The Sound of Laughter

My friend Dan alerted me to yet another ill-conceived piece of journalism about comedy, this time on the Guardian blog here. Why a decent publication like the Guardian sees fit to give e-space to a poorly argued piece of opinion (which amounts to "I hate the sound of human laughter") is rather bewildering.

The blogger somewhat shows his hand when he describes one of the most successful and acclaimed comedies of all time, Friends, as a "a production-line comedy". Friends was not as overtly quirky as Seinfeld, but to imply Friends was merely churned out is a serious misjudgment. He suggests that Blackadder and Frasier would be better with the laugh-track taken off. Richard Curtis must be kicking himself as it seems so obvious where he went wrong. Thanks blogger, we'll re-call and re-cut all the DVDs.

The comments underneath the article are, as you would hope, better informed and less prejudiced. Newmediamark helpfully guides us to David Baddiel's more thoughtful piece in The Times from Nov 09 here quoting this bit:

The reason critics don't like sitcoms shot in front of audiences is that it takes away their power. A theatre critic who hates a play that the rest of the audience loved can always tell you it bombed; but a TV critic cannot say that about a sitcom that is storming it. Which leaves him or her with two choices - be sneering about the response of the audience (always a trifle unlovely) or assume it's canned. Which - have I said this before? - it won't be.

I would add to this that reviewing TV is a lonely business, and attracts people who are happy to spend lots of time alone watching television. An audience laughter track implies that a whole bunch of people are having a good time, which some people find alienating or annoying, especially if they are all laughing at jokes that don't seem all that funny. Audience comedy has a 'togetherness' to it that some find irritating, tacky, corny or naff, and are therefore predisposed to like the so-called laugh track.

One can only commend the likes of AA Gill who is at least honest about the prejudice behind his loathing of audience laughter - and laughing out loud in general. I shall never forget his review of Jack Dee's Lead Balloon in the Sunday Times in October 2006, which said this:

This series is part of a new trend of comedy shows that don't make you laugh; you just nod your head and mutter, "That's really funny." It's a Darwinian improvement on the tyranny of the set-up-gag guffaw, and I approve of it. Laughter is ugly and common.

Given his hatred of the physical act of laughing, turning to him for fair criticism of comedy is rather like asking a vicar for reviews of pornography - don't bother asking because he thinks the whole thing is disgusting.

Some comedy/tv critics could simply not be any further away from the sentiments of their readers. Some are merely interested in demonstrating that they would write a much better, wittier, cleverer a comedy if only they had the time and the opportunity. It's all rather sad - a form of bullying, in essence - and it makes the job of producing decent, popular comedy even harder than it already is. Still we continue to try.

Getting out at the Top

It is a curiously British thing to take a sledgehammer to your own success, but that is what is regularly done - and it is, of course, partly the fault of John Cleese.

In the good old days, when your sitcom was commissioned, you milked it for all it was worth - and no-one thought worse of you for so doing. They still do that in the USA. And it's fair enough. If you manage the Herculean task of not only getting your show on air, but getting it recommissioned, and then re-recommissioned, why on earth stop? The odds are that it won't happen again. Note that even the greatest scriptwriters have penned plenty of failures that had all the ingredients but never quite worked. The cake didn't rise. The magic dust blew away. You get idea.

Fawlty Towers, a show that was largely ignored and disliked at first, may have been one at the vanguard of this habit of stopping just when they'd cracked it. Naturally John Cleese and Connie Booth were perfectly at liberty to do whatever they liked with the masterful comedy, and many people admire their restraint in stopping when the show was still good.

But why wouldn't three more series have been good? Episode 13-30 of Fawtly Towers could have explored any number of subjects and themes. Let's face it - they had the audience in the palm of their hand. The characters could all have been sellotaped to a giant bomb and it still would have got huge laughs. Once the engine of a sitcom is running, it'll serve you well for many years to come (unlike the engine out my VW Golf which I was forced to sell last year. That's for another blog - and doesn't even have a humourous story that's usable for a sitcom episode one day).

The Young Ones cut things short early and killed off everyone. Blackadder only gave us four series before hanging up their cod-pieces. Ricky Gervais 'got out at the top' in his own words on both The Office and Extras. Likewise, Corden and Jones seem unwilling to write more episodes of Gavin and Stacey - a lovely, heartwarming comedy with characters I'm only just getting to know. Why stop? I'm sure they have their reasons. New projects often seem more exciting than old ones. Understandable.

But what are British writers in general worried about? Is it concerns about a backlash? It is worries about people thinking you're cashing in your success? The British, after all, are very suspicious of success and wealth.

In America, they celebrate success. This doesn't make American's better people, by any means. Nor does it make them worse - although it does at least mean they can be happy for other people, and therefore not feel the need to constantly self-deprecate, that charming quaint British custom. This, perhaps, explains why their sitcom hits run and run and run. Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld and dozens of shows we've never even heard of make 24 episodes or so at a time. A show could run for ten years. I, for one, am glad there a nearly 200 episodes of Seinfeld. The last series was particularly funny and inventive (except for the finale - eek).

Of course, getting a show to run more than even 12 episodes is really hard work. But is that the reason Brits don't want to continue once they've done 12 or 18? Who knows? All I do know is that getting a new series up and running, and then to have it taken to the nations hearts, is even more hard work than keeping an old show fresh. I'm heartened that the writers of Peep Show keep bashing on. The fans love it. They cast and writers enjoy making it. Why stop success?