Good Intentions of Self-Improvement

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.

Panel Games and Sitcoms

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.

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.

Why I believe in Rev Adam Smallbone

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...