Episode 27 - First Ten Pages

Hello and welcome to another episode of SickCon Geeks. I'm James Carey. I'm Dave Cohen. And we are not joined by our producer Katie, who's the one who's busy doing work at Payser properly.

So we're at Her Real Job, real job. We're going to be looking at some first 10 pages today, but three scripts to look at. But before that we're going to talk briefly about Crowdfunding. Yes, because recently Brenda Gill-Hooley, the Sandler comedian writer, and Gail Tuesday in another character that she plays.

And she has written a sitcom for herself called The Mayors, and she's been crowd funding it. She's got a very good cast in there, people like Harry Hill, Jack D. So that's kind of obviously an advantage. But I know James recently, you, Crowdfunded the DVD for your play.

Yes, that's right. Not quite the same category as Brenda Gill-Hooley in terms of, my play was not done by Jack D. Exactly. So considering there's money as well.

But no, it's actually because it's now a thing, isn't it? Crowdfunding is now a thing, and they've made sort of one off TV specials of, I think, Veronica Mars or programs that sort of cancelled, and the fans wanted them to continue. So it's now a thing. I feel slightly mixed about it.

I used Kickstarter because I knew what I wanted to do. I effectively used it as a way of pre-selling DVDs of a play to most people who I thought mostly had already seen it. Right. So we were touring it, and people were aware of this play going into churches and schools and stuff.

And so, we weren't trying to raise a huge amount of money, we didn't raise huge amounts of money. And I was going to do the DVD anyway, so I thought I might as well do a Kickstarter. So that's quite a small project. And I'm really pleased with that.

And actually all the things that I made for my needs kickstarter, and just don't even think about it, they're so user-friendly and easy, and I have to say they were brilliant. But this brand-of-go-hood thing is on a slightly new scale, and it worries me a little bit. Yeah. Why does it worry?

The thing that worries me is you've got some big names involved, and you're thinking, does a channel not want this? In which case, why doesn't a channel want this? So there's that worry. Is this actually not any good?

Which may or may not be the case, because I don't know whether it's not wanted. But then also, you think, there are people involved in this who have a lot of money, why are they asking me for money? Right. But then the more worrying thing for me is, does this just make broadcasters more risk-averse, and they say, well, they can find the money and make their own pilot.

And that this is going to be the future. Is that Jack D's Twitter feed is going to be promoting his next pilot, and the public is going to pay for it. And then ITB get to make a series of it, if they like the pilot that they haven't paid for. That's the trajectory that I'm worried about.

That we're not in yet, but that's my worry. I can see that, but I can also see how to some extent, I think that's, I guess that's kind of already happening, obviously not too much for Jack D. Harry Hill. But for somebody like Brenda, for instance, who is a successful person, but not a household name.

How do you then literally, I would say kickstart your career when, as we know, it's already very, very hard to get things made. Surely it's just one more way of getting things made. I was sort of thinking more in terms of what we've discussed in the past as well about whether you should put your sketches on YouTube. And you always say, I think you're right about this, make something on radio.

Just don't do an audio. You can do a lot more. What about maybe an audio sitcom? Do you think that will be a good idea?

That's possible. I mean, I think I'm not an ex-black Kickstarter at all. All I know is that I ran one to raise a modest amount of money, and I know I have enough people who I know would put in for it. My worry is that people start doing kickstarters for Edinburgh shows, and they start doing kickstarters for a show that doesn't have an automatic following of any kind, at which point it then becomes a charity.

And that doesn't strike me as a particular solid basis. TV is expensive to do, so if you are going to do it, you do need to raise money to do it properly. Because one of the reasons I was skeptical about doing sketches for YouTube is that they just don't look very good, and it's very expensive to get to look good. So you do need to make a raise of money for a 30-minute sitcom, multiply that by several zillion, really.

Well, yes, I mean, half an hour of a time, it's going to cost you £250,000 to compete with what's on TV. So you think, well, even a two-minute sketch, you're looking at a few thousand pounds. Just for one idea, just for something that's 90 seconds, that's good and professional. Which is why I think if you can think of a format that doesn't need to look really polished, if you can think of a very vlog based character or something that you can do well, but also do using the camera on your laptop, then great, but not every idea lends itself to that.

It's really tricky because there are so many ways in which you can literally kickstart something, but it's a question of picking which is the right one. Sometimes people think that if they can just get a few good sketches onto YouTube, that will kickstart a career, and it probably won't, because it probably won't be found. It might show promise, but it's very lead to work. I don't know.

I'm having too negative. No, no, there's a phenomenal amount of stuff out there. And for every, I mean, I can think of two or three people who have started out with things on YouTube and have developed a career out of that. I think for every two or three that I can think of, I'm sure there must be hundreds, thousands who have tried as well and that's as far as they got.

I think the other thing that people neglect is actually comedy blogging, for example, which is pure writing. You're not making anything that's all day. There's somebody who lives near me, who lives near me, who dorses, I think, and she writes a very funny vlog about running a Ben Breakfast in Dorset, and it's very rural, and she's got a really strong voice in that area, and she's quite robust in her views, and about the people that stay in her Ben Breakfast as well, and automising it. I mean, oh, that's great.

I feel like you're getting a real window in a world, and you look at anything, well, that could be a book, that could be a TV show, that could be a radio show, but the moment it's just a blog and it's great. So if you can think of something like that and effectively write fiction, write a diary type thing, I think that's another way to go. That costs nothing. That costs literally nothing.

Except for your time. Except for your time. But that's the amount of time I can speak from the experience of putting on a new live show, which I've been doing for the last couple of months. That also takes a lot of time.

That's nothing to do with writing. Yes. Getting people to come to see your show and whatever. It's a lot of work.

Especially in London where we did the last tour of the God Particle at the end of May on a bank holiday Monday, so not an ideal night to do so, but 15-20 people. In a city of 8 million, you just assume that there'd be a big audience for stuff. And there isn't a better offer for being in a provincial town, where people are more grateful to have theatre and that kind of stuff. So anyway.

So do email us if you have strong thoughts on that. You can write to us. Our email address is www.congigusattagmail.com And I'm on Twitter. I'm at ATCongig.

And I'm at Coinde. So if you want to go and talk about that, we also have a Facebook page which you can like if you just look up to see Comteques on your book. Hopefully Facebook haven't taken it down or done an exception to anything objectionable that we may have written or edited in some way. A bit of satire there, loads and loads of things.

Totally unnecessary. So something that has happened is that people have sent us their first-time pages of their scripts. And we have been very bad at keeping on top of this for which we apologise. But we are going to review three today.

And we would also urge you to not send any more for now because we're not going to get around to them. We've got a bit of a backlog. We will let you know if as and when we're able to read more. But which one should we start with?

I'm just going to pull up on screen my notes. It's a surprise for me. We're going to look at SOS by Ben Moore. So SOS by Ben Moore is a sitcom set in a charity shop.

And in the first-time page which you can look, if you go to the Facebook group, you'll be able to see a link to a secret page on my blog where I posted the script so you can download a PDF of it. And read along. I'd be really curious to know if anyone actually does that and whether they find it useful or not. No.

It would be good to know. I don't think we've been reviewing enough episodes really for people to have caught on, but that's the thing to do. Yes. So SOS by Ben Moore, there's a charity shop.

There's a lady called Lisa in her early 30s. There's Jenny who's 10 years older, dressed more sensibly. She's not in charge of this annoiser. There's a guy called David in his mid 40s.

And they go into, so seen ones very short, seen two. They're in the sorting room where they're sorting through stuff. There's a mention of Stephen coming for a visit tomorrow. And there's a display unit from head office that David can put up tomorrow.

And talk of Lisa the branch manager is going to a conference. That's going to be tomorrow as well. Tomorrow's the very exciting day. And seeing three is on the shop floor where there's a customer, which is always good to have a customer in the place that you've established.

And then in scene for later in that day, they're in the staff room and they're talking about stuff and also the cabinet falls off a wall. And various other bits and pieces. Unfortunately, you can probably tell from my tone of voice that I wasn't crazy about this. Right.

Interestingly as well, just the way you were describing that. And the first scene is like a quick visual gag, which is fine. It's a throwaway visual gag. But in the writing, the actual quick visual gag is perceived by eight lines of character description.

And there are these four different people, at least two of whom you mentioned there. And a lot of information about these people. And then suddenly this thing happens, there's kind of nothing to do with them. And then we're straight away, we're into the second scene.

And there's two more characters. And then the two people who were talking in the previous interview, and so we're actually on to page two. And we're into our first little bit of dialogue. But all I've read so far is sort of stuff about the six other characters.

I don't really know. I don't get a kind of comic sense of great deal about them. And so far they haven't featured in the story. I think you need to, the first thing I would say is, especially when you've got a new script and you're showing it to people.

And we don't know any of these people at all. Ideally, if you've got a scene and there's two people in that scene, you just describe those two people for that scene and then go on to the next bit. So that was for me, that was the first sort of confusing thing. So the first two or three pages, they end up being a conversation between the two women that you mentioned.

At least you're getting charged. I'm kind of a little bit confused because there's so much, I've still carrying so much information about all these other people. And nothing's happened yet. Yes.

So Ben, who's written this, we're sorry, Ben, we're having a bit of fixation on the first two pages, but I hope that this can be a lesson to learn from you, but also for other people. So by the end of page two, you have introduced six characters. You've introduced Lisa, Jenny, David, Nick. Only Lisa has a line in that first scene, which is only one line of speech.

And then Lisa and Jenny leave that scene. So you didn't need to tell us about David and Nick because they didn't have any lines anyway. You've told us what they look like and all that kind of stuff. Didn't need any of that.

And then they walk into a room and introduce Elsie, an elderly lady, and Richard in his early twenties. And Lisa and Jenny then speak for the whole page. So by the end of page two, you've introduced six characters, but only two people have actually spoken. So you just need to have an eye for the fact that I don't know who any of these characters are, and therefore, if possible, which I think would be possible in this case, you just need to be aware that you just need to give the reader a bit of time just to catch up.

So you didn't need to mention those other two characters in the first scene. You could have told us about Lisa briefly. You could have told us about Jenny very briefly. Done the visual joke.

Walked into the next scene. Great to start with the joke. So I'm not putting that at all. Great.

But then they walk in and then he tells us two more people who then don't speak. And then they check it. So it's just a question of making it as easy to read as possible. Always think to yourself, who is reading this, a producer who is tired, who has too many scripts to read.

They are looking for something wonderful that will be the next big thing for them. But equally, if after two or three pages they're tired, bored and confused, then they're probably not going to get much further than page four or five. So you just want to keep it as simple as possible. So that would probably help.

I've got a few more bits and pieces, but they do want to take something else? Yes, I think. Some very nice jokes in here. There's a nice joke about Little Red Riding Hood, which I enjoyed.

And there's also a motivational email that comes from the boss and it starts at 13. Someone says, oh, that's nice. Talked just collectively. Well, actually, you just can't remember what I'm saying.

Which I thought was very nice. And there's a sort of quite an interesting, potentially, there's a sort of good plot idea here. They're in a charity shop. Not a huge amount of this happening, I have to say, in the first 10 pages.

But there is a kind of quite long drawn out conversation where they talk about what they're actually raising money for, which logically doesn't really make sense. If you're in shelter, say, I think I've got to go to shops called Shelter or Shop's called Happ The Ages. It's sort of fairly obvious. But there is a potentially interesting idea for instance, let's say, it was shelter, and it's a place for the homeless.

And that suddenly, some massive Saudi Arabian construction firm has offered to give you lots and lots of money. And they put up some little hostel for the homeless. Suddenly, you've got this quite interesting dilemma that possibly for a charity shop. You know, well, that's what they get involved with big business.

And there's a lot of issues now about charity shops and about how they're kind of on the high street and the other shops kind of resent them because they don't pay such great rates and they're kind of competing with other shops. They're paying less. So there's a lot of interesting stuff around charity shops. This feels like it's just a series of sketches in a charity shop.

So it worked for me so there is a key bit where people running the shop don't know who the charity is, that they're a charity shop for. And for me, you think there's no such charity shop. This shop doesn't exist. Every charity shop is for a specific charity, whether it's on-site or for a local hospice or something.

There's no such thing as a charity shop. I mean, maybe there is. I've never heard of one. But what this did for me was maybe think, oh, this writer's never been to a charity shop.

And it's something that I think Kevin Cecil talked about when we interviewed Andy and Kevin. And they said, do your research. And he used to be using the Rockcliff award thing. He reads quite a lot of scripts.

He's pretty obvious that the person is writing about something that they don't seem to know an awful lot about. For me also the demographics of the people that work there just don't add up. People of this age spread. Charity shops is mostly retired people who work there.

Plus a store manager who is in their 20s or 30s for whom they are the paid one and they're a great. So it felt like a workplace sitcom, which is fine. But people of these ages and who talk this way. For me, they don't work in charity shops.

So that just kind of took me out of it really. You can overcome these unrealities if you've just got something as ludicrously funny as far the Ted. Where they're not really Catholic priests. We know that they are for the show, but this is sort of nonsense and it doesn't matter.

But for me, I thought that was a real worry that I don't believe that the shop really exists. So I don't know. Did you feel that or did you not? Well, that's what I was saying.

I think that if you can find a way of within that idea of not so much of like we don't know what the charity is, the charity is doing something that isn't what would be expected of that charity. I think that might be a potentially more interesting story. But no, you can't imagine that I'm just thinking of all the shops on my street. We've got RSPCA.

They wouldn't be sitting there. Who's getting the money? I mean, fairly clear. So as they say, there is sort of stuff going on.

But my worry is that by the time we reach page, well page 10 really, nothing has actually happened. And what is interesting is you've got a bit where I'm just going to write it down here, where on page two and three lots of different things are introduced. So Steve will be coming. He'll be coming to do appraisals.

That's part to move on. Then there's the target for the week. What happens if they don't meet it? I don't know.

They move on. There's a new book display unit from the head office. Someone's going to have to put that up. I don't know.

Lisa's going to a branch managers conference. Who's going to be in charge? What's his way? I don't know.

We've done. So you've actually set up four different plots. But it's interesting that in scene four, they're sitting around having their lunch. And those four plots seem to have escalated anyway.

They sort of felt like they almost felt like one congealed plot to me. I could see how the inspectors coming episode, which is a valid episode. We'll mention it later in the next video. It's a valid thing to do.

But what's the twist with it? Maybe the twist is she's going to be away at this time. But as James says, everything is kind of left hanging and we haven't really moved on. I think people use a lot of jeopardy in stakes and that kind of stuff.

That's the other one with the charity shop. Can you shut the shop down? What happens if... That's an interesting thing to explore.

These people are volunteers, presumably. So what happens if... How do you fire a volunteer? What sanctions do you have?

I think you need to bake that in very early text if you don't stop. You don't have to pay your enemy invite. So I think it's really important that you set these things up. By the end of scene two, I think, oh my goodness, if this doesn't happen, then they're all in trouble.

And then the next thing, you've got another beat on that and you sort of... Because otherwise it's going to... It's going to drain... And then it's just people talking, which is the one thing that you really do need to avoid.

I don't know whether it's a function or that or not, but also within stage directions, you've got quite a lot of telling us subtext. So you're sort of telling us what's the... There's an offender of that on page five. David looks at Lisa.

He knows that even though he's been going to wind him up, what she says is basically true in a split second, he breaks. He has to do this while he's wagging pride. Yikes. I mean, that's a long-stage direction anyway, but you've sort of just told us all the subtext.

If it's not in the text, if it's not in the dialogue, then it's not in the show. It has to be there. It has to be there. So things like that are a bit of an alarm.

But you found that interesting. Thank you for sending this in. I don't know if you've got any more... I think that's all valid points to you.

So there are reasons to be careful. There are some good jokes. This is a perfectly decent place to come. But there's a lot to work on as well.

There has been... There was a charity set come some years ago. If you look on my blog, there's a long interview with Pete Sinclair, who's also a friend of Dave, where he does talk about it a little bit as well. So you need to find a way of doing charity shops now.

And there are a lot of things... There are a lot of things people think they know about charity shops now, that in fact you can challenge them and you can look at what charity shops are now, with what they were 10, 15 years ago, when I think of the classic ones, the LCs, those sort of people were in them, but now it's very different. And you need to do that because otherwise there's no reason for this show to exist. Otherwise it's just a bunch of people in the shop.

Why these people, why this show on in 2016? Because it's on TV, it's not an acceptable answer, which is like George Costanza's answer. Why am I working this show? Because it's on TV.

Not yet, the Englishness says. So, thank you Ben. I hope what we said is helpful and not too inducing of despair. The next one is For Art's sake by Martin Locock.

And we've got... Well, we've got Duchot, we've got For Art's sake, and then we're going to talk about the drama department. And the reason we've just taken those together is because they are about slightly overlapping things, and therefore they're very different, but something may come of talking about two shows in a similar-ish area. So for Art's sake is a show that is set in like an arts centre-type place, sort of a community theatre-y thing.

And we've got Jas, who is 25, 25 black woman, trendy clothes, and Emma is sitting at desk, and they are stacking leaflets and doing administrative stuff, and they talk for a bit. And then you've spaced it out quite a lot, so I think your 10 pages are probably eight pages. Other people, some pages. And then the phone rings, and there's clearly some events happening further down the line.

And then the director called John walks in, who is a little bit of a dandy, and then he goes into his office, and then in his office he's rehearsing a speech that he's going to be making at this event. And then he comes in with the post, and then there are lots of letters, and they're going to talk about what letters they're going to do. They chuck some of the bean, and there's one letter that's left. Don't worry, I'll deal with the rest of this one, and he puts up the anon, I'll deal with it later, he says, I'll deal with this one later.

And that's on page 10. So, well, I liked the way that it started very much. It was straight away. And then that came to you so exactly what's in the script when you describe the two characters.

Jas, 25 black woman, trendy clothes, Emma 24 white smart clothes. And that's just very, very short. We get a very clear idea of these people, and I think that's kind of sufficient information almost, really, but I think that's a lot of those two characters. And then they are, they do some business together when they're on phone and things.

And it's nice and there's some nice silly stuff going on with that. What's good is the first two lines are strong stuff, where Emma says, I think he's studying university, and I'm studying envelopes, and Jas says, someone has picked it up after five minutes. So, therefore, what we pick up from the very first two lines of dialogue is Emma is over educated, thinks she's sort of too good for this, and Jas has much more instinctive knowledge, she hasn't gone to university, and she's just doing this job. The way they actually undercuts Emma nicely there.

It's like, oh yeah, you know, it took you three years to understand them. And it's just really sets the two of them up nicely. That continues, although continues without anything else happening, unfortunately. Again, we talk about this, about how you really need to get to what is your episode about.

We need to sort of get to that pretty quickly. There's still quite a lot of stuff that goes on between them before we know what's actually going to happen in the show. And I think what's good about this also, is that there are only three characters in the first few pages. That's good.

We don't have characters. Overload. It's very easy to figure out what's going on. So Emma starts strong, she's clearly too good for this, but I think in this scene, maybe we also need to see, well, does she think she should be doing?

Does she want to be a director or producer? Is she down on her luck and she thinks that she should be, is she a frustration actress? I don't really know. All I know is that she's not happy about it.

She is. That's a good start, but I don't quite know what she wants. And I'm assuming the show is about all three of them, because it's not clear to me that it's about that this is the John show and Jaz and Emma are the two people who work there. I don't get the sense of it's about one girl rather than the other.

So we sort of start to need to know more. And this is the first thing that we see, but you've got to give us the impression. This is something I have talked about this before where I did a thing where I read like 30 lots of first 10 pages, and I spoke to the people about it a conference a couple of years ago. And once or twice people would say, oh, well, that's not the main character.

The main character doesn't appear until page 12. We're assuming that these three are the main characters. And so when you send 10 pages to us, it needs to necessarily be the first 10 pages of episode one. But we need to know that the people who are in this.

And I'm fairly sure that there are these three people. That is the case. We need to know that these are the main people. And I think one of the things that I felt with that scene where they're doing bits of silly stuff while they're answering the phone is to just maybe try and take it a little bit further and make it a little bit more extreme.

And you can sort of get to work while it imagines that two people sitting in the office doing that job can sort of get away with doing more. No one's going to come in and say, hang on, I need that paperwork to be sent to that bank manager by 10 minutes time. You don't get a sense. You get a sense these people are in a sort of vaguely creative kind of environment anyway, so they can probably kind of muck around a bit more.

And I would say that with the barchoo, so you set up Emory and Jazz well, and although that needs to then go further. And then John enters, he's dressed like a dandy. Okay, roughly, it's specific to it probably be good. But then he doesn't say anything to build on that.

His first line, when he walks in, is morning. And then she says morning, Mr. Strain. Hello, John.

Keeping busy, that's what I like to see. He walks towards his office. And then he does a bit of a dad joke. Oh, there's been phone calls all the day.

So John's looks at Emory to see if she's enjoying his joke. I haven't really made a joke. But don't do a non-joke at the first. So if somebody's a dandy and they walk in, they do need to sort of say something to be a dandy.

Or to play against or whatever. To be overly dramatic in what they say or just give them an attitude rather than just a costume. And it's always be aware. You've got 30 minutes.

It seems like a long time. But actually, you've got the only things that you can be doing. And the first time you see a character, the first, and somebody who's come to your show, comes to episode four. They didn't see the first three episodes.

So they're effectively seeing this character for the first time. Every time your character comes on in the start of an episode, especially in the first series, they need to make an entrance. That goes a little bit more than just, oh, good morning. You know, this morning I am the dandy.

I have come in, this morning I'm coming in, I'm quoting Shakespeare. I'm coming in and saying, oh, I might throw you on the window or whatever. So we get the sense of the person without you having to. In this case, in the next scene he's rehearsing a speech.

She's called the Lord worshipful, the lady mayor. No, of course I went. So he's got to give a speech later. So he could literally walk in and say the first few lines of his speech.

And he gets a pretty weird look. And then he says, I've got to give a speech later. Come on, people. Keep up up up.

Whatever he does. But at the moment, it's a bit of a flat entrance. You know how to do entrances because you did it well with the other two. And then at the very end, he's got this letter and for the first time I want to know what happens next.

And unfortunately that's page 10 already. I'm sorry to be fair to you. You've done a lot of double spacing there. We've probably only had about page seven already.

But even so, I'd like that letter ideally on page four or page five. I mean he could even come in with it. But at the moment, nothing's quite escalating enough. And I know you should set up characters and stuff.

But you can set up characters and do story at the same time because the story will reveal what's important about the characters. And we're going to take something we've talked about before. It's all very well coming up with random stories. But the best stories often are driven by the characters.

And also just again, it's set in an art center. I'm not totally picking up an art center in a way that when I listen to the show, the music teacher on Radio 4 by Richie Webb. And it's about a guy who's giving music lessons. And he happens to be using a room in an art center.

And we just get the atmosphere of the art center around him. That's kind of a secondary thing to him really. But I'm not picking up a sort of funny art center in a way like you pick up with something like Brits Ussenpai. You pick up that place where these people are.

I think again, we really need that. And also we need to know why is this show in an art center now. Why do we want to be that? I mean, is it under fun because of the Tories, the austerity and stuff?

Which is a, which would be okay. But it just feels like I don't know why we would want to watch the show in 2016. At the moment, this show could be any point in the last 15 years. There's a reference to email.

That's pretty much all the ten or five pages. So, yeah. So, thank you Martin for sending that in. I hope what was said is useful.

Overall, would I have read past page 10? Yes, I would. Because you gave me a cliffhanger, which I would rather have had on page 7. But that's great.

The final one we're going to look at today is called the Drama Department by Sheldon Southworth and Andrew Dixon. And this is a, I would say, a big sort of silly, not quite silly, but mainstream show, probably more radio too than radio for in its sort of sensibility. And that is not in any way criticism. Please don't hear it like that.

A guy called Tony is turning up for work back at the performing arts staff room at Claxbottom College, the worst performing future education college in the North of England. It says on the front page. And he immediately walks into Leslie, who is a bloke. Please don't give blokes a female name.

Well, for us to do it a while as well. And Leslie is completely unsympathetic and is obviously a bit of a force of nature. This is a used to work in television and is clearly no longer doing that and that's a bit of a problem for him, not her. And then, so they're in the staff room and then we are introduced to the principal, the new principal of the college, who was taken over in the three months that Tony has been off because of a breakdown.

And that's called, she's called Dr. Littler. And she is... Get it?

Littler? Littler? Oh, Littler. Oh, okay.

I think that's... Artless. And she is the new head of performing arts and again, not terribly sympathetic. And then there is talk of somebody coming from an inspection of some sort.

And there is easily my favourite joke that I read today, which was a confusion between human centipede and the hungry caterpillars, which I thought was very funny. And there's clearly going to be a performance there of the human centipede in some musical form. And it was a very good joke at the end of a show's topical stuff in the middle with you, which is also a very funny joke. And we run out of ten pages.

It's all one scene, which is quite something. And there are only three characters, so there is lots to like here in terms of simplicity of setup and attempts at proper jokes, which again I am very happy with. It's not like the other two at all. It's much more big and bold and silly.

What do you make of it, Joe? Yeah, well the first point I'd like to mention is that there's a very nice little visual gag on the front page. But the point is this is a radio sitcom and that's some... I think that's the time you should have been spending on the script, not coming up with the video.

I think again, the sort of the entire producer who's about to read a radio script. And there's a funny little picture to do with it on the front. I don't know what that... But I like the way it was set up.

You get the setup very nice in the opening two lines. And that actually what you mentioned I thought was quite a nice late in the gag. He's coming back after his nervous breakdown and you think he's going to be going into the classroom, but actually he goes into the staff room. Which is nice.

And you get very clearly found on the first page are these two very clear characters. This guy who's just come back from having a nervous breakdown. That tells you so much about a character. It's a really nice entrance.

And then the first person that he comes back to is very annoying. And you've immediately got these two people who are stuck together because they work together. And there's obviously the guy who's been there for three months. He's got a big advantage.

Big status advantage now over the other guy. But you can see that he's also obviously got his own issues. And so they're very nice and very clear. But very quickly we kind of come away from that.

And then you get into this, that's what I call the comedy argument sketch. Which is something that I find I do read this a lot in scripts. And it's the first place you go when. It's the first idea you come up with.

If you ever see people doing improv. Your first instinct when you're doing improv is to deny something. Then someone comes on stage and says, oh right, okay, so what we're going to do today is we're going to do this. And the other person in the meeting says, no we're not.

What do you know about that? And that's sort of a comedy-colder stack. And there's a kind of what this sketch needs is rather than people sort of denying each other. That they have to say yes to them.

You have to say yes and this. And there's a sort of argument about which of the two of them is better. One of the lines that Tony has is he says, just because you're in show business, it doesn't mean you can watch around thinking you know how to be a proper college lecturer like me. Which is a bit of a mouthful.

No one's ever said that. And also it's from a man who's just had three months after the nervous breakdown. So it sort of feels like a very wrong, either Leslie would then come back with a reposter there. Or he would, I just don't think he would say it.

He certainly has to say it in that way. People need to talk like they talk. You know, I'm not saying just write down scripted conversation. Just read the lines out when you've written them and see how would you say that line as I put, you know, it's just not something a person would say.

Just find a way. And then there's one of the responses is what do you mean? And that's again, I'm sorry to pick on little things here. But that's one of those classically, utterly redundant phrases.

He doesn't need to say what do you mean? Because you're having an argument. And the other guy just said, you know, you can't be as good as me. What do you mean?

I picked up loads about teaching. You don't need what do you mean? I picked up loads about teaching. So, you know, look for these redundant phrases because they slow the script down.

You want to go to the joke. And there are lots of good jokes here. And, you know, obviously some of them work better than others. There's a joke about putting on a show that has Roy War from acting.

And that's kind of a difficult one because a lot of comedians are quite good actors. But the show's called Good by Mr. Chip. So that's going to be fair enough, isn't it?

There's a catch rate for reference. But the problem is, I think, so there are lots of jokes in it, which there's a sense in which when I'm reading it, I'm thinking, oh great, these guys like jokes. I mean, that's a personal preference of mine. I know it sounds crazy to say.

So there are a lot of jokes. But the thing you then need to be careful of is you end up with the family guy problem, which is there's lots of jokes about stuff that's enough to do with the characters, but it's a reference to people for TV. And a reference to, you know, we've got references to Fred West and Dale Winternd and people like that. A, they're dated.

But I get that Leslie's career is also dated. But if you lean, it's not to lean on those jokes heavily. You can get a few in the first two or three pages so that the reader is relaxing that you know how to do jokes. But if you start to keep doing them, they start to become a substitute for jokes that should be coming out of character.

So that's something that started to worry me as I was reading it. And as I say, the human sense would be really funny. But again, you can't lean, you can't build plots around jokes. You actually need plots.

So at the end of the 10 pages, I don't really know what Tony is trying to do other than survive. He's a three month thing. And clearly someone's coming to inspect them and there's going to be a disaster with the human centre-feed musical. But this is page 10.

So we should be watching rehearsals of that by now or something. But then that then sort of highlights other things, which is why mainstream comedy is so hard to do and which is why I'm always going to cut it more slack. It's because what I like is about you've gone big and bold and that the jokes are proper. But then the problem with that is unbelievable.

So I just don't believe that you would get as far as actually making a musical of a human centre-feed in a drama department of a further education college. I think it's a good joke on the way to a plot. But that's really hard to judge. And that comes partly the experience, partly the instinct, partly with just having a reader in front of other people and seeing how does it go?

And seeing at which point the audience sort of stopped laughing and going, hang on, we're not sure about that. So that's why there aren't that many big hit mainstream comedy's on because this stuff is really hard to get right. So I think a way of again doing that is just getting the story going properly, not leaning on the jokes that you have got too hard. What does Tony want, what does Leslie want, and then what does Dr.

Littler want when she comes in. And I'm not quite any the wiser at the end other than she's fired some people and it's not really much fun anymore. She also doesn't seem to know who Tony is. It'd be odd to have somebody off sick for three days, three months.

And although she's arrived subsequently, she would sort of know all this stuff. So this is not again, all these issues of believability I think do come into play. So I think that's, those are my main comments on the script I think. I agree.

And it's very, very hard to get this kind of sitcom right as James says. One thing I would just say, one last thing I would add, the, as I say, this is the second one that we've had where the inspectors are coming is the plot. And it is a valid plot. But I'm starting to wonder, because it is an over-familiar plot, whether it's, you've got to find some new way of delivering that plot now.

And when I was mentioning, I know, you wouldn't, it's a band from the Kari House, although it's the birth, it's my birthday. But I still see, I did see something when I had a birthday plot quite recently, I don't know if flowers I think it was maybe. But they, so if you're going to do the inspectors are coming plot, you have to find a new way of doing it because it's just too common a plot now and it's been used too much. That is true.

But also, this is the very first episode of a sitcom. Is this really the one thing that your main characters are going to, are we really going to see what they want out of life, why the show exists, and inspection is not, you know. So when we're selling up a show at sitcom the other day with Marathi partner Richard, we were trying to think of what is the best pilot plot and we went through 70 different plots before we arrived on the one. And even that we're not sure about and we'll probably chuck it and start again.

You need to be absolutely brutal in what plot will set up this show right. And I don't think this is it. In fact, for all of them, I've been worried about that. But in one sense, these are questions to our side of the deadline.

But thank you for sending us your everybody, Sheldon and Andrew. Because of Sheldon from Big Bang for you, I'm now assuming that no one's actually called Sheldon and that's their fourth name. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Thank you Sheldon and Andrew.

Thank you Martin. Thank you Ben. Thank you for listening. We're done and we will be back next time.

Please look at our Facebook page, like us, leave us a review on iTunes, look at sitcomgeeks. sitcomgeek is my blog, Dave Blogs at dovetowin.org.uk. Dave. Thank you for listening and we'll speak to you next time.

Cheerio.