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.
Showing posts with label Allo Allo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Allo Allo. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Give 'Em What They Want: Sitcom
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.
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.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Missing the Point of IT
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.
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.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Understanding Failure in Comedy
Criticising sitcom, as I have remarked in previous posts, is the easiest thing in the world. Like many things that are easy, it can still be entertaining and fun, but it is ultimately destructive and unhelpful, as least for the purposes of this blog and constructive criticism of sitcom in general.
So passionate am I about situation comedy, that I want to defend every sitcom from attacks on all sides, regardless of whether I even like the comedy in question. At least that is what I felt when I read a recent posting on The Quietus - called Emma Johnston On The World's Worst Sitcoms. which can be found here. I don't mean to pick on her - I'm sure she's delightful - or the website for which she writes at all, but the article is a very typical example of pundits talking about sitcom that makes a number of curious points - and contributes to the overall welter of bizarre punditry surrounding a very specific form of commentary.
The trigger for Ms Johnston's article was undoubtedly The Persuasionists, the latest sitcom to emerge from the trenches before being mowed down by gunfire before it had a chance to fight back. I'm not going to defend The Persuasionists per se. A post-mortem is useful though, which I will come to in a moment. But in one sense, the audience have voted with their fingers. Episode 3 was only watched by 330,000 viewers, I believe. I recall a line in Which Lie Did I Tell? by William Goldman, who explains the failure of his turkey movie The Year of the Comet. When the Box Office numbers came in, they simply said something like 'They don't want to watch your movie, Mr Goldman'.
But I'm minded to defend The Persuasionists as a valliant attempt at big silly comedy, simply because sitcoms are routinely given the most violent of kickings whilst they're on air, and then for many years after - regardless of their success, it seems.
For example, Ms Johnston says picks out The Persuasionists' "stilted dialogue, childish, laboured gags and excruciatingly unlikable, stereotypical characters" as if all of those things are intrinsically bad in comedy. Sometimes stitled dialogue is funny (like Moss in IT Crowd). Childish, laboured gags can work very well, as can excruciatingly unlikable (David Brent), stereotypical (Del Boy) characters. But we really have to do better than just point these things out and say "Why couldn't they have done a grown-up, nuanced, unpredictable comedy with Aaron-Sorkin-esque dialogue, since that would obviously work?" For a start Aaron Sorkin himself tried this on a sitcom called Sportsnight. The show was slick, clever and well-produced, but funny? Not so much. And secondly, big silly comedies are very popular and can work well, Black Books, The IT Crowd and Miranda being recent examples.
Merely describing the premise of a show is also not enough. Picking out Heil Honey, I'm Home as a bad idea for a show - whilst acknowledging the Producers pulled off a similar premise seems odd.
Slagging off shows like Two Pints of Lager (which is not a show to my personal taste) or Are you Being Served? seems bizarre to me - the latter show ran for 13 years, spawned numerous catchphrases and is fondly remember by many. To say "Are You Being Served? managed to deliver two jokes, neither of which were funny" is, at best, disingenuous. Ms Johnston has looked back and judged an 1970s/80s show by the standards of 2010 and, unsurprisingly, found it wanting - even though it delivered much joy at the time and even though David Croft was responsible for hundreds of episodes of sitcom that were gladly received by the British public at large (Dad's Army, Allo Allo, You Rang M'Lord etc)>. It is entirely fair to pick out Come Back, Mrs Noah as a notable flop, but why did it flop? That's what I'm interested in finding out.
What is my point? I'd just like to raise the quality of the debate. Why do some shows work and others not work? What is it about comedy - and audience comedy in particular - that sets it apart from normal criticism?
There are two main reasons that come to mind. The first is that comedy is so personal. It's a wonderful thing to laugh, and when you connect with characters, when you identify with themes, situations and ideas, and when the joke arrives perfectly formed, it's funny and joyous. But when it doesn't, it's unfunny and painful. And the sound of laughter - other people getting a joke that you don't get, or dislike - is irritating. It's like they're all in on a joke and you're not. A number of times, I've read critics write that they simply don't understand why the studio audience were laughing. Myths about canned laughter still circulate. It seems that people seem reluctant to acknowledge that we all laugh at slightly different things.
The difference is particularly marked if there is a moral dimension to this. Are You Being Served is of it's time and broad - when attitudes to woman and homosexuals were very different. There's the jokes about Mrs Slocombe's pussy or John Inman are, to many today, distasteful (perhaps because they haven't been told in a sufficiently ironic way to allow us to laugh at them). In the process, comedy that seems unfunny also seems, to the unamused viewer, morally defective - and then the hackles rise and criticism gets more and more vicious.
The second factor is that comedy is designed to illicit laughter. A comedy which fails to amuse has categorically failed - and can therefore be written off. The fact that it has amused others seems to be of little consequence as the knives are sharpened and people trot out the usual comments like 'That's half an hour I'll never get back', 'Worst sitcom since [insert previous failed sitcom]' or 'How does this stuff even get commissioned? Do the BBC actually hate us?' etc...
To analyse a comedy that fails to amuse, then, is difficult work. It requires empathy, imagination and a serious engagement of critical faculties - in a way that isn't terribly amusing. It's probably more akin to investigating and air-crash or a crime-scene. But that is what I'm interested in - partly because I should be, shouldn't I? I'm a sitcom writer? I have been for about ten years. I should be curious. I'm just surprised that lots of other people involved in the industry are not equally curious, and seem to be satisfied with explanations of failure like "Bad script, stereotypical characters and scenarios that just aren't true to life" - when plenty of shows survive with poor scripts, some of which have stereotypical characters and some extraordinary scenarios.
I started out my comedy career writing a sitcom called Think the Unthinkable. Ryan, splendidly played by Marcus Brigstocke, would say that mistakes are opportunities. Annoying, but true. We learn more by failure than success. Which is just as well because I fail far more often than I success - you see? I just did a typo. I really should learn to be more careful. So we need to work out a way of embracing failure, picking through the wreckage, learning and moving on. That's my plan, anyway.
So passionate am I about situation comedy, that I want to defend every sitcom from attacks on all sides, regardless of whether I even like the comedy in question. At least that is what I felt when I read a recent posting on The Quietus - called Emma Johnston On The World's Worst Sitcoms. which can be found here. I don't mean to pick on her - I'm sure she's delightful - or the website for which she writes at all, but the article is a very typical example of pundits talking about sitcom that makes a number of curious points - and contributes to the overall welter of bizarre punditry surrounding a very specific form of commentary.
The trigger for Ms Johnston's article was undoubtedly The Persuasionists, the latest sitcom to emerge from the trenches before being mowed down by gunfire before it had a chance to fight back. I'm not going to defend The Persuasionists per se. A post-mortem is useful though, which I will come to in a moment. But in one sense, the audience have voted with their fingers. Episode 3 was only watched by 330,000 viewers, I believe. I recall a line in Which Lie Did I Tell? by William Goldman, who explains the failure of his turkey movie The Year of the Comet. When the Box Office numbers came in, they simply said something like 'They don't want to watch your movie, Mr Goldman'.
But I'm minded to defend The Persuasionists as a valliant attempt at big silly comedy, simply because sitcoms are routinely given the most violent of kickings whilst they're on air, and then for many years after - regardless of their success, it seems.
For example, Ms Johnston says picks out The Persuasionists' "stilted dialogue, childish, laboured gags and excruciatingly unlikable, stereotypical characters" as if all of those things are intrinsically bad in comedy. Sometimes stitled dialogue is funny (like Moss in IT Crowd). Childish, laboured gags can work very well, as can excruciatingly unlikable (David Brent), stereotypical (Del Boy) characters. But we really have to do better than just point these things out and say "Why couldn't they have done a grown-up, nuanced, unpredictable comedy with Aaron-Sorkin-esque dialogue, since that would obviously work?" For a start Aaron Sorkin himself tried this on a sitcom called Sportsnight. The show was slick, clever and well-produced, but funny? Not so much. And secondly, big silly comedies are very popular and can work well, Black Books, The IT Crowd and Miranda being recent examples.
Merely describing the premise of a show is also not enough. Picking out Heil Honey, I'm Home as a bad idea for a show - whilst acknowledging the Producers pulled off a similar premise seems odd.
Slagging off shows like Two Pints of Lager (which is not a show to my personal taste) or Are you Being Served? seems bizarre to me - the latter show ran for 13 years, spawned numerous catchphrases and is fondly remember by many. To say "Are You Being Served? managed to deliver two jokes, neither of which were funny" is, at best, disingenuous. Ms Johnston has looked back and judged an 1970s/80s show by the standards of 2010 and, unsurprisingly, found it wanting - even though it delivered much joy at the time and even though David Croft was responsible for hundreds of episodes of sitcom that were gladly received by the British public at large (Dad's Army, Allo Allo, You Rang M'Lord etc)>. It is entirely fair to pick out Come Back, Mrs Noah as a notable flop, but why did it flop? That's what I'm interested in finding out.
What is my point? I'd just like to raise the quality of the debate. Why do some shows work and others not work? What is it about comedy - and audience comedy in particular - that sets it apart from normal criticism?
There are two main reasons that come to mind. The first is that comedy is so personal. It's a wonderful thing to laugh, and when you connect with characters, when you identify with themes, situations and ideas, and when the joke arrives perfectly formed, it's funny and joyous. But when it doesn't, it's unfunny and painful. And the sound of laughter - other people getting a joke that you don't get, or dislike - is irritating. It's like they're all in on a joke and you're not. A number of times, I've read critics write that they simply don't understand why the studio audience were laughing. Myths about canned laughter still circulate. It seems that people seem reluctant to acknowledge that we all laugh at slightly different things.
The difference is particularly marked if there is a moral dimension to this. Are You Being Served is of it's time and broad - when attitudes to woman and homosexuals were very different. There's the jokes about Mrs Slocombe's pussy or John Inman are, to many today, distasteful (perhaps because they haven't been told in a sufficiently ironic way to allow us to laugh at them). In the process, comedy that seems unfunny also seems, to the unamused viewer, morally defective - and then the hackles rise and criticism gets more and more vicious.
The second factor is that comedy is designed to illicit laughter. A comedy which fails to amuse has categorically failed - and can therefore be written off. The fact that it has amused others seems to be of little consequence as the knives are sharpened and people trot out the usual comments like 'That's half an hour I'll never get back', 'Worst sitcom since [insert previous failed sitcom]' or 'How does this stuff even get commissioned? Do the BBC actually hate us?' etc...
To analyse a comedy that fails to amuse, then, is difficult work. It requires empathy, imagination and a serious engagement of critical faculties - in a way that isn't terribly amusing. It's probably more akin to investigating and air-crash or a crime-scene. But that is what I'm interested in - partly because I should be, shouldn't I? I'm a sitcom writer? I have been for about ten years. I should be curious. I'm just surprised that lots of other people involved in the industry are not equally curious, and seem to be satisfied with explanations of failure like "Bad script, stereotypical characters and scenarios that just aren't true to life" - when plenty of shows survive with poor scripts, some of which have stereotypical characters and some extraordinary scenarios.
I started out my comedy career writing a sitcom called Think the Unthinkable. Ryan, splendidly played by Marcus Brigstocke, would say that mistakes are opportunities. Annoying, but true. We learn more by failure than success. Which is just as well because I fail far more often than I success - you see? I just did a typo. I really should learn to be more careful. So we need to work out a way of embracing failure, picking through the wreckage, learning and moving on. That's my plan, anyway.
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