Hello, welcome to sitcom gigs, I'm Dave Cohen. I'm James Perry. And we're here at the Writers Guild of Great Britain, fittingly, because we're going to be talking about the winners of the Writers Guild Awards, which took place, the three comedy awards that took place on Monday. And we've had a new award this year, it was one of the best radio show and TV sitcom.
We have an award for the Best New Online Comedy. And joining James and I today, we have guests, we have the chair of the panel for the online awards. And also, I'm very much facing at the moment for his brilliant script, Eric Ernie and me, which was on over Christmas on BBC. And so please welcome Neil, the author's side.
Thank you very much. And also joining us is another prominent writer, member of the Writers Guild, and he was one of the judges for the online awards. And it's shy who's seen. Also joining us, because she was one of the judges on the TV awards.
Have you ever wanted to be here? No, no, no, no. But actually has made an online comedy. So on that basis alone is...
I'm very much a friend of the show. Yes, absolutely. Happy by this. Hi, have you ever come with a member, by the way?
I'm just about to find you. Yes, I got to leave earlier than needed. But it's just for the benefit of everyone else. We did an Edinburgh Live special, as it were, with Abby.
And you were sort of... I can't even... You were descending into Mademoiselle coming out of it. But anyway, it was fine.
It's fine. It's fine. Everything's going great. Anyway, let's start with the online show.
Neil, do you want to guide us through the winner and also mention the shortlist? Yes. Well, so we should say that it was the first year that we registered the old added the online awards. David, you were sort of instrumental to kind of getting that on board.
We thought it was a way to recognise all community voices, particularly up and coming writers. And there's so much comedy has just been kind of plonked online now. And people missing out those traditional development routes. We got about 60 entries, right?
And fantastic kind of quality. And a real range of premises and comedic voices. And what it boiled down to was... I'm going to give the kind of a fuel shortlist first, I think.
Well, I give the final three, which was Maddock Lardwood. Show real for one word or less parts. I think they're all freely available on nine of these clips. A Hard Brexit, which was written by Barney Fishwick and Will Hislop.
And the Meet the City Boys secretly voting for Corbin, written by Ebeel Bisset-Smith. So that was the final shot was the three. But I'd like to also give a quick shout out to the comic movie for Originals, the designers, written by Daniel Outrich and Kat Butterfield. The Split, written by Stuart Elliott.
And what's the one more, I think that was it. I'm not mistaken, Daniel and Kat were graduates of the NFTS comedy course. So interesting. Yeah, I can put those names.
And anyway, final winner, we are really good winners. Yes, that's right. Final winner was Maddock Lardwood for surely the one word or less parts. Whoa!
Whoa! Oh, Murray, he's the king of the online. He's a very strong physical comedian. And also, he had my favourite, Jake of 2017, which I don't think he wrote.
But when he was in Tim Vines' career, he was a great performer. I was just wondering how effective it would have been just by script alone. I felt that a lot of the material that got through to the finals was very much dependent on the talent of the performers. But that's not saying that the script wouldn't have been amazing.
I'm just wondering how much it would have been towards performance over writing. Although good writing is a good performance, doesn't it? It's a tricky balance. The beat that we had was what should you be particularly rewarding to guard against someone's very good script in late-time performance, for example.
Stuff that was in the bottom 30, what sort of mistakes are they making? That you just think, that's not quite often this. I don't quite know what this is about or this is just someone talking and hoping someone's going to be funny. Were there any obvious pitfalls that people were falling into?
I think it was a sort of a pragmatic thing that ruled some out, which was too long. What was in the limit when I did the day? I put a 10 in the limit on it and I really think that for online you've got to write to your medium a little bit. I do feel longer than that, it feels like something that perhaps is an outlier and more uncommon.
There was a couple of things that were better when they're shorter anyway. I think beginning, middle and end and a couple of twists along the way. There's no reason really for something to drift that long unless you actually just want to present specifically a Tester T but the Sit Compiler for example. Which is a slightly different beast.
I actually take this in writing throughout editing. We talked about that probably sounds quite skinny to some people. It's not really just comedic timing. If you can master the technical side of it, it's just thinking where should we end the scene and which we move it on.
I think there was some that we actually found the use members of the public. I think we kind of took the position, I think rightly, that we had to take it on the public to try and find the human association. Right, right. Because that's the thing we haven't had the industry.
I watched quite a few of them. As you say, no, the thing that you have to look out for and we say this all the time, whatever the script is that you're doing. It's not enough to just have a few people in a room talking. You've got something happens.
A situation happens as a twist. There are complications. There's another twist and we get out of it. It's getting to that second twist.
People are always very good at coming up with the first. What if XYZ and then drift towards the end? It's the same acropony method of shifting the camera to one side. I think we're bored of that now.
Well, first we don't need to have punch lines. You're not the fascia. You have to have those punch lines. That for me, again, is the rule for all writing all the time.
It's get to the point three quarter way where we're going to think, how are they going to get out of this? That's clever. That's... Especially if it's going to last more than 90 seconds.
You do need to be telling a story. I'm finding something surprising within an FED situation and then playing that out tonight. I think also we have to be careful not to make sure we weren't just very specifically trying to reward in an inverted-com sketch comedy. Right.
We're quite specific writing too. We're calling this online comedy, but it has to be a catch-all and asking people, some people don't want to write sketches, they seem to be purely narrative-writing or something a bit more off-beat or left-field. I think we were trying also to find clips that wouldn't fall into it. They couldn't have just sent this to a sketch show as a freelance submission.
It's something that's a very unique and voice and a bit weird. I think we find some of them as well. The thing online does so well is character comedy. You can really...
because you can make something cheap. That makes up cheaply, which is a real in-depth character study online. I don't know. Do you did his company?
Can you think of character comedy? Yeah, I do think the character probably shied me a bit early, which you should make again about. Not making sure we're not just rewarding later performers. There's a real increase in terms of comedy performance if you look on TV now.
It just sort of like seems that comedy itself is the writing, as we discussed before and everything. A lot of the jokes come out on whether it's well edited or whether it's well performed. There was a web series, a comedy web series that I made, and the majority of the jokes on that actually came out from the improvisation of the actors' own sense and through the other thing as well. That's not dis-ing my own writing.
It's just that there's a lot of factors in there. I don't feel as if, whenever I go into meetings and everything, it's very difficult to explain comedy and it's very difficult to sort of like... A lot of comedy comes out of character. So when you're writing it as a pitch and everything and as a plot, you can't pitch comedy as well unless you tell the producer who you have in mind for that role and for them to visualize where the comedy would come from.
It's just really difficult to sell. I did notice there were quite a few just starting now, but there were some that had come from quite big independent production companies, like BigTalk, I think, had some in there. Do you think that we should try and encourage them? Are the companies encouraged to be producing stuff now?
Because obviously it's harder to get TV pilots and radio pilots, maybe. Do you think there'll be more of that? You're sort of working doing lots of this kind of stuff. Are you finding taste of takes now much more common than trying to treat them as a YouTube video in their own right or...
This is the first time, I don't know, because I've been using that miserable... I can't sell the script, but it's not. There's no point doing it. And very recently, probably last year, I was just like, why am I not making some proper tapes?
I do think it's useful, almost all of a sudden stuff. I do think it's useful to have an idea that is makeable, like that looks like something else. You try to sell it. But I do think there is a massive opportunity, which I don't want any of the listeners to take.
I want to only be the only one who's doing it. I do think that there's not a lot of irreverence for the forms of the internet yet. So it seems like a lot of those forms themselves are quite sacrosanct. They're the ridiculousness of most online videos.
People don't really take the piss out of that. And I think that there's a massive opportunity there. But I always love the content. I like shows that take the piss out of themselves and that's a day to day.
I take the piss out of them. The way that we use itself is made, the way it's presented. There are opportunities to be had online. I'm not thinking off of my head of any deconstructed online.
They're in a field comedy, in a field series. That was on BBC3, I think. Wasn't it? Did that qualify?
It sounds like it's for young people to me. I don't recommend it. I don't recommend it. I don't recommend it.
They did things like university challenge. It's like a field. But that's sort of taking an established TV format and doing it in a low budget way. There is a way of talking and a way of blogging and a way of making stuff.
The law is not hilarious. Most bloggers are the most nightmarish narcissist in sein or naughts around. But there's a lot of reverence. They're really beautiful.
A lot of bloggers are so beautiful. You just get a lot of vlogs. I just get kind of hypnotised by these insanely good little people. And you're thinking, how is this so banal?
How is it even content? How much of it have I watched today? Exactly. So hypnotised.
I mean there are make up tutorials and stuff which are some of the funniest things I've without meaning to be. I haven't really seen anybody really go for it. There's a larry. I don't know if that was the woman who takes this out of contouring.
I don't know if you should have noticed. I'm interested also because obviously part of the nature of the stuff on the internet is it's fleeting and it's passing. I guess what we're trying to do with the writer's guilt, we're trying to set up on a board online probably. As you say, it's to get new voices and people coming through.
But do you think, I think, as self-contained pieces, you think people would come back to and watch again? Yeah. I think the one that one definitely would. Yeah.
I mean with online comedy it's a lot more viral and everything and that kind of thing. It's just major laugh and it's immediately relatable. Yeah. We should briefly describe it.
So it's a matter of fact I would show you all for parts, one-on-less. Right. A lot of visual jokes. But what he's ultimately doing is sort of, I guess, the sneeching.
I find the humour in the reductive way that television shows certain things. So like, moggers or I can't think, you remember the other categories. But it was, you kind of went through about 30, so ultimately I remember watching it. Yeah.
I find a very quick visual or quick snappy dialogue way of kind of them. As describing it, it reminds me of that amazing Peter Serifinovich video where he does a hundred impressions in five minutes and none of them are impressions. They're all, they remind you of people but they're not. And they each have a really odd specific impression in line to go with it.
Right. It's mesmerising. Because you sort of know exactly who it is but it's sort of not anyone's. Which sounds like the amount of work that has gone into it that makes it, that's coming back to what we're saying.
You still have to put as much work into the writing of the script even if it's visual gags. There's still a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And I think maybe that's the interesting eye-opener for people once they start making their own stuff, which is why it is probably worth having it go at making it yourself, is you suddenly realise how incredibly time-consuming making television is, how incredibly painful it is to cut stuff, how much preparation you need to do.
This is a fantastic video. It's probably been going around in 10 years but I only saw it this year. There's 100 different ways of walking. And there's somebody on a treadmill walking in 100 different ways.
They're drunk, they're carrying something. And he's absolutely nailed it. And you just think, what in fact did him an hour or seven weeks? No, absolutely.
Well, I thought that alone would have taken three or four whole days at least. Well, yeah, exactly. And I think that another big start learning thing for people thinking of submitting, like any comedy-waiting, laces more, just keep distilling, keep cutting, keep cutting, and that's absolutely the ones that came through onto the shortness. They cut out the facts.
Leave them one thing more. I think that internet probably made for that kind of discipline as well. That's also a good advice for starting out comedy writers generally. Is it making things short?
I mean, I thought when I made one last year, because I'm used to having a script editing process where somebody goes, no, no, no, send it back, do it again, send it back, do it again, make it less expensive. And so doing it myself, I actually recorded a really woolly version of the sketch. It was only when I saw it, I was like, oh, this needs to be like a half as long. I'm going to take it all the way.
And you have to be your own script editor. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. One thing that does happen, again, this is another reason why we recommend more now that you should do this more than before.
I know I did some stuff with Marek a couple of years ago, and the guy that we were working with just had a Mac, basically, and he shot it, he had the sound, he did the edit, and he was fantastic, and he had a good sense of humor, and he was quick. And so if you can find that the kind of person as a writer that you're looking for, maybe you'll look if you're just a writer, someone like that, there are more people now that you can find who have got these skills. And all the other skills, apart from the comedy writing bits, can often be done by one other person. So it's worth looking out for people, looking out, seeing stuff that you like on the net, and finding out who made it.
And maybe that's a useful tip as well. Okay, we're moving on now to the TV award, the best TV show. I bet you were one of the judges again, second year running for you on the TV award. We can tell you what the nominations were, which were This Country by Daisy Mackeeper and Cholle Keeper, back by Simon Blackwell, and Inside Number Nine, The Bill by Steve Pemberton and Reese Sheer Smith.
They were, those were the nominations. They were the nominations. But as you were, so how many were you sort of tawling through in terms of scripts? I think we read 28.
Okay. There's quite a lot. That's a lot, yeah. I love this country, I have to say.
It's really exciting. Is that a first or second series? I think it's first. Okay.
So I haven't heard of them and I had one of those problems. Oh, this is good. I'm enjoying this. So again, I quite like it because they were so, they had the sit was really, they were so poor, and they're so going nowhere.
But it's good to see that. You'd solve and see sitcoms where you were just like the states of the characters seem unrealistic. And I thought, anyway, I thought it was good. So it's a certain country, isn't it?
Yes. And what I liked about that was, so I'm not actually watching it properly yet, but I've made a note to watch it because one of my big problems with someone who lives in the country and has come from the country, my dad was a very farmer. And the biggest TV show pretty much in the country is Country File. And they only really ever show you the countryside in reference to the town.
They always treat people who live in the countryside as interesting specimens of people. Oh, people live here and all that kind of look. So it looks like that's a show which doesn't define itself against, it is what it is. It's like these are people who live in the country and maybe are trying to escape it.
Well, the great thing about it is we've talked a lot about the lack of white working class comedy in the last few years really, and definitely it's not like any other show in that sense. It's a very much from a working class viewpoint. And it's just so refreshing. I haven't seen any of the scripts.
So refreshing to see grinding quality. But it's really not. It's that thing that when you're a teenager and you just already do this hang around the disabled twins and McDonald's, I don't know. And you're like, yes, I've got a funny stuff going down there.
It's a real opportunity for them to look at those relationships. You really care about the hierarchies and stuff. In an old fashioned, we've got to know who the boss is. What fascinated me, especially given that the winner was, I'm giving it away here because I know what one.
But the winner was inside number nine. What was really interesting to me, and there was a particular scene, I remember where the two main characters, they want to make some money. And they go to the village hall and there's a woman at the village hall talking to all the local and employed people about how they can make money. And it was, for me, it was very, very reminiscent of the League of Gentiles scenes.
Hello, Joxy, yes. That's right. Because for me that felt like a little bit of a kind of act of playing the local village, local people. Whereas this actually felt like it came from the people themselves.
In other words, it was a similarity. It felt like it had a real kind of extra, that it had some extra kick to it. And the equivalent figure of the Pauline Order of History was equally monstrous. But there was more of humanity to it somehow.
I can't quite put my finger on why I thought that. But I did feel that it felt like, oh, this is people from where they are doing their comedy. It's not lots of very clever, funny comedy people. It feels like it's giving you insight into a world rather than this is a well constructed narrative and these characters work.
They're not quite the same thing. Well, insight number 91. Yeah, well, get over it, Dave. Yeah, yeah.
Was that a choice or? I think that there was a feeling that it was in terms of writing. It was such a, because we were also judging on a particular script. And so the script that we were judging was all set in a single, it was like a play.
And it was set in a single place. It was the one where they, it turns out to be a scam. Right. It's that beautiful, where it was such good character.
And it was like very clear on comic voice and it had this kind of, and it was an identity to get, you know, you know, sort of, I don't know. So that's, that's, it's a writer's award. Yeah. It was a, it was a real, I mean, I don't know what the set was really, I suppose.
Well, that's, it's just the, it's a half hour narrative. It's a half hour narrative. The comedy, the, um, the comedy award itself is slightly, it's slightly split beast. Yeah.
Because it doesn't, there's no entertainment sort of award cut, the thing is it will break in comedy on a thing like that. For the writers' guild at least. But was there anything, as you were reading all of these different scripts and stuff, was there stuff that you'd noticed where there seems to be a trend for this or that or? I do think that now there is a, it, um, we talked about it a bit last year, but that, the whole thing of having a developing narrative art.
Yeah. That I do think that seems to be influencing. I'm not that number as well, but it was really, really well because that, those characters, they know those characters so well. And, and, and all the, um, we're talking last year, we're talking about the short hones.
Do you remember like the way that thing of having a, a mechanism by which we visually work out whether or not the protagonist has achieved his goal? Yes. Yes. The clear terms of success.
And I, I did feel like, um, I felt like I saw more, um, crafted, more kind of visually crafted. Oh, right. Which was really good. I'm not saying that they weren't great last year, but there, there was seem to be more of an understanding of that kind of like, simple extra structure and knowing what that, knowing what these things would be.
Yeah. Well, if people decide to, if people are watching, you know, the League of Gentlemen guys doing stuff like that and they're thinking, well, these guys are doing it. So we should do that. Yeah.
Then that for me would be a definite bonus because I've found lots of company quite often rather unsatisfactory in its resolution and, you know, story arcs have a bit to answer for in that I think as well. Um, just a round off. Um, uh, radio. Yeah.
Well, radio, there were the shortlist was, um, Kevin Elden. Kevin Elden, we'll see you now. Sarah Kendall, Australian, Trungy and John Finn was that way. Right.
So, so it was very, very close. Uh, first and second, there were several shows that came very near to being on the shortlist and Kevin Elden, uh, was, was there. And, but there were so many shows that that could have taken the third place. Uh, Kevin Elden, Henry Normal, brilliant show.
Lovely sitcom by Holly Walsh, Colshaw, a lot of million. Um, lots of good, really good interest in such a role. You were, I remember when I was sort of slightly teasing about having all this listening and reading to do. Um, and you were actually really enjoying it and saying, I'm impressed with you.
I'm impressed with you. I could not believe and I was just, I was daunted. And in fact, there were 43 shows, which was more than I'm about to listen to. And I was dreading it.
Uh, and actually, you know, I was getting to, uh, I was thinking, right, I've got to find five or six. I've listened about 25 shows, already had 10 shows that I really liked. Oh, God, what, what, how good are these next ones going to have to be to get into the top 10? I mean, quite a few were good enough.
So, there was, there were two front runners, basically, and Sarah Kendall's Australian Trilogy and John Finnimor's, uh, double acts, which was very good and, uh, was, it was brilliant as John Finnimor's shows always are, as we always say, on the show. Um, the, uh, just in terms of actual... Sarah Kendall's Australian Trilogy, the particular episode we listened to, was, um, so far, uh, such a brilliant piece of work. And it had the most amazingly brilliant ending of any show, radio show that I've ever listened to, uh, in least 20 years.
Um, and it was absolutely stunning. And it was really, uh, kind of, there was unanimity among the judges that once it was chosen that fair enough, yes, that really was, uh, such a brilliant show and it had this sort of amazing ending as well. It was a beautiful piece of storytelling, very funny, uh, but yes, it was a piece of writing. Uh, it just stood out.
But the, um, I, I wasn't on the judging thing. The only thing to note, I would say, and I wonder if this is a thing that any of us are so, sorry, how we thought on this, is it feels like audio is having a bit of a, um, resurgence. It feels like people are now wanting audio to be good. It seems that Audible have just raised their game and there's now much more stuff going on to Audible and whether people are being more tempted to do audio only because it is possible to get some really good ideas down that don't require visualization, that don't require.
I don't know, have you written much more? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, sort of, um, back in the day, like seven years ago, I wrote a few things for Asian Network and Radio 4, um, but then, I mean, one of the things that turned me off of Audio Drama was that, you know, you had to write within parameters because there was only Radio 4 that would take it on and, um, you can't swear and there's certain sort of like, I mean, you can get quite edgy but not supremely- Expectation as well of what it's going to be and what it isn't going to be. What age range, you know, director tools.
No, no, they're audience for Radio 4, that's not true. So you've been away from it and you've finally stopped coming back or? Um, well, right now it's actually online that I've been most tempted by. Um, I mean, that was a comedy stand-up I doubled with last year as well, but then I realised I just enjoyed a lot more using that material and making it a short comedy form for YouTube instead.
Um, but with Audio coming back to it and everything, it does seem to be a really exciting moment now, but we were talking earlier about how there's only Audible who are the one gatekeepers and that was the thing I had with before Radio 4, the only gatekeeper. So it's nice that there's no two, but still it would be nice to have more. Um, I think Audible are the only way of sort of monetising stuff in that sense, whereas iTunes obviously still have the right to podcast market. And it feels like, you know, we're podcasts and obviously ourselves and this podcast does not make any money.
Um, but we do it for a reason. Oh, my gosh. This podcast is sponsored by Coca-Cola to stop it. No, we have one or two advertising inquiries in our inbox.
One or two of which were pretty fruity. We also just weird, and you wanted to say, have you heard the show? This is quite a technical discussion. There's some of the word comedy in there.
Alright, I'll get the lads comedy market here. Yeah, no, it was something that was a little bit fruity. Anyway, so it feels like there is a radio resurgence. What I was just to say for if you started out, you want to write the radio.
I mean, it was the range of shows was phenomenal. There were shows that a company called Daphne, which is a collection of young stand-ups, Phil Wang is one of them. And they did a show called Daphne Sounds Expensive. That's why it was evil.
Look, to me, that is young, okay? Into the envelope. Yes, I know. Thirty-five, god.
He's still, if you were an novelist, he's still being a novelist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so definitely so expensive. But Daphne sounds expensive.
It sounded like the goons but updated to the 21st century, which is just an amazing thing. Somebody is making a show that is like the goons, a modern version. And then again, there was another book by Max and Ivan's case book, which sounded totally traditional. It was totally like a round-the-horn almost, retro kind of show.
But it was hilarious. It was just really funny. So you can do, you know, this is a such a kind of back history of radio that you can pay homage to and update. And then there was an amazing show, just a guy with several palsy who, you know, there's so much kind of worthy stuff about diversity and getting different voices on.
But this show was just laugh out loud, funny. And, you know, there's a lot of great stuff coming out of the radio. Brilliant. We should wrap this up.
We should wrap this up. We should wrap this up. Sorry. Sorry.
What did you just do? Why? Why are you listening? I'm pretty sure you.
But anyway, thank you very much for being part of our discussion. Abbe, thank you, Sha'id. Thank you. To the writers' guild for letting us use their room after our comedy-quity meeting.
Thanks to Neil. He's not here. Thank you to Neil. He's gone.
He's dead. But too much. Too much. That's okay.
Yes. Anyway, speechy next time. Do send us an email. He's like us on Facebook.
Go to www.tonguex.gmail.com and we'll speak to you next time. Bye-bye.