Annoying People & Boring Bits

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

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.