Radio Sitcom

Situation comedies - recorded with or without an audience - are a staple of our output for Radio 4.

Current and recent narrative radio sitcoms include:
Audience: Rigor Mortis, Clare In The Community, Absolute Power, Old Harry's Game
Non-audience: Ed Reardon's Week, Rubbish, Trevor's World of Sport.
When you are submitting a script, remember these points:

Please type the script in the correct format. Use one side of the paper only, and pay attention to such abbreviations as F/X (sound effects), GRAMS (recorded music), (D) (distort) and V/O (voice over).
Don't forget to put page numbers in your script.
You can find a template for radio scripts in the Script Smart formatting program.
Very approximately, one side of A4 typed lasts about fifty seconds in an audience show and forty seconds in a non-audience show.
Slots for programmes vary, but the most common are half an hour (28 minutes in reality), although the 11:00-11:30 pm slot on Radio 4 can be split into two quarter hours (14 minutes in reality).
Time your script by reading it to yourself, but a half hour script is normally six to seven thousand words.
You should indicate clearly whether your script is audience or non-audience. Again, listen to the network's sitcom output before deciding, but in general an audience sitcom requires its jokes to be more obvious, punchy and frequent - and for scenes to end on a big laugh.
Avoid providing biographies of your characters at the front of your script. The reader wants no more information than a listener would expect, so name, sex, age and accent (if applicable) is all that's required.
Preface the script with a few lines describing what the idea is about.
Give synopses of future episodes at the end of the script: just short breakdowns of each episode so we can see how the series will develop.

You can find out more about the Radio 4 commissioning process on the Radio 4 website.