Paul Mayhew Archer on Sitcoms

Things to think about when writing and creating a sitcom

The Format

1. 90% of writing is deciding what not to write. Keep it simple. Focus.
2. What are your centres of action? Keep to two or three. The more characters you have, the fewer the centres of action (eg Dad's Army - they're all in the hall. We don't follow them home so the focus is simple.)
3. What is it really about? How is it about us? (eg Steptoe and Son isn't just about rag and bone men, it's about parents and children. Porridge is about experience and innocence - a surrogate family.)

The Characters

1. Are the characters archetypes or clichés? Are they bigger than life but still recognisably from life? (Fawlty is a huge monster, but we recognise his frustration. As in the gourmet dinner episode when he beats the car: we've all felt that frustration but we don't go to his lengths to express it.)
2. Are you showing not telling? Try to reveal character through action.
3. Are you avoiding plain backstory and exposition? Try always to give characters an attitude to what they're telling us or are being told.
4. What are the key relationships? Sitcoms are about relationships as much as about characters and situations. (Del Boy wouldn't be Del Boy without Rodney)
5. Give the central character relationships that bring out different aspects of his personality. For example Fawlty is subservient with Sybil but a cruel tyrant with Manuel. Blackadder is a crawler with the Queen but a sarcastic bully to Baldrick. The simplest way to do this is to put the characters in some form of hierarchy.

The Plot

1. The aim of an episode is to chase your characters up a tree and then hurl rocks at them. Just make life more and more problematical for your characters - and just when they think they've solved the problem... make it worse.
2. What are the central characters doing? Have they got a story? Are they initiating their problems and making them worse and/or solving them? Is the story letting them go through a range of emotions in the episode? Give them a story which takes them from triumph and despair and back again so we can see both.

The Comedy

1. Are your characters and relationships funny? Do your characters have a signature joke or characteristic? (The first episode of The Vicar of Dibley where the vicar meets the villagers for the first time exemplifies this.)
2. Are your plots enabling your characters to be funny? Are they offering opportunities for inappropriate behaviour? (There are lots of examples from The Office, Alan Partridge, or practically anything.)
3. The aim of page one is to make people turn to page two. Start funny.
4. Does each scene have a comic angle/attitude?
5. Make use of comedy techniques:
   1. Colour and hyperbole.
   2. Comic juxtaposition.
   3. Twisting the familiar.
   4. The gap. Flattering the viewers by making them work out the joke.
   5. Surprise through ambiguity - sending the audience the wrong way.
   6. Setting up jokes properly.
   7. Visual jokes.
   8. Rule of three.
   9. Comic observation.

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