Hints, tips and economy
As promised, here are some thoughts culled from the guest sessions at our recent workshop week. The message from three very different writers was essentially the same - pursue emotional truth.
Paul Mendelson, when planning an episode of May to December, always began by asking - what's the emotional issue, rather than - wouldn't it be funny if? They were serious ideas which could have been drama, but were treated in a comic way.
With My Hero, he kept a box of ideas about what could happen to each character in relation to another character.
A pilot, he said, should contain the DNA of a series. Everything has to be in it. In sitcom, there may be a series arc, but characters don't change.
A relationship has ramifications on other people, so a show about a man and a woman could involve her family and his family, her colleagues and his colleagues, her friends and his friends, providing a pool of characters on which to draw. Characters generate stories, and a rich group of characters can sustain many episodes.
Hugo Blick advises: Wherever the pressure is, go elsewhere. So when Men Behaving Badly was all-conquering, Hugo came up with Marion and Geoff, about a man who just wanted slippers and a home to go to, but was locked in his own bubble.
Also, he said,don't second guess what commissioners might want. Write something where you feel 'If I die and haven't expressed that, I'll be really disappointed'. And be sure in it's construction that you're saying something that hasn't been said before. Don't ape what has inspired you.
Most of Susan Nickson's work conforms to a structure that is generally applicable - three stories per episode with three beats (introduction, development and conclusion) in each. She generally creates two big stories and a small one, so in an episode of 2 Pints there might be a sex story, a relationships story, and a silly story.
When you're writing something, if you're not feeling it, then it's not working, she believes. Writers should feel the emotions their characters are going through.
College aside, I've just been spending some time with an MA student working on a dissertation which asks if sitcom is dead. He is going to conclude that it isn't, but there is no doubt that the form is evolving and will have to continue to evolve.
All broadcasters are under financial pressure, and sitcom is not a cheap thing to make. While it's possible to try and shoot more minutes per day of a single camera show, audience sitcom has unvarying requirements - a studio, sets and, of course, an audience, which makes cost savings hard to achieve.
With both audience and single camera comedy, there is a keen demand for more affordable shows, and affordable means fewer characters, more recurring locations in single camera shows(which might be built in a studio rather than shooting on location), and a reliance on regular sets with no 'guest' sets in audience sitcom.
For writers aspiring to write sitcom, thinking economically would seem a sensible way to go. Laurence Marks has often said that the great sitcoms could be played in front of a black curtain, by which he meant that good situation comedy is all about character, and that character is more important than the physical 'sit'.
That was the cheery message that colleagues from CBBC, the drama department and I relayed to the Sharps writers yesterday, and it's one I'm cheering you up with now.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~51~RS~)
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'thinking economically would seem a sensible way to go.
That was the cheery message that colleagues from CBBC, the drama department and I relayed to the Sharps writers yesterday, and it's one I'm cheering you up with now.'
Is he not going to be fighting overseas anymore then?
:)
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No, he's going down t'pit, Marc.
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Thanks again Micheal for the info.
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'If I die and haven't expressed that, I'll be really disappointed'.
Yes, not very cheery, but beautifully put, I've often felt the dark undercurrent to almost all the sitcoms I've really enjoyed, and thought the two interdependent.
As Shelley wrote
'Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught'
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' MichealJacob wrote:
No, he's going down t'pit, Marc.'
I've been unmasked Lol, but on a serious note I very much agree with the pros on this issue. For me also, other side of the same coin really, is that we have to care about the characters - and to engender that care it is useful to put the characters into situations that create emotional jeopardy. The vicariousnes of all story telling I guess. The greater the emotional risk the greater the emotional response - whether it be crying for a drama or laughing for a comedy. The greater the tension the greater the release.
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@ASA
Thank you for introducing Shelley to the blog. How civilised we have become.
@MrP/ ASA
Yes, absolutely. I've just been doing notes for a new writer making those points, but it's so easy to say - your writing needs real people with emotional depth rather than characters - and so hard for a writer actually to translate that into a script.
I see many scripts that move along briskly, are well organised and entertain, but exist in a sitcom bubble.
While it's possible to help with structure and jokes, helping with emotion is rather harder. I must have a think about the best way to do it. Any ideas welcome. I suppose it's really what made you cry last, what was the situation, who was involved, and why did you cry?
The emotion module!
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It's to do with the theme perhaps of the episodes. All stories should be about something if they are to have emotional depth. I've just a written a medical episode - the medical condition is cancer, but actually what the episode is about, at the heart of it, is two people, who love each other, falling out with each other and reconcilling at the end. It's the reconciliation that will make people cry, not the cancer revelation. At least I hope they will cry - that's my aim. :)
In comedy terms, emotional depth comes from recognition of our common humanity. Universal themes seen through the lens of the writer acted out by the er ... well by the er actors. Like I said earlier by putting those characters in emotional jeopardy.
I would ask your writer what is his story about first of all. If the reply is a series of this happens and then that happens, you will know that he doesn't have a central idea that he is working with. So at one end of the scale you get MIster Bean and the other you get Love Soup. Love Soup is my favourite sitcom of recent times and you can see clearly there are issues/themes being explored in each epsiode. The voice over explaining those themes makes it more, if you will allow it, visible. And the themes don't have to be huge. Often sitcom deals best with the minutiae of everday life, small jealousies, thwarted ambitions, self doubt, fear of elevators.
I am not original when I say the best way to approach characters is to ask what do they want out of life and what stops them getting it? In Sitcom the best answer to that is the character themselves. We empathise wth those characters as there but for the grace of God go we all. So the emotional response to Micheal Crawfords prattfalls is at a visceral level, while the response to Mainwaring thwarted ambitions is more subtle but just as funny. We respond emotionally because we do all recognise their ambition, and feel for them when we watch them fail, and laugh.
So emotional heart for me has to come from the writer really putting his head into his characters shoes :) That's what makes them real and not ciphers. Emotional attachment invested in the writing translates as emotion on the screen and an emotional rsponse from the audience.
And the last time I cried I think was when the Comedy College results were announced!
:)
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Yeah, that Shelley quote is one of my favourites, cheers.
Thanks for posting a very interesting question, micheal. And MisterP has given much food for thought.
My response is that I have learned that the reason why I ultimately watch TV and film (and read books) is for those moments when I recognise in them, expressed through their characters, a thought or feeling I always assumed was uniquely my own.
Niles' ongoing but suppressed longing of Daphne in Frasier has the power (due to the writers AND David Hyde Pierce) to rend my heart in two, because so many of us have been there- in fact, you can chart the beginning of the end of Frasier from their union.
And so we, the audience, the viewer, whoever receive and react to this emotion. But where does the emotion come from? As MisterP and micheal have stated (and just about everyone else already knows!): from the writer. He or she must invest his own real emotion, probably something he himself thought he felt uniquely. How well he or she does this depends on the quality of his or her writing.
That's what drives my writing now. The need for something that I feel is unique to be carried over to someone else, as others have done for me before. I'm finishing a sitcom episode for a competition at the moment. Its seed was the odd, contradictory relationship I have with two close friends, full of comic potential. I was driven to write it (first as a short story, then a play) because I feel it is special and different to the usual 'friends' scenario, I feel it needs to be put down, and I hope others will appreciate this.
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I have to quote CS Lewis here, or paraphrase because I would have to go and look it up, but he defines Art as the Expression of the Universal through the Individual to the Universal. A lot of 'artists' try to express the Indiviual to the Universal. The cult of the personality. In sitcom terms the truly 'Individual cult of personalilty shows' are very rare and rarely speak to the Universal. Nightingales was brilliant surrealism, that didn't get the recognition it deserved, but it is probably true to say that the audience was probably exponentialy linked in the wrong direction to how far away it was from the Universal. Take Robert Lindsay and put him in a Universal through the Individual to the Universal sitcom - My Family - and see how the viewing figures and 'success' goes in the opposite direction.
So I would advocate approaching the stories from the perspective of asking what universal truths can I address here, and express them in my unique comedy voice, rather than let my voice be unique and that is enough. The former is where you get emotional depth and resonance. And a bigger audience and more series commissioned.
Just not from me.
:)
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Thank you for another inspiring and informative blog, but this time with the fabulous added bonus of comments from other professional writers. As rewriting Red Planet and Summer Challenge entries, I've absorbed every word. Please feel free to keep it coming! Michelle Copelin
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MisterP, I appreciate your interesting, thoughtful comments. But I do believe you are splitting hairs, gilding the lily (can't think of any more Shakesperean cliches at the moment!). A writer can seek to find a general truth, or alternatively present his own truth. Both end up doing the same thing, as the writer's own truth-telling will engender a more general truth.
I think Nightingales is just a different style to My Family, not really a question of fundamentals. When you try to second guess a viewer, you're heading for trouble. I am fast becoming a fan of Waiting For God, which I'm sure everyone knows is an early ninties geriatric sitcom set in a retirement home. But I can't imagine anyone would have me in mind as a targeted 'audience', being a non-white twenty something! But then here is an example of the operation of empathy to bridge individuals.
Similarly, I know girls who are big fans of Peep Show, a sitcom about young male losers, which is in the direction of my own current work.
@totleightv- Thanks for your comments Michelle, but I wasn't aware anyone other than MichealJacobs was a professional- last time I checked I was an aspiring amateur, unless someone hasn't been sending me the paychecks! :0)
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P.S
I would like to put my own qustion out there like a shuttlecock to be batted about for discussion, related to points in Micheal's great post. It concerns the 'death of the sitcom' in a way. My question is,
Is the British 'Middle Class' Sitcom dead?
By the above I mean the gentler, more literary, theatre-like sitcoms from 70's to 90's, eg The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin, The Good Life, To The Manor Born, As Time Goes By, Up The Garden Path, As Time Goes By etc.
It seems to me these sitcoms weren't so hell-bent on laughs (quite contrary at times!) but put more stress on reality and complexity in character and situation, as well language so much so they tended to end up 'light' drama (but are filled with a very English sense of foreboding- just look at Geoffrey Palmer's face!).
It seems to me the American Sitcom (with great exceptions e.g Frasier), with its machine gun approach, firing one liners back and forth, eg Will and Grace, killed the British 'Middle Class' Sitcom in the late 90's, at the expense of real complexity in character and situation. (the exception to this is My Family, which seems to me the only existing 'Middle Class' British Sitcom).
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I'm not sure you understand what I am saying Mr ASAzam, but that is ok, I am not sure I do either half the time. And all sitcoms are middleclass, soap is for the working classes and the South Bank Show and Channel 4 racing is for the upper class.
:)
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Don't worry about your muddled moments, MisterP, I'm still all ears :0)
And here was I thinking Blair had bequethed us a classless society?!
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I am rather confused. I was under the impression that TV companies wanted studio based sitcoms as it was too expensive to do location filming as the whole crew need to follow...ie...even the 'restaurant' caravan
So, consequently I've been working my guts off writing a studio based sitcom....doh
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'I am rather confused. I was under the impression that TV companies wanted studio based sitcoms '
As far as I know there is only 'Moving Wallpaper in the UK at the moment, although there is 'Back to You' in the US, not sure it has be commissioned for a second series though.
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Well, quite a lot to absorb on a Monday morning.
Just to deal with the studio sitcom first. An audience sitcom and a location sitcom cost roughly the same to make. Channels want audience shows because viewers like good ones, and not many writers want to expose themselves to the fear that audience won't laugh.
Apart from Benidorm, 2 Pints and IDeal, most sitcoms are essentially middle class, but I think that what ASAzam is touching on is a vein of English (rather than British) melancholy that seems largely to have gone, though David Renwick and Brian Dooley have it in their different ways.
I agree absolutely that unless writers invest their own feelings in characters, then there will be a lack of emotional truth. Some writers find that hard, and I've known some who deliberately avoid it because they feel they'll be exposing their inner selves, and think that a lot of jokes will make up for it.
As MisterP suggests, sitcoms work on two levels - the overt one (four people share a flat), and the underlying one (the complexities and difficulties of true friendship).
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Michael, nothing like a whole ream of pompous verbosity (I write mostly about myself) on a monday morning?!
You've got it though, that is exactly what I was chuntering about. That sense of melancholy (by British I did mean English without thinking) embodied by the haggard jowels of Geoffrey Palmer. The existential sitcom in a way. I guess it seems old fashioned now, though I think Frasier had a touch of it, probably due to the recondite, Anglophilic nature of the show. And I think Peep Show updates and twists that strain of English comedy wonderfully.
By the way, I think Benidorm and Two Pints..., and even Ideal are underated sit coms that are full of life and situation, and Johnny Vegas!
Any situation (e.g four people share a flat) without the underlying, corresponding situation (therefore 'complexities and difficulties of friendship') will come across as fake and from 'sitcom' world, you'll sense it without even being able to intellectualise it.
But I've come to feel that by doing one (eg [as above] writing about people in a flat, probably based on people you know), if you pursue it honestly, it will automatically lead you to the other (eg 'the complexities and difficulties of friendship')
Those are the two parts of what I believe Robert McKee called the perfect story- one that deals with interpersonal conflict AND emotional conflict (the other is environmental, which I guess the above imagined sitcom would also deal with ie the constraints of shared living).
The trick is to do it, disembowel yourself emotionally and deconstruct your life in the process. Can't buy those emotions ready-to-wear on your sleeve, can you :0)
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By the way Mister P, I do get your point exactly now, I guess I went off on a tangent because I passionately believe in the indivdual to universal process of writing. I realise now what you were saying was something slightly different.
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Or rather, I believe the Individual to Universal process of writing is exremely valid in its own way, not that it is the be all and end of all in terms of approach. I'll shut up now, three strikes is more than enough :0)
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@ASA
I think the thing that cannot be legislated for is the self-awareness and emotional intelligence of the writer. Some people are good at understanding themselves and others and some people aren't. Some people don't want to understand themselves because of what they might find if they do. Some people set out to squeeze the world into a shape of their own devising and see only their own desires, making other people disposable.
So the emotion module should probably come with therapy time!
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@Micheal
Lol.
If it helps... My medical ep I mentioned. Essentially a love story. A man and a woman are the very best of friends. The woman has a secret that she thinks if the man discovers will want to have no more to do with her. At the start of the first draft, she ges a sense that the man is about to disclose his true feelings for her - she holds him at bay, then has to tell him she has Cancer and he really wishes to disclose his feeling but again she holds him off, finally revealing the secret. As she suspected the man can;t deal with it and leaves, before the big reconciliation scene at the end.
The first draft was working very well so on re-reading it I discovered that what was missing was actually seeing the true nature of their relationship, how they interracted with each oher. With her keeping at arms length from the beginning we didn't get a sense of their emotional connection, therefore we didn't empathise fully with the emotional jeopardy the characters were put in, so didn't really care.
The words most writers hate to hear from an editor are probably 'dig deeper here', and 'really earn' the moment. But both are valid sometimes. It comes down to the simple premise, show don't tell. If it's a love story, dramatise the love before the you rip it all apart and put it back together again. Thinking in acts here helps too.
It was actually quite a funny story too. I hope.
:)
Marc
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The second paragraph should read - the first draft WASN'T working very well, lol.
Shame you can't edit these posts!
:)
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Micheal, I think that is a very valid, perceptive point.
LOL perhaps there should be an interdisciplinary approach to comedy, a sort of Sigmund Freud School of Comedy :0)
It could even be the next step in reality TV in the vein of 'Can't Read, Can't Write' or 'You Are What You Eat', something along the lines of 'Sort Me And My Script Out!' :0)
Marc, that's an interesting point you made with your own script. It got me thinking about redrafting, and what Nabokov once wrote about having rewritten every word he had ever written.
Afzal
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@Marc
If only all writers were as good at analysing their work, never mind themselves!
That was really well spotted. And as a general thing, people sometimes write episodes about someone getting the sack or getting dumped or a business closing down when the reader and the audience haven't the faintest clue why it matters and thus don't care.
Like the old movie thing about meeting your lead character in ordinary life before the 'precipitating event', it's important to get some empathy going before the devastation.
I might book a psychotherapist for the Manchester workshop.
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'Comedy therapy', isn't that why we all do it? By that I mean writing of course, NOT telling virtual strangers our deepest secrets in neutrally-decorated rooms, such as the 1001 ways 'Mummy showed she didn't love me' :0)
Facetiousness aside, I think booking a psychotherapist for the workshop is an interesting idea. Psychotherapy is a powerful tool serving humanity. However, I'm unresolved about its application to writing. On one hand, humans try to fit their lives into narratives. So we talk of 'chapters' in our life 'stories'. On the other hand, I feel life is just far too complex to be reduced to any real narrative structure. Look at chaos theory, for instance. You could therefore argue that stories oversimplify life and so debases it. Though I would say this is an extreme position!
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@ASAzam
Life is complex - true. But as you say, we arrange our lives into narratives, and writers have to organise their characters' lives into some sort of comprehensible order. Given that a half hour comedy can only portray a paragraph in the lives of the major characters, then I don't think that's reductive.
I'll keep playing around with the thought of something in the area of emotional truth and psychology for the next workshop.
Thank you for the mental stimulation.
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@ASAzam wrote:
Niles' ongoing but suppressed longing of Daphne in Frasier has the power (due to the writers AND David Hyde Pierce) to rend my heart in two, because so many of us have been there- in fact, you can chart the beginning of the end of Frasier from their union.
Sorry to appear to derail the topic, but I have to disagree with the received opinion that Frasier ?jumped the shark? the moment Daphne and Niles got together. My favourite episode, the one that still makes me cry like a baby, is Daphne Returns, where we find out that Niles and Daphne still haven?t had sex, despite being together for several months. Niles has had her on a ?goddess? pedestal for so long he doesn?t even notice she?s put on 60 pounds (the actress was pregnant, the writers sent her to a ?fat farm? to explain it away) ? let alone feels able to make love to her, for fear it?ll be a crashing disappointment after a 7 year build-up. ?she?s got 7 years of fantasy to live up to? as Frasier puts it. The episode ends with them having a huge fight, Niles seeing her as she really is, flaws and all, and they go at it like muskrats. The last shot is Niles in the café, smiling post-coitally to himself over his coffee ? [SPOILER ALERT] he looks at Frasier and says ?You know the best part, Frasier? It wasn't at all like I imagined it.? BOOM.
I mention this because it seems germaine to the subject of ?emotional? bits in sitcom, all writers should aim to have moments like this, where it takes seven years of drip-feeding concern for the characters to get to a payoff. Still Game is another example of not being afraid of emotional bits. The last episode of series 5 (I think it is) has very few jokes at all, with a main character on the verge of death, but then one fantastically funny last line that causes a big great gasping release of laughter after a tense build up ? which would never work if you didn?t care deeply about the character (no spoilers, I know hardly anyone watches Still Game, and you should, so start from the beginning. The last episode of series 3 makes me cry like a baby too, and I?m really not the big drip this message makes me out to be)
I suppose what I?m saying is, there?s always room for the emotional moments, but you really have to put in the work with the characters first. The holy grail is a line that is so funny you break the tension you?ve built up, rather than thinking the sad bit is enough on it?s own to get a Bafta. (see also: David Brent crying at being made redundant, then revealing he?s wearing an ostrich costume).
(apologies for the long post)
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@Micheal
I have quoted this to you before, but will do so again as it could make a nice chapter heading for your module, and in memory of a great talent. :)
SOPHIA: I go to the market every day to buy a nectarine. At eighty-two that's life, a round trip on the number six bus to buy a nectarine.
ROSE: That's so sad.
SOPHIA: Not sad. Life. Sad is when you have to mash the nectarine with a fork.
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Hello Sarah, welcome. Having begun the blog with a certain amount of over-excitement, we are now more suitably thoughtful and collegey, and it's nice to have you joining in.
I think some writers avoid emotion because they don't know how to get out of it. Frasier was brilliant at that, in the sense of doing sad bit, small joke, sadder bit, bigger joke, cut to next scene. As you say, it has to end on a laugh.
Of course The IT Crowd isn't really going to make anyone cry, but to go back to the beginning of this discussion, the emotions of the characters have to be human.
@Marc
Let's strive to make 'Mashing the nectarine' as useful a phrase as 'Jumping the shark'.
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:)
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@Marc
Though as a phrase, it sounds definitely suggestive, and it has a hard 'c' in it.
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@ Micheal- my pleasure, and thank you for your full energy and commitment to a range of discussion, allied to an acute understanding of the subjects explored, and a lucid exposition (sounding a bit like a sixth form debating club now(!) but every word is intended)
I think, ultimately, that writers will always write as a way of understanding their own world. Whether it is effective or not is almost beside the point. I personally think the writer's 'truth' lies somewhere between the poles of truth and fiction, or to put it more scientifically, creative writing is not all baloney!
@ Sarah, I meant that Niles and Daphne's union was the beginning of the end for Frasier in a long-term sense. Of course, in the short-term, the situation was fruitful, but with that frisson gone, I think the show did begin to flag. They should have ended it soon after, like To The Manor Born, which has a truly wonderful ending that I'm sure Mike Newell or Roger Michell would envy. But then that's just my view.
What I think that wonderful extract that Marc pasted shows is the old cry/laugh situation. You either laugh or cry, hence my Shelley quote above.
Micheal pointed out the IT Crowd. That show has scenes in it between the two computer nerds that, from a personal angle, would be scary if they weren't so funny!
p.s. where does 'jumped the shark' come from? Sounds fishy!
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@ASA
It comes from an episode of Happy Days, in which Henry Winkler jumped over a shark while water-skiing. It means that a show has run out of ideas.
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@Micheal
That's sounds hillarious. Of course, makes perfect sense now- here was I thinking it might have been some eighteenth century Pirate's term....
Where could a show go after having Henry Winkler jump over a shark while water-skiing?!
That should be the compulsory ending of all BBC TV series! Having said that, The Last of the Summer Wine could have each of its geriatric characters do that ten times over and still keep on going for a million more episodes!
Afzal
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@ASAzam
There's a website here:
http://www.jumptheshark.com/index.jspa
If you fancy reading lots of people disagreeing about The Simpsons.
There's a reference to it in Arrested Development - Henry Winkler's character jumps over the body of a dead shark, which is so nerdy no wonder it got cancelled.
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Thanks for the link Sarah- there is a website devoted to pretty much anything, isn't there?! :0)
I will definitely have a look at the Simpsons section- though I personally think that show 'jumped the shark' back in the dark ages- still, my favourite show of all time.
Haven't really got into Arrested Development yet- though virtually everyone I know whose opinions I respect recommend it!
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Is there some reason why my posts don't appear anymore? :(
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I have just learned that the person playing the woman in my love story mentioned above is to be played by Ursa aka Sarah Douglas.
Now if she can't mash a nectarine nobody can!
:)
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@Marc
I'm not having a problem (which is probably a bad thing for the reader!). I get a little paranoid when something like that happens too. What with all the current coverage around China, I keep worrying about our very own British 'mandarins' :0)
Wasn't Sarah Douglas the actress who also plays the crazy queen in one of the Conan films- any chance of keeping her in that get up for the episode, would look rather incongruous with the realist medical story you described, but still might pull the punters in?! :0)
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@ Sarah
That was a great link by the way, thanks for pasting it!
Afzal
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"No hugging, no learning"
^the only credo I write (and live) by.
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On the subject of economy, why do we still have six episodes per series? If a show doesn't work during the first or second episode, then the chances are it won't improve over the course of a series, so over the run you just steadily haemorhage viewers and any goodwill the show might have (see Lab Rats).
Far better to have a very short first run, two or three episodes, study audience feedback, then come back with more episodes in a second run.
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@Aspie
That's an interesting point, but you should also consider that new comedies take time to bed in and for audiences to get used to the characters and the world. On the basis you suggest, we would either not have had any more of - or had radically different versions of Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses and One Foot in the Grave, to name but three.
In fact, the audience figures for Lab Rats have remained remarkably constant in terms both of millions and share.
Economically, a run of two or three doesn't make sense, since origination costs are high, and six is the minimum number of episodes to make the economics work.
From time to time we make pilots and research them, but research can be fallible. Famously, Friends tested very badly.
So it's the mysterious connection between audience and character that makes a hit, and however one approaches a new show - research or gut instinct - I stick to the old adage that you've got to make a series to discover what your show is. And then adjust for a series two.
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@Michael
I still think if you've got a duff show, then six episodes of duffness will pretty much kill it stone dead, even if there might be potential (although I take your point about Only Fools etc).
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of The Thick of It and Freezing (?) which both seemed to come out in dribs and drabs.
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@Aspie
The Thick of It began as a six part series, and has subsequently done specials. I think it would probably have continued as a series if legal matters hadn't intervened.
Freezing was a transmittable pilot for BBC4, and there were two further episodes which transmitted over three nights on BBC2 as 'event' scheduling.
I agree that a duff show won't work over one episode, never mind six, but we've all been involved in shows which we believed weren't duff, but turned out to be.
You also need to consider scheduling. A pilot can form part of a season, which can be marketed as such (eg a Comedy Playhouse), but two episodes don't really fit anywhere, are hard to promote and hard for the audience to find.
Then, if you do two or three and research them, and the research suggests dropping or re-casting a character or two, one has to begin again making six episodes, having spent a considerable amount of scarce money on shows that are being thrown away. That doesn't feel to me like good value for licence payers, particularly since there is no guarantee that a tweaked-up show is going to be any more successful than the original.
We think about these things a lot, trust me, but I'm not sure there is an ideal solution.
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@Michael
On the subject of The Thick Of It, I thought they gave Ianucci the money to make a pilot, and he went away and made three for the price of one?
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@Aspie
Something like that, I believe. In verite style, where you don't worry about traffic noise or passing planes, nor about visual perfection (and you've got a quick and unfussy director of photography), it's possible to shoot more quickly and achieve more minutes per day, which makes a show more affordable.
Do you think Gavin and Stacey would work like that, or should content dicate style?
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@All
You'll have to talk amongst yourselves for the rest of the week, because I'm off to Edinburgh for quite a lot of comedy, a bit of drama and a bit of music.
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Are you getting married???
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@MisterP
That was genuinely funny. If only you could sustain that for a thirty minute script you might have a comedy writing career!
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Thirty minutes! Are you having a laugh? I dont even have sex that long.
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@Mister P, thirty minutes? Probably says alot about my sexual prowess that I would call that tantric! :0)
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