Episode 84 - Hayley McKenzie

Hello welcome to sitcom geeks I'm Dave Cohen and I'm James Herring and we are here at the London No Craft of Comedy festival. It's very exciting to be with lots and lots of people here lots of exciting talks and we're here today with Hayley Mackenzie. Hi. Hello Hayley.

Hayley is runs that script angel so Hayley is the go-to person when you have a new script or you're trying to get script in comedy comedy drama. Can you just tell us a little bit about script angel? Yeah sure and so we're a screenwriter coaching and development company we are a company about 10 years ago. We work with writers mostly on the verge of breaking the industry.

We say breaking and the verge of breaking down. That is well. Yeah exactly. On the verge of a break down.

Are we all verging into the industry? We would need to write if we were all normal stable people. Anyway do you go on. But that's the joy of my job is really tough to break in.

Really tough. Even when you've been practicing or writing your spare time for three, four, five, six years and you've got specs on to you about it's still tough and that's the stage we tend to work with writers when they've developed the craft a fair but those scripts are still not quite resonating. They're still not quite getting them commissioned or getting them right. And we help them push those scripts up to that next level.

Right okay. So people tend to come to you with an existing script and then you help them really buff it up and prove it and learn in the process. Yeah and then we'll typically work with them for between six to twelve months so we'll often start working on a second project in that time as well. Right okay so you're actually that's sort of quite a long through process with the writers.

It is but then what I did when I set the company is I tried to replicate the process I went through as a script editor with writers so when I was a development exec it was that kind of like the process. You didn't give a set of notes and then not see your writer for another year and a half. You've had conversations ongoing you know every couple of weeks, every month or so when you go through that process of discussing an idea, seeing the outline, giving notes on the outline, going to draft, going to next drafts and it would take between six and twelve months before you got something you felt you could take to commission as. Right that's interesting because actually I mean that sounds familiar from what I know I've not written drama but the process of getting drama on and it sounds slightly more pro-active than my experience.

I don't know if you would say your experience as well with comedy scripts. Do you find that there's much script development goes on? I don't know sometimes there's too much which is only like to forget the original idea was I was speaking to somebody last night who was very frustrated that after six months a company production company sort of said actually you know let's think again about what the whole basic idea of this is and that's the bit where you really do want to jump in a river. Yeah because you kind of all need to be signed up to what it is right at the beginning and trying to create the best possible version of that thing all the way through that process rather than checking it all out and then seeing what happens if you turn on its head and start again which is really frustrating.

Yeah yeah well where were you working then before you set up on your own. So before script angel I'd been a development exec at ITB drama I'd worked at the BBC I'd worked at Channel 4 in development and also script testing on returning series the Hollyoaks and those kinds of shows. Which in itself are we sort of training grounds in their own right aren't they? Yeah and still aren't presumably.

Yeah absolutely for both writers and scripts exact. Presumably there is a little bit of a jump between going from wanting to be a writer writing a half of these scripts and then ending up on the crew of a you know on a team of writers to talk about being starved. So you're sort of bridging that gap maybe. Yeah absolutely and also the process they go through with us is quite tough because we're quite tough with deadlines so they don't give notes and then kind of say well we'll see you whenever you read it you set a deadline for delivery of the next draft and the conversation that's going to follow it three or four days later.

So it helps them keep momentum because it can be really lonely and if no one's waiting for that next draft it's really hard to just knuckle down and do the graft. But it's also preparing people for a professional writing environment rather than an aspirational one I guess. Absolutely and that's what we've tried to do at script angel is to create that process in preparation. Yeah so you came from drama background but you also do really a lot of comedy scripts.

A lot of comedy scripts over the years. I used to read before I became a script editor with a script reader freelance and I worked for most of the production companies in comedy I was working for Hat Trek and big talk and so I was reading a lot of spec that comes scripts through that time and I've kind of kept my hand in I've not script tested on a commissioned comedy show but I've carried on reading and obviously working with friends who are professional comedy writers and editing projects in development as well. And so what I mean we were at the TV writers first of all recently the BBC writers were in the studio and that's traditionally been a drama festival and then comedy has been allowed in. They let in the idiot but there was a session about comedy drama and we all sort of scratched our heads and wondered what exactly is it and do you have any particular reflections on that?

Yeah it's something we and our writers struggle with all the time. It's those hybrid projects particularly when a writer says well I think it's a comedy but it's 60 minutes and I go so it's not a comedy that's not a comedy. It's not a comedy. It's not a comedy that's not a comedy.

It's understanding how the industry works it's understanding that if it's a 30 minute piece it's going to be commissioned by a comedy exec and if it's a 60 minute piece it's going to be commissioned by somebody in drama. It's essentially. So it's understanding the differences between what those two types of people because they want to come to those jobs in very different ways and it's understanding what a drama exec thinks a comedy drama is and what a comedy exec would think a comedy drama is. Because also comedy purists will argue that comedy is dramatic and you can't have comedy and what could be one of the great sitcoms all the time many calls and horses contain drama.

And I'm saying you say and yeah and so it's got all those things but then I guess people do get frustrated and angry about the fact that oh it's it's an hour therefore it's not a comedy or but I think the thing that came out in that session which I thought was a bit lacking in the session I'm referring to is when people sort of throw their hands up and say oh well it can be whatever you want it to be. That's fine and we had commissions and controllers saying that. My point to them was well the audience don't see it that way. They want to know what it is.

The audience have an expectation and once you give something a label like drama comedy and this happens in future films when people use multiple genre labels as well they'll often describe that piece as a horror thriller. That's great as long as it's both hitting all the marks and audience would expect from horror and all the things you'd expect from a thriller. It can't be a little bit about it. It has to be delivering what audiences expect from both of those genres so you give yourself twice as much work to do.

I'm not even sure necessarily the label is I think in film genre is really important because you have to make an effort to see a film but TV just turns up in your living room and so people might not even they might they're not reading radio times even though it's but my point was I picked out two comedy dramas that I really liked and I realized why I liked them. The first was How Do You Want Me? Yeah. It was a Simon Knight show with Dylan Moran and Charlotte Coleman and the second one was Johnson Creek.

Now what's brilliant about both of those shows is it's very obvious what they are in terms of story so How Do You Want Me is about a girl going home and taking her husband with her and all of the local people think that husband her husband is an idiot and he thinks there he is and they don't accept him you know he works really hard to be accepted and in Johnson Creek he says this is a murder mystery except he's a magician's assistant and it's got jokes in it and it's been written by David Renwick so it's obviously going to have jokes in it. I would say that's a really great example and I think Colffy was as well comedy dramas that do deliver on both of those sets of expectations. I was just about to mention Colffy and Jonathan Creek is the same. What they seem to do is they seem to redefine or define what it then is.

I remember when for instance when roughly the same time Miranda and Mrs Brown's boys both hit at the same time and I went to some BBC conference with the commissioner saying we're looking for what we're looking for is audience sitcoms with a monster larger than life lead character and I just thought you just want you want to cut several more Mrs Brown boys and remembers how you know you're not what you're actually looking for you don't really know until it turns up and Jonathan Creek and Colffy's good examples of that. Colffy started out feeling much more like a comedy comedy and it had some comedy people in it and I think the audience were expecting comedy and it started a long time ago so I think people knew what they were getting and then it sort of became a bit so pea and I don't mean that in a bad way but it was like an unfolding comedy drama as opposed to a half hour beginning middle and end kind of thing. It was a relationship drama with really specific, well-structured stories for all of those characters going on a journey but peppered with a lot of comedy. I remember the pilot Jimmy Nesbitt standing out in the street trying to work with her and he was naked and I think he had a rose in his mouth.

I think it's a step in his box. But anyway, so I think presumably you're now grabbing your sort of trying to advise writers on which way because you've been giving these comedy scripts that maybe don't feel comedy comedy but feel comedy drama and you've got drama things that feel funny. I think the 16 minute scripts are designed to sit in a drama slot but that have lots of comedy and are much easier sell to a mission I think a drama series that happens to also be really funny as long as the drama works fundamentally and structurally is an easy sell. I think the harder one is when it's a 30 minute piece.

So it's going to sit in a comedy slot. It's probably going to be commissioned by a comedy you can exact but it's not that funny because it's replacing lots of opportunities for comedy to be drama. It's really not very interesting now unfortunately. I know examples of writers very good top comedy writers and I've talked to them a little bit about the process when they've gone from they've done audience shows, panel shows or sitcoms or whatever and they've gone to writing non-audience and saying when they're filming something there's like a video joke and then in the edits they'll just say in the flow of the drama that the joke gets in the way and so the joke goes and that's I think was one of the problems with the non-audience sitcom is that the plot is king and which means that the jokes have to go or for the feel of it and as you say that means that things aren't so funny and that is a bit of a problem isn't it?

Do you ever get a problem sometimes where there are too many jokes in a comedy drama? I thought that's exactly what I was expecting. Always the challenge we're always pushing writers writing those 30-minute pieces to put more comedy in. I remember at stories years ago friend of mine was writing a BBC One Prime Time series his own series and he told me the story of the read-through in which the exact site there was the script and every line that got a laugh around the read-through table got tick and everyone that didn't got a cross and went through the script afterwards line by line and you got told to fix all the lines that hadn't got a lot of the read-through.

That was interesting, I'm panel Idida and Andy Dawson one of the Dawson brothers who was talking about they wrote a script in the States and James and I often talk about well every line you have it's either got to be a set up for a joke or it's got to be a joke. Andy was saying in the States they basically say no it has to be a set up and a joke. Every single line has to have that. That's what they found working in America as well as being paid for nominally stupidly more money than we could ever dream of.

It's interesting because definitely I'm always pushing the writers to write more comedy into their 30-minute pieces mostly because they're still developing those skills so the jokes are not there because they haven't spent the time finding them and thinking of them but sometimes it makes me nervous to try because I'm worried about turning a show into something it's never intended to be and the example in my head I was keep as detectives. If I decided their script has to try to force a more jokes into that show it would not be the show I love as an audience member so I'm always trying to also figure out what does the writer want it to be. Not all 30-minute pieces are going to end up looking like Mrs Brown's boys on the other hand but you have to have a really strong vision of what it is if it isn't going to look like that. And the non-audience equivalent of like Brooklyn Nine-Nine or whatever which is just essentially a studio comedy with that pace and the joke count but it's just it's just isn't quite filmed in front of an audience.

So in terms of the sort of scripts that you're reading presumably they're you're witnessing some some mistakes people are making so they're coming to you with scripts and there's probably some general lessons that can be learned from the volume of scripts that you're reading and then they then respond to those by making further mistakes. Almost second guess and wait for them to find out themselves so maybe just save everyone a lot of time by telling people. Yeah except of course obviously they've got to go through that. That's true.

Learn those lessons themselves but definitely they are different sets of not mistakes but just it's a process isn't it? I think you can't you never write the perfect shooting script first go out. No. You discover it as you're going along and I like you James I absolutely advocate for planning which is sadly lacking in most of the scripts I read.

Yeah I was saying most of the writers this is only stage writers maybe were just their first or second spec script. Well typically I've started writing that script. We're not really having an idea of how the relationships work or where the comedy is coming from and certainly won't have figured out a structure for that episode story with the payoff. They'll kind of go into the script thinking they'll figure out as they go along and it'll kind of appear to them.

Also a lot of people tend to think that they're really strong opening after that it writes itself. So the biggest weakness in early scripts by early stage writers tends to be a lack of structure and story but there's no story. It's a series of unfortunate incidents that are not necessarily related by cause and effect which for me isn't story. Or even reading character.

No absolutely. Funny stuff happens to people. Is there a when we talked to the other day I think Shane Allen might have said what script that he's read enough of which is a bloke in his 40s gets fired, gets home, gets home, gets home, gets left, is why an old girlfriend is dumped in but now suddenly he's got to start all over again. Do you get many of those or do you get any of those or fairly cool?

Yeah we definitely see a lot of those that tend to be for writers who are at that stage of life and equally if you're a student almost all the students all the scripts I read from writers in the early 20s will be about students. Okay it's a 20 something people talk about. Yeah we just completely understandable and that's true in drama as well that's not exclusive to comedy. Most writers script first writers.

Yeah. A group of six 20 something people sitting in the cafe talking. You know in my experience most writers start writing scripts set in a world and scenario they intimately know and understand it's very personal to them. Yeah I mean the downside of so you know there is we could do a whole thing on right what you know because we've gone both people on the houses on that one before but there's there is virtue in writing what you know as a starting point because the alternative is if you're in your you know if you write something that's just completely genre it's just going to feel very mechanical.

Yeah and it won't have any authenticity. Yeah if you don't have any experience or research and you write a crime drama it's going to be the sum total of all the crime dramas you've seen in your life whereas if you've spent 15 years as a court reporter for a newspaper and your first show as a crime drama that actually might be quite interesting because you'll have a perspective on that. But as a rule writing you know our advice often on this is no one's going to make that show that you've written that doesn't matter but your script should get you won't. No one's going to make my show either just to put it into context you know if you've got no contact with industry your chances of your shaving 1 in 10,000 if it's any good.

My chances are about 1 in 500 without a first draft you know it's hard work but what you can do is show what you can do as a writer and get work then on the whole piece and the doctors and the father browns or whatever it is. Or sketch writing or if you're going down the comedy route absolutely those scripts show what you can do. And actually the kind of question of right what you know what I think is really interesting is when writers write characters they know that are at a similar stage of life or they write a collection of that stage but put it in a setting I'm not saying before so plebs for me was a great example of like that age character but in a world I've not seen done in the way. Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

And similarly with time-wasters. Yeah exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

No one can say that's not realistic. That's not a... We don't really know what Roman's time is about. No one there's a shot on his skin if we've got...

No except Greg Jenner the research his research on horrible histories who always gets furious and angry whenever he sees a viking wearing a helmet with two horns. Like he's not wearing those helmets. He must know enough comedy writers now to know that that that doesn't matter. He's just shouting at the TV now.

He knows enough about comedy as well to know that his anger is in itself quite funny. Right okay that's good. Yeah yeah. That's good.

So we've got... So we've got writing what you know what you don't know and topics that are relatively covered. We've got stories that often maybe start with a very unstructured in our experience for sitcoms because we only read the first 10 pages and we've had that as a thing and if you're a patron subscriber by the way we can read your first 10 pages and then do a little podcast about it. But we tend to find anything the story doesn't start well enough and nothing actually happens until page 10 and give me really odd search pages where you need to make that page 10 happen on page 2 really.

Yeah it's really interesting and the writers are coming through particularly in feature films who tend to have read a lot of books about story and structure and screen writing and all the guidance and advice is you're inciting instant you know the thing that kicks things off and makes your lead character have to do something to achieve something has to happen in the first 10 pages of 90. Yes. So if you kind of ratio that into a set community in like a minute. We've got to establish you've got 10 pages to establish the normality from which your hero is voyaging away from on their quest because you've got a three act structure and you've never you've never seen the sort of books before.

We've said this podcast before the sitcom is the permanent act too. We know act one because of because of the situation and the character and we don't want act three because that's the series finale. It will finish the story and how the character changes and the sitcom is now redundant. But even with it and that's partly why you get so many scripts that don't have a story because but you know even within that you know you have a puzzle faulty you have a faulty town.

Absolutely you have a beginning and amazing sequence of events that are character driven. Absolute character driven and escalates. Yeah. Escalation is a bit difficult.

Yeah. And you find that's usually lacking. Is that normally a problem then as well? Yeah.

I'm going to take that time to be a little bit later so the writers who have spent a bit more time thinking about the story and will still tend not to escalate things. So the final sequence will tend not to be of all the things happening in the script. Yeah. The funniest, the biggest.

Right. Actually that build is often missing. Yeah. And it's just reordering things and rethinking the story shape so that you're building towards something big.

Right. I just wanted to pick up on something that James mentioned. There's something I just just thinking about how when you we talk about you know we get sick conscripts and starting to get kind of comedy drama-ish type scripts as well. But in terms of what is out there as James mentioning as a training ground I mean shows like Holiday City and Doctors.

Casualty still. Yeah. But I think these are these shows as you say are the training grounds. I mean we used to have those as a show called Week ending was on 40 weeks a year topical show.

Now we've got one 12 week a year topical show. Do you think it's worth comedy writers because there is actually quite a large choice of possibilities. It's worth them trying to go down the route and say I mean I'm not here since I've seen doctors but maybe try and write and get channel their comedy into something like doctors. I would actually say not because it's equally competitive.

And I think if you try and get onto a show you don't want in order to get to another type of show you don't want to write on. Yeah. You're kind of wasting all your energy. Too hard.

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm actually to succeed at the wrong thing. Yeah.

I think if you if you can get on that's incredible if you can get those opportunities but it is incredibly competitive. I mean BBC writers really get what? 4,000 submissions every time they open a window for four weeks. That's what they get 3,000 for a sitcom and there's like three slots available for that.

If they get 4,000 for the next potential whole PC or doctors right I mean those are like several hundred episodes a year. They are but again that they'll have call writers. The number of new writers coming onto any of those will still only be one or two a year. Right.

Because the writers will then write on those shows for two, three, five, ten years. Some of the shows are impossible to get on. You know the Emma Dales and the Corais. They find you.

You don't find that. Yeah absolutely. And even to get on the shadow scheme for Holby and Cash Otay you have to have an agent to be able to apply the show. So you need to be writing at that level while you're repped.

So it is really tough. I mean I actually I kind of obviously have been in that drama space a long time. I know all those routes and kind of how the industry works and what I was finding challenging for script-changer was helping writers who wanted to write narrative comedy. What is that road?

Yeah. And I know it's really tough to give that advice. If you find out by the way we are all ears. All I can always advise my rights to do is to look at the people who were writing the kind of stuff you want to write and look at how they got there.

What were they doing? There was Paul Crenza did a session at the London Screen Master's Festival which was really interesting and he talked about kind of the steps he'd taken and the kind things he'd written and the kind of places he'd sent those things and it is really secure to us. Especially if you're Paul Crenza. I know Paul a bit.

He's kind of good at lots of things. He's a good Santa comedian. He's also got a religious bent as well on some things. Very funny gag writer.

Very good gag writer. He's also a really nice man which frequently doesn't help. Too nice to pull yourself together Paul. A couple of questions and one on agents and one on notes.

So about being repped back you know you can't get on this one agent. I find I don't know if it's the case now be interesting to hear your views whether writers and people on the outside want to try to get in. They do think agents are a bit of a magic wand. Do you find that you still have to slightly disabuse me of that and to say you need to be able to write and that takes time.

So concentrate on that. You will typically get an agent at the point where you sort of feel like you don't really need one because you've built your network. That's not so they don't open doors because they can. They can get your script on to desks that from outside and without an agent.

You can't because you will hit that. We don't take into this dematerial barrier all the time. But typically the agents are only really looking to sign someone who's already built momentum. He was already knocks and got their fur in.

All the cliche I said. Because in a way they have to make money and they're not really in the business of development. They don't have the time to develop you as a writer. No.

They can help develop your career professionally but you have to already have a proven ability to write the damn thing. Absolutely. They're looking for writers that can already write at a professional level even if they haven't necessarily got all the gigs they want yet. And in order to do that therefore they need to be able to respond well to notes.

They do. Is that something that you'll find? Is that a steep learning curve for people or are they coming to you? Maybe it's a self-secting group.

We're lucky to come to us on looking for that help. We don't do one off notes. We don't even do three months work with writers anymore. We only work for six or twelve or longer.

The writers that come to us have already gone through those stages of sending the script off of one set of notes from someone as a single transaction. They've used their peer groups. They've got peer review. They're already quite good at taking notes and they come to us because they need more help and a professional level of help and expertise.

I can personally announce that. I actually went to a script a few years back when I wanted someone to see it before I sent it off. You gave me some very good notes and the script got rejected. Well, you know, I'm not holding you personally responsible.

Yeah, but we're lucky and obviously the writers have already been through quite a steep learning curve. Because sending your script off or even showing it to friends is hard and getting feedback. I'd say friends don't know how to read the script. No.

So they sort of, and then their helpful advice might be not technically helpful. Yeah, and the other challenge of getting feedback from peers particularly is if you give it to five other writers that all have their own ideas of what it could be if there was their project they were writing it. Yeah, this is a problem that I've written a little bit about this in my book. It's sort of slight dilemma that I have because I also occasionally read scripts and as James mentioned, we do the 10 pages.

And I did this for a friend. I read his script and I said, I really like character A, character B. I'm not sure about the secondary character. This doesn't work for me.

And then he said, actually, well, funnily enough, I sent it to BBC writers and they said, we love character B. We didn't like character A at all. And I sort of thought, yeah, and kind of, we were both right in our ways. But what's the right to do with that when they get this?

It's hard, isn't it? It is hard. But I always think of my job not as telling the writer what to do to make it better. But to point out where for me it's not working and ask the right questions to help them figure it out.

And I can absolutely, I will give a personal response. But what I'm listening for is how that lands with them. Because you can tell if their light will go up and they're like, yes, that's exactly what I wanted to make. And if they're not responding in that way to your notes, you find another avenue.

Because my job is to try and figure out what it is they want it to be, and help them turn it into that. My thing with my rule of thumb with notes whenever I give notes is always the first time I give the notes I have to say. I hope these notes are basically telling you what you've secretly already always thought but are successfully suppressed until this point. And then, yeah, and then all with that, I'm sure.

And I'm also very conscious of just saying, I'm a very unusual situation. I give notes to an RTE, Shakele, British, and Ammon. And the show is absolutely demented. It's completely, it's all over the place.

It's really funny but it's completely, it's extraordinary. And they have a very clear tonal vision of what it should be. And quite often they push it in a direction I don't like. But I will tell them, I find this not funny because I'm quite prudish, for example, on this.

But you're comfortable with it to go ahead. But I just want to say that some audience people will be turned off by this. And then I watched the final transmitted version just go, oh, they went with it anyway. Good for them.

That's fine. Because my ideal version of their show is not the show they want to make. And I'm not convinced that my version would be more successful than their version. I just prefer it more.

It's something you learn as a script host. You have to be honest and authentic about how you're responding to the material. But you also have to be listening to what it is there. You want to do with it.

And often they don't know. And your job then is to help them figure out what they want it to be. Well, should it be a bit more like this kind of show? Or should it be a bit more like that?

And again, it's going back to, I think sometimes you, it's just helping the writer to bear in mind, which I don't think commissioners and controllers do very well. Because when we were talking to the other day, they said, oh, show can be anything you want it to be, who cares what it is. And that shows to me a little bit of concerning that they don't realise that the audience are parsing TV shows by what's gone before and what's gone after. So actually, you can help a writer say, when an audience member reads this, what are they meant to think?

What do you want them to think? Again, at the script the other day where there was a character that was very mysterious. And I'm sort of saying, you're showing the audience so many clues in one direction that when you reveal it, it's not actually a surprise. And so you just need to, I think you've forgotten that somebody who's never read the script is going to see the show.

Just think about it from their perspective. I think it's very easy to lose sight of that, isn't it? Yeah. That's all you want.

I just sort of just as, we are a fresh pair of eyes on them. If this script was shot and broadcast now, how would an audience respond to it? And then ask the writer, is that what you want? Is that what you'd like them to be thinking, feeling, experiencing?

They will be appalled. I want to be appalled. I want to be more appalled in here. Absolutely.

Should we push this in this direction? Actually, you want it to be more edgy. If the thing that I've drawn your attention to here, because I think it's a bit risky, it's actually the bit you're almost excited about in the whole script, then maybe actually the whole piece should be sitting in this space, totally. Yeah, absolutely.

Very quick question of curiosity. Do you ever get any audience to sit conscripts? We do. Multi-camera.

Studio, sit conscripts. Yeah, not as often as we used to. We would like. Yeah.

One in 10, one in 20. Yeah. Of the comedy, it's probably about, of the, of the comments, those are the comedy pieces. It's probably about 50-50 split between between single-camera and studio.

That's really interesting. So you get quite a lot then. And who was writing, what sort of people are writing studio sitcoms? Are they people who clearly look?

Love, love, sick. And are these people who've grown up watching porridge? Are they people who've grown up watching Big Bang Theory? Oh, that's an interesting question.

Probably because of the kind of writers we attract, they're probably grown up with porridge, or something. A little bit later, but not quite Big Bang yet. I'm looking forward to working with those writers, though. Absolutely.

That's a legacy too. I also, people who grew up watching Big Bang, which have been on for a long time, are all now watching friends. Yeah. And they're all on Netflix or Prime or something, aren't they?

And you just watch, just watch all of them. And I'd be able to see what is. Well, and my children are growing up, they're in the teens now, but growing up on Modern Family. That is the sitcom of choices.

In fact, as a family to sit down to, that's probably the show of choices. Yeah. Yeah. And the pace on that.

Although it's not a studio show, it has all the pace and the comedy and everything. Yeah, it does. 22 minutes, four, five plots. I wouldn't advise your first specs to come script, aiming for 12 characters.

No. All with a story. Yeah. That's quite a case.

One, usually one or two people are missing in any one given episode now. So usually they don't have Alex or many or something like that. Yeah. And you go, they're very bad.

There are three big stories going each week. And yeah, it's an absolute masterpiece. Just another thing. And we talked about the kind of sitcoms that you see over and over.

Just wondering if there's other kind of typical mistakes that you see in the specific errors that you see occurring again in the game. Yeah. So obviously we talked about the story or lack of, but the other one is often the lead character is not comedic enough and not flawed enough. There's a real tendency for the comedy to be coming from the supporting characters.

For the lead to actually be a little bit autobiographical and a character you really like who's quite nice. But he's not actually funny. You're totally dependent on all the other characters to generate all the comedy, which I think is a disaster. I think it has to be bold enough.

Something I literally have been thinking about in the last couple of days and something I'm doing. And it's an era that I find time and again, that whenever the character that I'm trying to write is me, which it usually is. And that's just how I write. But then inevitably the funny, you know, the people around that version of me are the sort of the opposite.

And so they're clear. They are immediately, oh, that person's role in the show is to do this. And that's immediately clear. And that person is that.

And suddenly you've got these three or four people who got a very clear thing to do. And then you forget about that, the main character. And I think some shows like Seinfeld, for instance, there is an element of that in Seinfeld that actually Seinfeld, I bet the show about Jerry Seinfeld. He is a stand-up comedian.

He's interesting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there are no rules and it's possible to have a lead character who is the least.

Well, the thing is he's a lead character, but he's also the funniest in the sense of he gets to do jokes that are funny. He is the observational stand-up comedian, which makes it okay. Even though he's also the worst actor. It's very funny.

I watched a comedian's in a coffee, comedian's in a coffee where he's talking to John Oliver. And they're both putting their hands up and just saying, we are such bad actors. But the number of times they've been in a scene with a really good actor and have stood there just going, wow, they're really good. And just forgetting that they've got the next line.

And they're just standing there. But I think I had this problem writing a show for really well school, which I'm very difficult to write because for the second series of three, I did a personality test for the lead character and discovered it's the same personality type as me. And so, but I think it depends also on, I think we're going to talk about what we're going to talk about in our comedy character class that we're doing after in a moment, is that you can have almost like a fish out of water can be a mad person in a normal world, but it also can be sort of a normal person in a mad world, which is what you've got in, say, like Zapped, for example, which is, you know, a guy walks a portal and he's sort of in Narnia slash Game of Thrones, or whatever it is. And actually you need to give them quite a clear quest.

But even then to make them a character who basically doesn't anything other than to raise their eyebrows. And those are useful characters but actually you don't necessarily want that to be your lead. So in Blue Stone 4-2, that character was weirdly the female parterain because she is odd that a religious character should be the voice of reason who sort of like, she's walked into this thought operating base, it's like, what the heck is going on here? Why are you punching each other for fun?

This doesn't make any sense. So those characters are really useful to have. But if they're the central character, the other obvious example is Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, where he is, Mr. Post-War America, Blans, Smiley Guy.

And that's why that show wasn't successful, of course. So in a way, it can be done. But in a way, you're fighting it every single episode. And I think they need to foil.

And the other thing you can do with them, I think, is you can just dial it up. I either need to dial up the madness of the second sentence that they're in. So there's more contrast there. Or you need to dial up something in their character.

Probably, because I've been involved in another show where the central character is an optimist. I think this character, what in a way you need to make them more in denial. The more in denial they are about the mad world they're in. The better.

So in a way, it's fine to find their business as if it's in the normal world. They can't understand why no one's obeying the world for their world. Wow, we've got really technical ed. But then again, as it's in, we've got technical, I was just thinking, Reggie Perrin.

It's just one of the great comedy characters that are in the same person in the mad world. But he's on the verge. He is right on the edge. The world where he sees as mad is the world that we recognise.

Yes. So we see all the random, we just think that kind of looks like the real world. But he's pointing out all of the madnesses of it. It's a stunning bit of work how he's managed to make a fish out of water in the real world.

And he's not the mad one. But I think those kinds of characters in those setups are the hardest to pull off. Because it works beautifully in standup. Because most standup and most jokes are observational.

They are you pointing out the ridiculousness of the world and you're the normal one in it. But I think in narrative comedy that leads characters, I have to have something about them that is equally mad in some way. That's a good point, isn't it? So a successful standup can basically go here.

The following things are wrong with the world. You can't beat that person in a sitcom unless you're trying to fix them in your own mad and demented way. Otherwise, you're just snarking. And that's not a story, isn't it?

And also, it's much harder to fall in love with those characters. I think we fall in love with the sitcom character. Who is a slightly extreme version of something you would recognise? And convinced of their own worldview.

And that's to me why sitcom is so brilliant, because that is what people are like. And that's why you have the same conversations with the same people. You know, you're mum rings and you go, I know what you're going to say. That is what life is like.

So maybe just wrapping up, I was going to ask a question about it. So once people start to get developed a little bit and receive notes, what mistakes do they start to make sense? Only because they're still figuring it out, not because they're not capable of doing it, but it is often the tone of the show is one of the hardest things I think. Even when you've got great characters and a good story.

Or the other problem I think which does kind of take you back to basics is why would I watch this? What is going to make this stand out from the other 100 or 1000 scripts that someone's going to read this month? Why this? Why now?

You start to hit all those hurdles that you know they're going to get asked when a commercial producer or a different sex reader. Yeah. I remember Michael Jacob, the BBC script reader saying he'd read thousands and thousands of scripts and that's like from the very top writers all the way through. And he said, you know, he could more or less count on the fingers of one hand that that's all scripts that he'd read that went.

This is absolutely brilliant. And I'm being able to remember it. I think one of the tests I have is if in two weeks I can still remember that project. If I've read another 30, 40 in the meantime, then there was something about it.

And that's what you're trying to achieve. Why will it stick? Well, yeah. The thing that makes that hard in just trying to think what darlistens will be screaming at there.

I'm screaming at that. I called it. Well, A, but B, sometimes you have an idea and you feel strongly about it. But at the time that you've developed it, developed your skills, it already feels dated.

Or you already go, Oh, last time when Halifax, oh, that's getting the mic show then. Yeah, that is a real frustration at this stage. Nothing to do about that. No, I think you have to at this point, I think you have to have the age of the ground know what else is in the works at places.

You know what's the latest project that's been announced in development by whoever. But if you don't know about it and it lands on desks and somebody else has already looked a bit further down the line, there's nothing you can do about that. But also, that's great. It's meant to be getting you work rather than being aimed at.

Obviously you want it. You've got to convince yourself you want to do it and you're convincing. But even so you need to be wise to the fact that this is a calling card. Yeah, absolutely.

And if it gets you in the room with a development exact or a producer, then it's done its job. And of all the meetings I had when I was in development, almost all of them were off the back of us back. I loved and I don't think we ever managed to take that project into development. But what we did was have a conversation about other ideas and those other ideas would become things we developed in commission.

And also they would show writing where you go. Well actually we need some writing on this other show. We'd be interested in that. No, no.

I'm only interested in my project. Brilliant. Well that's been a really helpful time. We'll be fine with you.

We have a website, scriptchange.com and all the information about who we are and what we do and how you come up with this is on there. Brilliant. It's good things about com. That's pretty much nailed it.

Thanks to Hayley Mackenzie at scriptchange.com. Do check that out if you're looking for some script development. If you're looking to stick your toe in would like us to read the first 10 pages of your script. Become a Patreon subscriber for this podcast and when you do that you'll find a world of benefits including a free copy of my book and Dave's book and also you'll find Patreon only podcasts and also early access to interviews which we've done which currently include Almarie and Stephen Moffitt and lots more besides.

So google sitcom geeks patreon and you'll find us. Anyway thanks for listening and speak to you next time.