Welcome to Sitcom Geeks the fortnightly podcast about all matters sitcom. I'm Dave Cohen. I'm James Terry and this is our producer Katie. Hello.
Katie Story and we're at episode 10, yes we've added to the big one oh. Big one oh very exciting. We shall celebrate by starting with an email. We do get some emails.
Do get emails. Keep them coming. Sitcom Geeks at gmail.com. Keep them coming but don't send us your sitcoms.
Do not send us your sitcoms. The best one in the world. We don't have time to read them. We don't want to be accused of plagiarism in the future.
It's just easier if you don't send them. But apart from that keep sending them. It's brilliant questions like this one from Gareth Gareth. Hello just discovered your podcast.
Really interesting. Thank you very much Gareth. I have a question for you. I have been advised to remove all the swearing from my sitcom script to make it's potentially available to a wider audience.
Would you agree that this is a generally good advice? I'd like a lot of the swear words now. James of course right. Blue Stone 4 too.
Yes which was quite a swearing show. I'm in the statement I think. Yes it's a small non-swearing word. Yeah yeah there was yes.
It's a good question. I don't know who's giving you this advice but I don't think people are as bothered about swearing to make it potentially available to a wider audience. The script that you have at this stage needs to be what it is. If these feel like the kind of people that swear then they should swear and if they're not they shouldn't.
I think if you're trying to use swearing as a way of getting offs you probably don't have good enough characters. You should probably look at that. But in general if you don't need it then I would get rid of it. But I would just do it deliberately or not do it.
I don't know how you feel about that. Yeah I think it's obviously if you're doing an 830 family sitcom that is for all the families to watch then you can't swear. But I mean most people swear some of the time and if it's anything other than that then you would actually yeah what feels right for your character. I mean one that actually funny enough there was an episode of my family that I was involved in that was about a prostitute and in fact we I remember having to sit through three hours of a script meeting with the then head of BBC comedy where we negotiated the number of words that we were allowed to use for a prostitute or hooker or trick given that the show had a repeat for 30 on a Sunday afternoon.
So we remember a moment where okay we will take that one from page 48 but you have to allow us to say prostitute on page 52 otherwise the whole episode falls apart. So obviously be sensible about it but yeah if the character is right. Yeah I think and that's why I'm not a particularly swearing person in real life I try not to be. But the show that we were writing was about soldiers and soldiers swear a lot.
They swear all the time they don't even think about swearing because they just do it all the time. So we actually had less swearing in the show than soldiers actually use in everyday life and we would occasionally get criticism from soldiers saying where's all the swearing you know we swear a lot and to which we had to say yes we do have to get F words and C words signed off by the channel. We had pretty much a free pass on F words we did not have a free pass on C words and I think that's I think that's fair enough. So we had to use them very very sparingly and only when that really was the only word that we could use.
So in one sense if you're trying to write pre-watch a show get rid of the swearing if you're not then don't worry about it. If your show is unbelievably swearing for a particularly good reason then I think you're you're just showing off Gareth. So you know remember you can see my little mouth come on it's not big and it's not it's not big it's not big or there it is sometimes funny. So that's an email from Gareth.
And then there's this there's another email from Tim Watson who asked about archetypes he says and during a podcast I've been jotting down some notes about character archetypes. Yeah he basically he sort of sent me a list of his ideas of archetypes some of which I thought made sense but I thought that they were a bit too sort of generally but I thought well what are these specific archetypes? Can we can we identify more of them by which we mean I suppose these are the characters they're not necessarily the main character in fact they are not the main character in your sitcom but every sitcom needs obviously other people around them and there are certain characteristics which we're not we're not asking you to do things that have already been done by other writers but that there are certain types of character who appear frequently in sitcom and we've identified them and you know we're offering them yes we are I mean just before we do that I mean there are some there are some types of character that actually become lead characters in some shows they're not like for instance we were talking about showing like that's our dad's army and there was this character Walker the Spiv and basically all he did in that's army was try and get you stuff on the black market you know nylon spinner meat whatever and that was his that was his entire role and then the 80s came along that's right 80s and everybody was like that and then you get these sort of main people like Del Boi, Arthur Daley of course arguably Black had her I suppose was more of a kind of opportunist. Absolutely yeah but and I had on it and we had one in Bluestone 4-2 because I would say our interpreter was Vruk he saw this purely as an opportunity to sell things and we were told by our military advisors yeah that's what they're like all our interpreters were like we started saying stuff but that's so we're back to him we're out of the Thatcherites 80s we're in the nice caring kind of Corbyn world of politics where we're much kind of actually I've read the motion Corbyn's case he does a podcast about the monarchy and I just wondering what your views were actually this is a total side issue about Jeremy Corbyn and his love of the Queen is he going to be discussed on the raw review for that he's refusal to meet the Queen?
Absolutely. I have to say I think I tweeted the other day that I'm sure the Queen's not all that thrilled about him to meet Jeremy Corbyn either so it does cut both ways doesn't it? It does, I think she might be interested in his allotment he's got a marvelous allotment everybody should have allotment and for that reason alone I think Jeremy Corbyn is a fantastic man she might also be interested in his knowledge of what is it a manhole cup as well oh yes that's another one of these are no obsessions so typical I'm in left, typical I'm interested in my knock on anyway it's talking of typical characters I mean once we're talking in stereotypes aren't we talking the media likes to pigeonhole people like Jeremy Corbyn he's a sort of you know he's CMD all that kind of stuff yeah so there's a sense in which although what we're not saying is you should fill your sitcoms with stereotypes what we are saying is there are archetypes and actually the audience is thinking in archetypes the audience are trying to work out the moment they see a character they're trying to think oh what sort of person is that and they'll pigeonhole them and you can try and resist that if you want but the audience are doing that so you do need to work with it even if you're going to subvert it or twist it which I suggest you do but at the same time we do need to just work out what these archetypes are yeah it's a shortcut isn't it? It's a shortcut to a laugh and so I'm starting with the first character that we thought that it was the idiot hooray we love idiots we love idiots well and I used to write with Michael Paul Kennedy very funny comedy writer he always called the idiot he's the free laugh basically and you know idiot someone was what we used to call them and there have been some changes I think a lot of people now recognize there's a lot of characters who were called idiots in previous sitcoms were dyslexic or had special needs and there's severe learning difficulties yeah so autism or whatever and so it's kind of and itself was shown with Derek wasn't it where it was like is this person an idiot or are they are they somewhere on the autistic spectrum and it is in the mind of the audience really yeah to make up their own minds but if you don't want that to be an issue in your sitcom you do just need to work out how to handle that but there are plenty of examples where you think actually you're on the side of the angels here who we got we got trigger in any forces and get a good example and he got some others as well yeah he's sort of literal isn't he really trigger he's a very literal person you got do go in father's head he's child really isn't it yes that's another way if you look at all you imagine all of doodles lies they could have been they could be set by a ten year old couldn't they ten of his gone through seminary somehow Alice is similar in the bigger deal yeah I think that's a good yeah it's a good similarity because she has a child's quality yeah the is Alice doodle wow interest in that someone there the theory that Richard Curtis who's all his characters are there other characters that are taken from other things well sometimes well there's a sense in which again because because sitcoms do deal an archetype because with with comedy you are trying to compress in order to get laughs you're trying to remove complications in order to get laughs in order to get laughs and therefore you're using these characters so because there are so many sitcoms around you you could probably track lots of Richard Curtis characters to other shows but you could track every other character and other shows to other shows okay so you know if you've got an infrared Curtis you could definitely make a case you could probably make a case for the others as well yeah there's a different kind of um idiot as well I think the idiot Samoan thing I think is useful in my hero I've mentioned it in the last podcast there was a character called Tyler who wasn't so much an idiot but was clearly away with the fairies right who who believed in who believed in aliens and all that kind of stuff and the irony of that particular character was the fact that he knew that arduino hanand's character was an alien from another planet with special powers but because it was Tyler nobody listened to him yeah so there's a sense in which it was like Cassandra the prophetess in uh ceterotroy she sort of said don't let the Trojan horse come in because it's full of soldiers but no one listens to her because oh it's Cassandra so you can ignore what they say because she's clearly crazy yeah so you can you can play around with this idiot character we had in bluestone we had a rocket yeah who was the the idiot but we also again you're trying to find a new thing we made him an animal lover yeah so there's an episode where there's a rat that goes missing and he tries to get on the rat and yeah those sorts of things yeah that's interesting because I was sort of him as an extreme he's an extreme character and I never actually thought of him as the idiot so you just got his name well right yeah well no he really was and yet there's another great useful thing about why I recommend having an idiot in your show is because you can explain the plots to them right so whenever an idiot is about to you know you know the characters are all about to go and do the big thing they're about to go and rob a bank or do some extreme thing that he's come to the idiot is going so hang on what are we doing again and then yeah we've got to do the thing so that we can do the thing and if we haven't done x by the time this happens then all is lost blah blah blah blah all right okay did you understand that no you know you can always find a way of getting a laugh off it as well so idiot characters are extremely useful they'll give you a free love for your exposition so that's good yes exactly they'll give you a free pass to do exposition yeah and then a laugh for it as well good and some of these characters are like i mean i get kind of like moss for instance in the crowd he is such a such a well drawn character he's you know one of the main characters in that show and then you've got the big bang theory which is basically an entire sitcom of people on the spectrum of different types of other waters i'm supposed really so so yeah there is um yes there is but they're they're all um science you know doctors professors yeah or whatever all right okay well let's move i've got a lot of these to get through so we'll crack on we've got the next one is the the wise cracker which is a which is a very useful character to have because the only reason they're in your sitcom is to tell jokes so and what what what what do you want really from a character norm is from cheers is the first one who springs to mind then there are a lot of the main characters as well we've talked a lot about Sergeant Bill Coen recent episodes because i'm obsessed with Bill Co and i love the show i'm watching for ages but i certainly um was very very influenced by that show in all sort of childhood really lee in not going out Hawkeye in mash uh so these are all the sort of main characters we don't i think norm had a back story but we we didn't really find out much and really all you need to know about norm he's he's overweight and he's in the bar a lot and he's escaping his wife Vera yeah we never he'll of course we never i think what's interesting in Hawkeye is a good example of how your wife cracker can work i think we've covered this maybe quite in one of the early podcasts Hawkeye is a wise cracker he is a voice of reason in a world that is mad so there's a sense in which you've got someone who they belong in that show and they can lead the show because in the same way that black halo is also not is a wise cracker especially in series well two three and four actually because he's the idiot in series one isn't he but he can do that he can't fulfill that role because the world around him is mad yeah so but if you just have someone but although it can be made to work because the most famous example Chandler obviously and friends he's funny his funny characteristic was being funny yeah and to the point where you know this person who is can be quite annoying really and they're they're they're hiding you know they're obviously they're using their humor to sort of hide their insecurities and he's quite open about the fact that he still uses it anyway even to the point where people are trying to actually have a serious conversation with him about life or whatever and he cannot resist going for the wise crack and even as something like Lee not going out as well isn't he even as you're laughing you're kind of going you're kind of feeling that's the sort of feeling that's beyond the signal what makes us show so massively popular like friends is that you know you're really kind of empathizing with that character you know you feel the sort of the paytos of that as well as but then he doesn't have to open your laughing again um curse you man so the next character then who's uh the best mate to carry down i was trying to think of a few i'm sure there are more that um George Costanza in science out yeah yes i suppose that's not necessarily what i would say is the mate oh i've ruined it already i think of him as more you know he is also you know like nothing nothing ever goes right in his own right yes he is he is the best mate and he's certainly he's the best mate who you know doesn't really kind of he's not much of a useful best mate is that really whereas and in fact actually yeah i was thinking about patsy and abther you know this is the best mate who gets you into worse trouble and yeah uh than he would hope really um Joey coming back to friends again he's he he's Chandler's best mate he sort of serves as a kind of best mate for the other guy he's really doesn't he you know that's the song that he's he's there for you isn't he you know um and again sometimes these best mates they get you into more trouble than they work as much as in peep show is is yeah i think i mean there's the variation on the best mate is the unreliable ally yeah i would say is that somebody who sort of takes you a set that and there's some incentive which you know Kramer who is the crazy guy uh as will come on to a little while Kramer is the if someone who's trying to help you but he'll help you in a way that makes your life much much harder yeah so that again those are the variations you've got best mates who are very loyal when you got best mates who are thinking their lawyer but actually making your life harder the loyal ones they're quite difficult to write as well they're a bit straight and they're not always great for human i think again likes them like bj in in mesh who's a great supporter for all kind but doesn't have any laughs but then it's a show where people are getting blown up every five minutes and so you can afford to have moments where there are many laughs but i was thinking again the show one of my favorite shows the likely lads struck whatever happened to the likely lads uh the robin is kind of a bop he's very straight everything about him is straight and it's a it's an extreme almost his normality is an extreme he so wants to be the straightest straight man in straight land but then terry always of leading the straight um let's let's go to the crazy guy now because that's talking about Kramer i mean other other examples i think of super handsome pig show which as you pointed out really on a fantastic name for super hands i've literally no idea what that is but he sort of it makes sense it's great isn't it Vivian in the young ones start with vy by an so like very girly name and the other man's a psychophistic um the chris marshall character in my family yeah i mean he was i mean he was the unexpected surprise package in that show which really got it to to a hundred episodes in a sense it gave such a good lot even though he left after series three or four series four i i i i i i may have mentioned this before but i said exactly how popular chris marshall was chris marshall equaled three million viewers because uh when he left when he left the show was on nine mich was getting nine million viewers and then he left and they got the six million viewers so so that's you can actually measure in exact terms how successful chris marshall but he was just you know in series one episode one he was um the oldest kid and then it just took off from there really um and then uh i mean the thing about these characters they're just they're fantastic characters to have on there because they could just they all they need do is just do something crazy drop the main character in realness and then just walk away that's their job yeah you know and that's if you can uh if you can come up with that character and you can find a way of of doing that and really because you know you want to drop your main character in as much uh chiply as possible really and that's a great way to do it and i'm trying to think of ones where they tried to do it and it didn't quite there was a there was a sort of british sign felt uh vague memories of in the 1990s um i can't remember who the main that's supposed to be i think might be an alan david's actually sure and there was a sort of slightly wacky character in that and it just didn't quite have enough stuff going on really i can't know what the show's got but i don't know can you think of other um you've not yet mentioned oh yes the clinger clinger in mash is a great one um he's one of who's always walking around in a dress i'm thinking also a show i never i was sort of before my time but taxi sort of had to didn't it well christopher loyds character was was uh pretty pretty kind of outback and then you got is it lap care or whatever yeah and the camera yeah so you've sort of got your free free laughs with those sorts of characters yeah and the camera he was more those sort of he was the idiot yes okay in fact he was uh again he was the funny foreigner yeah um which you know is again it's not so i wonder if you're within your within your ensemble i wonder if you're sort of talk there's a bit of an overlap between the idiot and the crazy guy and maybe you can probably get away with one but maybe not two and that's you've got a really big ensemble that taxi did and you've got one of the funniest people in human history in um what's in the Andy Kaufman yeah he was just just amazingly weirdly funny well an amazing cast that was uh dummy DeVito christopher loyds uh mary doo henna what's the guy don't ask me that before my generation of course yeah um so so yeah so crazy guy um the misery guts uh there's another one that i think of uh mentioned last episode uh Fraser in dad's army we're all doomed uh so yes he always brought the sitcom down every kind of but in a funny way if you've got a if you've got a if you've got a damn cloth character that can really just literally be a damn cloth but you want someone's gonna do it in a funny way and give it energy and pushing another direction yeah Neil in the young ones was another again catch Fraser yeah yeah yeah it was really pretty good actually and then there's the character Roger Lloyd Packard we mentioned Trigga i can't remember the name of the character but he was in in vittor of bibli he always have some story of that some frank sort of come with some horrible story out on the farm of some animal i've been horribly dismembered or something i can't that's a good one actually okay t um frank was the sort of one with the bow ties i was yeah so you tell the long round by yeah but then it's funny because you see no reaction which is just horror or yeah i'm rolling on and i think i think that the bore is a is another one of these characters and they in my experience are very hard to make work because when somebody tells a long roundling story and everyone on the show is bored the audience can also be bored so unless you have a particular genius for getting away around there i tend to tend to find those characters don't work hard way once or twice i'm sure yeah they sort of did it a bit they used to sort of do it a bit to Neil in the young ones didn't they they used to kind of he would start a story and they just they go off somehow they don't use it to cut to a totally weird surreal thing or they just say oh shut up yeah all vivian with it smash him over here exactly yeah uh yeah so so we got the misery we've had the crazy guy said the bore that's a good one we wanted to be careful with the bore yeah don't make him boring seems a lot funnier when you're planning a sitcom than they do on the night if he was if you've got a bore who can in one line convey boredom and that you can use sparingly then that's fantastic yeah um so there's a character sort of subsection of the sort of the big that there's sort of precursors to the big bang characters that the nerd and again i was sort of trying to think of ones who sort of earlier nerd characters on radar from a mesh is the one that immediately springs to mind and you know the geeky guy and um he's often you often see this character in the movies that he's the ugly friend of the lead character is the nerd or the or the other one with the laptop who who will get you into any building you want to get into yeah i've just watched again for some reason i love the movie national treasure i can't quite account for that the mikke kage movie where they're looking for it's sort of a da Vinci codeish but it's sort of a sonic treasure they have to steal the declaration of independence because there's a secret code on the back and there's a sidekick nerd character in that right who is sort of able to plug his laptop into things and get you into buildings they they can be those sorts of characters can be very useful because they can get you to a situation much faster because the sort of character where you genuinely believe if they plug their laptop in they really can do x y and z so you can do a bank heist in a way that you just couldn't in normal life yeah they you know if you have the right kind of nerd they do buy you an awful lot yeah that's why you get them in movies so much yeah okay yeah yeah yeah the new version of cute whereas the old queue was sort of a slightly different character but yeah all right the new benwishall version who is sort of young and can get you anywhere and do all that business yeah let's do it okay okay um then there's um there's the figure of authority and this is always a very useful character because often our main character is railing against that figure and the media one spins in mind is mr makai in porridge and he is so totally the little man with it with a little with a lot of power yeah and he really so much of porridge is about flesh trying to win little victories over mr makai that's that seem huge because because porridge is such a kind of you know it's such a brilliantly confined signal in that world prison world you know this is the tiniest the tiniest victory can be a huge thing and so that you've got a character like makai and he cannot let that he can't let that authority slip yeah i'm thinking of other characters the frank character in mash is a bit more of a sort of buffoon but he's sort of a tri-hard isn't it as well he's quite an unfortunate sort of you know he is quite a tragic figure but he happens to be in charge isn't he yeah although not although the real figure of authority played by a character called henry and there was nothing more wasn't there they they were always sort of amicable and sort of allowed misbehavior to go on yeah yeah oh the cj in perin so yeah that's a great he is a great character uh blakey in on the buses so Stephen Lewis another one went recently um but he he was a classic that the sort of little hitlers was the sort of phrase that people used to use about jobs worth and blakey had a little hit in the mr as well he was the inspector in on the buses and he always you know a stickle of authority and then they've been in similar way with porridge it's always about sort of getting one over blakey massively um and so so it's a very useful character to have it's somewhat this is a character who does everything by the rules yeah and you know you generally your your main sitcom character is a character who thinks they don't need rules or you know they they try to do things they try to get what they want um and so convince the rules yeah because the rules say that they can't have it exactly it's it's it's a tough figure to get right sometimes because you can't play the same authoritarian trick every time yeah so there is a there is a another subset of characters who turn up every now and then like the inspector character who can turn up to your hotel and close you down um but you can't have that character turn up every week right so so cj obviously can have can fire paren if he wants to but again paren's another example of the character he talked about who is a a wise cracker isn't he yeah but the world around him is mad and so he's able to see so cj is sort of part of a mad world yeah so it can be but the makai is the ultimate i think he was showing him an authority figure because he is but again it's it's an authoritarian disciplinarian sort of thing and it's reminded me of another archetype which is on our list but it suddenly made me remember and this is the character who is the the slavering sycophant when it comes to the figure of authority and so you have the double act in regi paren the greatest advertising great super yeah and that's all they said every episode was that oh they came up with an idea and cj that's the worst idea ever great super yeah anything to say whatever they had to say and i'm thinking the other obvious version of that is uh Gareth in the office who is just so totally loyal to baby brendt and we'll you know do anything to kind of get into to Brent's good books or you know we all we all hate David Brent we're all supposed to hate David Brent here's this one character who who worships him so you figure of all thora if say your main character is is the boss yeah then you've got this sub archetype character who is the the slavering yes man sick fans yeah and sometimes they're doing it because they're trying to get something out of it or sometimes they're just like that i'm now thinking of the british's empire and you have the only person really who likes Gordon Britas was the caretaker who was ridiculously loyal to him and the caretaker also who had a number of skin diseases and that kind of stuff he was a really unpleasant sort of character but he's just thought Gordon he's obviously britas was wonderful right anyway so that's another one yeah and we've got one a couple more actually there's the the student of life which was one that i again i thought of a little bit um they these are characters who were there to learn from the master really i suppose uh they're kind of sometimes they're sort of innocent so a little bit we mentioned do go as the sort of idiot stroke child but i mean the character like godbur in uh porridge and you can see him sort of learn trying to learn it's lectures need literally well also in that you can you've got Ronnie Barker is um it's Fletcher teaching godbur you also got Ronnie Barker as Arkwright teaching grand bill yeah so grand bill is a student of life isn't it who's a sort of a dreamer and it's interesting that now many many years on grand bill is now effectively Arkwright in still open all hours i haven't seen that yet no where no i saw christmas when i gave it to him he knows Arkwright in spite of in spite of himself yeah which is a nice little thing and Rodney in uh only fills and horses you can interesting how has that show developed uh how Nicholas Limpers character developed really and how actually he went from being the student in the same way he was saying almost that that Rodney kind of out grew uh down boy almost uh and and it was almost a sort of sad thing as well in the way because you could tell that he you know he was sort of he would never be the kind of that sort of that kind of chancellor that kind of character that they'll were wanted him to be but he can he become a sort of more rounded person which you know when you when you're up series eight or whatever yeah yeah other high successful sitcom you can get away with having this sort of really quite complex uh ideas around certain characters but i guess we're where we are we are we're not the short come yeah in one sense the student of life is not quite an empty vessel but they do have that naive innocence and they are i think that's a i'm thinking of um uh i'm thinking to some extent in the vick or dibly you've got Hugo who is being taught by the student of life he feels like he's learning and growing up he feels sort of innocent but also i think to some extent of a burner didn't yes right minister right there are quite a few times where i'm thinking in particular of um of when Bernard would knock on Humphrey's door and ask him a question about something and that's something that's Humphrey would say sit down Bernard and he would then tell him this is how it really works or all that kind of thing um it's a wonderful bit where they demonstrate to Bernard quite how ignorant he is about international affairs and you know what's the capital of chad and what language they speak and what's the currency of sense and he doesn't know anything at the end they go Bernard you should stand for parliament because he is ignorant as an empty so there's a sense in which i think Bernard is that student of life character which is very useful especially if you do have a absolutely rock solid um central character like Fletcher like god but like arkrai like hacker sorry or like so Humphrey you can you can really do because of the one sense they're they're not quite an opposition to them but they are frustrating them by not understanding stuff yeah it's a really good spot actually that so we could all right we could one and then we've got one more uh the the busybody isn't that correct i'm sure there are more by the way if you've got any ideas if you could think of other ones as well that we've missed um then do email us sit concrete such gmail dot com uh with your own ideas but the busybody was like the interfering neighbor that's the various characters in one foot of the grave and the neighbors there's a sort of neighbors in our number who always sort of seem a bit more perfect than the mirror family they're perfect but then they're not perfect it's a joke uh the door in character i think that's the best one i think of all the ones think dorian is particularly the neighbor who keeps coming round and who always turns up with with plots and story and intrigue yeah um i remember almost nothing other than in fresh fields there was a neighbor called Sonia there'd always be a knock at the back door and it'd be its own new Sonia and she was the kind of she would always turn up with with with with a plot so basically and that would be dorian in um yeah in birds of featherwood notice she would she would knock on the back door and come in with a bee story um so uh and mark you know husband Marcus who again we never see oh Marcus has done x which now means i can't sleep with my plumber which i'd like to be able to do or something there were mostly stories of her trying to sleep with people right so um but then she would sit in judgment on Sharon and Tracy as well so she was disapproving whilst herself being morally reprehensible she's kind of represents interfering at every sort of level really not just kind of knocking on the door and coming in but then also you know kind of getting involved in their lives exactly yeah yeah um so okay well that's a that's a big load just just to kind of recap obviously these are not setter stone and some of them will overlap but we basically we come up with um the idiot the wisecracker the best mate the crazy guy the misery the nerd the figure of authority the students of life and the busybody and that's a pretty good list of me not the bad list yet and as we say don't copy what's been done before but just think about those kind of the kind of things those people bring to the show in terms of the main characters what they can do to cause havoc for the main character and also you're doing this because the audience are trying to work out who these characters are and especially in your pilot scripts you know which is always the first thing that they're gonna that you're going to send out or you're going to write that someone's going to read is they are thinking what sort of person is this and it'd be wonderful to some extent if nobody ever had any preconceptions about anything that anyone ever wrote but that is not the world we live in so these these are those large to some extent lives in the life characters who who come in and that we that you need to sort of be thinking we're going to populate your show yeah as we say if you can think of any more sitcomgeeks at gmail.com and just a quick mention actually uh before we go i'd like to talk about something that James has been doing James has been uh sneakily well while we've been looking at James has been creating a sitcom you know on your sitcom geeks uh yes i have yeah yeah don't just tell us a little bit yeah so what i thought i do is quite often well occasionally i'm asked for specific examples of the sitcom creation process so all i've done is i've essentially created a sitcom on the blog called third time lucky which is not a show which i'm expecting anyone ever to commission at any point although i'm obviously secretly hoping that they will but it's uh and so i'm just walking through the process of of how to create a show the premise of the show is a couple who are marrying for the third time but it's the second time they're marrying each other and so what i sort of worked out would you know we talked to win the first podcast i think about what's your show about what's it really about at the moment what i think it's really about is whether people can change and in obviously in sitcoms they don't change but this is a show very much about the optimism that you might have that this time is going to be different so their marriage has already failed once before they've married they both married other people in that ended for a variety of reasons i don't know what yet but and now this will work through who are these characters what do the stories look like and so just going step by step all the way through it being a blog and having a little sort of comments uh place underneath it and people people have been coming up with suggestions and ideas a little bit yes yeah well you've been in this in code or secret no it's just i happen to mention i've been working today with uh build there who's very funny writer and producer who also happens to be the tutor of the national film television school comedy writing course and so he he studies sitcom a lot and i told him what your premise was and i said that i was curious to hear what he might say and he said i'm not sure he's gonna like this and got he said he thought the problem with it too much backstory well that's exactly it and so i've been writing um stuff about just making sure the show is always looking forward so that's why it's more question of and i specifically made both characters optimists about different things so that is a worry and it may be that as i because i literally have no idea where this i don't have any secret plan i may discover further down the line as i blog about this more that this isn't going to work but it may produce something that is going to work so as uh as james kara will tell you back story is the enemy of yes yes that's right confusion is the enemy back story is death right okay so that's just that spills note yeah anyway he's that that's just on the basis of me selling it to him in a sentence i'm sure sure he needs more he'll he'll he'll he'll see where the story is going and how it's going to work so yes i'm i'm dave i'm dave i'm dave kara and i've got a book out which is called how to be averagely successful at comedy james also you have a book called writing that's sitcom which is just about writing sitcom and it's uh it's a mind of information very very useful and we're on facebook as well sitcom beats um so like us please if you like us and even if you don't like us what does it cost us to like us just pretend just to click sitcom is all about faking it you know people are delusional in sitcoms just pretend you like it yeah well that's great and katie i'll produce it thank you very much katie has her own products as well one of which is a raw review podcast yeah we've actually we've not come back from a summer break we are stretching the definition of summer we really are it's a lot of things on so that's cool that's good to be busy okay and thanks to rushforth media who have allowed us to use their facilities here and the british comedy guide who are on the podcast uh i'm bave that's james and i'll be back again with another episode in two weeks time the bigger big 11 we've got over the big 10 so number 11 coming up next but turn it up to 11 comedy 11 isn't it yes one attack 11 to come 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