Let's take a moment to dispel another myth about breaking into writing. The myth in question that it's all about the new, clever, original idea for a show - an idea that's never been done before and is so self-evidently brilliant that the originator of this idea will be showered with script-commissions.
There are numerous problems with this notion, mostly because it isn't true. And you can tell when someone's falling for it, because they are very protective and secretive about their idea. They will ask you to sign some sort of agreement before sending it. They are paranoid about having the idea stolen because they think they've hit a magic formula that will act as a wand, opening locked doors and ensuring success.
The idea is an attractive one because it feels like it's just a question of coming up with the right idea, rather than spending years and years learning a craft. We see dumb luck all around us - especially on the internet, where one small idea goes global very quickly. One three minute song is the beginning of a pop career. But lots of decent web ideas fail. Lots of pop songs don't lead to successful long careers. The Big Idea myth is the writing equivalent of this.
You can also tell when someone has bought into this myth when they tell you their idea - and you tell them that their idea has already been done. They often get angry at this point, because you're raining on their parade. They are being confronted with the stark reality that it's not ideas that create success but the execution of them. But as Cromwell said to Charles the First, it's all in the execution.
For Example
I've been working on a show that might well go into production at some point soon - and was explaining the premise to a fellow writer. I explained the overall idea of the show, and said it's a bit like [insert name of successful show here]. There is an overall resemblance in terms of place and tone. I went on to explain a key dynamic/relationship within the the show. And he said 'Oh, you mean like [insert name of another successful show] here'. This hadn't occurred to me, but it was correct. If I'd been a more inexperienced writer, I'd have been crushed, or worried by this relevation. Or offended by this friend's suggestion of similarity to another show that I hadn't spotted.
Come on, it's 2012. Humanity have been telling stories and writing them down for about four thousand years. If it's not in the Bible, or a one of Jesus' parables, it's in the Gilgamesh epic, or Homer probably did it, or Ovid. It'll be somewhere in the Arabian Nights stories, and/or Chaucer and/or Shakespeare. And they'll be two successful movies and nine unsuccessful ones about the same thing. Who cares?
Hut 33
A while ago, I wrote a sitcom for Radio 4 set in Bletchley Park. It was only after I started writing it that I realised that the set-up of the three main characters was exactly the same as ITV's Only When I Laugh, which I used to watch growing. It's a working class man (James Bolam/Tom Goodman Hill) against a posh man (Peter Bowles/Robert Bathurst) with a peacemaker stuck in between (Christopher Strauli/Fergus Craig). Only When I Laugh was in a hospital. Hut 33 was in Bletchley Park during World War Two. This didn't bother me at all.
The fact is an idea will not open doors. A decent script might open a few. A really good script and a bag full of ideas might open some more over time. But there's a misapprehension that it's possible to come up with a silver bullet of an idea that guarantees success as a writer. It's a myth.
How to Succeed as a Writer
If you want to be a writer, you do need to come up with good ideas, sure, but then you need to show that you can write them. If your idea show promise, and your execution looks good, you need to show that you can write several episodes of that idea. And you need to be able to following through on that and be able to write.
Ultimately, there's no substitute for just bashing away at a script, and rewriting it, and then writing more and more. But if you need a bit of help, and you want to write comedy and sitcoms, consider coming to a day-long course with me and the highly experienced comedy writer Dave Cohen (sorry, another plug) on April 20th (for Radio Comedy) and/or 4th May (for TV Sitcom). More details here. I'm not promising we'll tell you everything there is to know, because nobody knows that, but we might be able to point you in the direction - and help you learn from our mistakes. Plus you might meet a kindred spirit and form a writing partnership. Or help you feel like you're not wasting your time. Maybe see you there.
Showing posts with label hut 33. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hut 33. Show all posts
Monday, 26 March 2012
Sunday, 17 July 2011
What's It All About?
A while ago, I was asked to write a slightly tongue-in-cheek article about the ingredients of a successful sitcom. The result of that is here. In short, a successful sitcoms needs characters, conflict, confinement and catastrophe. Crucial to success is also casting. And a catchphrase is nice too, if you can bear it.
I'm happy to stand by this. It is true. And it's possible to have a perfectly good and successful sitcom with those ingredients.
But a great sitcom has another ingredient. It's a certain je ne sais quoi. Or a certain something, as the French say. The show needs a philosophy, an attitude or a stance. It needs to capture something about the human condition, or the times in which we live. These are the shows we still want to watch on Dave or UK Gold. The hairstyles may date, and the cultural reference points change, but the show says something.
So What?
I've been thinking about this recently as I've been doodling on a few new ideas for sitcoms, and thinking of characters that seem interesting and funny, and scenarios and situations that feel fresh and fertile. But I keep asking myself the question 'So what?' It's a good question to keep asking yourself because somewhere along the line, someone is going to ask you that question - a comedy executive or a commissioner. They ask questions like 'Why would I watch this show?' or 'What's this show really about?' There's no point getting cross or rolling your eyes. They may not know why they're asking that question. They may have read in a manual that it's a good question to ask that sounds plausible. Or they may realise that good shows are about something.
The Office
The Office was about funny characters, and had good stories, conflict, confinement and all that. It was very recognisable and felt fresh. But it felt like it was about something. About being trapped in a dead-end job and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Or about the lunatics surrounding you. Tim (Martin Freeman) was really the eye of the story and one sensed that he could see his life and chance of happiness slipping through his fingers. It infused every episode. And when Tim did something about it, and finally said something to Dawn, and David Brent himself seemed to change after the love of a good women, the show was, essentially, over.
Just Jokes
If you've only got jokes, you ride or fall by every joke. And when the jokes misfire, as they will surely do now and then, the audience may realise there's nothing underneath, and that the whole thing is artifice. They already know it is, and are willing to suspend their disbelief - because a really good show is about more than characters and jokes. Look at the great sitcoms, and you'll see they're not just confined characters coping with catastrophes: Only Fools and Horses, Yes Minister, The Good Life, Steptoe, One Foot in the Grave, Dad's Army, Reggie Perrin. The list goes on and on. Great shows that said something, and still say somthing.
Friends isn't about Friends
One of the most successful shows of recent times is Friends, which is a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right. It's about six friends. That's it. Well, not quite. The creators of the show spotted there was a strange post-college, pre-family time of life when twenty-somethings relied on friends and hung out with each other, and were wanting to form close-knit groups that functioned like families. They were right. The show captures that, without ever saying it. They also thought that Monica and Joey would be the 'hot couple' for the show, which shows they didn't get everything right.
But you don't need to get everything right at first. You start with a fairly good idea of where the show is and what it's about, and with a bit of luck, an open mind, a good cast and following wind, you might just make a great show.
Hut 33
It is clearly absurd to make a leap to this largely ignored radio sitcom what I wrote, but I can only speak from experience. When I had the idea of setting a sitcom in Bletchley Park during World War Two, it would have been easy to have written a show about boffin odd-balls like Alan Turing doing daft things. Like a 1940s Big Bang Theory. But I felt that would become fairly tiresome fairly soon. And so I wondered about other themes that emerged during World War Two - and remembered my wife telling me that one of the main reasons for social reform after the war was how our nation were forced to work alongside each other, rich alongside poor, elites alongside outcasts. And both sides were pretty appalled.
And so I wondered whether throwing two characters together from different ends of the spectrum could work. Hey presto, we have a posh, highly-educated, elitist Oxford Professor (Robert Bathurst), and a self-taught, working class, Marxist Geordie (Tom Goodman-Hill) Both saw the world through completely different eyes. And both were right. And both were wrong. And it made writing the show a lot easier than writing Enigma jokes. After all, did you hear the one about the German and the Enigma Machine? Me neither.
I'm happy to stand by this. It is true. And it's possible to have a perfectly good and successful sitcom with those ingredients.
But a great sitcom has another ingredient. It's a certain je ne sais quoi. Or a certain something, as the French say. The show needs a philosophy, an attitude or a stance. It needs to capture something about the human condition, or the times in which we live. These are the shows we still want to watch on Dave or UK Gold. The hairstyles may date, and the cultural reference points change, but the show says something.
So What?
I've been thinking about this recently as I've been doodling on a few new ideas for sitcoms, and thinking of characters that seem interesting and funny, and scenarios and situations that feel fresh and fertile. But I keep asking myself the question 'So what?' It's a good question to keep asking yourself because somewhere along the line, someone is going to ask you that question - a comedy executive or a commissioner. They ask questions like 'Why would I watch this show?' or 'What's this show really about?' There's no point getting cross or rolling your eyes. They may not know why they're asking that question. They may have read in a manual that it's a good question to ask that sounds plausible. Or they may realise that good shows are about something.
The Office
The Office was about funny characters, and had good stories, conflict, confinement and all that. It was very recognisable and felt fresh. But it felt like it was about something. About being trapped in a dead-end job and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Or about the lunatics surrounding you. Tim (Martin Freeman) was really the eye of the story and one sensed that he could see his life and chance of happiness slipping through his fingers. It infused every episode. And when Tim did something about it, and finally said something to Dawn, and David Brent himself seemed to change after the love of a good women, the show was, essentially, over.
Just Jokes
If you've only got jokes, you ride or fall by every joke. And when the jokes misfire, as they will surely do now and then, the audience may realise there's nothing underneath, and that the whole thing is artifice. They already know it is, and are willing to suspend their disbelief - because a really good show is about more than characters and jokes. Look at the great sitcoms, and you'll see they're not just confined characters coping with catastrophes: Only Fools and Horses, Yes Minister, The Good Life, Steptoe, One Foot in the Grave, Dad's Army, Reggie Perrin. The list goes on and on. Great shows that said something, and still say somthing.
Friends isn't about Friends
One of the most successful shows of recent times is Friends, which is a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right. It's about six friends. That's it. Well, not quite. The creators of the show spotted there was a strange post-college, pre-family time of life when twenty-somethings relied on friends and hung out with each other, and were wanting to form close-knit groups that functioned like families. They were right. The show captures that, without ever saying it. They also thought that Monica and Joey would be the 'hot couple' for the show, which shows they didn't get everything right.
But you don't need to get everything right at first. You start with a fairly good idea of where the show is and what it's about, and with a bit of luck, an open mind, a good cast and following wind, you might just make a great show.
Hut 33
It is clearly absurd to make a leap to this largely ignored radio sitcom what I wrote, but I can only speak from experience. When I had the idea of setting a sitcom in Bletchley Park during World War Two, it would have been easy to have written a show about boffin odd-balls like Alan Turing doing daft things. Like a 1940s Big Bang Theory. But I felt that would become fairly tiresome fairly soon. And so I wondered about other themes that emerged during World War Two - and remembered my wife telling me that one of the main reasons for social reform after the war was how our nation were forced to work alongside each other, rich alongside poor, elites alongside outcasts. And both sides were pretty appalled.
And so I wondered whether throwing two characters together from different ends of the spectrum could work. Hey presto, we have a posh, highly-educated, elitist Oxford Professor (Robert Bathurst), and a self-taught, working class, Marxist Geordie (Tom Goodman-Hill) Both saw the world through completely different eyes. And both were right. And both were wrong. And it made writing the show a lot easier than writing Enigma jokes. After all, did you hear the one about the German and the Enigma Machine? Me neither.
Monday, 6 December 2010
The Tricky Fifth Episode
Last night, BBC7 broadcast Episode 5 of Series 2 of Hut 33. It's called Getting Heavy and the official blurb said:
Hut 33's record is the worst in the complex. Charles is mortified with shame, Archie is desperate to prove himself and Gordon wants to impress a girl he has just met. They break into Hut 7b to get extra information on a message they are decoding, which turns out not to be a good idea.
Getting Heavy was easily the mot difficult episode to write of that series. And it happens every series I've ever done. You write episodes 1 and 2 fairly slowly, as you're just character's voices into your head and feeling your way. Then episodes 3 and 4 are written in fairly good time, as the ideas are flowing and the characters are talking. Then comes Episode 5, which is like pulling teeth. It takes lots of drafts and just doesn't want to settle down - leaving you about a week to write Episode 6.
One of the problems for me is that with episode 5, I start writing the script before the story outline is in place. Flush with the 'success' of writing episodes 3 and 4 quickly and con brio, the temptation is to dive in to writing dialogue when the plot doesn't actually work. There's also the desire to save time and cut corners - but this normally backfires and I often end up deleting pages and pages of dialogue.
I'm aware that others write differently from me. One writer I spoke to the other day, who writes a much loved Radio 4 series, starts with a couple of slightly garbled pages of an outline and then writes a very very long script before he starts cutting and redrafting. I tend to start with a fairly long and detailed outline with some key jokes and bits of dialogue in it, so the process of actually starting to write the script isn't too painful. Sometimes, I abandon the ending and come up with a better one en route. But I have to start with something in place.
So Getting Heavy was one of those tricky ones that took six full drafts to crack. It was only in the fifth draft that I deleted a whole plot strand about radioactivity, which is was one of the reasons I wanted to do an episode in the first place. It thought it would be funny if our characters not really understanding Uranium, touching some and then being bundled in a van and taken off to some secret facility where they would be tested, poked and prodded. There was even a part where they thought they might have special super-powers as a result of the exposure to radiation based on Gordon's comic. This sounds rather preposterous but let's not forget that in 1941, not an awful lot was widely known about radiation. The first H-Bomb was still to be invented. In the end, we had a Quarantine episode in a different show, so the idea of being sealed off was covered in the series.
What I was able to retain, however, was the rivalry about sex-lives between Archie and Charles - and then Gordon. Archie is full of bravado, but short on delivery. Charles is aloof and unimpressed by innuendo, but has finally given into Mrs Best's pestering. Then step forward Gordon, who becomes the star of this show. Once he finds his woman, loses his virginity - he thinks - he becomes a man.
Two parallels spring to mind. One is Arnold Rimmer's alter-ego in Red Dwarf who is known as Ace - and says 'Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast' played by the splendid Chris Barrie (who, let's not forget was also Brittas in the hugely popular Brittas Empire). The other is Harry Enfield's whining Kevin character, the teenager who hangs around with Kevin and complains about everything. He radically transforms once he's had sex, becoming polite to his parents and very contented.
Then, of course, comes undoing this transformation since one of the rules of sitcom is that they end up back where they started (unlike in movies where characters are changed by their 'journey').
The Views of the Author
I should add that I don't share this view about losing one's virginity. It doesn't 'make you a man' or turn you into a contented polite person. We're back to the theme of myself as the writer having different views from the characters that I write. I hope, if anything, that this episode demonstrates that the hypocrisy and lying that goes on around sex is rather feeble and very pervasive.
And let's be honest about this. There was War on and people weren't sure when their time was up. So there was a lot of it about. In Hut 33, I was hoping, where possible, to painting a picture of Wartime Britain as it was rather than how we would chose to remember it. If there's no truth in a show, it's just jokes and won't last. If there's no jokes, well, that's another story...
Hut 33's record is the worst in the complex. Charles is mortified with shame, Archie is desperate to prove himself and Gordon wants to impress a girl he has just met. They break into Hut 7b to get extra information on a message they are decoding, which turns out not to be a good idea.
Getting Heavy was easily the mot difficult episode to write of that series. And it happens every series I've ever done. You write episodes 1 and 2 fairly slowly, as you're just character's voices into your head and feeling your way. Then episodes 3 and 4 are written in fairly good time, as the ideas are flowing and the characters are talking. Then comes Episode 5, which is like pulling teeth. It takes lots of drafts and just doesn't want to settle down - leaving you about a week to write Episode 6.
One of the problems for me is that with episode 5, I start writing the script before the story outline is in place. Flush with the 'success' of writing episodes 3 and 4 quickly and con brio, the temptation is to dive in to writing dialogue when the plot doesn't actually work. There's also the desire to save time and cut corners - but this normally backfires and I often end up deleting pages and pages of dialogue.
I'm aware that others write differently from me. One writer I spoke to the other day, who writes a much loved Radio 4 series, starts with a couple of slightly garbled pages of an outline and then writes a very very long script before he starts cutting and redrafting. I tend to start with a fairly long and detailed outline with some key jokes and bits of dialogue in it, so the process of actually starting to write the script isn't too painful. Sometimes, I abandon the ending and come up with a better one en route. But I have to start with something in place.
So Getting Heavy was one of those tricky ones that took six full drafts to crack. It was only in the fifth draft that I deleted a whole plot strand about radioactivity, which is was one of the reasons I wanted to do an episode in the first place. It thought it would be funny if our characters not really understanding Uranium, touching some and then being bundled in a van and taken off to some secret facility where they would be tested, poked and prodded. There was even a part where they thought they might have special super-powers as a result of the exposure to radiation based on Gordon's comic. This sounds rather preposterous but let's not forget that in 1941, not an awful lot was widely known about radiation. The first H-Bomb was still to be invented. In the end, we had a Quarantine episode in a different show, so the idea of being sealed off was covered in the series.
What I was able to retain, however, was the rivalry about sex-lives between Archie and Charles - and then Gordon. Archie is full of bravado, but short on delivery. Charles is aloof and unimpressed by innuendo, but has finally given into Mrs Best's pestering. Then step forward Gordon, who becomes the star of this show. Once he finds his woman, loses his virginity - he thinks - he becomes a man.
Two parallels spring to mind. One is Arnold Rimmer's alter-ego in Red Dwarf who is known as Ace - and says 'Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast' played by the splendid Chris Barrie (who, let's not forget was also Brittas in the hugely popular Brittas Empire). The other is Harry Enfield's whining Kevin character, the teenager who hangs around with Kevin and complains about everything. He radically transforms once he's had sex, becoming polite to his parents and very contented.
Then, of course, comes undoing this transformation since one of the rules of sitcom is that they end up back where they started (unlike in movies where characters are changed by their 'journey').
The Views of the Author
I should add that I don't share this view about losing one's virginity. It doesn't 'make you a man' or turn you into a contented polite person. We're back to the theme of myself as the writer having different views from the characters that I write. I hope, if anything, that this episode demonstrates that the hypocrisy and lying that goes on around sex is rather feeble and very pervasive.
And let's be honest about this. There was War on and people weren't sure when their time was up. So there was a lot of it about. In Hut 33, I was hoping, where possible, to painting a picture of Wartime Britain as it was rather than how we would chose to remember it. If there's no truth in a show, it's just jokes and won't last. If there's no jokes, well, that's another story...
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
A Monopoly on Comedy - and Character
Episode 3 of Hut 33 is called ‘Yellow’ (at time of writing being here). And it starts with one my favourite scenes of the series. It throws the character into a simple game of Monopoly.
Our regular three characters, Archie, Gordon and Charles, plus Mrs Best, play this relatively new game and it should be no big deal. But it’s a great opportunity to express character, prejudice, snobbery and general anger. It was useful to the plot of that episode because it highlighted what a terrible Christmas they were having. And therefore the prospect of having to spend New Year’s Eve together in Quarantine would simply too much to bear. (This is what happens by the way. They are Quarantined with suspected Yellow Fever, which gives rise to tunnelling and escape plans.) In the first scene, though, the game of monopoly turns into a large political dispute about the ownership of property which was true to the characters. And the audience seemed to enjoy it – because they were starting to know the characters as well as I did.
In essence, one of the main tricks of sitcom is taking characters out of their comfort zone – without it seeming contrived or ridiculous. (It’s up to you to decide whether I’ve been successful in that.)
Mistakes in Writing Sitcom
Along the way, then, we can note that this is an area where many first-time writers fall down. New writers are tempted to make their characters sit around and say ‘funny things’ rather than get up, move around and ‘be’ funny. Witty characters swapping jokes and witticisms is okay for three pages – Hut 33 attempts to have our characters in the Hut for the first three or four pages talking about stuff to set up the episode and reintroduce the characters – but it doesn’t sustain for forty pages, which is what you need. Plus, they're not swapping straight jokes but revealing amusing character traits.
It's a good test of how well you know your characters. When I was setting up Think the Unthinkable, I tried to work out what sort of coffee each of the characters would order at Starbucks. I didn't actually have them order coffee in Starbucks until Series 3, I think, but you need to know everything about your characters, or at least be able to work it out. Where do they shop? What newspaper do the read, if any? How would they go about organising a hen/stage night? What would happen if they woke up in Narnia or Alice's Wonderland?
This is why my current practice is to think up storylines quite early in setting up a new sitcom. Once I have my characters in some rough shape or another - sometimes it only needs three adjectives - it's worth thinking up scenarios, scenes and sketches, and then combining these characters with other characters in the show. After some time spend doing this, one often finds that one character has nothing to say, or little to add, or just isn't very funny. This character is normally expendable. If your show is focussed around this character, you've got a problem (and no show).
Ban Backstory
Doing this also avoids falling into the trap of backstory and background which is often irrelevant. You have no hope of conveying in a script and is therefore pointless. Characters need to be straining forwards, not harking back (unless their main characteristic is being nostalgic/reactionary). Remember, what did Geraldine do before she became the Vicar of Dibley? We don't know. We never really find out. Only very late on do we meet one or two people from her past. What drives our characters forward in any given situation? That's what we all need to know for all our characters.
Our regular three characters, Archie, Gordon and Charles, plus Mrs Best, play this relatively new game and it should be no big deal. But it’s a great opportunity to express character, prejudice, snobbery and general anger. It was useful to the plot of that episode because it highlighted what a terrible Christmas they were having. And therefore the prospect of having to spend New Year’s Eve together in Quarantine would simply too much to bear. (This is what happens by the way. They are Quarantined with suspected Yellow Fever, which gives rise to tunnelling and escape plans.) In the first scene, though, the game of monopoly turns into a large political dispute about the ownership of property which was true to the characters. And the audience seemed to enjoy it – because they were starting to know the characters as well as I did.
In essence, one of the main tricks of sitcom is taking characters out of their comfort zone – without it seeming contrived or ridiculous. (It’s up to you to decide whether I’ve been successful in that.)
Mistakes in Writing Sitcom
Along the way, then, we can note that this is an area where many first-time writers fall down. New writers are tempted to make their characters sit around and say ‘funny things’ rather than get up, move around and ‘be’ funny. Witty characters swapping jokes and witticisms is okay for three pages – Hut 33 attempts to have our characters in the Hut for the first three or four pages talking about stuff to set up the episode and reintroduce the characters – but it doesn’t sustain for forty pages, which is what you need. Plus, they're not swapping straight jokes but revealing amusing character traits.
It's a good test of how well you know your characters. When I was setting up Think the Unthinkable, I tried to work out what sort of coffee each of the characters would order at Starbucks. I didn't actually have them order coffee in Starbucks until Series 3, I think, but you need to know everything about your characters, or at least be able to work it out. Where do they shop? What newspaper do the read, if any? How would they go about organising a hen/stage night? What would happen if they woke up in Narnia or Alice's Wonderland?
This is why my current practice is to think up storylines quite early in setting up a new sitcom. Once I have my characters in some rough shape or another - sometimes it only needs three adjectives - it's worth thinking up scenarios, scenes and sketches, and then combining these characters with other characters in the show. After some time spend doing this, one often finds that one character has nothing to say, or little to add, or just isn't very funny. This character is normally expendable. If your show is focussed around this character, you've got a problem (and no show).
Ban Backstory
Doing this also avoids falling into the trap of backstory and background which is often irrelevant. You have no hope of conveying in a script and is therefore pointless. Characters need to be straining forwards, not harking back (unless their main characteristic is being nostalgic/reactionary). Remember, what did Geraldine do before she became the Vicar of Dibley? We don't know. We never really find out. Only very late on do we meet one or two people from her past. What drives our characters forward in any given situation? That's what we all need to know for all our characters.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
A Busload of Quakers
‘Pigs n Spivs’ is the title of Ep 2 of series 2 of Hut 33 (now on iPlayer here) I'm not convinced this is the best title,since it implies that there is more than one pig and one spiv in the episode, when there isn’t. There is one spiv who sells our starving codebreakers a job-lot of bacon. Which is still in pig form. Unfortunately, they discover the origins of this pig and could be in serious trouble.
The difficulty in writing Hut 33 is always finding our characters things to do that the audience can understand, since they don't really have a hope of comprehending the actual codebreaking part of their work. I've read several books on the subject and I struggle to retain the necessary information in my head simultaneously to put it all together. The chance of doing this and getting laughs is almost impossible. Episodes about codebreaking in Hut 33 are fairly rare.
This is why the theme of Pigs and Spivs is shortages and hunger. It's something that we can all identify with and get our heads around. Food was in short supply for the whole war and an unpleasant reality for all but the wealthiest. World War Two ration were meagre. Most of us today could eat their weekly ration in a day. So it's good to keep coming back to that.
Quakers, Baptists and Jokes
There is one other point of minor interest on this episode. Hopefully my explanation of it will give a small insight into how you sometimes make a joke fit the context. I spotted a comment on someone’s blog about Hut 33. (Clearly during the original Radio 4 transmission of Hut 33, I’m regularly googled ‘Hut 33’ in order to find out what people think of it). This blogger, a wife of a Baptist minister, blogged about her irritation that the writer of Hut 33 seemed ignorant of certain religious groups and their drinking habits. This is particularly poignant as I am not ignorant of certain religious groups, since I cheerfully belong to one myself (yes, I'm a Christian. There. I've said it) and I studied theology at University, so I know a bit about all this stuff.
The joke in question is Archie’s joke in response to his discovery that the pub has completely run out of alcohol. He says “So we’re now standing in the world’s first teetotal pub. We expecting a bus-load of Quakers?”
The audience, as I hope, laughed at this joke. But, in a sense they were wrong to. The blog pointed out that it is Methodists that refrain from drinking, not Quakers. I knew that. Honestly, I did. But I chose Quakers for the joke because I knew it would work. Why?
Shared Knowledge
Comedy relies on shared knowledge and simplicity. If the audience have to think about a joke for too long, or are unsure about any part of it, they can’t laugh. And they don’t laugh. Simplicity and clarity is everything. This partly explains why people get upset about stereotypes. They are a reality in comedy because it relies about compressing information and leaving plenty of things unsaid. (eg. Cab drivers are racist. Builders are Polish. Rich people are dim. In fact, when one breaks a stereotype, that in itself can be the starting point for a sitcom eg. one of the first women vicars in The Vicar of Dibley. The joke was, at the start, 'it's a woman! And not a man! You know, like a normal vicar would be.' I over-simplify naturally. But that's stereotyping for you.)
In this case, I chose Quakers because I’m not sure how widely know it is that its Methodists don’t drink. It’s also the case that many Baptists don’t drink either. How widely known is that? Less so now than before. I judged that the audience would have no problem believing that Quakers don’t drink – partly because in my mind there seems to be some kind of overlap between Quakers, Puritans and the Amish, at least in terms of their public perception. In reality there are vast differences between these groups of Christian believers. The puritans in particular were a remarkable bunch of Christian folk who were nothing like the the adjective named after them - 'puritanical'.
Returning to the joke in question, we have to bear in min that this was a joke for 2008. So I chose Quaker. Even though the joke is set in 1941, when the vast majority would have been clear that Methodists don’t drink.
Add to the equation the fact that characters are the creations of writers – and do not represent the views of the writer, or share their factual knowledge. So Archie, Charles and the team, and especially Josh, say plenty of things that are wrong, or grammatically incorrect. They hold religious, social and political views that I do not. It seems obvious to point this out, but occasionally one needs to.
Incidentally, the Quaker website says:
So I wasn't that far off anyway, was I?
The tricky part is where joke reinforce stereotypes that are unfair, oppressive or nasty. There, my friends, we have to use a thing called judgement. And then your producer will probably thumb through the BBC Producers Handbook Guide (Vols 1-9) and then just delete the joke.
The difficulty in writing Hut 33 is always finding our characters things to do that the audience can understand, since they don't really have a hope of comprehending the actual codebreaking part of their work. I've read several books on the subject and I struggle to retain the necessary information in my head simultaneously to put it all together. The chance of doing this and getting laughs is almost impossible. Episodes about codebreaking in Hut 33 are fairly rare.
This is why the theme of Pigs and Spivs is shortages and hunger. It's something that we can all identify with and get our heads around. Food was in short supply for the whole war and an unpleasant reality for all but the wealthiest. World War Two ration were meagre. Most of us today could eat their weekly ration in a day. So it's good to keep coming back to that.
Quakers, Baptists and Jokes
There is one other point of minor interest on this episode. Hopefully my explanation of it will give a small insight into how you sometimes make a joke fit the context. I spotted a comment on someone’s blog about Hut 33. (Clearly during the original Radio 4 transmission of Hut 33, I’m regularly googled ‘Hut 33’ in order to find out what people think of it). This blogger, a wife of a Baptist minister, blogged about her irritation that the writer of Hut 33 seemed ignorant of certain religious groups and their drinking habits. This is particularly poignant as I am not ignorant of certain religious groups, since I cheerfully belong to one myself (yes, I'm a Christian. There. I've said it) and I studied theology at University, so I know a bit about all this stuff.
The joke in question is Archie’s joke in response to his discovery that the pub has completely run out of alcohol. He says “So we’re now standing in the world’s first teetotal pub. We expecting a bus-load of Quakers?”
The audience, as I hope, laughed at this joke. But, in a sense they were wrong to. The blog pointed out that it is Methodists that refrain from drinking, not Quakers. I knew that. Honestly, I did. But I chose Quakers for the joke because I knew it would work. Why?
Shared Knowledge
Comedy relies on shared knowledge and simplicity. If the audience have to think about a joke for too long, or are unsure about any part of it, they can’t laugh. And they don’t laugh. Simplicity and clarity is everything. This partly explains why people get upset about stereotypes. They are a reality in comedy because it relies about compressing information and leaving plenty of things unsaid. (eg. Cab drivers are racist. Builders are Polish. Rich people are dim. In fact, when one breaks a stereotype, that in itself can be the starting point for a sitcom eg. one of the first women vicars in The Vicar of Dibley. The joke was, at the start, 'it's a woman! And not a man! You know, like a normal vicar would be.' I over-simplify naturally. But that's stereotyping for you.)
In this case, I chose Quakers because I’m not sure how widely know it is that its Methodists don’t drink. It’s also the case that many Baptists don’t drink either. How widely known is that? Less so now than before. I judged that the audience would have no problem believing that Quakers don’t drink – partly because in my mind there seems to be some kind of overlap between Quakers, Puritans and the Amish, at least in terms of their public perception. In reality there are vast differences between these groups of Christian believers. The puritans in particular were a remarkable bunch of Christian folk who were nothing like the the adjective named after them - 'puritanical'.
Returning to the joke in question, we have to bear in min that this was a joke for 2008. So I chose Quaker. Even though the joke is set in 1941, when the vast majority would have been clear that Methodists don’t drink.
Add to the equation the fact that characters are the creations of writers – and do not represent the views of the writer, or share their factual knowledge. So Archie, Charles and the team, and especially Josh, say plenty of things that are wrong, or grammatically incorrect. They hold religious, social and political views that I do not. It seems obvious to point this out, but occasionally one needs to.
Incidentally, the Quaker website says:
One testimony that Quakers have had to give careful thought to is our testimony on moderation. In the nineteenth century Quakers saw the bad effects that drink and drunkenness had in society. Along with other Non-conformist Christians they campaigned against alcohol. Many Quakers were active in the Temperance Movement - a movement of people who "took the pledge" (promising that they would never drink alcohol) as a witness against the evils it caused.
So I wasn't that far off anyway, was I?
The tricky part is where joke reinforce stereotypes that are unfair, oppressive or nasty. There, my friends, we have to use a thing called judgement. And then your producer will probably thumb through the BBC Producers Handbook Guide (Vols 1-9) and then just delete the joke.
Monday, 8 November 2010
The Inspector Episode
For a while, I wrote a blog about my radio sitcom, Hut 33. There is an blog post on there that pertains to this week's episode of Hut 33 that was on BBC7 on Sunday (and on iPlayer here). Here it is (with a few tweaks and changes).
The Royal Visitor - the blurb for Episode 1 of Series 2 of Hut 33 is as follows:
A royal visitor is coming to inspect Bletchley Park, but the top brass are worried that this particular royal is a Nazi sympathiser. Hut 33 has to delay him and make sure he doesn't see any of the code-breaking machines.
Since this blog is about the boring mechanics of situation comedy, allow me to fill you in on how and why this episode came together without, hopefully, deconstructing the whole thing into a joyless series of components - although if I do that, so be it.
The Inspection Episode
The 'inspection' episode is common sit-com device and also a very useful one. Characters are sent rushing around getting things ready. Cleaning, polishing and tidying. In the process, skeletons can be found in cupboards, difficult tasks can be comically compressed and plenty of dirt can be swept under the carpet. See the effect of the Inspector in JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls in which the presence and prospect of an Inspector causes lives to unravel.
Another advantage of the 'Inspector' episode its simplicity. Simplicity is everything in comedy, especially in half-hour sit-com. If the audience is confused, even slightly, they can't laugh. In that sense, sit-com is contrived reality, over-simplified and sign-posted. The audience is normally happy with this because they understand the genre and that real life is more complicated. The trick is, within the contrived situation, to make the plot and events seem as organic and uncontrived as possible. We start with something believable, and through a series of believable steps end up somewhere original and bizarre, so we're left thinking 'How on earth did we get here?'!
Inspections are a reality of life - audits, royal visitors, tax men - so we have a believable, clear goal that we can all understand - everything has to be ready for the inspector or special visitor. It's a variation on 'The Boss Comes to Dinner' episode that's common to many domestic sitcoms.
The Twist
The trick of sitcom, then, is to take a familiar situation and push it further, into unfamiliar areas, involving characters that we are familiar with. As you would expect, World War Two threw up plenty of these. And so when I came to consider the inspection episode, I tried to think of what the twist would be. As the blurb of the show suggests (so I'm not spoiling it) what if the Royal visitor cannot be trusted?
This taps into the very real concerns during the war that some members of the aristocracy could not be trusted and were well-known for Fascist sympathies. It is a running theme of the series - partly embodied in the character of Professor Charles Gardiner. As a well-connected Oxford professor, he moves in elevated circles and was friendly before the war with high-ranking Nazis and sympathised with some of their views. Every episode, Archie normally makes jokes implying that Charles played some kind of sport with a prominent Nazi. And Charles has to concede that he was friendly with the Von Ribbentrops, the Rommels and even Mussolini.
And so as I was thinking about which Royal visitor, real or imagined, could visit Hut 33, I stumbled across Prince George, Duke of Kent. If you read up on the man, you will see that he was a very worrying figure for the British Establishment. Given the extraordinarily secret nature of the work at Bletchley Park, the Prince's visit would have to be frustrated in some way. If news of the breaking of Enigma was leaked back to Germany, it would have proved disastrous for the Allies.
German High Command had no idea that the British were reading their messages so a hint to that effect would have been catastrophic for Bletchley. 1941 was a difficult year for the Allies. Britain stood alone against Germany and was on the verge of starvation. The convoys in the Atlantic bringing food and supplies from America were a lifeline. This, then, gives an intensity to the story that hopefully makes it play and gives good motivations for our regular characters who are instrumental in keeping the prince away from the code-breaking machinery.
Hopefully, this creates a twist on the Inspection episode. Our characters frantically prepare for a Royal visitor, making easy-to-understand displays so that the inspection will explain exactly what they do at Bletchley Park, giving our characters a clear and comprehensible focus for their activities in which the comedy can play out. But when it is discovered which member of the Royal Family is coming, they have to frantic undo everthing and obscure that they are doing at Bletchley.
Guest Star
Fans of Radioactive, KYTV and Trevor's World of Sport will recognise the voice of the Prince. He is wonderfully played by Michael Fenton Stevens (who also played alongside Robert Bathurst (Charles) in My Dad's the Prime Minister).
The Royal Visitor - the blurb for Episode 1 of Series 2 of Hut 33 is as follows:
A royal visitor is coming to inspect Bletchley Park, but the top brass are worried that this particular royal is a Nazi sympathiser. Hut 33 has to delay him and make sure he doesn't see any of the code-breaking machines.
Since this blog is about the boring mechanics of situation comedy, allow me to fill you in on how and why this episode came together without, hopefully, deconstructing the whole thing into a joyless series of components - although if I do that, so be it.
The Inspection Episode
The 'inspection' episode is common sit-com device and also a very useful one. Characters are sent rushing around getting things ready. Cleaning, polishing and tidying. In the process, skeletons can be found in cupboards, difficult tasks can be comically compressed and plenty of dirt can be swept under the carpet. See the effect of the Inspector in JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls in which the presence and prospect of an Inspector causes lives to unravel.
Another advantage of the 'Inspector' episode its simplicity. Simplicity is everything in comedy, especially in half-hour sit-com. If the audience is confused, even slightly, they can't laugh. In that sense, sit-com is contrived reality, over-simplified and sign-posted. The audience is normally happy with this because they understand the genre and that real life is more complicated. The trick is, within the contrived situation, to make the plot and events seem as organic and uncontrived as possible. We start with something believable, and through a series of believable steps end up somewhere original and bizarre, so we're left thinking 'How on earth did we get here?'!
Inspections are a reality of life - audits, royal visitors, tax men - so we have a believable, clear goal that we can all understand - everything has to be ready for the inspector or special visitor. It's a variation on 'The Boss Comes to Dinner' episode that's common to many domestic sitcoms.
The Twist
The trick of sitcom, then, is to take a familiar situation and push it further, into unfamiliar areas, involving characters that we are familiar with. As you would expect, World War Two threw up plenty of these. And so when I came to consider the inspection episode, I tried to think of what the twist would be. As the blurb of the show suggests (so I'm not spoiling it) what if the Royal visitor cannot be trusted?
This taps into the very real concerns during the war that some members of the aristocracy could not be trusted and were well-known for Fascist sympathies. It is a running theme of the series - partly embodied in the character of Professor Charles Gardiner. As a well-connected Oxford professor, he moves in elevated circles and was friendly before the war with high-ranking Nazis and sympathised with some of their views. Every episode, Archie normally makes jokes implying that Charles played some kind of sport with a prominent Nazi. And Charles has to concede that he was friendly with the Von Ribbentrops, the Rommels and even Mussolini.
And so as I was thinking about which Royal visitor, real or imagined, could visit Hut 33, I stumbled across Prince George, Duke of Kent. If you read up on the man, you will see that he was a very worrying figure for the British Establishment. Given the extraordinarily secret nature of the work at Bletchley Park, the Prince's visit would have to be frustrated in some way. If news of the breaking of Enigma was leaked back to Germany, it would have proved disastrous for the Allies.
German High Command had no idea that the British were reading their messages so a hint to that effect would have been catastrophic for Bletchley. 1941 was a difficult year for the Allies. Britain stood alone against Germany and was on the verge of starvation. The convoys in the Atlantic bringing food and supplies from America were a lifeline. This, then, gives an intensity to the story that hopefully makes it play and gives good motivations for our regular characters who are instrumental in keeping the prince away from the code-breaking machinery.
Hopefully, this creates a twist on the Inspection episode. Our characters frantically prepare for a Royal visitor, making easy-to-understand displays so that the inspection will explain exactly what they do at Bletchley Park, giving our characters a clear and comprehensible focus for their activities in which the comedy can play out. But when it is discovered which member of the Royal Family is coming, they have to frantic undo everthing and obscure that they are doing at Bletchley.
Guest Star
Fans of Radioactive, KYTV and Trevor's World of Sport will recognise the voice of the Prince. He is wonderfully played by Michael Fenton Stevens (who also played alongside Robert Bathurst (Charles) in My Dad's the Prime Minister).
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Characters and Stories
I'm going to spoil a book for you. An expensive one. That Robert McKee book called Story, which is now an astonishing £19.99 in paperback. In paperback. That said, we tend not prize that which has cost us nothing - so you'll ignore what I say when I summarise the book. McKee argues (I seem to remember) that story is character. Character is story. Characters only exists in stories. Stories are only meaningful with characters. You get the idea. What's the plot of your film, sitcom, or novel? Well, who are the characters and what are they trying to do? Story and Character are two sides of the same coin.
It's extremely easy to forget this, especially when coming up with ideas for a new sitcom. Whenever I read treatments for new shows by new writers - and look back at my old ones when I was 'new' - I often see this being forgotten or ignored.
Most comedy writers know that sitcom is about memorable characters. But often, much light and heat is generated explaining who the character is and where they have come from - their likes and dislikes. Often, these get very nuanced and contradictory. I always cringe when a character outline contains the words 'sometimes' or 'occasionally'. Sitcom characters don't do things occasionally. They either do them all the time. Or never. Or for a funny or compelling reason.
Here is what I mean. This is a sitcom I've just invented in the last 30 seconds. It's called The Greasy Pole.
You get the idea. I had to stop there, as I was getting cross just writing it like that. The reality is that there could be a perfectly decent show in there (Miranda runs a shop) - and there was lots of detail, but we don't really know anything about Sally at all. Just what happened in the past. We're left asking the question 'Why?' an awful lot. The audience will be asking it all the time if they happen to tune in to episode 2, having missed the first one.
Characters need momentum - stories. They need quests and dreams. They need relationships. Why does anyone do anything? These are very basic questions about our very existence, but the sitcom-writer needs to address them.
When I was setting up my Radio 4 sitcom, Hut 33, I had to do this. The show is about a disparate bunch of people thrown together at Bletchley Park by the war. But where are they from? What drives them? Not exterior events in the war. Or even their roles within the war. It's about who there are and what they want: Charles is a snob who wants to preserve the pre-war status quo. He is into self-preservation, luxury and being seen to be right. Archie is an inverse-snob who wants to see the likes of Charles taken down a peg or two. Even though he's an academic hanging around with private school boys, he wants to preserve his working-class roots and embraces the language of Marxism. Gordon is a seventeen-year old who is trapped in the crossfire of Archie and Charles. He just wants everyone to be friends. And he wants to be taken seriously as a 'grown-up', and fit in, even though he is a teenager among men.
Once you have characters that have a forward momentum and attitudes, you can start to throw them into situations and see how they react - restrict their food, extend their working hours, drop a bomb on their hut or threaten them with a posting to the jungle, and see what happens. Ideally, they need to be the instigators of these things. Or the instigators of other stories, which are interrupted or modified by bombs or other circumstances beyond their control.
That's what I'm doing at the moment with a number of sitcom projects. I've assembled some characters, and given them trajectories, hopes and dreams - and am now seeing what happens when things go wrong, or unexpectedly right for the wrong reason. It's only when you start storylining that your find our whether you have workable, active characters - who are the authors of their own downfall.
Let's go back to Sally in The Greasy Pole? Why did she hire Pavlov? Is it because she can't say 'no' to anyone because she wants to be liked? (like Geraldine in Dibley)? Which means that all her plans to run a business are almost certainly doomed to comic failure? Why is she even running a shop? Is she trying to prove her husband/boyfriend/mother wrong - and she wants to be taken seriously? Is she really that insecure? (she could be) Is she just passionate about stationery? If so, why? Could it be something else she is passionate about that says something about her? Could it be a haberdashery, because she likes pretty things - because she is all about looking good, rather than being good, and she hired Pavlov because he's cheap (thus making Sally a bitch, which might be funny). What happens when her personal life gets in the way of her shop? How does she manage that? On what basis does she make those decisions?
The fact is that failure to do this makes the show impossible to write, because you don't know why your characters get up in the morning. Once you have living, breathing, thinking characters, they start talking to you. You hear voices in your head (in a good way) and they go off and do things. When that happens, despite what any psychiatrist might say, you are really onto something good.
It's extremely easy to forget this, especially when coming up with ideas for a new sitcom. Whenever I read treatments for new shows by new writers - and look back at my old ones when I was 'new' - I often see this being forgotten or ignored.
Most comedy writers know that sitcom is about memorable characters. But often, much light and heat is generated explaining who the character is and where they have come from - their likes and dislikes. Often, these get very nuanced and contradictory. I always cringe when a character outline contains the words 'sometimes' or 'occasionally'. Sitcom characters don't do things occasionally. They either do them all the time. Or never. Or for a funny or compelling reason.
Here is what I mean. This is a sitcom I've just invented in the last 30 seconds. It's called The Greasy Pole.
Sally is a business woman who is trying to be a success, but it's not as easy as she thought it would be. She used to work for the local council, but she was frustrated that it was slow and bureaucratic. Then one day, she met a business guru who changed her life and told her that she could be anything she wanted to be. So she bought a power suit, got a loan from the bank and started her own business - a shop selling stationery. After all, everyone needs stationery, don't they? But her life is made even harder by the shop assistant, Pavlov, the Polish friend of a friend with bad English that she rashly hired because she felt sorry for him...
You get the idea. I had to stop there, as I was getting cross just writing it like that. The reality is that there could be a perfectly decent show in there (Miranda runs a shop) - and there was lots of detail, but we don't really know anything about Sally at all. Just what happened in the past. We're left asking the question 'Why?' an awful lot. The audience will be asking it all the time if they happen to tune in to episode 2, having missed the first one.
Characters need momentum - stories. They need quests and dreams. They need relationships. Why does anyone do anything? These are very basic questions about our very existence, but the sitcom-writer needs to address them.
When I was setting up my Radio 4 sitcom, Hut 33, I had to do this. The show is about a disparate bunch of people thrown together at Bletchley Park by the war. But where are they from? What drives them? Not exterior events in the war. Or even their roles within the war. It's about who there are and what they want: Charles is a snob who wants to preserve the pre-war status quo. He is into self-preservation, luxury and being seen to be right. Archie is an inverse-snob who wants to see the likes of Charles taken down a peg or two. Even though he's an academic hanging around with private school boys, he wants to preserve his working-class roots and embraces the language of Marxism. Gordon is a seventeen-year old who is trapped in the crossfire of Archie and Charles. He just wants everyone to be friends. And he wants to be taken seriously as a 'grown-up', and fit in, even though he is a teenager among men.
Once you have characters that have a forward momentum and attitudes, you can start to throw them into situations and see how they react - restrict their food, extend their working hours, drop a bomb on their hut or threaten them with a posting to the jungle, and see what happens. Ideally, they need to be the instigators of these things. Or the instigators of other stories, which are interrupted or modified by bombs or other circumstances beyond their control.
That's what I'm doing at the moment with a number of sitcom projects. I've assembled some characters, and given them trajectories, hopes and dreams - and am now seeing what happens when things go wrong, or unexpectedly right for the wrong reason. It's only when you start storylining that your find our whether you have workable, active characters - who are the authors of their own downfall.
Let's go back to Sally in The Greasy Pole? Why did she hire Pavlov? Is it because she can't say 'no' to anyone because she wants to be liked? (like Geraldine in Dibley)? Which means that all her plans to run a business are almost certainly doomed to comic failure? Why is she even running a shop? Is she trying to prove her husband/boyfriend/mother wrong - and she wants to be taken seriously? Is she really that insecure? (she could be) Is she just passionate about stationery? If so, why? Could it be something else she is passionate about that says something about her? Could it be a haberdashery, because she likes pretty things - because she is all about looking good, rather than being good, and she hired Pavlov because he's cheap (thus making Sally a bitch, which might be funny). What happens when her personal life gets in the way of her shop? How does she manage that? On what basis does she make those decisions?
The fact is that failure to do this makes the show impossible to write, because you don't know why your characters get up in the morning. Once you have living, breathing, thinking characters, they start talking to you. You hear voices in your head (in a good way) and they go off and do things. When that happens, despite what any psychiatrist might say, you are really onto something good.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Missing the Point of IT
Comedy is huge business - and it always surprises me there isn't more of it on television. There is so little comedy now that every new episode of a show is hyped and picked over to an extraordinary degree.
And then newspapers runs bizarrely pointless pieces like this one in the Guardian. I don't know if it appeared in the print issue (I do hope they didn't waste their ink).
The IT Crowd has NOTHING to do with IT. It has no more to do with IT, than Black Books had to do with books. Bernard's bookshop in Black Books simply couldn't exist - and doesn't really exist. The show is using a bookshop as a backdrop for beautiful and daft character comedy. Clearly, there are one or two bad old bookshops kicking around that are on the brink of bankruptcy, but to ask whether Black Books resembles a real book shop is to miss the point of the show. (I'm not sure what the point of Black Books is. I loved it and dearly wished there could be more episodes. They'd done all the hard work of setting up a show!)
Moss and Roy hardly ever do any IT work in The IT Crowd - and certainly most of it can't be done from the office they inhabit. In this latest series, they haven't ventured up to the office floor to fix anything (it's quite fun when they do that, since they're so out of place). Moreover, nor should they really do any real work either. Computers are boring on television because ultimately, computers are boring in real life. People are interesting.
I faced this problem writing Hut 33 for Radio 4 (which is not in the same league as IT Crowd, I hasten to add). The show is about codebreaking in Bletchley Park in World War Two. Stories about codes, mathematics and war were few and far between because they are such cold subjects, especially on the radio. Hut 33 is a class-warfare comedy. Archie is the rising socialist whose time is coming. Charles is the falling imperialist whose time is passing. Everyone else is stuck in the crossfire. As a result, Hut 33 is about as true to life in the huts as Allo Allo was to life in Occupied France. Just as the IT Crowd is as true to life as Black Books and Father Ted.
It's worth thinking this through if you're trying to write a new sitcom. The 'sit' of a show should not be where the comedy comes from. The 'sit' will give you a canvas on which to paint. It'll give you a stage which you can fill with walking, talking, thinking, shouting, crying characters. Your setting needs only be real enough to convince us that the characters are real. And if it's a studio show, the audience do know the situation isn't real anyway. They are not stupid or totally gullible. Sitcoms are preposterously contrived (something TV critics cannot get their heads around). But the audience will cheerfully suspend their disbelief if you, the writer of the sitcom, are able to help us forget the set and the 'sit' and give us a greater truth. And a good laugh.
And then newspapers runs bizarrely pointless pieces like this one in the Guardian. I don't know if it appeared in the print issue (I do hope they didn't waste their ink).
The IT Crowd has NOTHING to do with IT. It has no more to do with IT, than Black Books had to do with books. Bernard's bookshop in Black Books simply couldn't exist - and doesn't really exist. The show is using a bookshop as a backdrop for beautiful and daft character comedy. Clearly, there are one or two bad old bookshops kicking around that are on the brink of bankruptcy, but to ask whether Black Books resembles a real book shop is to miss the point of the show. (I'm not sure what the point of Black Books is. I loved it and dearly wished there could be more episodes. They'd done all the hard work of setting up a show!)
Moss and Roy hardly ever do any IT work in The IT Crowd - and certainly most of it can't be done from the office they inhabit. In this latest series, they haven't ventured up to the office floor to fix anything (it's quite fun when they do that, since they're so out of place). Moreover, nor should they really do any real work either. Computers are boring on television because ultimately, computers are boring in real life. People are interesting.
I faced this problem writing Hut 33 for Radio 4 (which is not in the same league as IT Crowd, I hasten to add). The show is about codebreaking in Bletchley Park in World War Two. Stories about codes, mathematics and war were few and far between because they are such cold subjects, especially on the radio. Hut 33 is a class-warfare comedy. Archie is the rising socialist whose time is coming. Charles is the falling imperialist whose time is passing. Everyone else is stuck in the crossfire. As a result, Hut 33 is about as true to life in the huts as Allo Allo was to life in Occupied France. Just as the IT Crowd is as true to life as Black Books and Father Ted.
It's worth thinking this through if you're trying to write a new sitcom. The 'sit' of a show should not be where the comedy comes from. The 'sit' will give you a canvas on which to paint. It'll give you a stage which you can fill with walking, talking, thinking, shouting, crying characters. Your setting needs only be real enough to convince us that the characters are real. And if it's a studio show, the audience do know the situation isn't real anyway. They are not stupid or totally gullible. Sitcoms are preposterously contrived (something TV critics cannot get their heads around). But the audience will cheerfully suspend their disbelief if you, the writer of the sitcom, are able to help us forget the set and the 'sit' and give us a greater truth. And a good laugh.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
The Pressure of Perfectly Paced Plotting
BBC Radio 7 has been repeating Series 1 of Cabin Pressure - which I completely missed the first time round. I caught one or two episodes of Series 2, and enjoyed it, but am pleased to have heard almost all of the the first series. It's lovely show with an admirably small number of characters, as the title suggests - pressured relationships in one cabin of one aeroplane.
There's just a 1st Officer we know should be the Captain, but is a bit of a rogue; a Captain who's a bit uptight; the owner who's the headmistress kicking her boys into shape; and her son, the air steward who is breathtakingly dim (played by the show's writer, John Finnemore - who's a fine comedy actor as well as a superb writer. Yes another reason to dislike the thoroughly pleasant man.) There are more details about the show here and here.
In some senses, the central relationship, between first officer and captain functions a little like Wilson and Mainwaring in Dad's Army. I don't know if John Finnemore was, or even is, aware of this. Past shows influence all of us. When devising Hut 33, and created Charles and Archie, I realised I'd created a relationship akin to Glover and Figgis in Only When I Laugh. And pretty much every configuration of every relationship can be found in classic novels or Shakespeare. So this is not a criticism at all.
But it takes more than a central relationship for a show to succeed (unfortunately). In my last post, I wrote that it's important to do proper autopsies on sitcoms that die a painful death. Much can be learned. But one can also learn in an altogether more pleasurable - laughing hard at a decent show, and then thinking about it work so well.
I don't propose to list the virtues of the show. "I cannot find a single flaw in it. So top marks" said the Independent on Sunday. Praise indeed and well deserved. I've mentioned the characters. Oh, and there's the jokes. They're good. Properly funny. But the thing I'd like to praise Cabin Pressure for in particular is boringly technical - but this is a boringly technical blog. And frankly, if the boring mechanics don't work, you have a coughing and spluttering sitcom. After all, an Alfa Romeo may be fun now and then, but it's not got the boring mechanics to get you very far. Boring mechanics are only ever notable by their absence.
So here it is: the show is perfectly paced. There is exactly the right amount of story and plot to give the characters room to bounce off each other to maximum comic effect. There's not too much frantic running around at the end, ploddy bits of exposition or a mad dash to tie up loose ends in the last 90 seconds. That's what I find hardest to do in Hut 33 - but perhaps Mr Finnemore is reaping the benefits of having four regular characters (Hut 33 has six characters - and there is a war on). I'd be interested to know how Mr Finnemore does this - whether he spends a lot of time on the storylines so that they fit the show precisely, and unravel at exactly the right pace. This has the added benefit of increasing plausibility, which adds a health dose of 'this could really happen'. Which makes it funnier.
What are the temptations here, then? Why do some sitcoms often cram story in and become too frantic? It may be lack of confidence in the characters. It may be lack of confidence in one's own ability to write enough jokes. Much easier to blow up a car or lose a set of keys in the story to add extra frustation and 'mayhem'. But it may not make the show funnier. It may just make the show noisier. We can, I'm sure, think of examples in which that is the case. There are warning signs: If you find yourself typing the line "Wait a minute, there just one thing I don't understand" or "So the whole thing was covered by the insurance" or some other nebulous or unsatisfactory line. Plot is like marmite - best thinly spread.
But then, we can also watch an episode of Seinfeld and think 'How did they fit all those stories in 22 minutes?'
Sitcom is a dark art, a conjuring trick with no manual that requires hours of practice, the odd prayer - and even then one runs a serious risk of being pelted with fruit. Still, it beats real work. My dad was a farmer. I know what I'd rather be doing for living.
There's just a 1st Officer we know should be the Captain, but is a bit of a rogue; a Captain who's a bit uptight; the owner who's the headmistress kicking her boys into shape; and her son, the air steward who is breathtakingly dim (played by the show's writer, John Finnemore - who's a fine comedy actor as well as a superb writer. Yes another reason to dislike the thoroughly pleasant man.) There are more details about the show here and here.
In some senses, the central relationship, between first officer and captain functions a little like Wilson and Mainwaring in Dad's Army. I don't know if John Finnemore was, or even is, aware of this. Past shows influence all of us. When devising Hut 33, and created Charles and Archie, I realised I'd created a relationship akin to Glover and Figgis in Only When I Laugh. And pretty much every configuration of every relationship can be found in classic novels or Shakespeare. So this is not a criticism at all.
But it takes more than a central relationship for a show to succeed (unfortunately). In my last post, I wrote that it's important to do proper autopsies on sitcoms that die a painful death. Much can be learned. But one can also learn in an altogether more pleasurable - laughing hard at a decent show, and then thinking about it work so well.
I don't propose to list the virtues of the show. "I cannot find a single flaw in it. So top marks" said the Independent on Sunday. Praise indeed and well deserved. I've mentioned the characters. Oh, and there's the jokes. They're good. Properly funny. But the thing I'd like to praise Cabin Pressure for in particular is boringly technical - but this is a boringly technical blog. And frankly, if the boring mechanics don't work, you have a coughing and spluttering sitcom. After all, an Alfa Romeo may be fun now and then, but it's not got the boring mechanics to get you very far. Boring mechanics are only ever notable by their absence.
So here it is: the show is perfectly paced. There is exactly the right amount of story and plot to give the characters room to bounce off each other to maximum comic effect. There's not too much frantic running around at the end, ploddy bits of exposition or a mad dash to tie up loose ends in the last 90 seconds. That's what I find hardest to do in Hut 33 - but perhaps Mr Finnemore is reaping the benefits of having four regular characters (Hut 33 has six characters - and there is a war on). I'd be interested to know how Mr Finnemore does this - whether he spends a lot of time on the storylines so that they fit the show precisely, and unravel at exactly the right pace. This has the added benefit of increasing plausibility, which adds a health dose of 'this could really happen'. Which makes it funnier.
What are the temptations here, then? Why do some sitcoms often cram story in and become too frantic? It may be lack of confidence in the characters. It may be lack of confidence in one's own ability to write enough jokes. Much easier to blow up a car or lose a set of keys in the story to add extra frustation and 'mayhem'. But it may not make the show funnier. It may just make the show noisier. We can, I'm sure, think of examples in which that is the case. There are warning signs: If you find yourself typing the line "Wait a minute, there just one thing I don't understand" or "So the whole thing was covered by the insurance" or some other nebulous or unsatisfactory line. Plot is like marmite - best thinly spread.
But then, we can also watch an episode of Seinfeld and think 'How did they fit all those stories in 22 minutes?'
Sitcom is a dark art, a conjuring trick with no manual that requires hours of practice, the odd prayer - and even then one runs a serious risk of being pelted with fruit. Still, it beats real work. My dad was a farmer. I know what I'd rather be doing for living.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
The Persuasionists
Here’s the short version: I rather like it.
Here’s the longer version:
The problem with launching a new sitcom is that most viewers compare your Episode 1 against their favourite episode of their favourite sitcom. We all have our favourites - and we love those characters as if they were members of our own family. Frankly, I would like to hug 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon and tell her everything’s going to be okay. Or we’d like to smack the characters because they’re making the same mistake week after week. Seinfeld said their rules were No Hugging and No Learning - but pretty much every sitcom has that second part. Sitcom characters don’t learn. Mainwaring and Hancock are pompous, always. David Brent thinks he’s funny every week. And so on. And so usually we find ourselves chuckling before they’ve even done the joke. Sitcoms that are up and running have a crucial momentum that keeps us laughing.
And so getting a new sitcom off the ground is like launching a rocket. Once the thing is moving and orbiting the earth, you just need to nudge it the right direction. But getting the darn thing of the ground, that takes a lot of energy.
Why am I saying this? You may well be ahead of me. I’ll fess up and say that I didn’t really like episode 1 of The Persuasionists, and some of this is because of the reasons above. I just didn’t know the characters. There are other reasons, which I’ll mention in a moment. But I did like episode 2. I’ve watched some scenes several times over and laughed a lot. And I’m looking forward to seeing episode 3. Put it this way: I watched Episodes 1 and 2 on iPlayer. But for episode 3, I’ll try and make an appointment to view - or at least tape it on my PVR and watch it within 24 hours (high praise in my house).
Why did I like it? I liked it because it was a big silly sitcom with jokes in it. It sounds rather daft to say that, but I do worry, sometimes, that some people think jokes are beneath them or just too obviou, or that a show is all character and story, and the laughs are simply organic. In one sense, they are. But you need them all the same. It’s another reason why writing sitcoms is so hard. You need to create characters, relationships, a situation, a story that hangs together - and then write about a hundred jokes that make a roomful of 200-300 people laugh out loud. Oh and three million people at home, give or take. That’s why the money is quite good when you get it right.
The Persuasionists is, then, a knock-about comedy set in the world of advertising. Are the characters believable? In a sense, but they’re obviously larger than life. And they’re clearly meant to be that way. And as with most office sitcoms, and audience shows, you tend not to believe that any actual work goes on in the office in question - but nobody minds that. It’s a sitcom. The audience understand that real life isn’t that funny. And that an office of 25 people tends to have more than 5 people who actually talk to each other. Sitcom is a contrived format by its very nature. But it works.
Clearly, the recipe for this particular show didn’t work for some people. The reviews and comments were almost entirely negative. It’s all rather sad. Reviewers, bloggers, and tweeters single out comedy for the vilest of comments. In a way that shows they care about comedy. It also shows that people are prepared to hide behind the internet to say horrible things that they would never say in real life. But the relentless stream of twitters say “Worst show ever” and “I’ll never get that half hour back” is pretty depressing. Apart from anything else, most TV is dreadful. Even successful shows. But we digress from the matter in hand.
Here’s my main worry about the show - the mix of characters. There are five characters, all with fairly strong traits. And since the show is set in the world of advertising, most of the characters are, what tv execs call ‘unsympathetic’. They shout and rant and are generally mean to each other. The exception is the Adam Buxton character - who is the optimist and nice-guy. The other characters are more grotesque, which is fine, but it makes them less believable. And so every single line those characters say has to be really funny. If it isn’t, we’ll stop laughing and think to ourselves “I don’t buy this”. Occasionally, you need a character to say things like “Hey, we have to get this done in time, or else” or “I hope my mum doesn’t die” or something that they have to mean. We all know it’s made up, but if the we don’t even believe that the characters believe in anything, the whole thing falls apart into a deconstructed heap on the floor.
I’ve run into this phenomenon writing Hut 33, which is a sitcom for Radio 4 set in Bletchley Park in World War Two. One character is called Minka, played by Olivia Colman. Minka is a psychopath who believes that violence is the solution to all problems. And she’s very handy and has all manner of weapons secreted about her person. She’s a preposterous character, keeping weapons in places where they couldn’t possibly fit, but it works - as long as she’s not carrying lines of exposition or doing what the other characters do. The problem comes when you have a whole show of those big characters. They have to gag their way in and out of every situation, and if one joke misfires, it can fall apart. If two jokes misfire, it hurts.
In Episode 2 is because the jokes fired. They worked - especially the lunatic stuff Keaton said and did, and the wonderful scene in which the boss explained to the popstar why Australia wasn’t ordinary. It was great, and bits like that really carried the show. There were other lovely moments when the popstar looks at Adam Buxton from afar and he’s sniffing his hands. And then he says how boring he is saying “Even when I hear my own voice, I think ‘O God, not him again’.” Lovely. The question is whether episode 3 can pull off the same trick. I hope so. I do enjoy laughing.
Here’s the longer version:
The problem with launching a new sitcom is that most viewers compare your Episode 1 against their favourite episode of their favourite sitcom. We all have our favourites - and we love those characters as if they were members of our own family. Frankly, I would like to hug 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon and tell her everything’s going to be okay. Or we’d like to smack the characters because they’re making the same mistake week after week. Seinfeld said their rules were No Hugging and No Learning - but pretty much every sitcom has that second part. Sitcom characters don’t learn. Mainwaring and Hancock are pompous, always. David Brent thinks he’s funny every week. And so on. And so usually we find ourselves chuckling before they’ve even done the joke. Sitcoms that are up and running have a crucial momentum that keeps us laughing.
And so getting a new sitcom off the ground is like launching a rocket. Once the thing is moving and orbiting the earth, you just need to nudge it the right direction. But getting the darn thing of the ground, that takes a lot of energy.
Why am I saying this? You may well be ahead of me. I’ll fess up and say that I didn’t really like episode 1 of The Persuasionists, and some of this is because of the reasons above. I just didn’t know the characters. There are other reasons, which I’ll mention in a moment. But I did like episode 2. I’ve watched some scenes several times over and laughed a lot. And I’m looking forward to seeing episode 3. Put it this way: I watched Episodes 1 and 2 on iPlayer. But for episode 3, I’ll try and make an appointment to view - or at least tape it on my PVR and watch it within 24 hours (high praise in my house).
Why did I like it? I liked it because it was a big silly sitcom with jokes in it. It sounds rather daft to say that, but I do worry, sometimes, that some people think jokes are beneath them or just too obviou, or that a show is all character and story, and the laughs are simply organic. In one sense, they are. But you need them all the same. It’s another reason why writing sitcoms is so hard. You need to create characters, relationships, a situation, a story that hangs together - and then write about a hundred jokes that make a roomful of 200-300 people laugh out loud. Oh and three million people at home, give or take. That’s why the money is quite good when you get it right.The Persuasionists is, then, a knock-about comedy set in the world of advertising. Are the characters believable? In a sense, but they’re obviously larger than life. And they’re clearly meant to be that way. And as with most office sitcoms, and audience shows, you tend not to believe that any actual work goes on in the office in question - but nobody minds that. It’s a sitcom. The audience understand that real life isn’t that funny. And that an office of 25 people tends to have more than 5 people who actually talk to each other. Sitcom is a contrived format by its very nature. But it works.
Clearly, the recipe for this particular show didn’t work for some people. The reviews and comments were almost entirely negative. It’s all rather sad. Reviewers, bloggers, and tweeters single out comedy for the vilest of comments. In a way that shows they care about comedy. It also shows that people are prepared to hide behind the internet to say horrible things that they would never say in real life. But the relentless stream of twitters say “Worst show ever” and “I’ll never get that half hour back” is pretty depressing. Apart from anything else, most TV is dreadful. Even successful shows. But we digress from the matter in hand.
Here’s my main worry about the show - the mix of characters. There are five characters, all with fairly strong traits. And since the show is set in the world of advertising, most of the characters are, what tv execs call ‘unsympathetic’. They shout and rant and are generally mean to each other. The exception is the Adam Buxton character - who is the optimist and nice-guy. The other characters are more grotesque, which is fine, but it makes them less believable. And so every single line those characters say has to be really funny. If it isn’t, we’ll stop laughing and think to ourselves “I don’t buy this”. Occasionally, you need a character to say things like “Hey, we have to get this done in time, or else” or “I hope my mum doesn’t die” or something that they have to mean. We all know it’s made up, but if the we don’t even believe that the characters believe in anything, the whole thing falls apart into a deconstructed heap on the floor.
I’ve run into this phenomenon writing Hut 33, which is a sitcom for Radio 4 set in Bletchley Park in World War Two. One character is called Minka, played by Olivia Colman. Minka is a psychopath who believes that violence is the solution to all problems. And she’s very handy and has all manner of weapons secreted about her person. She’s a preposterous character, keeping weapons in places where they couldn’t possibly fit, but it works - as long as she’s not carrying lines of exposition or doing what the other characters do. The problem comes when you have a whole show of those big characters. They have to gag their way in and out of every situation, and if one joke misfires, it can fall apart. If two jokes misfire, it hurts.
In Episode 2 is because the jokes fired. They worked - especially the lunatic stuff Keaton said and did, and the wonderful scene in which the boss explained to the popstar why Australia wasn’t ordinary. It was great, and bits like that really carried the show. There were other lovely moments when the popstar looks at Adam Buxton from afar and he’s sniffing his hands. And then he says how boring he is saying “Even when I hear my own voice, I think ‘O God, not him again’.” Lovely. The question is whether episode 3 can pull off the same trick. I hope so. I do enjoy laughing.
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