This is the very final chapter of Writing That Sitcom which you can get as an eBook here:
In order to give your sitcom the greatest chance of success, it has to be truthful and distinctive, something you’re uniquely qualified to write, or have spent time immersing yourself in. You have to pour yourself into it. Because writing comedy is so personal, it’s almost impossible not to take failure personally.
But the stark depressing reality is, your chances of success are very low. It’s partly because there aren’t that many sitcoms on TV any more. In the early 80s, there were plenty of sitcoms on BBC1 – about three or four a week – as well as sitcoms on BBC2, ITV, including local ITV franchises like Central, Thames, Yorkshire or LWT. Then Channel 4 came along and there were even more. And the vast majority of these were writer-led.
BBC1 does not broadcast the number of comedies that it used to. ITV have only made a handful in the last fifteen years. There are more digital channels, but very few have the funds to make more than one or two sitcoms a year, if that.
You’re also competing with hundreds of writers, stand-up comedians and writer-performers, all churning out scripts trying to get shows on a small number of channels with relatively few comedy slots. That’s why I’d advise looking at radio so strongly.
Failure, then is very common. Almost certain, in fact. On top of this, you attend meetings to talk about ideas, which go nowhere. You send treatments to producers – sometimes they’ve asked to read them – and you don’t hear anything for months, if ever. And even if you start writing a pilot script, or your show is being made for TV, you get endless notes which essentially say ‘This script isn’t good enough yet’. Or at least ‘We don’t love this enough yet’.
Failure is all around. It’s part of the job. The only useful question is how to deal with it and get used to it. And comedy writers, if they're not careful, will apply sitcom logic to their own lives. In sitcoms, everyone gets their just desserts. Our hero triumphs. Kind of. Our villain fails. Sort of. Justice is done. In a way. The point is that in sitcoms, things don't happen for inexplicable reasons. That's bad plotting. But they do in real life - and especially in the life of comedy writer. Ironic, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how hard you worked, how much you believed in your success, how much you felt ‘the time is right’ and how much it would have made the sacrifices worth it. They’ve turned down your show. And that’s the end of it. Deal with it. But how?
Coping Strategies
Everyone has their own way of coping, but it usually helps to bear a few things in mind.
You don’t know the real reason for your rejection and you probably never will. The commissioner and/or controller has totally different concerns from you – and your show is very low down on their list of ‘Things to Give a Toss About’. It may be they have a similar show, or think they do. Or are pretending to themselves or someone else you don’t know that they might. Or they just don't like your show. Or they love it but their boss hates it. Or think that no-one will watch it. Or they never liked it, and they didn’t commission it and they’re not going to recommission it. Or their sister’s boyfriend son said your show sucked.
The point is: it doesn’t matter. It’s not about you or your show. It never was. It was only about you to you.
The whole business is like a crap shoot and you only get to throw one of the two dice. You ultimately have no overall control in what is largely a game of luck in the first place. So there’s no point getting all worked up and stressed about this. Or start scoring points. It doesn’t get you anywhere.
This is easier said than done, of course. I’ve had successful shows cancelled for reasons like ‘We feel this format has run its course.’ Who knows what that really means? One time this happened, we won a significant award for the show a few weeks after the cancellation of it. There is a temptation to crow and blow raspberries and shout ‘daaaah! Told you!’ but, again, it doesn't get you anywhere.
Commissioners and controllers make their decisions based on criteria that only they truly understand. Even if they knew about the award, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. So, much better to expend that crowing energy on thinking of a new show.
We’re writers. We’re not in control of the industry. And neither should we be. But what we do control are the words on the pages of our scripts.
All we can do is make them as good as they can be. And try and enjoy that process. And if a TV channel doesn't want to spend £250k per episode shooting my sitcom, then that's not the end of the world, surely? Nobody died. Okay, maybe I didn’t get paid much, or paid at all, and that’s annoying, discussion of which will be part of the next book.
But if we start looking for cosmic reasons for everything, or turn in on ourselves, we're going to get confused, angry and disappointed. This probably describes most writers you know, but you don’t have to be like them.
If you want to see the world through the eyes of an actual TV Commissioner, why not have a listen to episode 86 of Sitcom Geeks in which Dave Cohen and I spoke to Saskia Schuster? You can also hear me explain why I don’t want to know the reason why a TV series isn’t commissioned. Because there is only one reason. And she was quite surprised.
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