Get Some Attitude

M*A*S*H is a really important sitcom for me. It's not just that it's brilliant, well-written, and has lots of decent jokes. It's also not just that it's got the most original and interesting setting. For me, it's the fact that the show even exists. It's a sitcom, set in a medical unit during the Korean war. Let me repeat that. It's a sitcom - a comedy - set in Korea, during the war in which young men and women were wounded and killed. It's not set on a cushy base in the USA, like The Phil Silvers Show. It's not even set in an uninvaded England, like Dad's Army. Bombs go off. Bloodied men come in. Limbs are cut off. Snipers turn up. People die.

It's as unlikely as Life is Beautiful - a comedy drama about an Italian concentration camp. M*A*S*H and Life is Beautiful are, to some extent, about the same thing - coping with horror. For the comedy to work, and the characters to be real, the horror has to be real. And it is.

But what M*A*S*H means to me is that it demonstrates that anything is possible. Anything. There isn't one single place where you couldn't set a comedy. And for that comedy to stand at least a chance of success. We know this in our heart of hearts, but do we believe it? Maybe we veer towards safe places because they're easier to write. Plus difficult settings require hard work, research and reading - which sounds like the real graft that most of us writers are trying to get out of doing. That's why we're writers. So we don't have to read and do real work.

M*A*S*H is carefully written, based on real experiences (since the original movie is based on a non-fiction book), and has an ring of truth to it. When Hawkeye is making light of calamity, we know he's only doing that because if he doesn't, he won't be able to cope. Klinger wears a dress because he really wants to get out of that hell hole. Some people are up tight. Some people not tight enough. It feels right.

The TV series M*A*S*H did have one key advantage. A two-hour pilot. When the original movie, the idea of making it into a TV show was not even on the table, but having made the movie, and turned it into a TV series, they had plenty to go on. And plenty of mistakes to learn from. As I like to constantly point out on this blog, failure is good. Banality is the enemy.

I mention this because I saw the movie for the first time the other day. It was made in 1970, when the parallels with the war in Vietnam were very obvious. And the subversive tone of the film carries everything. The film has attitude. In my opinion, it doesn't have much else. I could barely make out what they were saying to each other, so I had to have the subtitles on; I couldn't follow the plot, until I realised that there wasn't one - it's just a series of incidents, which felt like for 4 episodes of a sitcom whammed together (so no wonder they turned into a sitcom); and I couldn't really distinguish between the three main characters.

But the film has some magic dust - and I think that dust is ground out of the solid attitude of the movie. It tackles the nature of all things military head on. It shows how people cope with the horror of war, and seeing its casualties. It shows the cost of those survival techniques. There were shades of Catch-22 in it. And all of it was successfully captures and turned into a highly successful, long running sitcom.

Thinking about it has inspired me to work harder to find better, harsher, more interesting settings for comedies; and having an attitude that carries the show along. A good setting and some guts will cover a multitude of sins.

Having Rhythm

I've been a little under the weather recently and have been watching a little more TV than usual. One of the programmes was one of the dozens of 'How funny Britain used to be' documentaries that all the networks find more appealing to make (rather than commissioning actual new comedy). The show in question was a Heroes of Comedy about Max Miller - the 'cheeky chappie' and the highest paid comedian of his day. To give you an idea of what he was like, think Paul Whitehouse's slightly uncharitable parody Arthur 'Where's me washboard?' Atkinson.

To give you an idea of the age of the Heroes of Comedy documentary, they were interviewing Bob Monkhouse about him - and the last episode about Les Dawson contained an interview with Dave Allen. We're going back a little. But one of the comedians being interviewed was a young-ish Victoria Wood. She pointed out how much of his jokes and patter were about the delivery - and how much comedy is about presentation and rhythm.

I think she overstated it a little when she suggested that the material itself was almost irrelevant, although I can see what she means. In this case, I was watching Max Miller and I didn't find it funny at all, since he inhabited a different world. Also, he was such a quintessentially live comedian and of his time, it would be odd if me, a thirty something in 2010 found it hilarious. His comedy isn't timeless - it's of its time. And all the better for it. One can easily see how he was the must-have act of every variety bill. Bizarrely, though, the same rhythm makes Paul Whitehouse's Arthur Atkinson funny. The lines themselves aren't funny, but they sound funny. Extraordinary.

It's easy to eschew this form of stagecraft or writing - but it's all part of the most basic of comedy skills - timing. I've noticed the more I write, and rewrite, the more I feel I know what the funny line should 'sound like', or how it should bounce. It's not just about getting the funny word at the end. It's getting there with a hop, skip and a jump. Sometimes, I get the rhythm before I think of the joke. Sometimes I can't think of a joke to fit the right rhythm, so I sit there until I do. Or I redo the set-up and give myself a chance of thinking of a joke with a different rhythm.

Rhythm makes comedy seem effortless and 'right'. It can cover a multitude of sins, which isn't always a bad thing, but it means that if it's well-crafted, it stands a chance and is more than simply people talking. Again, critics of the sitcom would point to the fact that it makes dialogue even more unrealistic. People don't talk like that. But it's sitcom. It's a contrivance. It's a play. Things are compressed and speeded up. Details melt away and we get to the funny stuff.

One of the great comedy shows of all time for me was The Phil Silvers Show aka Bilko, which I watched on repeats growing up and have seen subsequently and now own on DVD. It's brilliant. Phil Silvers is a force of nature. Bilko is a truly wonderful creation. The rest of the cast can't act to save their lives. It's ham as you like. But wow, the way Bilko talks. The patterns of speech, the gabbling, the escalations, the tickings-off, the flattery, the calls to attention - it's a masterclass in how lines can be written and delivered. And because of the situation, and the storylines are about people, they are not timely, but timeless. Oh, and very funny. And ultimately, that's what it's about, isn't it?