TV exec slates 'no-joke' scripts

ITV’s director of entertainment and comedy, Paul Jackson, said Edinburgh Fringe performers were also falling into the same trap.

At the city’s TV festival, Jackson said the success of shows such as The Royle Family and The Office had led too many writers into creating earnest , over-realistic comedies that verged on ‘drama done rather badly’.

‘There’s quite a lot of comedy that actively eschews the joke,’ he said. ‘I saw a sketch show last night [on the Fringe] and there wasn’t a single joke – or attempt at a joke – in it. It was all observation.’

‘It’s considered vulgar to put jokes in your script, but it’s called comedy – you have to follow the funny.’

He advised writers to mark every joke in their script, and ‘if there is not at least one joke a page, then you have a problem’.

Jackson also admitted that he used to have huge rows with Caroline Aherne while making the Royle Family. He wanted her to film it in front of a live audience to provide a laugh track, since the script did contain plenty of gags, while Aherne insisted on doing it her way – and was vindicated for sticking to her guns.

However, BBC Trust member David Liddiment said the Royle Family ‘set the sitcom back ten years’ by leading to too many realistic single-camera comedies over the traditional studio-based set-up.

But the TV executives at today’s session at agreed that old-fashioned sitcoms would make a return, and they were keen to nurture the talents to make them.

Echoing Jackson’s points, BBC comedy commissioner Lucy Lumsden said: ‘The thing that obsesses me is to make sure there are enough studio sitcoms. Only one in five scripts submitted to me dared to have a live audience to play to. Everyone feels it’s a thing of the past.

‘But when we deliver comedy it has to be with a capital C; it has to have a lot of laughs.’

Lumsden said she would be ‘piloting like crazy’ to find the next generation of comedy hits. ‘Sitcoms are rare and fragile creatures that need time to grow and find their feet,’ she said. ‘It’s a very exposing form for both writers and performers.’

Jackson admitted the studio sitcom was ‘out of favour at the moment’ but added ‘we mustn’t lose the skill to make them’.

‘When these new style of shows came through and had a huge impact, all the bright writers thought they wanted to do that… but I’m absolutely convinced [studio sitcoms] will come back… having a cast perform in front of an audience, it’s a very good discipline.

Lab Rats star Chris Addison said there had previously been a lot of derisory chat about laughter tracks among media insiders, but defended the practice, saying: ‘Comedy is a communal experience. You need to know other people are laughing. In stand-up, we’re all live in the same room, we can feel it. The closest you can get for TV is get an audience in and record their reaction.’

He, too, said while the single-camera show was in vogue, it was not the only future for comedy. ‘What happened with the Royle Family and People Like Us, they moved comedy along. It was really exciting – this style was suddenly a new toy.

‘What you do with new toys is put the old one back in the box, but after a while you go back to the old too, and now you’ve got two toys.’

And he said NBC’s shows in the US – which include the likes of The Office, 30 Rock and My Name Is Earl – proved there was a third way, single-camera comedies with old-fashioned, gag-driven sensibilities.

Jackson also said ITV had difficulty with sitcoms because their £350,000 average cost of a half hour programme cannot be recovered in one advertising break. However, other panellists noted that a hit sitcom has an almost indefinite shelf life, with shows such as the Good Life and Dad’s Army still being repeated today.

The Media Guardain Edinburgh International Television Festival continues until Sunday.

Published: 22 Aug 2008