Hello, welcome to sitcom Keaks. I'm Dave Cohen and I'm James Caring and welcome to the show and today we're going to do a show that is all about your sitcom scripts. It's all about everything to do with the sitcom scripts. What happened recently I found that I had to read about 30 sitcom scripts of radio, TV and all sorts in a very short space of time and it was a lot of very obvious facts were coming through.
There was some very funny ones and there was some slightly less funny ones but there was a series of points and things that we have talked about before many times. But we thought it would be a good idea to put all those ideas, consolidate all our ideas into one package. One easy podcast, one easy podcast for your delicatation and so we're going to talk about all of the things that came up. Before we get there we've got a couple of questions from Facebook which relate to this and also this has been that we're talking about it because I've recently watched some TV sitcoms that have been produced.
I watched a whole load of new ones and I found myself wondering what is the show actually about. Even funnily enough is the title of episode one of SICK COMBIECES. I even found this watching an episode of PORRICH where Fletcher is writing letters for everybody else and I watched that episode and I thought I don't actually know why Fletcher is doing this. I don't know why I don't see what this is about.
This is Fletcher being frustrated that he's writing letters for other people. It's not Fletcher, it's the grandson of Fletcher. And we think this show only really exists because of Ronnie Barker in the same way that Steel Open All Hours only exists because of Ronnie Barker and David Dason is still alive. And so when Alison Harlan Facebook asked why are the BBC so keen to remake old sitcoms instead of coming up with new ones, I think there's a very good question and the answer is search me.
But in one sense it just feels like the BBC want to try to work with something that's already a bit of a head start. They know that people love PORRICH. It is one of the greatest sitcoms of all time and the writers of it are still alive and they are prepared to write it for the money that is being offered. So you can sort of, it all makes sense but the only problem is you're left with something that feels like it's slightly reheated rather than made from fresh.
Partly to be fair to the BBC they are trying to do whatever it takes to keep audiences that come alive and for that we of course applaud them. They're not quite doing whatever it takes. That's the subject for another one. The last comedy playhouses I finally got round to watching them.
I have to say I've watched about five different comedies in one Sunday evening and when I made it all the way through to the end it was static which was the caravan one which also had Alison Steadman in it as well as that famous. She's so famous. She was very funny. I actually really enjoyed that and I watched it all the way to the end but even so I was still left at the end.
I hope they recommission it and for a series but I was still left at the end of that thinking I don't know what this show is actually about. So I think that is something that's worth bearing in mind as we talk about these scripts. The other question, sorry David's shomping at the bit to talk about it. The other question we had on Facebook from Jamie McKeib was saying I wonder what you guys think of the importance of the sit in sitcom.
If you have a great cast and a great script is it as important? I would say that you probably can't separate those things and you might get away with a poor situation if you have a really good cast. Having said that there have been some great shows with some great people. Mr Charity, we talked about with Pete Sinclair, Stephen Tonkin is a fantastic company actor who had great experience and chops during the rest of their donkey.
Great script written by really funny writers, the audience has fell about and I think it wasn't enough. It wasn't right. So the idea is the situation really doesn't need to say something about what your show is really about I think or at least what it's about what it's really about is a bit of a... Yeah and again we talk about the family sitcom that the sit is the house but of course that is always being redefined.
So a show called Modern Family is a sitcom with a family but the sit is three different houses and then reflecting three different lifestyles so that's very much different from say my family or just the step-toe and son or whatever the what Ab Fabb and so the sit is kind of reflective to the of the column you know even if it's something as conventional as like say even some picture you know two guys two twenty something guys sharing a flat and how many times has that sit been done but it's what you do with the sit really isn't it? And there are ways in which you know it depends you might come up with a sit first in fact all of my sitcoms that I've said before I've actually come up with a situation before I've come up with the characters so I think about management consultants who are sort of too young to know any better Hut 33 set in Bletchley Park during World War II, Bluestone 4-2 about Bond's, those in Afghanistan. The situation came before the characters but that's not how by any means every show is originated. Ab Fabb was from a character from a sketch that was created by Jennifer Saunders so it depends which way around but ultimately you want your situation and your script your jokes your cast and everything to be pulling in the same direction otherwise you're just sort of doing a show that is somewhere for the sake of it and I think you're making your life very hard for yourself.
Yeah I think there was other questions as well was mentioned Time Oysters which is one of the new sitcoms of the last few weeks which I've seen. I have not seen in my five-year-old binge watch evening that was not I don't even kind of I may be wrong I don't like to I don't like to raise your expectations too much because I know James and I often we say to you must watch this you must watch this and so I said I didn't quite excuse as much as you did it like that but I did what I've seen of Time Oysters I have really enjoyed and that is a show that really does clearly know what it's about even though it's kind of quite a complex setup which is basically a jazz band from the modern day find themselves transported and through a block of flats back to 1926 and hilarity ensues trust me if you haven't seen it. Okay so yeah so if we can come back then to my kind of overall notes based on all these scripts that I saw and the thing that hit me time and again was something that we couldn't really really discuss them specifically and that is a structure the structure of sitcom and the structure is it's there really it's there's not a lot you can do about it it's 20 30 minute slot is 27 minutes on the BBC and anything between 20 and 24 minutes on channel 4 ITV whatever and it'll have an ad break halfway through and you know you can have only fools and horses and you can have mrs brown's boys or peep Joe or absolutely fabulous all totally different but they're all using the same structure it's like that's saying you know if you're building a house you don't start with the roof so you need to be aware of the structure of a sitcom even when the first on your list there and on our notes is Seinfeld even when they do everything they can to convince you that the show isn't about anything it takes a lot of work to make something look like it's not about anything and so even when something seems to make a virtue of not being about anything it's just very cleverly disguised its own structure so whereas some shows like Sean show we've discussed before is effectively the Pompidue Center where you can see everything it's all on the outside there are other shows where they're very minimalist and you can't see anything you can't see any of the joins and you think that this isn't this isn't anything but actually they are very carefully structured it's just they've done a really good job of hiding the joins and hiding the sort of the plot crux moments and that sort of thing yeah when we talked last about how stories seem to have got lost in recently if you take something like faulty towers which is an intricately intricately applauded 27 minute fast about 31 minutes actually sometimes they got slightly longer and longer and they weren't quite strict on the time but I believe the later episodes run at about 31 or 32 right ruins the argument that I was making well it's it's but even so it's 32 minutes and it's not 55 yeah and you start with a character and the character has a goal and that goal conflicts with the other characters or with their own ability to achieve it or with the laws of nature and there's a conflict that escalates step by step in this story that you have so you get to the point about two thirds of the way through where all is lost or all is one and then you have to get back from that point to the end of the episode where the world is back as it was at the start of the episode no one's learned anything but you've got your character who got into scrapes is getting out of them or ideally by having to make a choice or a decision and at least appear to learn something which they will have safely forgotten in 23 you know in an hour it's or in a week's time minus minus half an hour yeah so that's really the crucial point to remember is you've got the story a simple story to tell and you don't have a lot of time to tell it so read a lot of scripts and it's all very enjoyable I was really four or five pages at the start of interesting conversations and philosophizing and groups of people sitting in pubs or whatever and I've just by the 25th script I was screaming for a story to start I had that in an episode of Upstart Crime which I actually gave up after 10 minutes it started with Talk About Catholics and something and there was sort of but they just it's a good show I like it but they just kept making a series of oh imagine a world where we know basically Britain tries to leave Europe or imagine a world where and they kept doing it kept doing it kept doing it so they did all these jokes in the pub and then the actors were there who were very funny clicking Dominic Conan who I love very much and then they went back to Shakespeare's house and then they kept making these jokes after 10 minutes I was like this story needs to start right now where I'm turning and it didn't and so I turned it off because people talking is not enough and far bit for me to tell Ben Elton how to write his show and how to write comedy but I can tell how to write that one because there was not enough actually happening and we've had a question on Twitter from Alex Smith who said is there something to be said for launching into a script while the idea is fresh rather than spending weeks planning and outlining it first and he said in the tweet before after that he is by nature a planner so what I would say to that is it is well worth just splurging dialogue and if you if you want to launch in launch in and you will be producing sort of raw material that you can then start to hammer into shape as and when you need it early on the best thing you can do is just to hear your characters talk I remember once I was swimming and I could start to hear characters with sitcom which is subsequently failed to mention released to occasions start to talk to each other and I had to get out of the pool go to my locker get my phone and type out about a 15 line conversation between the heroine of the show and her daughter and in the end that conversation never but it was a key moment where I could just hear them talking and so anything that moves it on is great but there comes a point where you have to sort of put that to one side work out okay what's going to happen how is how am I going to keep my viewer interested beyond just people saying things that are funny because you do need a story and that comes with structure I've definitely changed my normal way of working this project I'm working on just because I thought I always say oh prepare and prepare and prepare and plan and I thought right I'm going to ignore my I'm just going to try and splurge and which I have been doing and it's hard it's hard for me it's probably hard for Alex in the same way you know you it's letting go it's it's a hard thing to do but once you do do it it can be quite liberating we talked about Carl Elaine and that's how Carl Elaine used to write she would just start writing but all regardless of how you do that you do need to have in your head this simple fact you've only got this limited amount of time you've got a story to tell there has to be this moment of jeopardy at this moment where all is lost or all is one the opposite of jeopardy two thirds of the way the end and then you have to find the characters have to get you to the end and you can't just invent a plot it has to be consistent with the flaws that are in your characters but that's the plot the character needs to solve their plot problem in a way that is surprising but retrospectively inevitable once you've seen it you realize oh that is the only way that you could have resolved that in the same way that I was just thinking about the lovely movie Night's Tale which I showed to my kids recently the Heath Ledger movie with Paul Bettany in it it was just amazing as Chaucer where he walks he walks into the movie literally naked because his character Chaucer has gambled away every single thing that he owns but there's a plot issue at the end where in order to compete in the final tournament he's led his character has to be a knight and the only way he can become a knight is if the king makes him a knight or if the prince prince of Wales won't make some knight but he's already met the guy early running the film because he jousted against him and then he's followed and then you just think that was the only way in which he could have happened but the first time you watch it you're not expecting that to happen yeah so you're kind of looking for those things and that sort of stuff takes time and it's not terribly funny or rewarding but you need that you know if you want a really fancy lovely car that everyone's going to drool over you still need a chassis underneath it it's going to hold a darn thing together otherwise you've got an alpha reo and we should go to fall apart sooner or later you know it's a petri-made joke there for all your top gear fans right totally over there's not a flicker response from there you go in there totally blank to you there yes so yes just be bearing that in mind because otherwise you can just go all over the place and really you're looking for three or four kind of big things to happen once you've had this story developed this plot thing that happens very early on oh right x has to get this thing all right here's the first one step one no that doesn't work it makes things worse step two that's made even worse all around itv it's time for a break okay we've got to solve this for good now i'm part two oh no it's got even worse now and we're two thirds the way through and we've got to solve it that's one thing i was particularly mindful of when i wrote a couple of episodes of citizen calm with adil ray one thing i was really challenged by and struck by was how adil was committed to making mr calm his comedy character absolutely instrumental in his own downfall so he was really ruthless and it was very frustrating and hard work but i knew it was the right thing was when we had a plot that basically worked he would pick a hole in it and just go we see here all he's done is mr calm's tried to do something and he's failed he needs to have made it worse he has to have made it worse and so that would be another hour two hours spent working out okay how is he the author of his own downfall at every turn it's not always possible but it normally is and i think that's one error again in which i think scripts can feel unrewarding or not very exciting is because somebody has a goal they tried number one doesn't work number two doesn't work number three the thing that you the audience know they should have tried all along and they finally do that's you know that's okay but it's not great and what you need is someone just to say let me try there's a really good chuck when nick i think i posted his link to his blog before i try and put it on the notes where he's very big on let me tell you what's wrong with your script without even having read it and it is basically you've just got people trying and failing and that's not enough and it's to be oh i'm gonna try oh my goodness it's gone awful and then oh my it's gone even worse oh no and now there's a pterodactyl attacking me and that you know what i mean it's yeah so you and you need the characters to be trying to do the wrong thing for the right reasons and there's a lot of places to spin i'm sorry about that so um what would you say citizen carne is really about them it's about it's about his his inability to to uh see things from any other point of view than his own son i think i think he could easily be portrayed as a selfish self-aggrandizing character and that might be where he started as someone who wants to be considered a community leader um that's sort of very much series one but actually what's really lovely about the show is that he he loves his wife and his daughters but he doesn't really know how to love them and therefore he will always try to love them in the wrong way um but also he's fundamentally quite lazy and so therefore he will try to help them away that doesn't cost him anything and then he realizes too late that it's now going to cost him far more and if he'd only done the right thing at the start it would have been okay but he didn't and now he's really going to pay for it so those are kind of the things that we were talking about with that character which is you know in one sense an archetypal sitcom character and you know none the worst word which is episode two i talked earlier episode one of sitcom gigs what's your show about what's it really about episode two we talk about the main character where you where you have a main character we could call it a monster or just somebody who is larger than life citizen carne is kind of both those things really is some extent yeah um or Miranda Miranda is literally larger than life and she's almost too she's too big for the world around her almost i think yes and she's someone who is looking for approval you know i think she wants the approval of her mother and the approval of Gary the approval of of tilly and those around her but she's also fundamentally slightly too lazy to actually do the things she needs to get it and actually she should want their approval less and be happier with herself more and she sort of has to learn that lesson every week yeah learn it only to have forgotten it as we say by the time we come back but that's life yeah that's why you have the same conversation with the same people week after week because people don't learn and they don't change yeah they they maybe grow up a bit and they may change slowly over 15, 20, 30 years which is why i went to sitcom runs a long time by only fools and horses the last episodes feel very different from the first but ultimately you know that's a change through getting older but overall people don't change sitcom character don't change in that sense i think they are more true to life than most other forms of television yeah i agree i agree um i just got one other observation that i made really from reading all the scripts and the word is punch lines now this doesn't just mean oh here's a joke and there's a gag there's a punch line up it does mean that of course we want lots of jokes not enough jokes in sitcoms we know that put more jokes in please ideally they're character based um and um but also remember that the scene is uh self-contained uh it's a bit like a sketch really as we've said before you need to get out of a scene with as funny as big away as possible really and the punch line is the way to do that and we know punch lines are hard they're like second twists in sketches as we talked about before um you have to get to that point and um you have to work really hard to get that punch line so um it's not just about pushing a story forward but always checking as James says about all the plates and you've got that they're spinning the one that gets forgotten quite a lot in the enthusiasm to tell the story possibly is that you forget there has to be a funny joke here and here at the end of the scene ideally is the funniest joke in the whole scene yeah there needs to be a proper front joke the only substitute for that is a really big cliffhanger but you only want to do that if you've got 12 scenes in your sitcom you can probably get away with one cliffhanger the other 11 scenes are going to have to end on a decent joke and there are ways of doing that um one is it just comes naturally and that's great that sometimes you discover that the scene should just end slightly earlier you've got a really good joke and then the stuff that you've got coming after it you just think we actually need any of that you're telling the audience what you're going to what the character is going to do next and it's obvious what they're going to do next and you can start the next scene and we will have assumed that they've done it so sometimes you can or you can shift the order around so that you are thinking so you are ending your sketch you're seeing on a good joke and without having to think of a new one but you know but think of a new one work out or you know cut the end off so that you're ending on the funny bit or re-order it but just end every scene on a joke it really makes your script much easier and more heartening to read if you are ending each scene on a joke that just tips you over into the next scene because although we are really big on making sure that your story is compelling it is the jokes that people will stay for because you won't be able to compete with line of duty or game of thrones for storytelling you will need to separate with jokes yeah so the other thing is I mean I wonder if when you're reading these scripts they've you felt surely they must have seen that this is too baggy this is too did you not sort of think this has been poorly edited or self-edited or did you just think what what was a little disappointing I thought was that and sometimes there would be sort of two or three scripts by the same person and what felt disappointed was that a script would get would be written and it has had feedback from someone else as well but the feedback has not necessarily been taken on board and so I would be reading a script and I'd read script one and then there's some funny jokes this is great this character I don't get what this character's funny thing is I don't get what's supposed to happen I don't really think there's much of a story here and then I read their next sitcom oh here's another character I've got no idea what they're they're doing and it is about you do you know you really do have to kind of learn from from your mistakes and we all make the mistakes and that's fine but it's the repetition of the mistakes that that was for me was sort of quite disappointing aspect I guess if you're not listening to notes then you are just going to repeat them that's very easy for us to say try to get people to give you notes and I realize that's easier said than done but you can send your scripts to people to read to producers and stuff and actually especially if they work for BBC and they do tend to be very pub-expirited they will try to give you a little bit of feedback and it will be a headline probably but I'll you know make the most of that it may be the wrong note tonight and I can't vouch for everything being of all the notes being of top quality but but I do also have I wrote some blogs recently and in the past about how to at least self-edit your sketch as much as possible and one thing I did recently when I was writing Be Lucky which is my radio whales sitcom only three episodes of it I mean it's about as low key as a sitcom can get but one thing I found myself doing one script really wasn't working very well and what I did was I took the script and I what I normally do is print a script out when I think I'm happy with it put it away for two days print it out and then come back to it go to a cafe without my laptop and a pen and what and and you know physically on the piece of paper just delete cart lines that I don't think necessary does a pen have like I sort of have the internet on it yes it's like the pen has a thing that comes out the end and it goes straight on it's like it's like an apple pencil but a pen goes straight on to the document and it's old school and so if you get a bit because I find that if I start editing my sit-com script on the screen I then stop reading it properly and actually the best thing you can do is try to factory reset your brain and read it afresh and then work out is this working try to read it in one go without making notes and then try to read it again and start making notes and start making cuts and work out what is this line doing here is this moving the story on is this developing character is this a joke it isn't at least one of those things you have to delete it but the other thing I have to say the new thing I tried there was for a script I didn't think was working I wrote a summary of my own script so I wrote that script based on an outline that I had already written and so but there was a gap between what I thought was my outline and what the script was and what was working so I wrote a new outline based on what I had actually written and realized oh in this scene nothing's actually happening I'm trying to summarize the scenes and work out how does this move the story on and discovering that this is just a bunch of jokes and there needs to be more development here or I've got this in the wrong order or something right so anyway so I'm just trying to sort of do any way of resetting my brain so I'm taking a fresh look and that usually involves printing stuff out having another look at it for a set of eyes and then doing a rewrite based on that and anyone can do that anyone can do that I'm a big fan of the walking away for two days and coming back again we really do notice things that are blindingly obvious that would have not at all clear two days ago and unless you're shooting it tomorrow there is always time to do that so you know especially if you get yourself organized there isn't if you if you're writing for a script competition and the deadline is tomorrow and you've only finished it before well you should have started earlier but also but that's okay because you know when you're in the zone and you know that that script has to be finished by midnight there are some things that magically kick in anyway and so the chances are that you're you'll find them if the script is already on its way to being the right kind of script you know if it's not working now it won't work in four hours time but you may what you may miss and if you will gain from having that deadline but if you haven't got that deadline it is hard when you've not got a deadline just set yourself a false deadline write it put it away come back to it and you'll see allow it to prove from in the oven or not in the oven in the proving rule right now you I think we are done with that amazing topic so we're we're about to wrap things up but if you for example want to send us to the first ten pages of your script you can still do that we are reopening the doors but we are reopening the doors for our first ten pages for subscribers via patreon so go to our patreon page and have a look at that and we will do special subscriber only patreon episodes where we go through your first ten pages and we we talk about all this stuff in further detail and it could be your script that we're doing that with and Dave also has some things up his sleeve which we say he's able to offer you yes we got some courses running you find out about them writing for the sitcom or stand up or writing the topical comedy um go to my website devcoen.org.uk and that'll be slash and make a living up comedy i think it's not quite right but you'll see it on the menu if you go to the home page and yes get in touch with us at gmail.com or the facebook page sitcom gigs yes and also on twitter sitcom gigs on twitter and i'm also sitcom geek and co-in-dave that's new isn't it and also i read a book called writing that sitcom which actually takes you from as the american say from super to nuts on um on coming up with an idea and seeing it all the way through and sending it off so hopefully that will be obvious and if you become a patreon subscriber you will get my book for gratis and for for us online as well how to be averagely successful at comedy and also for some of you the new book which will be out very soon called funny which is a brilliant title for a book congratulations on finding a good title i'm also uh hopefully writing a book called a good sense of humor which is about um why we love comedy and jokes and why it so often goes horribly horribly wrong um so it's sort of partly about the ethics of comedy and how people take offense and and being a a god bothering type this is something that i i get asked about quite a lot and you know my people are often very sensitive to jokes about blasphemy and things like that so this is something i've thought about a lot i'm actually less sensitive to these things than most of um other fellow godboderers but well i have to say i think the first time i ever heard the c-word in a comedy show was uh blue sound fit too oh my goodness you know that is quite a legacy and it's amazing that um that the catchphrase from series one even though it was only in the first episode was off uf and that one caught on we believe that um one sergeant major asked permission from his captain or somebody to be able to dismiss a parade with that expression um on a parade ground of her majesty's armed forces anyway thanks very much listening to the show thank you very much speak to you again soon bye