Episode 200 - How Many!?

Right, so Bill says he can't stay, which is obviously a very loaded way of saying, get on with it for God's sake. Hello, I must be going, I came to say I cannot stay, I must be going. Welcome to CICOM Geeks, I'm Dave Cohen. And I'm James Carey.

And we are here celebrating episode number 200. The devil's entry, raising the bat towards the pavilion. We have the 200. We've got lots of people, I guess, but they're all on mute, but they all kind of cheered and clapped and whooped there.

But this is a... Hurray! There's one, yay! Oh, here they come, either.

Oh no, what have you done, Dave? I know, it's anarchy now, that's it. But yes, we've got a few of our Patrons have come along to witness this historic event. And so we're going to...

Yeah, of course, can you remember, first of all, first question for you James, what year was the first ever CICOM Geeks podcast? So I think we started in 2015, is that right? It is correct. So first five points to James there.

I mean, I was there. So yes, 2015, can you remember, can you name the audience CICOMs that came out in 2015? That's the next, that's a kind of leading question. It's a trick question, Molly.

Oh, OK. Oh, were there not very many? Try again. Bit lower.

Oh, were there none? Was it there? No audience CICOMs, the year that we came out in 2015. But there have been some since, so we can try and take some of the credit for that.

Yes, it would be entirely misplaced, but we do try. But interesting, some of the shows that debuted the same year that we did. Car Share, Chewingum, and Catastrophe all started in 2015. As well as some Pompey-Doo and in an out of the kitchen, Miles Jupp's radio transfer.

So those two weren't as big successes. They obviously needed that all magic starting with C ingredient. Yes, who knew that was what you needed to start in 2015? Yeah.

Was there something beginning in C? Yeah. So that's the next leading question there, James. What can you say, links, all those shows?

Car Share, Chewingum, Catastrophe, Pompey-Doo, the Matt Lucas Silent Show, and Miles Jupp's In and Out of the Kitchen? I guess there's a similarity that the people who wrote them are in them. That's a very interesting one. Yes, exactly.

That's another kind of introductory point. So this time, seven years ago, all the sitcoms that were coming out were non-audience, and they were all written by the people who were in them. So I thought I'd start with that nice... It's depressing.

Yeah, jolly, breezy point. But things are changing a little bit. Do you think, James? I mean, I think that they're in some ways they're improving, and there have been more audience sitcoms, and there have been more sitcoms written by people who just actually write.

But those were the kind of two big things that I noticed as we started to think about this episode. So what's your big takeaway from when we first started to now? I was probably more successful when we started. So I had a sitcom on the television called Bluestone 4-2.

I think it was on series three by that point, I think. But I knew at the time that getting a sitcom on the television is incredibly hard and had taken me basically 10 years. And it might take me another 10 years to get another sitcom on the television. Well, I'm still on course, 10 years after the last one.

Estimated time to get one is 2025. So in a way, getting stuff on is really hard. It's all still very competitive. And in one sense, I don't know, because of the number of channels competing for viewers and eyeballs, it makes them ever more keen to grab something that's going to bring its own audience with it.

And the thing about shows with writer performance in, if your sitcom's got Lee Mack in it or Sarah Milliken or Kevin Bridges or someone who can fill a very large venue, it's probably going to be much more likely to have commissioned than the previous thing that used to happen in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which is usually two blokes who went to school together, became comedy writers, and then wrote a play. And then as BBC producers saw it and became sitcom, and then they basically wrote five more sitcoms before they retired. So that's kind of that's different. I don't think it's worse necessarily.

We've got a probably much greater variety of comedy on than we previously did, and much more voices, much more representation. And also the fact we are a different country from what we were 50 years ago anyway. But even from 2015, things seem quite different now, don't they? From years ago.

Very much so. I've been going through the British comedy guy charts of sitcoms from 10 years ago and 20 years ago and new shows. And interestingly in 2005, something like there were only something like about 20 new shows that made their debut compared to sort of 40 new narrative shows. But then in 2015 it was something like 60.

So the point you just made there, which is that there are more channels and that there is more stuff being made, but there is definitely more of a kind of scatter gun feel to it. And you know, there are more, the companies are looking for sort of different ways to try and get stuff on. And they are looking bad news for you and me, James. I suppose they are looking a little bit beyond the whites middle class male who has written 99% of everything for the last 50 years.

And we can't really, well, I can't really complain about that. And that would partly explain why since 2015 I've written two books, two stage shows, script edited, a CBBC show, written an episode or two of Citizen Khan and a UK Gold Show called The Rebel and an episode of Shakespeare and Hathaway. So in a way there is still work out there for people like me and increasingly non-profit making things like writing books. So there is a way of making it work.

But yeah, it's different. So getting a show off the ground is hard. I think it's always been hard, but it just feels like there's more competition. By the way, Gary on the chat has just asked me if I spent all my earnings from Bluestang, which is a moot point really I suppose.

I guess the fact that I've got an office here in my house would suggest that I have spent most of it because it sort of went on the mortgage and doing things I couldn't have done before. And Mike has asked whether Jerry Sadovitz, The sitcom, is bringing an audience with it. A show that commissions and cancels itself. I think that's it, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. One stop shop. I mean that's got Hyl Honeye home, isn't it? Well, he did do a series on Channel 5, actually.

Jerry, back in the day, shows the call. Yes, it wasn't a sitcom. No, it wasn't. And I'm not sure he would do it.

Well, I think he would be, I think someone could do a sitcom with him. It would just be about his magic because he's a great actor. And when he doesn't swear and when he's not mean and nasty, he does the most incredible show. And when he's like, it's the story.

When anyone likes to write to sit calm with him, it doesn't sound much fun. No, no. I'm sure he's not like that in real life. Oh, no, no, no, he is.

Oh, OK, right. Is he like that in real life? Not at all. No, he's one of the nicest people in the comedy world, which, you know, people think I'm joking when I say that.

But actually that's, he was, he was, you know, he was the first one to be way ahead of all those sort of suitably and people like that. It was a construct. His character is a construct. And yes, he says absolutely horrible, terrible things.

But the person that I think I mentioned in the last podcast, the person that he hates more than anyone or everything is himself. And that's the kind of, that's what you come away with. But you also come away feeling deeply hurt and wounded. And whatever you might be, you know, you might be a woman, for instance, or you might be a black person or a Jew or, you know, or called Dave.

He used to do a lot of stuff about guys called Dave. Well, Dave is boring. All Dave's are boring. That was it.

I don't know why I remembered that. But, you know, that was the problem. It wasn't just, oh, he was very mean about that. He was just like, he was really angrily personal against me for being a woman or a black person or a Jew or whatever, working class.

And, you know, so you can't, you can't kind of come away with it. Feel good. Yeah. Either way, Jerry's out of it to sitcom seems unlikely to be commissioned.

I don't think it's going to happen. Sorry. In the next 18 months. We digress.

We digress. So, so just going back to about studio sitcoms and everything as well. And the porosity of the number on TV, whatever. I think also it's worth saying that it feels like there's less room on radio than there used to be as well for scripted comedy and non-writer performer comedy.

It felt like I was particularly fortunate to get in on that before that door got smaller and slightly harder to open by getting in there. We think the unthinkable in 1999, I think it was, and then Heart 33. And I still do Milton's show. I've done obviously some of the plenty of those in the last seven years as well.

It feels like the amount of scripted comedy that they still do lots, you know, as it were, they used to do loads. I think it's quite a lot. I think it's that fair. I don't know.

It just feels like you could graduate from that topical comedy thing onto your own sitcom. And I remember at one point, you know, I was doing one. Mark Evans was doing big expectations. Lawrence Howarth was doing.

Oh, rigor mortis. Yeah, it can be. You know, John Finnwall was about to get going with with cabin pressure. And it just felt like this is something that's, you know, that's a thing.

And it just feels like that particular thing has been squeezed. Yeah, I agree. And in fact, all those, I've well, Shane, mentioned parties over, which is one of the more recent icons, but again, the party wasn't there. That was the original version of that.

But also at that time, you know, I was writing for radio again, when we started, my show that I was doing had been doing for 15 years, finished at about 2019. And I haven't had any radio work since then. And I think it is true. And also when we started out, we could say quite glithely, well, you know, if you want to make it in comedy the quickest way in is writing topical jokes, and then you'll get to know the people at radio, et cetera.

And it still applies that there are now topic, there are still topical shows that it's still away in, but it's not, it's a much harder way in than it was. You know, as we say, the way you started, the way I started lots and lots of people, Simon Blackwell, Georgia, Prichard, Tony, Roseville, those people, they all started that way. And pretty quickly, they were being commissioned to write for lots of other shows. So they were in there and earning enough to be able to quit day jobs and stuff from doing tons and tons of stuff on radio.

And so that, unfortunately, that has gone a little bit by the way. So I think what, can I just ask on that? Just check on that. So Dan, swear it's been doing that for a while, if you want to unmute yourself and ask, do you think, has there been much change in the opportunities in the last, you know, seven years, you know, you've been doing it for a while?

Is it still a good way in writing topicals for the new radio for shows? I think it's a good way, it's a good way in, but as Dev says, there's not any money, not really any much money in it. But I think the process is the same. You impress the producers, your approach to producers, you, they've all got their own independent radio companies now, the producers that I worked a lot with at the BBC.

But it's still a lot of chasing sending scripts to all of them. So I think the process is the same, but I think there was, from what Dev has said, there was more opportunity and there was more money in it that you could actually live off that way, whereas it's pretty much impossible now without a proper, proper quote job on the sidelines. Yeah, yeah. No, the money's sort of the same, but obviously you're, it doesn't make, it doesn't earn you the same money.

So it's, I reckon the news is the same for gaga as when I started coincidentally in 2015, seven years it hasn't gone up. Yeah. And I think it's the same as what I was getting for a gaga on week ending in 1983 when I started. I think what is changing a little bit with radio and it has potential to change now, I think is that audio has received this sort of massive kick up the backside through things like Spotify and Audible books.

And there is starting to be now a little bit more of a kind of, you know, the radio for was the only place in town for anyone could do comedy at all. And so yeah, the money has gone from doing that, but there are now more places. And I think a Spotify goes more and more into things like audio books and there's audio books going more and more into having more than one voice, you know, and there's, you've already got those sort of companies like Big Finish that do kind of big, huge series of, you know, 20 episodes of a Doctor Who series or something. And I think that might be an area that will develop.

Do you think is that happening down? Are you aware of that? Yeah, yeah. Well, people can make their own stuff as well.

That's the big changes podcast as per issue. You can sit in a room and be funny. I mean, not everyone wants to listen to people trying to be funny. But you can make your own stuff.

I'm surprised. I'm surprised not many people make sitcoms as podcasts. Yeah, I thought they'd be more. I think they'd be like this.

Can I make a point? I started writing in mid 90s and everybody that I knew that the BBC have subsequently gone on and made their own production company working with Audible. The big one being that, that Max, now is responsible for the recent Sandman stuff and all the more. And even little producers like friend of mine, Barney and Jones, who has just produced the radio version of Champs for 123 with the hat trick.

None of them are going towards being on radio at all. They're just doing it privately for either private sales or selling platforms like Audible. Yeah, that's really interesting. The way things are at the moment, like big finishing, some of the things you've mentioned there, Stephen, it feels like it still heavily lends itself to genre in particular science fiction and those sorts of things.

But actually, just going over to Peter, who made his own science fiction sitcom, which was fantastic and funny. And he won our competition and then crowdfunded a pilot and then tried to get a second one going, but it didn't quite take in the same way. And he just says, oh, the chat, he was surprised by how small the audience was for podcast sitcoms. It's one of those things where because it's not done, people aren't looking in that space for it.

So I think that's quite a good point is that people don't, it's hard to create, to to pull your heart and soul into creating an original audio product. If you're not sure that people are looking for it in the way that they're looking for YouTube videos, you know, feels like the search of, you know, perhaps the answer is that it doesn't need to be genre based as well because it's things like, welcome to the night fail, which has just been a podcast and it just exploded, absolutely. Yeah, well, Peter mentions that there. And I think that's, this is one of those things where, and people have tried to make, online sitcoms that have been quite a few, not just Peter's one before that, there was the, would know the Coats, the Set in a Funeral Parlor, and that that ran for about three or four series.

But I think it's, I think it's the amount of work. And as we say, the, you know, the fact that not many people are listening, but I think something, something will come along in, I think, like the way that 50 Shades of Grey came along and nobody was interested at all in books that were published, that were self published or independently published. And then suddenly this book comes along that sells a bazillions and independent publishing becomes a thing. And I suspect, you know, and it's something that we should probably think, talk a bit about in a future episode, James, because I think it is, it does have potential to be a big thing in the future.

I mean, I've never mentioned it on this podcast before, I don't think, but I make a podcast for a church based organisation called Facing Kids. And so it's me and I'm, and another guy making stuff that's sort of family friendly, that's sort of Bible based and stuff. And then I write a sketch based on the bit of the Bible, and then I get actors to record it quite often on their own where they are occasionally, but we get studio. And then I kind of add sound effects, which are all, you know, you can get really good sound effects for free that are public domain.

And I just want to tinker around with it. And if I may say, it sounds pretty good. And it's not that hard. And I do it because I get paid to do it to make it for the people.

And so, but it's interesting that it's not technically very difficult. But at the moment, I think, yeah, that one thing is it's hard to put your heart and soul into an audio comedy because you just, you just don't think that anyone's really going to find it. And that, and in a way that's the thing that I'm always wrestling with is because I'm such a contrarian and a self starter. I just agree.

What you would. I always just think, well, I can make it myself. I can do it myself. I know people I can get stuff done.

I've got technical expertise. And actually, you always have to balance that with how can I spend time and energy getting into other people's networks or, you know, getting a commission because they're going to put it in front of other people. And so it's always finding that balance to you, making your own stuff and putting it in front of other people for it to be have a much wider audience. Go on, Stephen.

And to the similar, so during lockdown, the company I'm a director for released a podcast, 12 episode podcast called viral murders. And we did that because we were funded by the National Lottery to do it. So we got paid for it. We got paid for it upfront.

So it's possible to do it. There's things that you have to be able to go and do and have the motivation to go and do it in the first place. And that's not always easy. Some of my favorite words there, paid for it upfront.

I love that phrase. That's another phrase from 2015 that you don't hear so much along with audience sitcom. Yeah. I think he, his whole kind of ghost business has taken off phenomenally.

And I'm pretty sure that was that began with him. It's just just the subject that interested him. And it started as his hobby, I'm pretty sure. And now it is a big thing Radio 4.

They've got West End shows. They've got big name actors doing it in Broadway. And you know, it's a good thing. Yeah, he did a podcast.

But actually before that, I remember he did he did a radio show for Channel 4 Radio. Do you remember? For about nine and a half hours, Channel 4 had a radio station. I don't know what I mean.

But for the time you figured out how to listen to it, they're not doing it. That's probably one of the things that has changed, particularly for me as opposed to you in terms of the advice that I give. So seven years ago, I would have been relatively robust in saying, don't bother making your own stuff. It's a distraction.

It takes too long. It's hard to make it look good. All that kind of stuff. And I think I've sort of finally succumbed to saying, you should definitely make your own stuff.

But equally what I would say is it needs to be consistent and sustainable. And it doesn't have to be a YouTube video. It doesn't have to be an audio podcast. It could be a regular blog.

There's this thing called reading that's been a thing for a while. People still like to read. So if you can turn up and just do a really funny blog every week consistently with a character maybe that could have a life of its own, then that would be worth doing. If you can tweet, there's Moose Allen we spoke to a while back who is a Patreon member or used to be anyway.

He got a lot of cartooning work through being really good on Twitter, didn't he? Yeah, yeah. He just put stuff out there regularly. And coincidentally, on the next episode, we're talking to Jeremy Arasmuth, the great sketch writer.

And she mentioned Danny's writing partner, Dan Tetsul, who used to do a blog, a dad's army fan fiction, which just that idea made me laugh. But I think that's a fair point. But also another reason, another thing to say about you should make stuff is to say actually you should get to know people who make stuff as well. Because I think that's the big change that I noticed when I was in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, and the more I see of it, the more I think it is the case.

I wouldn't go as far as saying, you know, stand up is finished. But I mean, stand up was dealt a very, very big blow by Covid, and it hasn't got back yet to what it was. It was already kind of a little bit in the doldrums before Covid. It was already a bit like the Premier League.

You know, you had half a dozen or so brilliantly successful people and everybody else scrabbling around for the scraps. But I think now that the people who are doing well in Edinburgh and the people who will do well, the people the buzz is about, are the people who are doing too many sketches online. And the difference between, you know, going up to a stand up and saying, can I write jokes for you and writing jokes for them, which is fine. But then if you go up to somebody's making sketches and say, can I write sketches for you, you actually learn a lot more about the writing process.

And I think that's, for me, that's the big thing as well that I've gone away from being Mr. Optimus. Hey, everybody, you know, just write the brilliant script or make it through doing topical comedy, etc, etc. But actually, you know, you've just got to get better as a writer.

The thing we have most control over is becoming better writers so that we can write better sitcoms. And just as a novelist learns to write by writing short stories, comedy writes and learns to write by writing sketches. And I think that is definitely, and there are lots of people out there, somebody mentioned in the chat, Troy Hawk. It was a great, funny character performer.

Rosie, Rosie Hawk, we mentioned the guys, Larry and Paul, the lead guy's very funny stuff they do. There's a lot of people out there and there's a lot of pressure on the writer performers because of the algorithms. You can't just have a couple of funny sketches. You have to have a lot of funny.

You have to make more and a lot of people burn out. And I think they're going to need more writers as time goes on. So I think, again, it's not, you know, there's no quick route to success now. But I think that that's getting to know how to write by writing sketches for people online is going to be the way forward, I think, for the next couple of years, at least.

Just coming back to radio. I mean, the opportunity is to end up at the moment. There's four open subs, programs on radio, which is the third of even in the 90s. So there's noisies, noisies, noisies, noisies starting on BBC Scotland, which is going to run concurrently with Rick and Youse for a few weeks because it's a half-eleven slot rather than the normal comedy slot, Rick and the news, obviously.

And then you've got the DMs are open, I assume, will be coming back fairly soon. That's the in-house, big to see, radio, news show, yeah, replace New Jack. The skewer as well. So there's four things to write for on the radio.

So the opportunity is after there. There's more of them, if I don't think of them all. But the difference is, say, for instance, if you are writing, you want to have a go at writing topical comedy, let's say you want to, you've got the skewer and breaking the news on at the kind of the same time. So the amount of work you have to do for this, for breaking the news, there's like three days of nonstop, they send out briefs and they want as many jokes as possible from you.

You have to churn out the jokes for that. The skewer is you are kind of making the thing yourself, even if it's not the finished product. You're the one who's getting all the clips to make the whole thing work. So it's over the weekend.

So that said, is having a life if you have to do that. Well, yes, but here is my increasing refrain on this podcast. Nobody asked you to do that. Do you know what I mean?

Nobody's forcing you to do anything above. And if you do that, you'll get better at it. And B, it's great that the bar is quite high because it weedles out an awful lot of time wasters. So there are upsides to there being a high level of what's expected of you to write for those shows because most people give up.

Great. One of the benefits of the skewer is there are no actors. So you can make the stuff, if John doesn't want it, doesn't mean you can't make it and put it on social media. It's an audio sketch you've created without any, you have to pay the actors to start.

We're not doing any of the glory about knowing actors. George Lucas's dream. Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair enough. I think then you know, so you have to have a kind of long term view of things.

I think, Dan and Eleanor, I think you'll probably agree with me on this, that if you're on a six week run of breaking the news or a ten week run, you're kind of not doing anything else. You're saving, you're putting that sitcom in the drawer because in terms of the amount of time, do you manage to do get other stuff done when you're writing for that? Not so much. I mean, I was talking to Joe the other day who I write with on those top shows and she said it's like having a second job, isn't it?

It kind of doesn't pay very well. But it is, you know, when I think of the hours that we talked to our peach week, well, I try not to add it up because I've got to get very depressed and start rocking in the corner. But it is a lot of work. You know, I've got a lot of hours into it.

Yeah. So I guess when those shows are on, yeah, I'm not working so much on the old sitcom thing, but there's always something rumbling in the background to put competition pops up and you think, oh, I'll tweak that for that competition. Yeah. Can you feel yourself improving over that time as well, though?

Eleanor. Well, in terms of writing on the topical. Yeah, I just go. Oh, yeah.

I like to think so. They're all you're doing it because you're treating it like a job and trying to have that hat on as you sit down to it. It does just make you get better at it. If you tell yourself you're taking it seriously.

Yeah. Go on down. Sorry, I cut you off there. You have to, you have to, it's not even one to do it.

You have to need to be a writer. I think, I think that's what it is. I mean, what are you saying now is if you're not a lead writer on breaking the news, you have to treat it as though you are a lead writer. That's the level of input you've got to put in it.

And if you want to be a commission writer for one of the BBC, the other BBC shows, you have to act like a commission right from the off. It's not just right three jokes and send them in. That's very enough. But if you want to be a writer, you need to act like a writer and write a lot.

And I think again, this is something that some, the changing of expectations I think over the years, that's something that has changed. I mean, not just for you and me, James, although I think our expectations have changed a little bit in terms of our own writing, but I don't think that you kind of have to look at it as a long term, very much as a long term plan and not be kind of thinking, all right, so kind of next year and I'll be writing for breaking the news. So that means I can give it my job. I think five years, I think three, four, five years ahead, really.

Yeah, yeah. Which reminds me of the Bill Gates thing. It may be Bill Gates, it's probably someone else that you overestimate what you can do in a year and you underestimate what you can do in five years or ten years. I think that's good to keep in mind.

I think I was going to say it was about sort of development, really. And for me, one of the big changes that I'm noticing is the fact that there is now a proliferation of TV production companies in the way that there wasn't so much, I think, seven years ago. So in 2015, it was, you mentioned Channel 4, which started out commissioning independent production companies and that began the independent sector in the 90s because up until that point, the BBC made programs to the BBC, nobody else made them to the BBC. ITV had the regions, they had tinties and Yorkshire and stuff, some of them making sitcoms that were their networks on ITV.

For some reason, the legacy of that, there's a sitcom called Constant Hot Water that I keep remembering. It's set in a bed and breakfast, you know, and it's a real proper, wobbly set, low budget, ITV region sitcom, but there were loads like that and there's like Hough to Roost and stuff like, do you remember that? John Thor? Well, if I just, I went back to 1995 when I was kind of doing this kind of 10 years ago, 20 years ago thing and there was a sitcom that I had vaguely remembered called Faith in the Future, Linder Bellingham and Julia Swallow.

Yeah. And I was pretty sure it was an audience of sitcom, I thought I better just double check and so I watched, I found a clip on YouTube and watched it and for the first minute, you know, there was no laugh at all and I thought, I'm sure it's a studio sitcom. Eventually, after about a minute and a half, you heard a little sort of chuckle from the audience. Ah, yes, yes, it was a studio.

So kind of the standards back then were not quite this. Well, yeah, I mean, thing is that there are plenty of other shows that are on TV that in within their genre aren't much good either. But so we transitioned from that ITV network thing into the independent production company and then in a way, when I was getting started, it just felt like there were eight production companies that made all the comedy outside of the BBC and that was Hatrick and Talkback and Tiger aspect and, you know, an objective turned up with Peep Show and, you know, but it was maybe Cow. Yeah, yeah.

But in a way, you sort of knew who you were going to be taking your sitcom script to or your idea to in the hope that they would commission a pilot script, especially if you've had stuff on TV in the past before, like what I have. But the reason I mention it is because now the expectations are changing. Virtually every time you read broadcast magazine, should you read broadcast magazine, it basically says a TV commissioner called whatever has gone to set up their own independent production company. And so they don't have any development money.

They don't want to pay you to write a script. And so now you've got loads and loads and loads and loads of independent production companies, many of which will run by people with plenty of industry experience, but no development budget. So where are these pilot scripts going to come from? Well, people like me are going to end up writing them.

So, you know, I'm working on a whole bunch of sitcom ideas at the moment, having really decided to get back on the horse properly. And I'm writing scripts because I have no real confidence that anyone's going to pay me to write them. But, you know, there's always a conversation to be had there, but I might as well get on with one now. But it just feels like that's new.

And if it's any consolation for people listening, or is that discouraging, I don't know, even if you get some measurable degree of success by having a TV show on, unfortunately, the same rules apply to me as they do to you. So that's good, isn't it? I don't know. Hell.

I think it is what I've been thinking about this last week or so about how it's playing out. And what it reminds me of now is when I quit being a stand-up in the mid 90s and tried to write the screenplays as everyone here, I'm sure, has several in their bottom drawer. There was the kind of excitement of possibility about it. But you knew exactly.

I know 40 movies made in Britain every year, and 30 of them were kind of tied in with big names or box office, whatever. The rest were adaptations, and then occasionally two or three would come through by new people. But that was kind of enough. A story of some plucky underdogs who started to choir, started to strip thing, you know, to me, it's always that kind of thing, isn't it?

Well, that was the guys who did the Sliding Doors movie with the Gwyneth Paltrow. They were, I knew them because they had been on the Comedy Circuit group of brothers for a couple of years, and they left out and they said, oh, we're going to do our movie made. Oh, yeah, of course you are. And sure enough, they did manage to, you know, they actually managed to do it.

So there is that kind of almost lottery feel, which is, in some ways, it's a shame. Yeah, we don't have an industry in the way that we did have, if we ever did have an industry. Then again, there are more possibilities. You and I, James, both know more people now who are getting work in America, for instance.

And so there are British people making successful shows in America, like succession, for instance. Yeah, and they're also making unsuccessful ones, which are still quite profitable if you go to America. I would happily make an unsuccessful show in America, because, you know, you still do all right out of that. And you learn a lot and you get some great anecdotes as well.

So, but I think, again, it's a theme that's emerged recently. I've said it a few times is that people still want to watch television and laugh. That's not going away. So it doesn't feel like we're wasting our time by wanting to write scripted comedy.

However, it's understood as comedy drama, comedy narrative, whatever form it is. And, you know, I'd imagine for most of us listening to this show, comedy sitcom is probably still our first love. And we want to recreate those great ones that we watched when we were growing up, not only to people still want to watch TV and laugh. New shows are being made all the time.

You know, Dave just put out four pilots the other day. And, you know, there are lots of new shows, not the S, Dave the channel, not Dave Cohen. And as you would expect, you know, every year new shows are launched and every year, most of them aren't very good. And they don't get recommissioned.

And next year, they commission a new bunch. So it's not as if there's no way in in terms of like they're not making any new stuff. So there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful. But I guess it feels, you know, more competitive even than it did in 2015, which was pretty competitive.

And the internet is sort of changing everything in lots of strange ways. Dan had a interesting observation about how we used to talk about characters and now we talk about plots. Do you want to say a bit more about that, Dan? I just remember it was not just you guys.

It was any writing course you went on. It was all the story. It's all about character. It's all about character.

And it turns out we can do characters. And as you found out from the two sitcom competitions you've written, we have problems with stories and stories of that's what I've seen, like when I'm like editing people's scripts or giving notes for people's scripts. It's the story that's a problem really. But that seemed to over the course of seven years have occurred to us all at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. So I've had a lot of scripts that one maybe sees now might be better in some ways than it was seven years ago. I think people are learning the lessons and the character is really important.

But actually it turns out that the way that character is expressed through plot is way harder to get right than one might think. I'm now much happier with some characters I've got on this sitcom I wrote over the summer. But I've only just realized on Friday last week, oh, it's boring though. The school itself is boring.

Is this the one that doesn't have a joke till page 17 or something? Well, hang on. It has jokes until page 17. They just weren't relevant.

Okay. And they weren't about characters we were ever going to care about. Okay. I've fixed it, but then I've realized, oh, I fixed it, but it's now just kind of boring.

So I better add some, I better add some set of scenes and just sort of. What's boring is it the story that's boring, all the characters that are boring. No, I think the characters are really good, but I've kind of smoothed it out too much for them. And so I had to go back and it sort of, it was, I got as far as the scene by scene.

I thought, you know what, that kind of works. I got halfway through making the scene by scene and just thought, oh, it feels a bit flat. Oh, I think a consequences. Yeah.

The way I progress on that point of view from over the seven years is, yeah, I've always said that character character. I think an element said in the chat, a good character might get you a meeting, but the story and plotting has to be gold too. But what we're forgetting with our plotting is that the plot has to be character driven. And that's why that's why we're still not quite getting the characters right, because you get to this very tricky point in the story, as we all do, and kind of usually somewhere towards the end of that too, where something needs to happen, something big needs to happen.

And occasionally we'll crowbar in something from, for no reason, or there'll be a kind of a, they have, you know, if I've pronounced that correctly, or I've got a machine from the gods, you know, something that happens to change things. And, you know, it comes back to the character. It has to be the character who makes that thing happen because that's the floor in them, and it has to be that makes things really bad. And it has to be them again that gets them out of the thing, not to learn, but to just reset for the next episode.

And I think that that's, so it is still, it is still character, I think. But the bad plot is the result of the not quite absolutely nailed character. Yes, I think that's probably true, at least not using the character to solve your plot's problems. And to be honest, that was probably in the very first episode of this podcast is the Jack Rosenthall, not Jim Rosenthall, he's the RGB sports guy, wasn't he?

Jack Rosenthall, the answer to your, you know, problems is probably in the character. Yeah. The character will always get you out. The character is always the answer.

What is the problem? What's the plot problem that you've done at the end there? The answer is something to do with the character. Yeah.

But I think in a way that then throws up the last sort of big issue that's presented itself in the last seven years in particular is the story arc, story, drama, comedy, drama, plot twists and that kind of thing. And it's really tricky. And I've just started watching This Is Us, which is on Prime, which is, which actually I think started in 2016. But, you know, it's, I've only watched the first two, but it's quite clever in, at the end, it just, the end of the first two episodes it goes, ah, you thought it was this, but actually it's a big reveal.

And then, which I'll actually, I should say, after the first one I thought, I don't know whether I actually enjoyed that. And it feels like that that was a bit of a trick. I did. I stopped watching my wife carried on and she has, she kind of, it became her sort of lockdown, you know, got her through lockdown was made a new episode.

And it's about the lockdown, you know, with all that. So, yeah. But I think, well, I've just finished running a series of emails that I do this occasionally. I've done a whole thing about comedy drawn.

I spoke to Simon Nelson, who is the executive producer at BBC Writers' Room, because they've got this comedy drama script they're asking for in November. And I asked him for the kind of definitive, you know, what are you looking for that you're not looking, that the BBC Comedy Department isn't looking for. And you know, they are pretty, and that's the one good thing that's happened recently, I think as well, is that the BBC Comedy Department has very clearly defined what it means by comedy now. It means, and they've got four types of sitcom, sort of broad sitcom, which I suppose we're out of, Mrs Brown's boy who's not going out, would be that family sitcom, like that one, the new one with Jim Howick.

Yeah, that's cool. And then Young sitcom, and then, you know, you're also famous, you get to choose what you make a sitcom, and that's people like Mackenzie Crook and the League of Gentlemen people. Yeah. Gary Thomas has said, how about Mrs Brown's boy is not going out to mash up?

No, thank you. Not my cup of tea, I think that would be. But yeah, so that's, and they talk about them very much being a no-occ, no arc. Yeah, this is self-contained, nothing moves on.

It's just, and each episode finishes and ends and the characters in the same place at the beginning as they are at the end. And that's, you know, and what Simon is saying is, yeah, obviously that's a very clear thing. We do expect a little bit of movement, but what they're really interested in is voice, and that's the thing we've discussed a lot. We can discuss it again, I think, in another episode, you know, distinctive voices.

It's a kind of thing, it's very hard to know what it is, but I know when we were doing the hat-trick competition earlier this year, James and I both picked up on one particular script that was quite flawed, but we both really thought it was unusual that the writing was very unusual and though hat-trick weren't going to include it, and we kind of thought to keep it in there because we just felt this person has got a really interesting take on things and I think that's, it's finding your voice, which is, you know, the sum-tuple of you. Yeah, and that applies all the way along the line. So as I've been coming up with whole loads of ideas to be pitching over the autumn, I've actually gone through and just put a line through a load of ideas, which are basically nobody wants me to write that show. Just a bit, it's just like, oh, here's an idea for a show, this could work.

Yeah, but nobody wants you to write it. If I thought of a new call-the-midwife or something, or if I optioned some book that was really good, and it's like, yeah, but nobody would want me to do that. That's not what I do. They would want, from the writer of, you know, Miranda and Bluestone 4.2 and stuff, it's just like, so just give people the kind of show that they want someone like you to pitch them so that they can then pitch it at the network, rather than me just saying, I've got this amazing idea, because they're getting pitch-to-mazing ideas all the time.

So yes, Mike on the chat says, call the mid-husband, very good. I don't know what you call a male midwife, so maybe they're called me as husbands, I don't know. I say, out and proud mid-wives, actually. I think we had one of the male mid-wife.

Okay, fair enough. Let's not get into that. So yeah, I think it's just a question of self-knowledge. What are you into and passionate about so that when you do get that meeting, you can say, well, this is something I'm really interested in.

I've got experience of, and this is why it's relevant now. You know, why this, why now, why you? Because it comes around again, and it's really important because your idea has to stand out, and I think that's something that, again, one sees a bit when people are pitching ideas or you're reading scripts and you talk to the person about it. And in a way, it's like, well, there's no reason why they would commission you to do this script because it's just, it's a bunch of people in the situation and not much is happening.

Oh, yes. But in episode two, we're going to do this. And in episode three, this is going to happen. There is no episode two.

You know what I mean? Unless episode one is better, episode two doesn't exist. So whatever that, that episode two thing sounds brilliant. Put it in episode one.

You know, so I think you just want to make sure that, and that's going back to this is us. I just thought it feels like they've thrown a lot of episode one on the bait. And then at the end of episode two, there's a really nice twist as well. I just thought, oh, that's great.

And you just think, oh, they're going to burn through a whole lot of stuff here. Yeah, keep burning because you've got to keep feeding this machine. That's the thing I really learned from Stephen McCrum who got Blue Stone on television as well as Mrs. Brown's Boys on television.

He was really clear on just saying, what's the grab? How are you going to absolutely grab your audience by the scruff of the neck and pull them in to your world? And if you can't really do that, if you say, oh, well, it's a nice original idea that's nicely written, it's like, well, if you russell T Davis, you could probably do that. And even then people would go, russell, nobody wants you to write this kind of thing.

Can you not write something that's more transgressive, weird, or, do you know what I mean? I'm rambling now, but people got used to that over the last 199 episodes. No, I'm the designated rambler on this social. Any more?

We've got any more last questions? Yeah, we should wrap up. Yeah, questions. Because there was one question right at the beginning that we haven't, I was just looking at.

Yeah. And it's from Peter who's left us now, but he said, who do you mainly get feedback from, especially on early drafts? Have you ever had a regular writers group or similar? Well, actually, that's where we're actually thinking of going down that route with some of the master classes and things.

We're hoping to develop more of this kind of group, looking at scripts and helping people with their scripts. We did one in July, I think, which was fantastic for me, because nobody else, and in fact it was interesting because somebody said that they were going to put their scripts in, but they pulled out the last minute. They really wish they had put it in because it had been really useful. Because they thought the standard would be really high, but fortunately Dave, but his is the most good.

Oh, right. Oh, it doesn't have to be any good. Yeah. Yeah.

And we also looked at my script, which wasn't funny till page 17 famously. I was a very good Jamie Oliver joke. I remember. It was a bit Jamie Oliver joke.

Least page eight. Yeah, something like that. But in a way, so yeah, so on the Patreon in the master class level, as it were, I think we're going to do some of those script reads because it is hard to get your stuff read. And the way Peter asked that, it was like, yeah, it is hard for me to know the scripts I'm writing on spec as it were in a way.

I'm going to have to send them to producers who might produce them because sort of, you know, my wife, Jackson, for typos and stuff, but she's not got notes about the scene composition and, you know, the finale and that kind of stuff. Other than the fact that she can say, I didn't think this was as funny as that other thing you did, which frankly, it's still very helpful. Very useful. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's not granular and nor should it be. Yeah. A couple of great questions.

Shane says you've done quite a few first 10 pages reviews for subscribers now. Have any general points pros and cons emerged from them? Yes, we have. And we're going to continue to do those.

So if you join us on Patreon at that level, we record a little 10 minute 12 minute podcast about the first 10 pages of a script which all the patrons can listen to so that we all get to benefit from it. And they get to read the first 10 pages too. And get to the plot is the always the usually that's the number one point is that we what we read 10 pages which are perfectly nice and fun and interesting characters and whatever, but we don't get a story. And that's partly because again, this horrible confusion of what is a story and what is an episode and what is the premise and actually people think, well, if I'm just writing around the premise, then I've got a, you know, this, this is, I've got an episode.

No, you actually need something to happen as well that isn't the premise. Yeah. And then the character reacts and how the character reacts to the thing is, is the premise. Again, sorry about this, James, but take another drink as I mentioned.

It's ex's birthday, for example. That is not a premise. That's a story. But ex is doesn't want anyone to know it's their birthday because they're getting old and they're feeling a boom and mortality, whatever.

That's the theme. So there you go. So Gary says, can you look at outlines too or just scripts yet? We'll do outlines as well.

Sometimes it's much better to critique an outline. Christian says, how often can we get our first 10 pages review? We've not really had to police that very much. People tend not to chuck stuff in too often and actually people join us on that level on Patreon and still don't really make much use of it.

I'm always surprised actually that more people don't send us more on that. And then Marie says, Scott Dickers, who is the co-founding editor of The Onion, runs a writers group where we read each other's scripts. It's incredibly useful. And the reason that Marie might know about that is because Scott Dickers, we interviewed quite a while ago and the patrons have all listened to the episode, which has not gone up yet and will go up soon.

We promise. We promise. So it was a really good, really interesting in my view interview and I can say that because they weren't interviewing me. So, yeah, I really would recommend joining Patreon because we can do those for that first 10 pages thing, all of you join on the masterclass level, then you can be part of those sort of closed groups where we just talk openly about scripts and really help each other.

Yeah, I think we've covered everything in the questions. Episode 200 in the bag, in the can, all done. Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Lots of reasons to join us on Patreon.

It'll be great to have you there. There's also the Discord channel as well where people just chat about all kinds of things. What was on TV last night as well as off topic subjects as well. But yeah, I think it's a good, happy place to be as well as our secret Facebook group.

But let's be honest, Discord is what you hoped Facebook would be like. So, I recommend joining just for the Discord group alone. Absolutely. Yes.

Okay, thank you ever so much everybody. It's been a real pleasure to do all these and we've got, we've, we still feel like we've got the, there's a mileage still. Oh yeah. Seven weeks.

I'm doing it. I mean, we would have stopped a long time ago, I think, if we did. And you're very happy to keep cracking on through. So, do join us and do the part down.

Thank you for the whole view who have been part up to now. Special big thank you as well. So, the British comedy guide, of course, who hosts the show and thank you to them as well. And we'll be back again in two weeks time with episode 201 and more to come.

Cheerio. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.