Notes from the TV Comedy Forum

With around 30 speakers – including commissioners, producers, stars and agents – the TV Comedy Forum, backed by Broadcast and Paramount Comedy, aimed to ‘tackle the pivotal issues’ facing the industry.

Event producer Dan Brain said: ‘Times are changing in comedy with new opportunities emerging abroad and online. At the same time the industry is faced with the decline of the 30-minute show and talent issues.’

Here are some of the key opinions to emerge from the day:

How do you find new talent?

Mark Freeland, BBC head of comedy: ‘We look at stand-up year-round, because I’m wary of the feeding frenzy of Edinburgh. We have a writing scheme and we try to do shows which we can put new talent into, such as Wrong Door – no one is going to live or die by that. Then there’s radio shows, like Tilt on BBC 7

Gary Reich, executive producer with Brown Eyed Boy: ‘I purely work with writer-performers. Edinburgh is how I find them every year. I like getting them before they’ve got agents, because it makes it easier to work quicker – and I like working quickly. I fund mini-pilots, and shot some in Edinburgh.’

Hannah Chambers, agent: ‘My strategy is to sign very few clients; get them small slots on other shows and develop their own projects. But the live scene is where people learn to develop and find their individual voices. It’s quite easy to find talent – it’s what they do with it.

Duncan Hayes, agent: ‘Writer-performers are the most important to find. Edinburgh is very good for finding sketch and stand-ups. But these days, you never quite know where it’s going to come from. It’s quite exciting a time.’

Sarah Mahoney, director of commissions Paramount Comedy: ‘I look at absolutely everything: The live environment, which is an industry in itself, and lots of viral clips.’

How do comics break through from live work to broadcasting?

Kathleen Hutchinson, producer: ‘All good stand-ups have a unique take on life, so they can probably write.’

Andrew Newman, Channel 4 controller of comedy and entertainment: ‘People are given a series too early. Sometimes people are given their own series, with their name in the title, have been allowed to write, star in it, and produce it – and sometimes it isn’t the best thing for them. There’s a lot of “ooh, you’re quite a funny stand-up – here have six half-hours” but it means people are running before they can walk.

Lucy Lumsden, BBC controller of comedy commissioning: ‘You see people in Edinburgh and they have a great buzz and huge excitement about them. But you just have to slow down and say, “that’s a great hour-long set, but have you got a series in you?”’

Jon Plowman, producer: ‘I sometimes feel like we say, “go on, write your half-hour”, without quite telling them how to go about it.’

Are compilation showcases such as Comedy Cuts and Comedy Shuffle the answer?

Gary Reich: ‘Broadcasters have to open up the spaces to short-form shows to find writers and performers. We made a BBC show called Comedy Nation that helped Mitchell and Webb, Peter Kay, Jocelyn Jee and Sasha Baron-Cohen.’

Hannah Chambers: ‘New talent is put into these shows quite early in their careers. They are thrown in at the deep end with no producer looking after them. Once they do a bad slot on one of these shows, they’re off the lists. You don’t give people two, three, four chances very often. Shows like this are a good thing, but there needs to be a lot more hand-holding. The broadcasters’ attitude is that we’ll throw a lot of shit at the wall and see what sticks. The chance of getting a star out of one these formats is slim.’

And where does talent graduate to after working on the showcases?

Jon Plowman: ‘Is it the case that broadcasters say they want to showcase new comedy, but they don’t, really, because the audience doesn’t want it.’

Rohan Acharya, producer of ITV2’s Comedy Cuts: ‘There’s nowhere for people to go after they’ve done these sort of shows. I’ve pitched half-hour pilots for a lot of the people who took part in Comedy Cuts, and no one is interested unless Johnny Vegas will star in it.’

Kathleen Hutchinson: ‘There are a lot of frustrated writers. Where are the opportunities for the half-hour series for the talent that made the great shorts?’

Gary Reich: ‘There shouldn’t be just six Comedy Labs on Channel 4 a year, it’s not enough… But the half-hour is almost anachronistic. You can tell a story in five minutes.’

Mark Freeland: ‘I think the half-hour is here to stay. I think there’s an appetite for stories.’

Does the internet provide new opportunities?

Martin Trickey, multiplatform commissioner for comedy, BBC: ‘Online is a real opportunity for the Beeb to offer a space where new talent can try things out.’

Henry Normal, managing director Baby Cow: ‘Nobody actually knows what we’re doing. There are lots of chances to make things for the web first, but no real way of funding it. People make stuff for money or to showcase what they do – but there’s no way of making money online except for exploiting your past stuff. No one comes to you, except the BBC, and says, “Here’s some money, go and make something.”’

Jimmy Mulville, managing director Hat Trick: ‘Putting something online gives the broadcaster confidence. You can see the idea, it’s not just a treatment. It’s reducing the development time, and for the talent, seeing something on screen is a way of learning the craft.’

What sort of shows are broadcasters looking to commission?

Andrew Newman: ‘I want something I haven’t thought of… we would never have gone out and said we wand a bloke doing comedy African accents making prank phone calls, set to animation, but that’s Fonejacker. It’s possible that Channel 4 comedy is too blokey, so perhaps something that balances that.’

Lucy Lumsden: ‘The simple answer is that we need to look for new ideas. The white middle-class metropolitan is well-covered, we need more diversity. There’s a type of comedy BBC Two attracts – quite cerebral, with big ideas, often set in big institutions. But The Cup is different, it shows there is room for less boisterous comedy on BBC Two.’

Jill Offman, general manager Paramount Comedy: ‘We are now looking for commissions – and we will give them our best slots. We don’t care if it’s a panel show, a sitcom or something hat hasn’t been explored before.’

Does stand-up work on TV?

Lou Wallach, senior vice-president of original programming, Comedy Central: ‘It does for us. People are tuning in based on our credibility, based on our record of finding stuff. With our audience, there is an appetite for stand-up.’

Lots of sitcoms famously took off only after a few series. Are shows given enough time to settle in these days?

Lucy Lumsden: ‘I inherited a sense that a lot of series had been put down too quickly, which I want to change.’

Andrew Newman: ‘I think shows are less likely to catch fire after a number of series. You have to get people in quite early these days. We do stick with things we think are funny and have a resonance, but if something isn’t working, sticking with it is keeping another show off the telly.’

Published: 19 Sep 2008