So what are we going to do about scripted comedy?
To you and I ‘scripted comedy’ means situation comedy aka ‘sitcom’. That’s what we love. That’s probably why you read this weekly blog every Friday. You might well be working on a script, or have a few ideas, or have written scripts in the past and are wondering if you should bother doing it again, or enter a competition. Or should you give up all together?
Headlines like this recent one that appeared in Broadcast about the Edinburgh TV festival should give us all pause: “Is it curtains for scripted comedy?”
Are we wasting our time writing scripts and trying get sitcoms on TV?
I would say we are not wasting our time at all, but we must not be naïve.
First, I’d argue that rumours of the death of sitcom have been greatly exaggerated. On the one hand, if anyone knows what’s being commissioned for television and what isn’t, it’s Broadcast and the speakers at the Edinburgh TV festival. So they’re not wrong.
But.
We’re not wasting our time trying write sitcom scripts because, as I often say, I know two things for certain (not including death and taxes). I will reiterate them without fear of contradiction:
THING #1: People like laughing.
THING #2: People like watching TV.
Therefore, people love watching funny TV.
Fashions wax and wane, screens change in size. We can talk about how Comedy is Important and Brings Us Together as a Society, and gives us Shared Values, yadda, yadda, yadda. But we don’t need to be too pompous about it. We want to laugh. It feels good. And so audiences will seek out comedy.
There is demand. We just have a supply problem.
Actually, we don’t even have a supply problem. There is more access to comedy now that at any point in my life. Thanks to streaming platforms, Freeview, iPlayer, BitTorrent and old DVDs, you can watch just about anything that’s ever been broadcast.
Isn’t that brilliant? When I was a teenager, I had to wait a whole week for my one chance to watch an episode of Blackadder or Red Dwarf. Now my teenagers can watch almost anything anytime on any device. My kids are rewatching Brooklyn 99. With my eldest, I’m watching Arrested Development and Seinfeld(Netflix) and Yes Prime Minister (DVD). My youngest has watched a ton of Simpsons (Disney+). People are still watching scripted comedy. It really isn’t dead.
So when we ask the question “Is it curtains for scripted comedy?” the answer has to be “no”. Or, to quote the bawdy BBC scripted comedy Up Pompeii (you thought Plebs was original?), “Nay, Nay and Thrice Nay.” The only problem comedy has right now is supplying new comedy. Which comes down to price. The article says:
In UKTV’s Spotlight session, the broadcaster revealed it has rowed back on scripted comedy almost entirely, despite having made a concerted effort to champion burgeoning comic talent in the unscripted arena.
Chief creative officer Richard Watsham called the decision “emotionally really gutting” but explained that the economics of scripted comedy are simply no longer viable, with drama working much better at UKTV both in terms of finances and viewership.
The article says that Kevin Lygo was still commissioning some comedy but said “Very few [ITV] comedies get more than 2m viewers over a 30-day period,” while the channel was rather wanting 5m.
Readers of this blog might be shouting at their device, “That’s because you’re not making my scripted comedy!”.
I get it. That is an entirely understandable reaction. I have it too! I have a half-hour mainstream spec sitcom script ready to go. I wrote with my writing partner, Richard Hurst – with whom I worked on Miranda and Bluestone 42. We wouldn’t have written it if we didn’t think it could get 5m viewers. It would be perfect for ITV1 or BBC1 at 8pm.
We wrote it on spec because we really believe in the idea and there’s no money. That’s what the Broadcast article keeps circling back to. International financing isn’t just more common but the norm. That means that your comedy has to work in more than one market.
Some comedy can and does work all over the world. Mr Bean has had a massive success internationally. But writing a sitcom with an international audience in mind? That’s a tough challenge. The writers of The Good Life or Porridge did not have to worry about that because, in those days, the BBC just made comedy for the British (which is, after all, the first ‘B’ in BBC) and paid the full cost of it. Those days are gone.
If you’re a producer or a production company, your chances of long-terms success seem far higher with a generic drama like a police procedural. Broadcasters can order them in huge batches, pre-sell them abroad and the whole package makes sense. It’s safer. Comedy is volatile and weird. It can explode. In fact, I paint a nightmare comedy scenario here:
Original half hour comedies like Brooklyn 99 or The Good Life are now a very hard sell. You’ll keep hearing the same phrase: “It’s really tough out there.” That is absolutely true. I can personally testify to that as someone who pays his mortgage with scripted comedy, so I’m rather invested in the current state of affairs. And it sounds a lot like writing a scripted comedy a waste of time.
No. Isn’t a waste of time. For the reasons I gave earlier which are, I believe, immutable.
THING #1: People like laughing.
THING #2: People like watching TV.
So if you want to write scripted TV comedy, you are not wasting your time.
But we cannot carry on as we were. I can’t. My home is at risk if I keep writing sitcom scripts on spec. Or pitching ideas with little prospect of a script commission. It’s really tough out there. This new normal or market failure - whatever you want to call it - focusses the mind of the comedy writer.
So what now?
Next time, I’ll lay out a few options. So if you’ve not already done so, please subscribe (for free):
And I’d be really interested in your views and thoughts. What are you doing to adjust to the new normal, or this temporary market malfunction? Please leave a comment.
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