all part of the interactive element.

Instead of these programmes, BBC could broadcast the wonderfully educational, informative and entertaining programmes that it does make and systematically hides on BBC4. Or documentaries by David Attenborough. Or costume dramas. Or just dramas (remember them?). Six hours of decent TV from the millions of hours of archives stretching back decades

If repeat fees were too high, pages of Ceefax could be broadcast. Or BBC Online. Or a picture of Tess Daly. Or simply a succession of suggestions like 'Have you tried reading a book by PG Wodehouse? They're an easy read. Go on.' or 'Isn't it time you put up those shelves?' or 'Have you thought about watching Channel 4? It's where we got half our daytime formats anyway.'

Or they could leave the screens blank and broadcast the truly wonderful, rich and cost-effective BBC World Service. Made for us. And then shared with the world. Just a thought.

Whites

2010-10-20T03:08:00.001-07:00

Last night I got round to watching another episode of Whites. I watched the first episode a while ago. Then downloaded another on iPlayer which expired before I got a chance to see it. Then last night I watched Episode 4.

What I like about Whites is that I believe it. It feels like a real kitchen and that the characters really are who they say they are - even though they are all very familiar faces. One could argue they are too familiar. But then who wouldn't want Alan Davies, Darren Boyd and Katherine Parkinson in their sitcom? They are fine comedy actors - as are the others. But let's be honest: it's a non-audience show, shot on location, so there's no excuse for it not being believable, although it does happen occasionally.

If you read the last post on this blog, it wouldn't surprise you to learn that overall, I didn't really go for Whites. It didn't make my wife laugh at all, although I chuckled on a number of occasions. But Whites is part of this enormous raft of non-audience comedy programmes that have been broadcast recently - Rev, Him and Her, Grandma's House, Roger and Val and now Whites. All of these shows are all good in their way, although not all to my taste.

But the fact that they are non-audience seems to provide some kind of safety net. Because they are well-shot and directed, filmed on locations and played out like dramas, with jokes in them at various intervals (you be the judge of how often), they don't make one cringe in a way that an audience comedy can. If one took the last five audience comedies and compared them, the failure rate would be much higher, certainly in the opinion of our beloved critics. But the hits would also register higher too, I think.

The believability issue is crucial. Sometimes audience comedies shot in studios with contructed sets just aren't believable, parodied rather brutally (and unfairly) in When the Whistle Blows (why does Gervais do this? Anyone?) But, as I often point out, if the jokes are there and done in the right way by the right character, the audience don't care. They know that the IT department in the IT Crowd isn't real. But they don't care because they love Moss and Roy and Jen. When they do believe the situation and premise and you have great characters and jokes like in the Office, you have the makings of a real hit on your hands. When the jokes misfire and we don't take the characters to our hearts, it's like watching a car crash. Strangely, it's hard to spot this in the studio, where there is a closeness and a bonhomie that gives you little indication of whether you have a hit on your hands or not. It's only when you sit down at home, and the show starts up and you watch your work that you have any indication of whether the show will be a success.

The fact that the show was non-audience meant they could get away with the fact that Episode 4 was the 'Health and Safety Inspector' episode. It's surprising that given the characters and calibre of actor that the Inspector Card needs to be played quite so early in the game. I have to admit I was disappointed by this - even though cleanliness is obviously a critical facet of the kitchen's operation. But in this instance, there was a decent pay-off, in someone pretending to have Parkinson's in front of someone who's dad has actually Parkinson's is pleasingly morbidly funny.

My final comment is on the creative choice of the show at the start with the central character. Kitchens are famously hot and angry places. Celebrity chefs are famously monstrous. I understand why Whites has decided to subvert this in order to be creatively more interesting and surprising. But it may have been funnier to have had a total monster since they are funnier and can be very interesting. (See also Gordon Ramsay, Gregory House MD and Brian Clough...)

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this show.

Panel Games and Sitcoms

2010-10-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

It was Gore Vidal, apparently, who said ‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’. One has to admire his honesty. He went even further. He also said ‘It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.’

It’s hard to work in the comedy in Britain without feeling like things are a competition. In a sense they are. Comedy budgets are limited. I follow Chortle and all those news feeds as much as the next paranoid writer, and whenever I see a sitcom commissioned that is nothing to do with me (which is virtually all of them) part of me feels a pang of envy.

But it’s a rare feeling these days, since I often see a newsflash entitled ‘New show for [insert name of comedian here]’, click on the link and discover it’s another new panel game. My reaction in that situation is the opposite to the feeling above. I always think ‘Oh, what a shame. They should have given him a sitcom.’ The first time I experienced this feeling, it took me by surprise and I realised that my gut reaction to panel game is general disinterest.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by this surprise (keeping up?). With the exception of Have I Got News For You?, I gave up watching panel games a few years ago. Even though QI regularly contains comedians I like very much, I’ll only watch it if it’s on. And nothing else gets a look in. Mock the Week, Eight out of Ten Cats, this new one with highly talented Rhod Gilbert, Genius with the lovely Dave Gorman and that one on Dave with Marcus Brigstocke, who's great – I just don’t watch these shows. Occasionally it feels like there’s no British comedy on, especially audience comedy with lots of jokes in. There is – they’re almost all panel games.

So, what’s wrong with panel games?

Nothing, really. They’re often very jolly. But to me they’re just strings of jokes. Jokes without context. Some would argue ‘Jokes? What’s not to like?’ Granted, some of my favourite comedians, like Milton Jones or Tim Vine, tell jokes without much in the way of context (that’s the impression that’s given. In fact, both Jones and Vine skillfully and subtley create the right atmosphere for their jokes – with stage presence, stage craft and other jokes).

It’s context and most of all character that makes jokes particularly funny. To take the most overplayed example, a man falling over is quite funny. Del Boy trying to look cool and yuppyish, standing next to Trigger, falling through the bar, is much funnier. Characters have stories and lives of their own. Every decent joke counts double or triple when a character says it – and even more so when they say it at a funny point in a funny story. The funniest moments of our lives are not telling to jokes to each other, but moments that we can’t describe to anyone else because ‘you had to be there’. Sitcoms, at their best, create those moments.

Panel games are like bags of chips – a guilty pleasure that satisfy a basic craving, but don’t really enrich your life like a nourishing meal.

So why are you bringing this up?
I mention this because I’ve been thinking about ‘jokey’ comedy at lot recently. I’ve been trying to write one. A few, in fact. But one in particular which is in the Black Books/Father Ted territory – a genre of sitcom which is immensely popular, partly because almost all of it seems to be written by Graham Linehan, who's toner cartridge I am not worthy to replace.

Certainly, Linehan’s work is very inspiring, but I arrived at the Father Ted party very late. I completely missed it when it arrived on our screens in 1995. I’m not sure why. It’s only in the last five years that I really caught up – and I’m still not sure I’ve seen every episode. Bizarrely, I did latch on to his much overlooked work on BBC2, Hippies with Simon Pegg (whatever happened to him?). When the series first aired, I wasn’t wild about it. But I watched some repeats a few years later and really enjoyed the show (especially the episode involving the court case).

But my original inspiration was an equally forgotten show from 1993 – Mr Don and Mr George, a show I have referred to in the past. It is full of superb jokes, clever routines and wonderful silliness. Even a few catchphrases. You can watch the whole lot on 4oD on Youtube. I thoroughly recommend it.

And yet, Mr Don and Mr George was not a success. It’s largely forgotten. (It has arguably done better than Linehan and Matthews’ first sitcom from the following year, Paris, starring Alexei Sayle and Neil Morrissey. As far as the internet is concerned, this show does not exist. I’d love to see it – and I’d love to know what Mr Linehan learned from the experience, given that it’s been hit after hit since then). But I have been thinking about why Mr Don and Mr George was not a success – and Father Ted was – so I can learn the right lesson from this.

I think the reason is this: Mr Don and Mr George had tons of wonderful jokes – like any old panel game – but we don’t quite care about the characters enough. It’s a weird relationship and the characters don’t really have any context, and so the jokes are floating in the air. Perhaps it’s a function of the fact that the characters sprung from a sketch show.

Whereas we believe in Father Ted and Father Dougal. We believed they existed and we wanted them to succeed, whereas I think we were just curious about Don and George. We also cared about Bernard Black (I still do). And we care about Moss – even though we know almost nothing about him.

The thing to learn, I think, is that it’s not just about the jokes (stupid). It’s about who says them, how and why and whether it matters.

What is frustrating is that at the moment, we have panel games on the one hand, and non-audience character comedies on the other. The former are stuffed with jokes and one-liners, the latter sparsely sprinkled with them.

It’s as if British writers are convinced that single-camera non-audience shouldn’t have jokes in them but be all character (Tina Fey would show that this isn’t the case) Roger and Val is obviously the most extreme example. Again, I stress that that many people liked Roger and Val. And lots of people say nice things about Him and Her, which is not to my taste. But I find it puzzling when one reads comments like those by Claire Webb in the Radio Times who says that Him and Her is ‘Masterfully scripted and short on laughs’ and ‘more Beckett play than the zany fare you might expect from a BBC3 sitcom’. Yes, she did say that the script was masterful. And didn't have enough laughs in it. And yes, she did use the word ‘zany’.

Him and Her and programmes like that are fine. But I like stuff in the middle – audience comedy with proper jokes in proper characterful context. But it seems like this stuff is very carefully rationed. Why? 6 Miranda’s a year and 6 IT Crowd's every 18 months is not enough for me. And QI and Mock the Week aren’t filling the gap.

Downton Abbey

2010-10-04T12:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Downton Abbey is not exactly a comedy or a sitcom, and therefore has no place in this blog - but in my defence, I will say this: I laughed more at Downton Abbey than I did at Roger and Val Have Just Got In so it counts. (Please don't mishear me. I don't mean to say that Roger and Val is no good. I can't tell if it's any good or not. I don't get it.)

But it's worth pausing for a moment to examine a decent programme like Downton Abbey and ask ourselves 'Why is it good?' Undoubtedly the cast have to take some of the credit. They are all superb, from The Dame, through Bonneville and Wilton (national treasures both) all the way to Lesley 'Mrs Pants' Nichol, the Head Cook. The show is well shot and well directed. Classy and traditional, but not twee - at least not to my taste.

The real star is the script, by Julian Fellowes. Granted, this feels like something of a rewrite of (and improvement on) his rather fine Gosford Park - a movie nearly single-handed ruined by the presence of Stephen Fry. Downton Abbey are some great jokes - mostly spewed from the caustic mouth of the Dowager Countess (Dame Maggie Smith), who cuts people down to size and does not suffer fools, but who is also on the receiving end from time to time. Comedically, the show is exactly as funny as it intends to be.

The show is also well-paced and moves along fast enough to keep things interesting, but not so fast that we have no clue what is going on. Because of this, there is no need for clunky expositions, or restatements of the plot (eg New Tricks, which often assumes that you falll asleep for 12-15 minutes somewhere in the middle, which, sadly, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy).

But the main thing I take away from the show is that every line counts, and every scene matters. If something is shown, it isn't said. If catch a glimpse of something, it has consequences. Unless Mr Fellowes has a supernatural ability, I would imagine this take weeks of plotting, replotting, sketching, redrafting and bellowing at flipcharts and post-it notes.

And herein lies the lesson, I think. There's nothing in Downton Abbey that makes me, as a writer, think 'That is genius! How clever! I could never have thought of that!' The show is not a genre-buster or completely new approach. It's Upstairs Downstairs on a decent budget. It is a historical/costume drama with a few decent jokes. The characters feel real and talk like consistent real people. The situations are interesting. It's just the application of skill, energy and time to the task and making it not just half-decent but just right.

The Most Successful Makers of Comedy in the UK

2010-09-10T02:16:00.000-07:00

I was talking to some comedy writers last night - and we were thinking about why we liked BBC4 so much - the comedy, the documentaries and everything else. We thought it might be because the budgets are so small that anyone making a show isn't doing it for the money, but for the sheer love of it. People with passion are making TV they are passionate about, and figuring out a way of putting it on the screen. Their documentaries are superb for that reason - full of content, and people telling you stuff, rather than atmos, filler and 'coming up later, I'll be telling you about something juicy'.

And think about BBC4's sitcom output for a moment: The Thick of It, Lead Balloon, Getting On, The Great Outdoors. Throw in Screenwipe, We Need Answers and the delightful Diary of a Nobody, The Alan Clarke Diaries and Micromen it's rapidly looking like BBC4 is the HBO of British television. Has BBC4 had any out-and-out comedy failures? There were some shows that weren't to my personal taste, but there has been nothing out there that's really been bad, has there?

BBC4: The HBO of Britain. I salute you. (And it is really true your comedy budget has now been slashed to zero? Clever. With no budget at all, the quality should go through the roof!)

Characters and Stories

2010-09-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going to spoil a book for you. An expensive one. That Robert McKee book called Story, which is now an astonishing £19.99 in paperback. In paperback. That said, we tend not prize that which has cost us nothing - so you'll ignore what I say when I summarise the book. McKee argues (I seem to remember) that story is character. Character is story. Characters only exists in stories. Stories are only meaningful with characters. You get the idea. What's the plot of your film, sitcom, or novel? Well, who are the characters and what are they trying to do? Story and Character are two sides of the same coin.

It's extremely easy to forget this, especially when coming up with ideas for a new sitcom. Whenever I read treatments for new shows by new writers - and look back at my old ones when I was 'new' - I often see this being forgotten or ignored.

Most comedy writers know that sitcom is about memorable characters. But often, much light and heat is generated explaining who the character is and where they have come from - their likes and dislikes. Often, these get very nuanced and contradictory. I always cringe when a character outline contains the words 'sometimes' or 'occasionally'. Sitcom characters don't do things occasionally. They either do them all the time. Or never. Or for a funny or compelling reason.

Here is what I mean. This is a sitcom I've just invented in the last 30 seconds. It's called The Greasy Pole.

Sally is a business woman who is trying to be a success, but it's not as easy as she thought it would be. She used to work for the local council, but she was frustrated that it was slow and bureaucratic. Then one day, she met a business guru who changed her life and told her that she could be anything she wanted to be. So she bought a power suit, got a loan from the bank and started her own business - a shop selling stationery. After all, everyone needs stationery, don't they? But her life is made even harder by the shop assistant, Pavlov, the Polish friend of a friend with bad English that she rashly hired because she felt sorry for him...

You get the idea. I had to stop there, as I was getting cross just writing it like that. The reality is that there could be a perfectly decent show in there (Miranda runs a shop) - and there was lots of detail, but we don't really know anything about Sally at all. Just what happened in the past. We're left asking the question 'Why?' an awful lot. The audience will be asking it all the time if they happen to tune in to episode 2, having missed the first one.

Characters need momentum - stories. They need quests and dreams. They need relationships. Why does anyone do anything? These are very basic questions about our very existence, but the sitcom-writer needs to address them.

When I was setting up my Radio 4 sitcom, Hut 33, I had to do this. The show is about a disparate bunch of people thrown together at Bletchley Park by the war. But where are they from? What drives them? Not exterior events in the war. Or even their roles within the war. It's about who there are and what they want: Charles is a snob who wants to preserve the pre-war status quo. He is into self-preservation, luxury and being seen to be right. Archie is an inverse-snob who wants to see the likes of Charles taken down a peg or two. Even though he's an academic hanging around with private school boys, he wants to preserve his working-class roots and embraces the language of Marxism. Gordon is a seventeen-year old who is trapped in the crossfire of Archie and Charles. He just wants everyone to be friends. And he wants to be taken seriously as a 'grown-up', and fit in, even though he is a teenager among men.

Once you have characters that have a forward momentum and attitudes, you can start to throw them into situations and see how they react - restrict their food, extend their working hours, drop a bomb on their hut or threaten them with a posting to the jungle, and see what happens. Ideally, they need to be the instigators of these things. Or the instigators of other stories, which are interrupted or modified by bombs or other circumstances beyond their control.

That's what I'm doing at the moment with a number of sitcom projects. I've assembled some characters, and given them trajectories, hopes and dreams - and am now seeing what happens when things go wrong, or unexpectedly right for the wrong reason. It's only when you start storylining that your find our whether you have workable, active characters - who are the authors of their own downfall.

Let's go back to Sally in The Greasy Pole? Why did she hire Pavlov? Is it because she can't say 'no' to anyone because she wants to be liked? (like Geraldine in Dibley)? Which means that all her plans to run a business are almost certainly doomed to comic failure? Why is she even running a shop? Is she trying to prove her husband/boyfriend/mother wrong - and she wants to be taken seriously? Is she really that insecure? (she could be) Is she just passionate about stationery? If so, why? Could it be something else she is passionate about that says something about her? Could it be a haberdashery, because she likes pretty things - because she is all about looking good, rather than being good, and she hired Pavlov because he's cheap (thus making Sally a bitch, which might be funny). What happens when her personal life gets in the way of her shop? How does she manage that? On what basis does she make those decisions?

The fact is that failure to do this makes the show impossible to write, because you don't know why your characters get up in the morning. Once you have living, breathing, thinking characters, they start talking to you. You hear voices in your head (in a good way) and they go off and do things. When that happens, despite what any psychiatrist might say, you are really onto something good.

Do People Really Talk Like That?

2010-08-24T03:03:00.001-07:00

It's a question worth asking yourself all the time as you write. Do people really talk like that? There are plenty of moments where, if you're honest with yourself, someone has only really said something in a certain way in order to provide the set-up for a joke.

A stand-out example of this for me was the much un-loved Frank Skinner sit-com Shane. I watched an episode a year or so ago and rather enjoyed it. The only bit that diminished my enjoyment was that Frank Skinner had almost all of the jokes and that everyone else had feed-lines. On top of this, the feed lines didn't always sound right or natural, which telegraphed the fact that a joke was on the way and therefore spoiled the joke (and also made one aware that the whole programme is a conceit, which is not something you want to remind your audience of). Sometimes it's hard to avoid a clunky set-up line, especially when the joke you have in mind is a real cracker. But the skill of the writer is to make the dialogue sound real, or natural, or at least real enough.

When The Office came out, the critics and the industry went wild. Here was 'real' dialogue. This is true. The dialogue did sound real (although let's not forget that the character add times spoke directly to camera, in a documentary, and the they played fairly fast and loose with the docu-format).

The Office was truly brilliant as a non-audience show. (Critics then, bless them, returned to studio sitcoms and slammed them for being contrived or fake or silly, when, as I often say on this blog, the audience do realise it's a contrivance and they're okay with that). The Office, though, had an effect though on other writers, who wanted to write dialogue like the dialogue in The Office, and number of other shows, mostly forgotten, came and went that focussed on awkward silences and ennui. Spaced was another groundbreaking show that inspired another generation of writers, and created 'a way of talking'. Let's not forget Peep Show and The Thick of It.

Likewise, monstrously successful shows like Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld have almost created a 'way of talking' that really trips of the tongue and gives a show a feeling of pace. This is fine - if you're an American writer and writing for American audiences. But sometimes this kind of wise-cracking talking finds it way into British comedy.

The reason I mention this is because one or two shows recently - and the odd movie - have felt very unreal to me because of the dialogue and 'way of talking'. It's as if the writers were writing a show that were designed to sound like other shows. It's impossible to tell whether this is intentional - either because the writer in question is writing that way because he/she thinks the audience will like it, or because he/they likes it and it sounds good, or because he/we don't realise we're doing it.

The example that made me shout at my television the most was a movie on TV called Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel - directed by a good comedy director and had funny actors in it. But it felt like the script was half-way between Hitchhikers and Hot Fuzz. That sounds like a good place to be - but it was just that and only that. It was only influences. I didn't believe any of the characters, or the set-up - and this was highlighted by the fact that people in real life just don't talk like that. What's more, the Hot Fuzz area is dangerous because it is a movie heavily influenced by other movies.

Screenwriters need to know how real people talk and write concise and characterful dialogue in that style. If you spend your life watching movies and TV, and TV influenced by movies, and movies influenced by TV, you'll end up trapped in an unreal life that doesn't connect with reality. Decent writing is about truth. If there's no ring of truth - in situation, character or dialogue - it's just someone talking cliche's or secondhand speech. If you're doing that, stop writing now and get a part-time job, get married and have a child, go into politics or just do something that isn't about TV.

Grandma's House, Roger and Val Have Just Got In, The Great Outdoors, - three brand new BBC comedies inexplicably premiered over July/August - do not fall into this trap, I'm pleased to say. Nor did Rev earlier this summer. In all those programmes, the characters feel real - like they are based on truth, not based on something based on truth. And truth, not wisecracks or contrived 'sexual chemistry', ultimately, is what keeps people watching.

Happy Tuesdays: Mr and Mrs Smith

2010-08-13T06:09:00.000-07:00

I listened to Will Smith's Mr and Mrs Smith the other day - part of the Happy Tuesdays season of pilots on Radio 4. It was a show about a married couple undergoing counselling, and starred Will Smith and Sarah Hadland.

I rather liked it. In fact, I like it a lot.

Why? Here is one reason. There were lots of jokes in it - making me and the studio audience laugh. I like it when that happens. It seems strange to point this out, but there are some comedies out there with scant few jokes in, both on radio and television. It's not that these comedy have lots of jokes that are lame, or misfiring or don't work. It's just that there aren't any in the first place - and yet the show can still be billed as comedy. Which is odd.

If you follow me on Twitter (do so here), you will have seen my mild disappointment with Roger and Val Have Just Go In - which appeared to be a well-cast, well-directed comedy, but one without any jokes in. After 7 minutes, I tweeted that I would be requiring a joke soon. And after 15 minutes, I tweeted that I was going to bed. Which I did. My problem was not that the show wasn't any good. It's just that it wasn't trying to make me laugh out loud with jokes.

It struck me that this is tantamount to making pornography but not including any sex scenes. Now, one could argue that there are much subtler ways of creating the same erotic effect - and that the most sexually charged films do not need to contain sex or nudity but that's not the main reason people buy pornography, I don't think.

Lots of people have tweeted how marvellous they thought Roger and Val was, and that it was clever and subtle and warm et al. And that it was very funny and made them laugh out loud. So clearly, I have more mainstream preferences. (eg I'd take Seinfeld over Curb any day.) I'm pleased that the show is finding an audience, and that the BBC are not trying to sell a pup. They've made something that really connects with people. Well done, Beeb. I just wanted to laugh. And found the show wasn't interested in making me do so all that often. So I went to bed.

Mr and Mrs Smith, on the other, made me laugh out loud plenty of times. From the moment Will started quibbling about the cost of the session and the lost minutes, a refund, and then working it out on the calculator on his phone, I knew I was going to enjoy it.

But the show was more than a succession of jokes (as if that were easy to do anyway). The characters inter-played well - or at least disappointed each other again and again. The format of the characters explaining it, and cutting in to actually hear the event being explained, worked. It can be muddling, but I was never in doubt as to what I was listening to - which always fights comedy. (Confusion is the enemy) There were plenty of call-backs and running jokes too and overall it didn't feel like any lines were wasted. Every line delivered in terms of being a joke, revealing character or advancing the plot - and many did more than one of those things.

If I had one suggestion for the show, should it be commissioned for a thoroughly merited series, I would make a plea to warm up the central characters a little. This doesn't mean making them 'likeable', but making their failings and foibles more forgivable. Will Smith's character throughout the show was worried about getting back in time to see Avatar with his lifelong best friend. This was funny and he wouldn't give up on it, so provided a really good distraction and quest for him, that was fighting the romantic weekend at every turn. It's just his desire to sacrifice romance for his friend seemed a little unreasonable and hard to forgive. It might have been better if these was some extra reason why he had to see Avatar with his friend on that particular day - something stemming back to a poignant moment in childhood or adolescence. It could have served the plot well in demonstrating how Will's character is unable or unwilling to let go of the uncomplicated life of being a single man. I'd also say that his job as a would-be novelist is also a little self-indulgence and needs some sort of redemption.

But all of these changes are just a minor adjustment in detail and tone. There's a lovely show here that's properly funny. And it'll be even funnier if we care even more about Mr and Mrs Smith. More please, Radio 4.

Less is More in The Great Outdoors

2010-08-06T04:55:00.000-07:00

Comedy writing is hard. Sometimes it looks hard and complicated and watching it is intimidating. Non-audience shows particularly can be fast and complex, especially narrated ones (eg. Scrubs and Arrested Development) Plots interweave and we jump from place to place and scene to scene, often just for one single joke. The jokes are finely chiselled, the set-piece scenes well-choreographed and beautifully shot. And it looks difficult and expensive.

Comedy writing is also hard because it can look so easy - especially the comedy that's filmed in front of an audience, where the scenes are longer, the pace is a little slower and it looks a lot like people sitting around and talking. What's the problem?

I am reminded of that line in Seinfeld when George, with no writing experience, talks about writing their show about nothing and he says something along the lines of 'How hard can it be? We're talking about a sitcom here?' That is one of those jokes that funny for different people for different reasons. The audience laugh because George is being disparaging about the form of the show he is in. The writers are laughing because George has no idea how incredibly difficult writing a simple-looking sitcom really is.

I mention this because I've just seen the first two episodes of The Great Outdoors (ep 2 here) which has been tucked away on BBC Four as part of some Outdoors season. It's about a small and dysfunctional rambling club - and they go on a ramble. Each episode starts at the beginning of the walk - and they walk and talk and do stuff. Looks easy. That's why it's good. It's no effort to watch. On both occasions, the first time I looked at my watch out, at least 25 minutes had gone.

Now, why was I looking at my watch? It wasn't boredom. The writer in me was thinking 'how long have they got to wrap this story up'? What interests me is that they stories aren't really wrapped up at all. In one sense, it's because there's a series arc of sorts. But in another sense, it doesn't really matter anyway. Not in sitcoms. Writers, producers, exec producers and directors get into a real tangle over this and I often find myself alone on this one. 'The room' often says 'But what about the unpaid invoice?' or 'How do they get back to shore?' or 'If he breaks his arm, shouldn't we see him in a few weeks so that we know he's all better'. My response is usually along the lines of 'The audience won't care'. The neatness of the ending is often irrelevant. Apart from anything else the audience, yes the smart audience, realise it's a sitcom and that we start from the same position next week as we did this week. If the kitchen has been burned to the ground, it'll be as good as new - well, as good as last week - next week.

Sometimes, endings do matter. In films, the ending is everything - because the protagonists go on a journey. They learn. They change. They end up in a different place from where they started. But in sitcom, they don't learn, they don't change and the end up back where they started. Sitcoms are about the journey. Films are about the destination.

And so, when your hero triumphs or fails, the show is over. So end it. The moment your show has climaxed, and the big emotional moment has been done, you've got about ninety seconds to wrap it up before the audience is bored, looking at its watch and wondering what's on next. You can probably forget about you hero's parking ticket, or weight gain, or broken toe. You can certainly forget about the peripheral characters' destroyed briefcase, ruined party or misplaced visa. Because it's not about those things, and never was. The audience knows that all will be well - and should be back next week for the same again.

That's why I've been enjoying going on a journey with the ramblers in The Great Outdoors. What is the destination? I don't really care. I'm really enjoying the journey.

Passion, People and Money

2010-08-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

One of the best articles I've read about how to make your way in the creative industries is by a banjo player called Danny Barnes. He has written a long piece about making a living through one's music here. It is well worth reading in full and translating to the craft of writing. Naturally, some of it doesn't apply, in particular the stuff about performing live and doing gigs. But the overall tone is interesting. It is laid-back, self-assured and calm. If I may paraphrase, his advice can be boiled down to this: Work out what your art is, and then pursue it. Make sure you work with good people. Get rid of bad people or phonies. If you can see trouble ahead, avoid it. Do your taxes properly. Get a job. And stop whining. It's not about you.

There is much to be learned from all of this. And my recent experiences have chimed with them too. Let's focus on three things. Passion, people and money.

1. Passion - it is essential to be passionate about your project, or story, or character. If you're not, writing it will be an impossibly hard slog. It's hard enough to write a half hour script of a sitcom you are completely in love with. To do that for a show that you're ambivalent about is soul-crushing. Passion is essential. Ditch the project and ideas that you're not passionate about. They might be good ideas, or clever ideas, or even original ideas, but don't bother with them. I remember once developing a sitcom idea into something that seemed original and possibly interesting for a TV Commissioner - but it didn't interest me at all. So I left it. Good move.

I was once asked to come up with a TV movie that fulfilled about seven different criteria for a notable transatlantic media company. I came up with one that ticked all of the boxes and was quite interesting, although the constraints of the media company limited it, I felt. Eventually I ended up on a conference call and we were all discussing an 8-page treatment of the idea, but eventually they said 'We're all about passion at [transatlantic media company]. We just don't feel you're passionate about this story'. This is both a dumb and a sensible thing to say. I wouldn't have come up with the idea without their preposterously long list of requirements. And yet there were right that I wasn't passionate about it. So it was best that we all walked away from it and, yet again, I had done days and days of work on the promise of money that never materialise but these things happen. It could have been worse. I could currently be banging my head against a wall trying to rewrite the third act of a TV movie I never really liked in the first place.

Passion is essential, or it's just too hard. Writing it is too hard, and getting through the commissioning process without sticking your head into a gas oven is impossible without passion.

2. The other thing I've been realising is how important it is to work with good people. In fact, if you work with good people, work barely seems like work at all. It's good fun. Plus these good people make your work better. It may mean having to turn down a better offer so that you can work with the people who really understand you and the project. It may just be walking away from people that you're just not at all excited about working with. These decisions normally prove to be the right ones to make. If at all possible, avoid working with people that get on your nerves, or just don't seem to get what you do.

3. Money follows (1) and (2). You need passion to get a project written and off the ground. You need good people to get the project to be any good. If what you do is any good, money will turn up sooner or later because most TV and the vast majority of movies aren't any good. The fact is that if you're a writer, you will write. No-one will be able to stop you. And nothing else will matter to you. Getting paid is great. And is essential every now and then. But the money is always secondary to the project - or at least it should be. If you're a writer, money is something you need to help you write - like a decent word-processor, a chair and some drinkable coffee. So get passionate about that story, find the people to bring that story to life and sit down and write it.

Learning from Other Writers

2010-07-27T02:47:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has pointed me to a cracking website here chock full of mp3s containing lengthy interviews with serious Hollywood screenwriters - the sort of long drawn out chats that only people serious about screenwriting would be interested in. Fantastic. (especially when you get past the dire introductions).

Learning from other writers is really important, not so that you can emulate their work patterns or get depressed about how good at their job they are (or the opposite), but so that we can all be reassured that writing is a long, painful, wasteful process that we all thinking about giving up regularly. But then realise that we don't write because we can, or we should, but because we must. It's good to hear how entire storylines and scenes are dropped, endings changed and characters amplified or killed. Doing stuff like this is not failure but progress. And it takes such a long time to understand that a script is more like a owl of alphabet soup than a monolithic text chiselled in stone.

It's All in the Execution

2010-07-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

... as Oliver Cromwell said to King Charles.

One of the things that I've noticed new and inexperienced writers suffer from is paranoia. They are almost all worried that their idea is going to be stolen, or their hot new script is going to be ripped off in some way. When I've been approached by friends of friends who want to write and send me scripts, they are often vary cagey, or explain that they have copyrighted them somehow, so there's no use me trying any funny business, or passing it to someone who might.
Now, one would have thought that a new writer would want his script read by as many people as possible. But the young writer is inexperienced - and with his new script, truly believes he/she has written something that has never been written before, or observed something and captured it in script-form for the first time.

Well, any seasoned writer would at least agree with the verse in the Bible which says "There is nothing new under the sun." We've all be there. We've mentioned our hot new show to someone, explained the premise and been told 'Oh, like that American show from the 1970s' or 'Like that play by Alan Bennett?' etc etc.

It's all been done before. All of it. From every angle. The only question a writer should really ask of himself is 'Can I write?' That precious first script is the beginnings of an answer.

Writing is not beavering for hours in order to crack a new formula, whereafter it writes itself. It's about making the old old stories fresh, new, current and original, when they are anything but that.

I mention this because Rob Long just did an excellent bit on idea theft that you can find here. Go and listen now.

Missing the Point of IT

2010-07-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

Comedy is huge business - and it always surprises me there isn't more of it on television. There is so little comedy now that every new episode of a show is hyped and picked over to an extraordinary degree.

And then newspapers runs bizarrely pointless pieces like this one in the Guardian. I don't know if it appeared in the print issue (I do hope they didn't waste their ink).

The IT Crowd has NOTHING to do with IT. It has no more to do with IT, than Black Books had to do with books. Bernard's bookshop in Black Books simply couldn't exist - and doesn't really exist. The show is using a bookshop as a backdrop for beautiful and daft character comedy. Clearly, there are one or two bad old bookshops kicking around that are on the brink of bankruptcy, but to ask whether Black Books resembles a real book shop is to miss the point of the show. (I'm not sure what the point of Black Books is. I loved it and dearly wished there could be more episodes. They'd done all the hard work of setting up a show!)

Moss and Roy hardly ever do any IT work in The IT Crowd - and certainly most of it can't be done from the office they inhabit. In this latest series, they haven't ventured up to the office floor to fix anything (it's quite fun when they do that, since they're so out of place). Moreover, nor should they really do any real work either. Computers are boring on television because ultimately, computers are boring in real life. People are interesting.

I faced this problem writing Hut 33 for Radio 4 (which is not in the same league as IT Crowd, I hasten to add). The show is about codebreaking in Bletchley Park in World War Two. Stories about codes, mathematics and war were few and far between because they are such cold subjects, especially on the radio. Hut 33 is a class-warfare comedy. Archie is the rising socialist whose time is coming. Charles is the falling imperialist whose time is passing. Everyone else is stuck in the crossfire. As a result, Hut 33 is about as true to life in the huts as Allo Allo was to life in Occupied France. Just as the IT Crowd is as true to life as Black Books and Father Ted.

It's worth thinking this through if you're trying to write a new sitcom. The 'sit' of a show should not be where the comedy comes from. The 'sit' will give you a canvas on which to paint. It'll give you a stage which you can fill with walking, talking, thinking, shouting, crying characters. Your setting needs only be real enough to convince us that the characters are real. And if it's a studio show, the audience do know the situation isn't real anyway. They are not stupid or totally gullible. Sitcoms are preposterously contrived (something TV critics cannot get their heads around). But the audience will cheerfully suspend their disbelief if you, the writer of the sitcom, are able to help us forget the set and the 'sit' and give us a greater truth. And a good laugh.

The Creative Process

2010-07-09T01:52:00.001-07:00

Have a look at this. Look carefully - and work out which path you would travel!

Some Wise Words for Sitcom Writers

2010-07-07T10:18:00.001-07:00

Paul Mayhew-Archer knows a thing or two about sitcom, having written them (eg. Vicar of Dibley), script edited them (eg. My Hero), and produced them (eg. Old Harry's Game). He's written a little gem about sitcom-writing here which is tucked away on the BBC Writersroom website. Comedy writers old and new should read it - not just on the screen. Print it out and read it. I've just had a look and here's one point about characters that's well worth bearing in mind:

Give the central character relationships that bring out different aspects of his personality. For example Fawlty is subservient with Sybil but a cruel tyrant with Manuel. Blackadder is a crawler with the Queen but a sarcastic bully to Baldrick. The simplest way to do this is to put the characters in some form of hierarchy.

It's not just a question of having a consistent character - but having a blend of characters who bring out different aspects of each others' personality. It sounds complicated, and it is a bit. But if it's not in your sitcom at the start, it'll be very hard to work in later. Wise words.

Oh my Word...

2010-07-03T09:04:00.001-07:00

As well as writing sitcom scripts, I do script editing, especially sketch shows. I usually enjoy this role, especially as it involves liaising with new writers and writers who are just starting out. When you read something good and/or original, it's great to be able to pass on good feedback and encourage people. I've had at least half a dozen people in the last couple of years in which I've been able to write emails along the lines of 'Well done, there's some brilliant, original comedy here. You're really hit the brief and surpassed it. Thank you. Keep going. You will succeed. etc'.

The downside of script editing is discovering how hopeless people are at using Word, and if often surprises me that calling people on this doesn't go down very well.

But I would say that if you are a writer, or want to be one, you need something to write on. That thing is usually Microsoft Word, unless you're writing feature films. You will spend thousands of hours of your life using Word, so why not try finding out how it actually works? So that you're not using the space bar so that things end up in the right place (this is roughly how my dad, a farmer his whole life, does his emails and documents)?

There is, I would like to argue, an onus on the writer to be able to use his tools effectively. Sit and play with it till you've figured it out. Go on a course. Actually buying Word in the first place might be a start. It's really not that expensive, and sending non-Word files looks pretty shonky, I'd say. If I, as a script editor, want to, er, edit, I have to unpick the document and reformat it myself, which often taking ages.

Is Word really all that hard to use? Are hanging indents really as baffling as some seem to suggest? Is the Page Break a thing of great mystery? If you spend a little time with Word, you'll discover it is a very powerful tool that can make your life easier. I have a number of templates set up that make it feel like Final Draft, so that you're typing names, which go straight to dialogue formats and back to names again. Time spent in the early days when you're time rich and cash poor will reap dividends.

And we can all be grateful that we never have to use a chain harrow, a combine harvester or a threshing machine.

Why I believe in Rev Adam Smallbone

2010-07-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

I have to declare an interest here. I'm not involved in the show. But I do go to church. In fact, I'm on my local PCC. I like the Bible and all that. (In fact, I have a degree in Theology) And as a result of all this, I wasn't expecting to like Rev, the new comedy on BBC2 starring Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman. Usually, when sitcoms or TV shows in general are made about things you know about, you can bet they're get some basic things wrong and you'll never be able to forgive them.

I had heard that they had done their research, but I still wasn't convinced it would have the ring of truth about it - until I watched it. I was pleasantly surprised. And I believed it.

There are a number of good things to be said about Rev - and I'll say some of them in future postings. And one or two here. I was interested to read that almost no reviewer was prepared to say them. Most reviews I read said 'This seems okay' or that it could be a grower. I was saddened by a review in the Independent that said that you have to be very careful about making up your mind on a sitcom too early; not because sitcoms take time to appreciate, but because you don't want to look like an idiot in the future if you make up your mind too quickly, like his mate who slagged off Father Ted after one show. Most reviews for Rev that I've seen centre around spoiling the plot for you by telling you what happens, and whether it would happen in real life, rather than having a stab at why the show is actually rather good.

So here's the reason I'm most pleased with Rev. Our vicar is a believer. He really does believe in God. This sounds daft but it must have been so easy to have created an angry vicar who resents his life situation and wishes he'd never become a vicar in the first place. Or you have a type who would never have become a vicar in the first place. Instead, we have a vicar who wants to do the right thing, but the right thing isn't immediately obvious. Does he shunt some locals' wedding to please the local headmistress so the local MP can get his son into the school having made a hefty donation to fix the broken window? How does he know what to do? He takes a moment to himself in the church to think it through - it wasn't a funny scene, but it was an important one. He kind of prays. And it's not naff. It works. I was pleased.

There's another scene where he tenderly explains why he's not too worried about Richard Dawkins - and what he says has a ring of truth to it, and isn't a simplistic answer that makes us think less of him. Ultimately, I believe in Rev Adam Smallbone. I believe he is a vicar, with a real faith, albeit fuzzy at times. And I believe that this job of being vicar is not really the job he signed up to do. He finds himself being asked to do things - rather than being a pastor. And he doesn't quite know how to move forward. (The only bit I don't believe is telling those builders to f**k off. But I also don't belive builders would just openly laugh at a vicar like that - even if that bit is based on a true story).

The show reminded me of Lead Balloon. In fact, I preferred it to Lead Balloon, since I never really believed Jack Dee's character. But I mustn't say too much more in case the rest of the series isn't any good and I look like an idiot...