Episodes, that's it. It's going to be, okay, let's start the show again. No, okay. It's going to be episode 177.
Okay, all right. Welcome to sitcom geeks. I'm Dave Cohen. And I'm James Carey.
And this is episode 177. And it's a very special episode, and James and I, we're both very excited, aren't we, James? We are excited, which is unusual, because sitcom writers tend not to get excited about anything, short of being offered money for work. But you know what, we've almost got that, haven't we, Dave?
We're heading in that direction, because what we are going to do today, we're going to talk about a new competition. And that we are, we have organized in conjunction with Hat Trick TV. How about that then, hey, Hat Trick? They are awesome comedy production company of great heritage.
Jimmy Malville is the head of that company and is probably the best known, but there are lots of others. And so in conjunction, Dave has done all this. I can't really claim much credit. He has got Hat Trick to pony up prize money for this competition.
Isn't that right, Dave? That's correct, yes. And the prize money, the winner of this sitcom writing competition from Hat Trick is going to win £1,000. £1,000?
That's not bad, is it? That's better than our last competition, where you got to be a guest on the podcast. And how do you listen? Your sitcom, Scritch Critique by us.
It is a bit of a step up. Maybe not for the winner, actually, of that. Maybe Peter thinks, well, actually being on sitcom gigs was the highlight of my career, and anything after that is less. But that's not just, also, as well as that prize for the winner, £1,000.
There is a chance of development meetings and writers' room experience at Hat Trick. And so that's a really interesting aspect of this competition. And so, yeah. So, in short, it's fair to say Hat Trick are excited about this.
And so there will be the winning scripts, which obviously we'll be giving close attention by Hat Trick. But actually, there's a handful of scripts that will go through to them. So there's possibilities of a potential interest in meetings. So, in a way, we can't overpromise what that's going to mean, but we are developing this competition with them.
So this is a way in. And I know lots of questions that we get on the podcast are, can I send my scripts to a production company when it says, please don't send us your scripts to which the answer is obviously, well, no, they've just said they don't want it. So, it looks like doors are closed everywhere, but this is an open door. There is light emanating from it.
You can almost hear choirs of angels singing on the other side and beckoning you in. Have I ever stated a bit? No, because I had a meeting with Hat Trick, we discussed this. And there were, I did say about how difficult it is for new writers and how, you know, you've gone on the days when you could actually even send a script to a company just so that they would ignore it.
You know, you can't even do that anymore. And they acknowledged that as, you know, and that's partly. And at that meeting, I just mentioned that meeting when you told me about it, because I wasn't able to be there. But when Dave told me about what this meeting was like, it sounded like the Council of Elrond, where Dave sort of walked in and the whole development team were sort of sat around waiting to talk to you.
And there at the centre was a Galadriel, or who's the dude? Who's the Kiwi guy who plays their head elf? Anyway, Jimmy Mulvill was there too at the centre. You completely lost me on these cultural references, James, I have to say.
Well, for Lord of the Rings fans, anyone who's seen one of the most successful movies in human history. Yeah, and of course, because every social distance, it was a sort of giant room. Although there were only like sort of eight people. So there was lots of, sorry, what was that?
Could you repeat that, please? Pardon me? Not just from me, because I'm a bit deaf, but everybody was having that. But it was great.
You know, they really are very excited by this. And so that's, you know, coming back to that point, the fact is that it is actually, this as far as I'm aware, apart from BBC competitions, is only a comedy competition really that's actually free to enter, free at the point of entry. We were considering running this competition with BCG Pro and British Comedy Guide. And actually, they're going to be involved because they're brilliant at kind of, you know, getting scripts in and sending them out to us and all that side of it.
They host our show on their servers. They are brilliant. They are a good force in the comedy world. Yeah.
But even they aren't technically receiving entry fees for this. So that's all been waived. So this competition is free at the point of entry. There is a caveat coming up because everyone's thinking, oh my goodness, you're going to get sent 8,000 scripts, which, but we'll come to that in a moment.
Yeah, I mean, well, actually the first caveat we should mention is that we're looking at new writers. Stop listening now. Stephen Moffat. Your time is up.
This is not open to you. Yeah. It's, I know quite a few writers who've had quite a few credits who would consider that actually, this is about as near as I'm going to get to getting someone from Hatrick to read my script. So I'm afraid that some, you know, but out guys.
Yeah. So if you've had a half hour sitcom script produced on TV, I think is pretty much I think that's the same. Yeah, it might even be that, you know, if you've been, if you have been paid for a script before, we don't know, we haven't got the absolute exact details yet, but we're just kind of thrashing them out. Yeah, yeah, because the opening date for this is you got a month or so to get your act together.
And we'll stick some terms of conditions on the BCG website so you'll be able to see exactly who's in who is eligible for this. But essentially the vast majority of this into this show have not been paid for writing work. This is for you. So that's very exciting.
Now, should we get to the caveat Dave about what we're looking for? Yeah. Yes. Okay.
So the emphasis is on mainstream sitcom. Okay. So what do we mean by by mainstream? Now, there was this word that was being banded about at the meeting and they all kind of grown when they said it, but you know, how management speak kind of a word takes off.
Somebody says something and then the boss says, oh, that's a good word. And apparently everyone in commissioning is saying they're looking for, we're looking for co-viewed shows. That's co-viewed, which is a horrible phrase really. And it also, it sounds like COVID.
So we're looking for COVID shows. No, we're not looking for COVID shows, co-viewed by which they mean they're just trying not to say family shows, because they're not trying to kind of exclude people or, you know, kind of demonize people who aren't in families or whatever. But what they mean is shows that can be watched across all age groups. So, you know, kind of shows that are family shows, like in the broadest sense.
So like a group of people can be a workplace could be like an ensemble piece. But it's also shows that you can watch with your kids, if you've got kids or with your grandparents, if you've got them, or you know, kind of you watch. But I mean, there are obvious examples. And in fact, Hatrick has a long track record of making lots of shows like these, Father Ted, The Kumars, Drop the Dead Donkey, Dairy Girls, Out Number.
These are all Hatrick shows. And they're all shows that you can watch with anyone really. I mean, which is interesting because Father Ted, obviously back in the day, was on Channel 4 after 9 o'clock. And it was a little bit daring, wasn't it?
But in a way, I think there's a sensibility to it, which is, well, in one sense, inclusive, isn't it? Rather than, so essentially, we don't really, I don't think we're going to get very far with a sitcom that's set in a brothel. That just feels like you're going to make it very hard to make that a co-viewing experience. But in a sense, it's just worth thinking like, you know, there's stuff like Open All Hours, which obviously feels very, very mainstream.
There's other stuff like Ghosts, which is, you know, again, a bit of a silly show, but it's about Ghosts, and it's got, it's got scariest in it and that kind of thing. And obviously, actually, I don't watch my kids with Ghosts because they scare me really easily. So that for me is not a family show, even though I think I've seen every episode. But what I mean by that is, so it's a pretty broad category.
It's just what we're not really looking for is dark stuff, stuff that's really alienating, stuff that's almost a comedy about comedy, stuff that's really heavily deconstructed. And not in a Mrs. Brown way, but in a much more, you know, Gary Schandling sort of way. I don't think we're looking for something like that.
But the middle is pretty broad, isn't it? Yeah, we'll stick to what they are looking for at this point. We'll kind of do what they're not looking for in a moment in more detail. Friday Night Dinner is another show they mentioned, and that's a kind of, well, you know, that's a family sitcom.
It's got the four family people in it every week, Canada and the neighbour. And that's basically it. And then usually there's another, or there was another person like an aunt or an uncle or whatever. But basically it was the mum, dad, the two boys, and the same thing, same thing every night and every episode.
Good, warm, lovely, funny sitcom, I think. They mentioned Staff Let's Flats as well. That's sort of, you know, it's a kind of ensemble workplace. But we are talking, as you say, about shows that they kind of have a warmth to them, I suppose.
We have talked, I think, did we do a whole episode about tone in a show? Have we ever talked? We've talked about it? Well, it turns out we've done 176 before this one, so we must have done 10, 10 at one point or another.
I think Tony's a good thought. Do you want to just give a talk about tone for a moment? What we mean by that do you think? I don't really know what we mean by it.
But I think instinctively we do know what we mean by it. There is a kind of welcoming, positive tone to, I guess, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a positive, playful tone, even though it's about policing on the mean streets of New York. So, yeah, it's a bit cartoonish, and that's fine. So, tonally, that works.
But then there are other shows that might appear to be more mainstream, but tonally, look, much meaner, so you could have a period comedy and think, oh, that sounds funny. That could be funny. But then there's Hundaby, which was not a particularly tonally upbeat, co-viewing kind of show in that same sort of way. I only saw the first one.
I didn't particularly go for it. I didn't think it was bad. I just didn't really appeal to me. So, there are other shows.
There was another show called Flowers, I think, one of them called Tumor. And so, there are lots of shows like that, which do fine, and people like, and I have no problem with those shows, but tonally, there's a difference, isn't it? So, they don't have to be upbeat and goofy, although upbeat and goofy is great. But I think there just needs to be a bit of a warmth to it.
So, even if it isn't a family, in fact, it probably won't be a family, it kind of feels like a family and go back to the episode where we spoke to Sarah Morgan, that fundamentally all sitcoms of families and there's a theory in which you can just say, every successful sitcom at least has a family element to it. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think actually going slightly, well, one other thing I would add is, so you can have a show like Derry Girls, which is potentially a very serious, you know, it's got a very serious backdrop to it. But it's kind of about, it's about people coping in that serious world.
And it's almost like, how do you cope in that world where the kind of violence and social and streets or whatever is in every day? How do you find ways to remember? In the same way that maybe like a show like Orange, you could say, well, it's about, you know, actually don't ask too many questions about what these characters did in their previous life, because we don't really, we don't want to know. But what we like about it, there is a kind of the unity of the prisoners, that kind of battles against authority.
It sort of is like almost like a family sitcom, whereas I would say maybe something like Peep Show, which is a very, very popular show. And we do get a lot of shows, I feel, that are quite, it's a very influential show, I would say Peep Show. And a lot of writers want to write shows like Peep Show. But I think it's a, that there's talking about sort of warmth and things like that.
We don't actually, that's not necessarily the kind of tone of Peep Show really, I would think. So kind of bringing up, not so much a show like that really. Should we talk about, so let's, yeah, let's talk about the shows that we're not looking for. Dark comedy, that's a word that's often used.
And a lot of people say, I want to write a dark comedy. I mean, there are girls, it's potentially a dark comedy really, isn't it? But it's, it manages to not, it's about the tone. Yeah, yeah.
And so I mean, another example of what you were, as you were talking, I was thinking my wife has always liked Bluestone for too, not just because it helped pay the mortgage, but because it is actually a very, very warm show. But I would say that isn't really what we're after because it contains weapons, great swearing, as well as weapons, great weapons. And also sort of a fairly serious threatened violence, you know, all of which I would say is artistically justified. But I would say tone, tone therefore isn't quite everything.
It's actually almost a borderline show like that, I would say, because although it is a very dark, you know, subject matter and, you know, kind of quite terrifying subject matter, it is still about kind of, you know, a family unit really, isn't it? It's about people. How do you cope with that? Yeah, that's true.
But it's just, I think the threat and the language probably push it slightly out of, and obviously some, I know lots of teenagers did watch it and really liked it. And it was on BBC Three, you know, so, but I think that says more about UK parenting than anything else, frankly. So, but that's not going to get sidetracked in time. I think there's sort of examples of shows that we're talking about, I suppose, the obvious example of what might be called a dark comedy is a fleabag.
Again, obviously a very, very popular show, a show that, you know, and again, we do get a lot of scripts that are very influenced by fleabag, which is not surprising. It was certainly, it was, you know, the kind of, the sort of stand out sort of show in the last few years in terms of, you know, kind of being different to everything else that's out there. But also, I think shows that are, well, I know, because we talked about shows that are like stand up driven. So, a show like, say, sort of Starstruck or the Duchess.
So shows that are sort of about a character who's already out there, like a stand up. You mentioned there, I thought, I'm going to have this on the list, but I think that's a very good one. I'm sure they will agree. Those kind of meta shows about, you know, like, shows about showbiz, you know, that kind of curb your enthusiasm, for instance, or, God, I forgot the name of it now, the Tina Fey one, my brain is just turned.
It's pretty rock, guys, my brain is turned to much Gary, Gary, Larry Sander show, etc. So that kind of thing is probably not there. And the thing that actually really cheered me when I first suggested this idea to hat train with us, let's do a, they said, oh, let's do a sitcom competition. And the first thing, Daniel, I said, oh, God, what if they're going to ask for comedy dramas and God bloody up.
And the first thing they said was, we don't want a comedy drama. We don't want shows with a strong narrative arc. So the wrong man's, you know, home, this way up, those kind of shows. These are shows where they're very, you know, we're very through narrative.
So I want a show that you can watch an episode, a standalone episode, and you know, you can come to the show on series two, episode four, and decide, oh, I like this, and then go back and watch the rest of them. Yeah, that's really helpful distinction because actually that more than anything else will hopefully probably be a bigger problem and a bigger barrier for some people rather than tone because I think this question just comes up all the time now about because I think people fundamentally have a problem calibrating what a sitcom is and what a comedy drama is. And I'm almost up for abandoning the words comedy drama because it's so misunderstood. There are things now which I so people often say, you know, they've written a pilot script or they talk about their show and it's all about the character doing this thing.
They discover this, it turns out they're this and then they do this, they go off and do this and then they do this and this and this and you think, well, that's what I used to say, that's a three-hour movie, broken up into chunks. And I would say that's not a comedy drama, I would say that's a funny drama. And I think quite often in these stories, you get the sense when people are telling you the story or pitching it or writing it up that they're more interested in the story than the characters. And I have no problem with that at all.
I've just read Brave New World and the characters in that are quite interesting, but it's all about the story and the setup and stuff. And, you know, when you read a novel, it tends to be that the characters having epiphany, they change, they go on a journey and then they're done. And that's great, that's what movies are. And so there are lots of TV shows, which also have jokes in them, that might classify as comedy dramas, I would say, they're funny dramas, but they're not sitcoms, whereas a sitcom is it's all about the characters.
And it's going to be the same characters in similar situations each week, but you need to have a situation in a series of characters where there is endless variation. So that's the thing that we want. We want a sitcom, don't we? Yeah, not only that, not only are they different, but they're absolutely in contradiction to each other.
You mentioned the character who goes on a journey and learns, and whereas your sitcom character does not go on a journey and does not learn, and that's the whole point of it. And, you know, that's so, it's, we have talked about how do you square this contradiction? And there are some shows that manage it, but it doesn't always work. I think, I may be wrong, but potentially this will be very helpful to us that normally around this time of year as well, the BBC writers' room run a competition to ask you for a comedy drama script.
So, because they stopped doing comedy, they stopped doing out and out and out. I guess, shame on them, but there's, well, there's nobody up, you know, at this point, this is the only competition, this is the only thing that's open to everybody. You know, there's nothing up there. The BBC really should have kind of free competition.
They had the Golden Simpson thing a year ago, but we haven't heard any more. They've kind of been on hold BBC comedy for about two years now, changing. Wow, Dave's really calling out the BBC here. I'm loving this.
Come on BBC. Let's see it. Well, you're going to let a podcast in Hatrick steal a march on you. What?
Come on. Yes, that's right. That's, that's, you know, get in there. You're giving it the old, you know, kind of motivational speaker there to the BBC.
Come on BBC. Come on BBC, you know, get your ass in gear or whatever. Whatever. The BBC would call it.
Get your posterior in gear. Oh, right. That's not the BBC. No, no, fair enough.
So that's, you know, it's, it's hopefully, so if you're not sure, you know, which is which, it should become very clear. And one thing we are going to do, so we're launching the competition now, but we're going to be talking about it a lot. We're going to be interviewing Jimmy Mullville as well on the show. And we'll do, we'll talk to him about the competition, what, you know, how he sees it and what, what he wants from it.
That's going to come in about a month or so. We're going to be running a series of blogs just across the whole kind of area and make sure that so, you know, you know, things like, obviously, we'll talk about character and story and jokes and all that, but we will really try and make it easy for you to see how, you know, if you're writing this kind of thing, that's wrong, you know, so we're going to try and do that. And then we'll open the window for the competition, forgetting your scripts on the 1st of December, Wednesday the 1st of December. And then the window will stay open all the way through over Christmas and new year and close on the Wednesday the 5th of January.
So you've got about four or five weeks, including hopefully, if you're lucky, sometime just towards the end when you're, you can just concentrate on writing. If you know, that's right. The 12 days of Christmas can become the 12 days of sitcom, and then you can send off your scripts on Wednesday the 5th of January and enjoy and enjoy 12th night on the 5th of January. But I would always, I would always advise.
And we spoke to the, when we did speak to BBC writers about this, I think about their competitions they've run before and their open windows and stuff. They've always said, try to get it in early, earlier, because if you hit the deadline and there are technical difficulties, your internet goes down, you can't log in or something like that. And then you miss the deadline, well, that's it. And then you've got to send begging emails to which the answer will be, no, you've had a whole month to get this in.
So be professional, get it in. But I was keen to extend it to the 5th just because people take a lot of time off over Christmas of New Year, and that's the time to be finishing it off, polishing it up, going through it one more time. And in the future, I'm developing a resource at the moment to sort of buff up your script and give it a really good, once-over-mo-t checklist sort of thing. So I'll keep you posted on that.
But I'm also going to rerun a webinar I was doing, if I may just make use of this moment day. So in September, I did a webinar called Sitcom in a Day. So I'm going to run that one again, which is a live course on Zoom for a whole day, where it's like everything you need to know about writing a Sitcom with links to other stuff so that we don't sort of take out the whole day with things that you can watch online for free. So I'll be running that again.
And if you follow me on Twitter at sitcomgeek, then you'll see stuff there. And I've got a blog as well called Sitcomgeek at, at www.blogspot.com. But if you look for James Carey, Sitcomgeek, you probably won't just go too far wrong. There aren't that many Sitcomgeek's called James Carey out there, I'm pleased to answer.
So there'll be a couple of things coming up from me, and Dave is always doing stuff as well. Dave, what sort of stuff are you planning on? Well, actually, mostly in the next few weeks, I've got of course, I've built a Sitcom, which is slightly more modest a time. So you only have a whole eight weeks to create a Sitcomge, rather than a single day.
But I'm also running a rewriting course, which I'm quite excited about, because that's something that nobody ever really talks about, or does things for. So if you've got a script now already, you can go to daycoing.org.uk. I'll have a few places left, I think, for people to come and do this. It's like a four-week correspondence course, where we really look at the script that we've written, and we examine what's working and what isn't.
And then we look to make it work better. And then we can really do a similar kind of MOT thing, but on the first 10 pages, to really make those first 10 pages stand out. But also don't worry, if you're not able to do any of those things, you don't want to, that's all completely fine. Just because we're doing those things, it doesn't in any way affect the outcome of the competition.
It's going to be done anonymously, so we're not going to actually know who's written what. And there'll be other people checking in and reading and auditing what we're doing too. So we won't be waving stuff through that we might have seen before, from Patreon, for example, or anything like that. So this is all going to be done proper, because hat-tricker involves.
So we're all on our best behaviour. So we don't want to go on the wrong side of Patreon. So there'll be links to all that in the show notes, and we'll keep you posted on that. But if you follow us on Twitter, I'm SitcomGeek.
We are SitcomGeek's on Twitter, and on Facebook, and Davey's on... Dave Cohen Comedy. That's Dave Cohen Comedy. I'm sorry, I have a total blank on that.
But it's one of those things where I don't need to know it, because I already follow you on Twitter. So I don't punch in your name every time I want to see what you're saying on Twitter. That's not really how it works, is it? But I just want to go back, just to one last thing on StoryArks.
And I think I want to reiterate something that Dave has said in the past, which I think is really, really helpful about comedy dramas and story arcs. So we want Sitcoms. And it's okay to have a little arc in your Sitcom. But the arc, I would say, let us say, for example, you have a Sitcom that is set on a cruise liner.
The first episode could be casting off the opening day of the crew arriving, or it is leaving, and the final episode could be. The ship is docking after its 30-day voyage, 60-day voyage, something like that. So there is a beginning and a middle and an end to it. But essentially, episodes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, up until episode 12 are stuff happening on a cruise line.
And of course, it's about the characters. It's not about stuff happening. It's about the characters. So I think those kinds of things where you do have an episode one, which is the beginning of a journey.
It could be a couple agreed to get married, and then the final episode is the wedding day, and each episode is a subset of this week, the cake. And then next week, it's booking a honeymoon, and then the following week. So there's a story of the week, which we're seeing them doing in their normal places and that kind of stuff. Maybe that we don't see the honeymoon, or maybe that series 2.
But I'd rather not. Series 2, episode 1, should be just got back from honeymoon. Wow, that was bad. And episode 1 is living with the tropical diseases that they picked up on their honeymoon or whatever.
So I think those kinds of things are okay and actually quite hard to avoid in some situations. Personally, I would just start the ship mid-cruise on a cruise liner. I don't think we necessarily need to see the beginning. You could have the casting off episode done in flashback in episode 3.
West Wing starts with Jed Bartlett as president, and then series 2 is, how did he get to be president? Which worked really well, I thought. You've seen what I've seen. I haven't actually known.
No, Lord of the Rings. No, West Wing. I know, I know, I am. What kind of a sick comedy?
Oh, then obviously, I'm a kind of guy who watches comedy. Okay, fair enough. I've just subscribed to the History History Documentary app thing. So I can just get to watch History Documentaries now.
So I'm terrible at watching Sick Combat at the moment, but I have been trying to open watching Go! So I'm nearly watched all of them. Okay, so just one more thing that we wanted to talk about, because this did kind of come up in the meeting. And what Patrick has said is, understandable, I say, are hat-trick, and they've had lots of them.
We're looking for a hit to show. So what's a hit show? So that's a kind of tough ask really, but I did think that there is a way that we can talk about what a hit show is, because in the last few years, both of us have different shows, written for shows that we had no idea that they were going to be hits, because you never do know with the show. But you, James, worked on Miranda.
Yes, I did. And I worked on Horrible Histories. And so I mean, I just thought we could sort of talk to each other a little bit about what, how did a hit show come about? And obviously this isn't going to be, oh, well, this is how you do a hit show, because if it was that easy, we'd all be doing it.
But these are examples in our very recent memories that may just help kind of when you're thinking about the sort of thing that you want to make. So just to ask you really, you know, how Miranda was never, I mean, it was on BBC Two anyway, wasn't it? It was, you know, it was when you were first creating the show, what was your kind of, how did you sort of feel about when it was being made, you know? Well, I mean, I didn't join it at the very start.
I helped out with the radio series, but even then it had been commissioned for TV. And Miranda had a very clear idea of what the show was, you know, ahead. But we can learn from that. I learned a huge amount working with Miranda and for her, you know, and for the show.
And I just think she was really clear on what the show was and what it wasn't. So although it was based around, partly around a central performance. And as writers, we don't, you know, so if you're writing a script for this competition, you're writing for actors and that's not you. And you can't write in the script.
Trust me, when I do it, it's funny. That's not really what we're after. But there was just a very, very clear point of view. And so the main writing voices that were on this show knew exactly what the show was and what it wasn't.
It was all about Miranda. Her house rule was, I mean, every scene, which immediately initially goes, you know, to a normal British person, it's like, oh, wow, who do you think you are? That's what the answer is. Miranda.
And that's the title of the show. So I get to be in every scene. And if you don't like Miranda, then you're not going to like the show. So I might as well be in all of it.
So all of the plots revolve around her. There isn't really, you know, and it's about her trying to fit in, you know, and she's just a square peg around her. And she's, in one sense, she's a fish out of water. She's not one out.
Everyone else seems to be, you know, smug, married, getting on with life, successful, grown up. And she just feels trapped in this strange body. She wants to play what I love about the shop that she runs. It's completely, it's completely accurate to her as a show.
You know, it's a joke shop, really. I mean, in the radio series, it was even more of a joke shop. But in the TV show, it's just sort of a self-ducereuseless junk, it's not a serious shop in that sense. It's for people who don't really know what else to buy.
And I think it works metaphorically, because Miranda doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life, because she doesn't have particularly strong feelings about anything, politically motivated. She's not driven financially. And then the man that she's always really liked goes and starts a restaurant next door, and it's kind of that. And it's that immense pressure for mum.
But I just think there was a really clear voice at work in that show, as Richard and I were just really trying to hone and help her find and just go, how about this? Maybe this, maybe not that. And I think that's the advice I'm giving lots of writers now is just always, you know, what is the voice of this show? Because that's what they're looking for.
They're looking for voices. They're looking for a well-executed script, but they're more interested in a script that has a strong voice than a script that is technically perfect. A technically executed script that is competent, but it's like, okay, I suppose that kind of works. It's a script that's a bit of a mess.
I mean, there's the Father Ted story, isn't there? Which was apocryphy retold, but I think we finally got the the subfinal settled version of it, haven't we, Dave? Yes, that's right. This was Jimmy Mulvall mentioned at the meeting that they, the late Jeffrey Kirk, who was one of the founders of Hatrick with Jimmy.
And they received this kind of, typed up script that was not a tally script by any stretch of imagination, but it was like a smooth, a smooth documentary thing, a day in the light of Father Ted Crilly. And it was, I'm sorry, it was just, but it was him in a car and just talking about his day. And it was kind of all over the place, but it just, there were just these sort of big moments, big hilarious moments in the first three pages, and they just went, we've got to meet these guys who read this. And that's how that, you know, that kind of, well, we know the rest.
Yeah, I mean, you can go back and listen to the episode with Graham Linhen, who, I mean, they'd already tried to get Paris on TV, but it feels like this was sort of happening at the same time. So Paris was this very expensive Channel 4 sitcom, which didn't work very well. Go back and listen to that episode and you'll discover from Graham's own words why it didn't go so well. But they'd already, I think they'd already had this idea, but it was, but it, there was just something there that felt really funny.
And the technical execution wasn't quite right. So obviously we want lots and lots of technical execution. We're not saying that doesn't matter, but what we're saying really matters, is just that, you know, that character, that central idea, that central character, and that voice, which I think is, I think that's what really separates scripts, particularly. I mean, given that there will be many entries and plenty will be perfectly well executed, the ones that will rise to the top of that shortlist, as it were, are the ones that really feel authored, like they've got a point of view.
Yeah, and I think that's actually clarified for me what Horrible History's had. It did have, it had a very clear, well, it had a very clear author at the point of view, and the view was of Caroline Norris, the producer. So there were these books, you know, hit books, so that was already something going for it, but that's never a guarantee that a successful book will become a successful show. She had this very clear idea of life of Brian Blackadder, take on Terry Deere's Horrible History's books.
And so there was a team of people who knew how to write those kinds of sketches. And then there was, for me, you know, I've written the sorts of songs, like the kind of songs that you would hear in Monty Python. And so it brought everything that was there was very, but was all kind of Caroline's, her vision, really. So she got the cast together and everything.
And those first five series were very much that clear vision. But again, you never really know. That's the next thought is, you know, well, when do you realize that actually this thing that you just did, which is just a job you did, and this was like, it came out a year after we'd written it. And that was, and it was kind of about four or five weeks in, and I had kids the age of the sort of kids who were watching Horrible History's.
And everybody at this kid's school was talking about it. And then a word got out that I'd written the songs. And so suddenly, you know, people who had never spoken to me were coming up to me. And saying, oh, I'm the biggest fan of this show.
Oh, I know that I can sing all the words to this song. And it was just, it was like, God, you know, I've been waiting for 30 years. Well, loads of shows. I've never ever had this kind of, you know, straight and just coming up to me and the street and talking to me about it.
And I think that is, you know, you just don't know when you're doing stuff. But when you live that kind of, you can sort of see the things that you eliminated to get to that place, I think. The other thing that you've left out, which I think is absolutely critical, because they stuck to their guns on this from day one is, Horrible History's is a yes and show, not a what if show. And so it's always based on the idea that truth is stranger than fiction.
So they will take a strange fact about Henry IV and build a sketch on it, rather than say, wouldn't it be funny if Henry IV went into space, to be honest with you, I don't know, maybe it wouldn't. Wouldn't it be funny if Richard III hadn't died at the Battle of Ozworth? It's like, well, but he did. And what, you know, so it was, it was, all the sketches are, they take a fact and absolutely run with it or take three key facts about the Black Death or whatever.
And so I just think that was a really, really strong format. And they start to rate and they, you know, they haven't changed it in that sense. My kids have seen pretty much every single thing. I think they've only just about stop watching it now, because I think they've still had enough, but they did pretty much watch every episode of Series 1 to 6 or 7 or 8 or something.
Okay, well, we're going to wrap up now. We should. But that's some, hopefully you're going to go away and be very inspired by that. Be very certain that what you're writing is the kind of show that we've been talking about.
Yeah, we, you know, it's going to be, we've got to have, we know we're going to get a lot of entries. And James and I are going to be reading every one of them. So we won't take kindly to your opening bomb exploding mysteriously on an island that's nothing to do with the characters on page 4. So, so bear that in mind.
Standing alone episodes, I think is the main thing that's, you know, family, family, co-viewing. Yes, not co-viewing. Yes, so yeah, we'll be talking a lot more about that as we say. We're going to have to be more along soon as well.
And but some good luck starts, so checking things out will be putting lots of stuff on the BCG website about this. So look in the show notes for links to that. And also to Dave's rewriting course to my sitcom in a day course and lots more to come. So you're under starters orders and later in December we will shout go.
We are now ready to receive your entries. But anyway, it's a really exciting, really exciting time for C compute. So I mean, I was going to say tell your friends, but lots of people don't want to tell their friends now. Because that's just one other person to compete against.
But why don't you tell your friends? Well, tell your friends who aren't comedy writers and they hold you accountable and make sure you write the script that we want to see. Absolutely. Okay, so until next time we'll say thank you very much and speak to you again in a couple of weeks.
And goodbye to you James. Bye bye Dave. Thanks for listening everyone. Cheerio.