Hello and welcome to sitcom geeks the Haines motoring manual of situation comedy every fortnight We look at the nuts and bolts of sitcom taking it apart and putting it back together without hopefully team We random bits of metal leftover. I'm James Kerry My co-host is Dave Cohen hello and our producer is Katie story and let's start with you Katie What have you been up to in the last few weeks? I've mainly been working on jumping more souvenir cabin for sure so two weeks about which is really fun What is his souvenir cabin? It was a mix of sketches all done new from his radio program So much fun, isn't it?
It did really well, yeah, it was really fun. So I'm getting John to a dinosaur onesie but his last costume changed every evening That's quite a powerful image If there's what the few of you who are left listening to this saying who is John Finnemol Well we can tell you We can tell you that John Finnemol is an excellent writer who read a show called Cabin Pressure Which I recommend you getting hold of because it is annoyingly good He is a masterclass in sitcom writing and his current show is called Double Act Which is on radio for at the moment so you get that on iPlayer He's not just a brilliant sitcom writer, he's also a brilliant sketch writer Yes John Finnemol's souvenir program is also not on iPlayer at the moment But it does come on quite frequently and definitely with the listen That's a classic sketch writing It is so he is a masterclass in schickamiting and sketch writing We will all be his worthless slaves On iPlayer also I happen to notice his old Harry's game by Andy Hamilton Which is well worth getting hold of if you've not listened to it before Andy Hamilton who was a master sketch writer and now a master's a combinator So numbered and numbered Which is coming back for a Christmas special? Is it indeed? On also dot the donkey obviously was Andy Hamilton and Guy Dinkin And there's another new show called shush on iPlayer right now And that is with more when about some Rebecca Front And this is the first episode of the other day and I laughed a lot Good, well it's a sick, competent library isn't it?
It is It's the title shush I remember that program being commissioned or being talked about Seven or eight years ago and here we are finally the show has been commissioned So there's another lesson for all of us Keep going keep keep keep patience regardless It takes ages, it's very depressing lesson really isn't it? It is Even if you're really good at it and have a long track record You could still take eight years I think what you want to tell the listeners is this podcast is you'll get rich quick Okay sorry, yes of course Yes, seven secrets of successful signal writers That's gonna be There are no secrets Dave what have you been up to? I'll follow you up like this is like a radio for segue Talking of shows taking the seven right years I've just had a sketch show rejected by a radio for So that's what I've been up to We're getting a very disappointing email But we've got another segue, we've got a mini series of 15 minute musicals It's a couple of Christmas special So that's what I mainly would I have been up to in the last week or so Great I've got another segue I think well, Dave, you see tell them Well, no, I've been noting I've also had an annoying bit of feedback from something which I went boy with But I have to spend a lot of time in the room with Milton Jones writing his radio for show So that'll be out at some point in the next few months I know it went So great fun That's always a big for you, don't I? The new series of Milton Jones radio show Well, that's right, I don't even say But in the days of time shifting it'll be on my player So maybe you'll like this and what he goes on But I love working with Milton at least because It's a very precise show So we spend a lot of time arguing about small numbers of words And trying to get something Really as economic as it can be And that's for me a really good workout That's why I do the Milton J show So Dave, you wanted to plug something?
Yes, this is another minisegway We talked about the Shaw Theatre there Named after George Bernard Shaw, the great comic playwright And there's a competition, the Shaw Society, the Burn of Shaw Society Running a writing competition For you to write another extra scene to a Burn of Shaw play Yes, so if you just look up the Shaw Society, Google it And the Shaw Society writing competition And you'll see all the details, I think March is the deadline for it And I think it's a 500 pound cash prize They are looking for comedy So they talk about Shaw as the original sitcom writer Which I think the people who ask me to mention this Which is a bit of a stretch But he's right It's a bold claim to say that I would probably argue that PG Woodhouse has a great acclaim to it Probably, yeah I think between them they have plenty to tell us really In the modern day One other thing I'll mention as well is a company called Wood and Overcoats got in touch with me They have been writing and producing an online sitcom Which I haven't had a chance to listen to yet Bit of a help from Hat Trick, they've got a top cast Including Belinda Lang and Andy Hamilton Second mention in five minutes there And this is a sitcom Again if you just Google Wood and Overcoats sitcom And then I'm sure you'll find it And you can listen to some episodes free On the old internet radio thing It's set in a funeral parlour, as you might have guessed By the title Wood and Overcoats James, can you name the two British sitcoms That have been set in funeral parlours I can name two Two I can think of are Fun of the funeral parlour Which was BBC Three or BBC Choices A really first sitcom Right, yes, by least almost the first time And I'm also thinking of In Loving Memory Right Which had Thorra heard in it James, can you name the three British sitcoms I don't know what's the third I heard The movie, also written by Of the book Also written by Keith Hortouse With this all Wow, so So a sitcom knowledge there I didn't have a clue You weren't expecting a Nubbing Memory, wait I was not I could even give you the theme gene if you want I think it's been on a bassoon Right, okay As I think lots of sitcoms had to be in the So a ten percent or bass bassoon? It was quite low I bet it was probably not I suppose only one type of bassoon I think so, yeah You did a trussing song Right, let's go into our subject today Which is Ensemble sitcoms And Ensemble sitcoms The David Croft sitcoms I would say Particularly lend themselves to this Definition like Heidi Hye Aloello, Dad's Army, are you being served We have a large cast of characters And he would argue maybe friends as well Yeah, friends Although that presumably Well from what you said to me before Didn't actually start as the idea for Ensemble It was a vehicle, wasn't it for Courtney? Courtney Croft and they thought it would be a Courtney Croft and Matt LeBlanc show I think But I think all these origin stories are disputed Apocryphal, going to folklore Shows like Mashed Cheers is probably again That is the most obvious one It's a pub, it's a bar Lots of lots of people coming to a bar And I guess Only you guys saying Bluestone in the same breath as Friends Like Friends, Bluestone 4-2 It's set, it didn't start out as an ensemble did it really? No, it didn't In our minds There are at least nine characters And we couldn't really get it in our heads Any smaller than that And that was partly because we had to reflect The military reality of it In that one of the things we're keen to do Is make it as military accurate as possible So a bomb disposal guy An ammunition technical officer has a number two Who helps them do that job And there is always somebody from Signals Who was also doing that job So that's your little team of three And then you have a military escort Which we discovered subsequently Could be only one person But we had three for some reason And then you needed a bit of chain of commands And you needed somebody outside of the group And we needed an interpreter So we got to nine fairly quickly So that's kind of how it became But in one sense it felt like an ensemble show Even more so towards the end Because although we started with the show being Very much about Captain Nick Medhurst And his attempts to woo Mary, the Padre We actually, at the end of series one Lost Nick's number two, the sidekick And replaced him with another one We lost Mary at the end of series two And we lost Nick, spoilers In the second episode of series three So the people who got on the helicopter to go home At the end of series three Were relatively different Do other people, this is even uncommon Yes, that's right Yeah, like you said The show that starts, the show that begins in your head Compared to the show that's actually out there And life gets in the way Or something happens An actor doesn't gel or whatever reason Or some other character who you had As a minor character Suttly takes on the life of their own And so the dynamic of the show But I'd say kind of by midway through series two Very much looking at something that felt like an ensemble to me Yes, even though we actually in series two Particularly we tried to make sure that That Nick had the A story in every single episode Right, but you're right It felt like we were trying to service all of the characters I guess I partly had a good picked up some experience of that Writing My Hero Which was a BBC One sitcom Much forgotten and unloved But did five or six series And did over 50 episodes All right, six of them And in that you have Ardo Hanlon You had his wife You had their next door neighbor You had a sidekick You had Geraldine McNulty You had Pete Dennis You then had some parents as well So you got to eight very very quickly And they all had to be in every episode And they all had to have an attitude and a plot So that really got me going In terms of thinking how many you can actually get into half an hour Yeah, I then with those shows If you've got one main character Yes, running the show Then you've got lots of characters around the show It really helped that on My Hero It was about Ardo Hanlon's character Who was Superhero And I think you do need in a gang show An ensemble show A strong central character And in My Hero you have that With Ardo Hanlon's character And the other great show I always go on about Is Bill Coates, Bill Silver Show So you have this Titanic central performance And then all of the other characters Around are foils really To that one central character But we mentioned David Croft And of course his name is One Half of the writing team On some of the biggest TV shows Of the 70s and 80s Dad's Army The Navy's served on their own And I mean, Dad's Army I suppose Manoring and Wilson were the main characters Hello, it's very much about Renee I would say Oh, you've been served It's probably a little bit harder That really did feel much more The shop was kind of the star Although it wasn't it really here I guess so And I suppose actually shop culture Yeah, and I think that does bring us on to The first point really We would think about why You would want to do an ensemble sitcom Is the setting of it And you've had a couple of thoughts on that Yeah, the set In some of the great sitcoms I think the set is almost like another character In a show and something like Friends Central Perk I mean, it just kind of Invented the kind of cafe culture Really didn't it around the world I mean, Starbucks And all the cafes And they're all basically The premise of all these places is Friends It's like this is a place It's not just a place where you go and buy your coffee It's a place where you hang out with your friends And sit on trendy sofas And that was 25 years ago When Friends started That was a kind of revolutionary idea And so How could you say it has no memory of those times DKT?
No There were no coffee stops when we were When we were Well, you wouldn't spoon cafe Greasy spoon cafe I can't imagine Friends ever being set in the golden egg On White Heart Road in Bristol Where I ate some of the most disgusting sandwiches In the way It's student years Well, the set is an important thing though And the ensemble show Because I do feel one ensemble show in my head At least is open all hours And again, you've got a strong central character And then the shop itself And I think in particular The till Is almost another character, isn't it? Where every time he opens it and shuts it It bites And then the tin always falls off the top Yeah So you have these really evocative places So you look at the shows Like a show that's army The church hall is the really Where virtually everything takes place These guys are basically Doing war In a chill at hall Already, it's funny Are you being served as we mentioned? Obviously And the one Well, cheers, you've got the bar as well I mean, the bar is In one sense, it lends itself to an ensemble Sick and purely because it is a bar And I guess there's a British show Which I didn't think I saw Early Doors, which is also a pub A pub setting Which interestingly, that one That was a normal audience sicker And that really made me think of Coronation Street And Coronation Street, I suppose, is almost like This sort of precursor to Cheers It was the Rovers' return Really was, you know, where we all went And it didn't matter that You saw people going to the toilet So you worked out the job And they were actually walking into Ken Barlow's living But it was sort of something That was something about the Rovers' return That was Just was a perfect, solid place And of course, the East End is a something The Queen Vic And so, yeah, the pub is very, as an English thing It's a very central thing Yes, with Cheers, obviously It's where just about every scene Apart from the little occasional scenes The back office, yeah Virtually everything happens there So the setting, it's great If you've got a really strong sense of a setting And it's highly high, you know, it's a holiday camp And obviously, it's not necessarily a specific room But it's a place And people are stuck in that place So it's, you know, if the idea that you have You want to do it to come And with Bluestown, obviously, you're all mashed You're stuck in this place Really, there's no way that you're going to get out of this place In our thought mummies, you know, it's another one It's an army base in our place And yeah, so the setting is And that's one of the main, yeah, that's definitely The place itself is great And having that one place as well It just allows you to really concentrate on the characters And that's why, again, if we talk about a bit about Cheers Do you think about the... There are just so many sort of memorable characters One sort of memorable that he went off and got his own sitcom From another 10 years, very straight, very straight, of course And so, yeah, it's a good...
You can really do a lot of work with your characters Because they're just in the pub, you know So that's the first reason that you want to have And I'll do it on somewhere I think we've talked a little bit there This comes on to the next idea, which is about writing an audience sitcom Yeah, and that's... People, audience sitcom, every five years, they come into fashion And then they go out of fashion again And they went out of fashion for quite a long time When single-camera sitcoms began And very early in the life of the single-camera sitcom We had The Office And The Office was a huge hit and everybody thought, well, I'm the full show And which came up, which came after the Royal Family, didn't it? Oh, actually, yes, I suppose Royal Family was probably the first big non-audience sitcom And everybody wanted audience, non-audience sitcoms First of all, they're a downside chieftain to make You can probably make three or four non-audience sitcoms Got you for the price of an audience Well, I don't know, it's that much, it's maybe two to one But yeah, and also, at the time, they just felt more fresh and modern, didn't they? So, although you just couldn't have done the Royal Family in front of an audience And it felt like that it was a new thing And therefore, everyone started to chase after the new thing, which is completely understandable And also, so what happened as well was that comedy then became associated with a sort of realism that it hadn't had before We always accepted an audience sitcom the same way that we accepted watching more Commonwealth-wise sitting next to each other in their single beds in their room at bedtime We didn't, so we didn't, we didn't, uh, hmm, what's this about?
We'll see kind of erotic implications of these two men So, when we came back to sitcoms, I think this was probably the sort of low point of the sitcom Audience sitcom was sort of, you know, the sort of the 2000s And everybody was getting into the non-audience one The sound of the laughter was just sound and the bright lights It was just the artificiality of it, kind of, uh, made people go, what's going on here? Those, the audience isn't laughing, it's all kind of laughter And I think that what's won it back is the sitcoms like Miranda and Mrs Brown's Boys I actually proud as well as one big one, wasn't it? Those two specifically acknowledged that I am in a room and there is an audience there And there's a sort of a wink to the camera or the sort of Mrs Brown's voice Or I'm just going to go fetch my prop from the previous scene So there's a kind of post-modern kind of version of the audience sitcom that brought people back to it, but generally writers don't want to write audience sitcoms And I say write them because not enough writers write audience sitcoms And lots and lots and lots of people want to write these kind of really trendy looking beautiful A lot of people and I think a lot of people writing comedy feel like they are sorted filmmakers and authors rather than, I mean, an author subject from other podcasts And I think I've blogged about it For me, the non-audience sitcoms springs more from movies And the audience sitcom springs more from theatre So I think that's for me, I'm more excited about theatre than I'm about movies So for me, I'm always pushing towards the audience anyway But also the bare-faced capitalist in me is also looking towards audience sitcom Because I know for a fact that commission has won for them, especially on BBC One And therefore, if you can, you really should Because you will get, remember you saying before when Lucy Lumsden was at the BBC The sheer ratio of audience sitcoms to non-audience sitcoms was ludicrous wasn't it? Yeah, right, so something I actually got 250 scripts Of which 200 were non-audience and maybe less than 50 were audience sitcoms And given that they were rather commission audience and audience you think, well, the odds are much better in your favour If you write an audience show, but obviously you need to do whatever is suitable for your show You should do that, but do bear in mind The audience show is strong and if your set is a character on its own right, it's very evocative And it does lend itself to it It's then the ensemble show is Yeah, it could be beckoning And this is the difference between writing an audience and a non-audience You are limited, you're limited by the number of sets you can have because you're in a studio And you have maybe two or three sets at the most Rather than seeing that as a limitation, you see that as a well, okay, I've got this ensemble there in one place That's actually, I'm going to use that, that is a good thing The other thing about when you're writing audience sitcoms as opposed to non-audience You know that you have to make every other line funny, laugh out loud funny Because if you've not got a laughing out loud audience, you've got a broad audience sitcom And so you need to be a bit broader But again, rather than think of that as a disadvantage, think about what's the situation that I can write Where broadness isn't necessarily a weird thing Where you can have that broad humour And it's a big thing, it's in one place, it's got a lot of people And that's a good way of approaching writing sitcoms Yes, I should be trying to get that And that's why we generally say try writing more audience sitcoms than non- So what's another advantage of audience, sorry, of ensemble comedy on sorts of comms?
Again, you've got these lots of these characters And the great thing is, and again we'll talk about secondary characters next time But you get these catch phrases, you can have any character that just has the one catch phrase Well the thing that they do, they walk in, they do and walk off Yeah, and so yeah, that's kind of, and actually even, and that can really build over time as well I don't know how big Norm was meant to be in episodes of Cheers But actually every time he walked in the whole bar shouts Norm Yeah And then Woody would ask him a question and he would have a funny response And so he wanted to get a catchphrase, but they had a stick every single time And yeah, I remember it's like, you know, even everybody No, is it Jack Frost nilling your toes? Yeah, and I'd like to get Joe B and Nimming at my liver Which is lovely, in every week, you know, there's always a different one You all need to love that So the ensemble show means that you can just do that with characters I think Open All Hours again is another good example of that Where there is stuff in the shop and then there's a sort of series of people coming in and doing a funny thing and going out again Sometimes it has consequences and sometimes it doesn't And the audience is very happy with that arrangement Yeah, well I know well Fraser is a good example in Dad's Army As soon as I say Fraser, we know the phrase We're doomed We're doomed But then occasionally he'd do a little story He'd sit and tell a little kind of story and bore the pants off of somebody And it would just be like a ghost story He'd just enjoy scaring the person, you know, that was just a little thing It's a subsection of we're all doomed And by the way, I'm really pleased that we're all doomed Yeah, so it sounds as well Yeah, which, you know, when you've got a long running show You've got something really nice to build on You have characters in 33 years Yeah, because with those characters who are recurring And again, maybe it's up with the podcast But with the recurring characters with catchphrases You can push them a lot further because they are slightly less real They are slightly more extreme And so one of my own favourite characters from my own work If I make people like that Minka played by an actress, you don't really see much anymore Call Olivia Coleman, I don't know if you've come across a She played a character like that No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Olivia played a character called Minka who was a member of the Polish Resistance Or X-Men of the Polish Resistance And she was very funny because she was an utter psychopath And every time she arrived within the scene She would say something unannounced and everyone would jump in Because she suddenly appeared She gave me a question that she could move silently or appear in a room without anyone knowing So she was always a very threatening and menacing character So we had a lot of fun with her But there's a sense in which the more of that character you see The less you really want to see You want to keep them fairly small In the same way that you could never really have the Kramer show In Seinfeld to spin off Because to Kramer is never more than a quarter of anyone ever said We've started to fail because much more than that You would start to go, hang on this is nonsense This person could possibly exist So if you have characters like that An ensemble show is very useful Because they can come in, do their shtick Go off and maybe come back, pay off the shtick And you're done So it does work very well with that Yeah I think I'm just the last thought really on this is with an ensemble When if you're developing the idea, ask your developing idea And hopefully as you're getting halfway through You're fantastically successful first series going out And you start to see some of the actors who bring the other characters to life And so the people who you thought were the main characters weren't And suddenly you get these people who come through it And again Friends example, yeah Friends is where they suddenly realized the show was Ross and Rachel And they hadn't quite seen that one coming It took on a life of its own But actually you see it in the opening Two minutes of the opening episode Her entrance, which happens to be the big funny entrance The other five of them are all there, chatting away Which is what the show was to some extent And then Rachel comes in to a cafe But she's in the full wedding gear And that massive entrance from that point onwards It's a show about her and Ross as you say And just to come back to tears Again, Fraser Crane was no doubt one of a dozen people who were coming in And just gradually obviously she was an ex-boyfriend She was a boyfriend of Diana at one point, wasn't she? And then he sort of split up with her And then he got married at one point And then came in anyway So with Diana left, but Fraser kept coming to the bar That's right, yeah And then Lilith came in So we got this whole sort of backstory of Fraser That was sort of built up as the show went on really And obviously he was obviously like the camera liked him The audience liked him or whatever And so the writers obviously liked writing him And that's how he developed out of it I mean in a sense it's a good lesson to learn really That we've talked about this ensemble thing As if it's a you can really plan it In one sense, planning or sitcom is like a military plan As in you go in with the plan But the moment you turn up at the pre-arranged spot The plan is immediately out of the window So to go in with no plan is a disaster So in one sense with your ensemble show You do need to know what every character is doing You're not just thinking of nine random characters And hoping to have that three of them are going to gel And give you a show You do need to go in with a much clearer idea What you think the show is about or should be about And mindful of the fact that the moment you've started writing this The camera, the microphone, the audience Will just veer towards particular characters And even when that does happen Sometimes it takes quite a strong act of will To know that that character won't sustain that amount of attention Like Kramer we said earlier To make sure no, no, no, if you have less is more with this character Whereas you might be starting to get notes saying Oh, this character is really funny I've just had that on the script recently Where someone said, oh, I like this I'm worried about the two main characters Because I'm finding the subsidiary character funnier And the response was slightly yes But they're a profoundly negative character And they're just slacking things off So it's quite easy for them to be funny Because they don't really have to carry things So our response to that is not to Let's have more of that character But to fix the other characters And give them more motivation to make them funnier So it's- That suddenly reminded me of Keith from the office Actually when you were saying that A great example of somebody who's in a relatively small amount But whose impact has continued I mean he's probably- He's probably more well known than some of the much bigger characters You think of the office And also he's in that one amazing scene Where he's doing the staff appraisal Yeah You know, what were the options again? And he's all going with this He's an amazingly funny scene But it's brilliant So that's our topic conversation today Was the ensemble show We hope you found some of that useful And that it will turn into something funny at some point That's not a terribly conclusion Is it really better?
As I say, the problem with this is- Take on a lot of it, sir These things take on life of their own And therefore we can talk technical But then the moment you write these characters You start to hear them, you put them in front of other people They do start to behave in ways that aren't expected So in that sense, there's a limit to how much you can theorise So that's our podcast for this week We have a few things to plug We're doing a sitcom course, aren't we? A two-day thing Last chance to mention this I think And in early November And fifth and sixth In the Canal Museum in Kings Cross So I looked that up online Look on my website sitcomgead.blogspot.com And there's a little box on the right hand side Dave's website is in.org.uk Dave's probably used to remember Dave's also written an excellent book Which is called How to be an Adveragedly Successful at Comedy And mine is called Writing That Sitcom Which is great Which I have been used for Also, we have a Facebook page Which I have never mentioned before I keep seeing the gigs coming up on my page And intimidating me It's the same thing as you haven't updated this page for three days now Yeah And I thought it was a terribly good one Yeah, quite enough on mine life Yes, that's fair enough So if you want updates or anything Or you can even get in contact with us through that Then as Sitcom Geeks Which is on Facebook So look for us there And like us, even if you secretly hate us You can also contact us via email at sitcomgeeks.com That's sitcomgeeks at gmail.com That's little at the beginning I was confused Okay, sitcomgeeks at gmail.com Also, we don't ask for money for the show If you want to contribute to the podcast The two things you can do I recommend us to a friend Or tweet a link to us That'd be very nice Or leave us a review on iTunes Especially a glowing one A glowing on B. Nice Katie Oh, is that money so? You owe me Obviously so much so So do work out some way of sending us money That'd be great Just to be thanking you to Rushforth Media For allowing us to use their studio space We are very grateful to them Thanks to Jane Watkins Who composed our Two Roneys Meatz