Channel 4 Workshop for Sitcom Competition Finalists

Meet the writers:  Paul Mayhew Archer

The first thing I would say that's very important, especially for comedy writers, is that you must find an outlet for yourselves, get it on in front of any sort of audience. I did get my plays on at school and realised they were crap, and they just didn't work- boring and tedious - and I learnt so much from doing that. You can convince yourself endlessly that what you're doing is wonderful until you have to show it to someone else and, more importantly, get it read loud for yourself or performed aloud. Even now when I do things I convince myself that what I've written is perfect stuff then it's read by the cast and you know you can think of a much better joke. So you've got to get yourself a performance. Since the chances of getting a sitcom on television - it costs over a million pounds now for a six part sitcom - are slim. (I'm not saying it's impossible just very difficult.) If there are any other means of getting your stuff on ...

So if you're keen on writing, send it to local theatre groups, sitcom festival, everything, every opportunity because the crucial thing is to make relationships with people - producers.You've got one foot in the door now, you've got to make relationships now; badger Caroline, you can badger me and you can badger all sorts of people, wherever possible. If you can make a relationship with a producer so when they pick up your script as opposed to anybody else's script they say "Aaah, I look forward to reading this" as opposed to saying "Oh Christ, not another bloody comedy script". Because that's what we're doing; we're reading loads of them and we want to find them funny. If we know the person we will inevitably, psychologically, look at them in a slightly different way.

So I came from writing lots of plays at school then I became very lucky and got a job as a radio producer so I spent eight years as a radio comedy producer producing all sorts of shows which meant that I met lots of writers and lots of people in comedy and I just learnt new ways from that. The other thing I would say is spend time if you can with other writers, form a circle, if you can locally, whatever; go on courses, meet writers because the amount I've learnt from just watching and reading other people's work is fantastic because you pick up naturally - by osmosis, you pick up what is going on in a script and what works and what doesn't. And also watch lots of television, lots of comedy. Don't just watch it but think about it, analyse why some things work and why other things don't. Rather than just switching off after two minutes and saying "I don't like that it's crap". Work out why it's crap. There is a lot of crap on now - I've been guilty of it. It can be crap for a variety of reasons, there's miscasting, initial mistakes made about the focus of the series, whatever. So if you can analyse it, it helps with your own writing.

I've got a few tips about writing if you're interested. Some of this may seem very obvious, some it may not. These are things I've learnt over the years.

Graeme Garden, he said to me a few years ago that 90% of writing is deciding what not to write. Comedy writing is a fantastically difficult business, it seems to me the easier you can make it by deciding about the 90% you don't need to write then the easier it will be. First of all you decide what format you want to write. If it's a half-hour sitcom, it's almost inevitably with a studio audience so you have to think, "right, I'm going to write something which only requires between 3 and 7 characters, 2 or 3 sets, very little outside filming and it's got to have a long shelf life. It's got to go on and on, so these characters have to return week after week. So that knocks out an enormous number of ideas that you might have, for one-offs, things that require a lot of filming, things that require you to go across the world. So forget about any of those because the whole thing about sitcom is focusing exactly on what you want to write about. So having decided that you want to write a half-hour sitcom the second thing is, and this is crucial, (and I'm staggered by how many people don't think it is important) a sitcom has to be funny. It is the only thing sitcoms have to be, you can forget about the rest, forget about social comment, forget about dramatic import, you can forget about getting the audience to empathise and be moved by the characters plight, the audience doesn't give a shit about that. What they want to know is "is it going to make me laugh?" And audiences and readers will forgive the writer if it's funny; if they're making them have a good time, they'll forgive character inconsistencies, they'll forget plot leaps, all sorts of things, these can be dealt with later, the crucial thing is to be funny. And it's difficult to be funny consistently for half-an-hour, it gets through an enormous number of ideas.

It seems to me that you have to fix a sitcom, you have to think about every single moment and every single thing. "What is making this particular moment, this scene funny?" If I've got 2 characters who are having a fairly serious intense discussion, have I got a third character who's an insensitive bastard who can undercut that seriousness and give me a comic viewpoint on the scene. If I've got a character concerned about something, have I got other characters who can undermine his or her concern in certain ways, you know. Here's an example. If someone's concerned about a spot, and one character comes in and re-assures them that they haven't really got a spot and it isn't very noticeable, then every other character should come in and should be immediately drawn to it, that's the first thing they do. You try to look for the comic angle, the comic perspective on every single scene on every single moment. Absolutely crucial that sitcoms are funny.

And the next thing you have to decide, having decided to write half-hour sitcoms, is to fix on what you want to write about and - this is something that will become more and more apparent - sitcoms have a theme. Every sitcom will have an underlying theme and if you can decide what the theme of your sitcom will be it will give it a focus. The theme can be incredibly broad. The theme for Friends is, "you need friends" but actually what it means is that all the episodes they write are about friendship. Men Behaving Badly is about men behaving badly and the problems that causes in relationships with women. If he wrote an episode where the men did not behave badly, we'd start to wonder what it was about.

So he's trying to fulfil a brief every week and he's given himself a focus. In The Vicar of Dibley- which I do - the underlying theme is "a person can make a difference". It sounds American and twee but it is about a person who goes into a small community and seeks to make a difference and that is the starting point for every episode. And if you got a focus for your setting, for your characters, it means that you are concentrating on what you mean or want to write about rather than rushing about all over the place.

Then you have to decide to fix on your settings, your centre of action; they don't need to be exotic. People keep coming up to me saying "I've got a fantastic idea, it's set in the North Pole and its about a man and a Polar Bear that can talk." Unless you're incredibly practised, you're setting yourself an incredibly difficult target to do that. Most sitcoms are naturally set in places that we live because that's what people can relate to and that's what people understand. Therefore we've got an accepted world for everybody. The crucial thing about centres of action is that it's where characters are coming in and they're not having to say, "I just thought I'd pop by, I don't normally come this way"; it's just wasting airtime. You want centres of action where all the people meet. The more characters you have, the fewer centres of action you should have. In Drop the Dead Donkey they have 8 characters and in Dad's Army they have 8 or 9 characters and they have one centre of action. They all meet in the office for Drop the Dead Donkey or they all meet in the Church Hall for Dad's Army. In The Vicar of Dibley, we have 7 or 8 characters and they all meet in the church hall or the vicarage, occasionally we go to David's house but very occasionally. Because basically you want a place where all your characters get together where they can naturally get together and you don't have to explain why they're there. Again you're trying to make things as easy as possible for yourself.

And then you have to fix on your characters and there are a few things to say about characters. If you're starting off a sitcom don't tell your audience everything about your characters. Don't feel you have to explain all your characters, the complexity of human emotions. The audience couldn't care less about all that complexity, again, they want to laugh. And when you think of great sitcom characters basically, by and large, they are controlled by one emotion. Captain Mainwaring - it's the pomposity that controls him. Victor Meldrew is controlled by a frustration that the world doesn't fit in as he wants it too. Basil Fawlty is controlled by prejudice. The Vicar of Dibley is controlled by one over-riding emotion and that emotion can have good and bad aspects to it. Basil Fawlty is controlled by prejudice which is terrible in some ways but at the same time it means he does have ambitions and he wants it to be good and he's also motivated to make his hotel as good as possible. That means that he tries to chuck people out of his hotel. So there's a good and bad side to his character. So you really want to think about your characters in terms of "what one thing do I want my audience to take away at the end of half an hour?" "What over-riding thing do I want them to take away?".

You don't need to go into lots of backstory, there's nothing more depressing when I read a script and get to page 4 and the 3 main characters sit down and go "so what have you done so far", "well, about ten years ago I...". It's a nightmare because they're telling you things you're not interested in because they're nothing to do with this week's story. You may know the backstory but you don't need to lumber the audience with it. And you only need to tell the audience stuff that is relevant to this week's episode.

For instance, if you've got a story about someone getting their exam results tomorrow and they're getting into an incredible state about their exam results, you can use that opportunity to reveal they think their whole life has been a total failure, they've never had any sort of success, everything has been a disaster because it's informing their attitude to the crisis that's coming up this week. It's got to be related to something that's going on now. Can anybody tell me what the Vicar of Dibley did before? Because I don't know. I actually do not know, I've no idea if she did something else before becoming a vicar. Even if you need to know about it. The audience don't need to know about it. It can inform you. I worry that actually if you know as much about your characters before you start you limit opportunities. In One Foot in the Grave, in a monologue in episode 12, it's revealed that they had a child that died and apparently [David Renwick]didn't know that until he came to write that episode, so I'm told; he didn't know that they had a child that died two days after. In the second series of The Vicar of Dibley it was revealed that Frank is gay, we didn't know until we started plotting that episode; we did not know that Frank is gay. Suddenly it seemed appropriate and a comic and touching revelation in the context of the radio show they were doing. That's how it came about. And if you fix your characters too definitively, you may limit your opportunities, as characters will grow because you will grow in your knowledge of them. People do have a bible, I've read the bible for Red Dwarf and it's 250 pages long but I suspect that the bible when they started writing it was much smaller and it's grown as they learn about the characters.

I think you can treat characters on one level as archetypes, don't be frightened of archetypes - "Mr Silly", perfectly fine supporting characters. You just want characters who have a funny characteristic. Almost every sitcom you care to mention has a Mr or Miss Stupid in it. You rely on thickos, it's vital. And the key between the good and bad sitcoms is not that the good ones don't rely on those archetypes, it's just that their thickos are funnier thickos.

Baldrick is a fantastically funny thicko. Manuel is a fantastically funny thicko. That's what makes them great sitcoms because they take a thicko and put a certain spin on it. Or they've got a Mr Grumpy or they've got a Mr Hopeful. There are characters who are ever-hopeful dreamers. These are regular archetypes that you come across and don't be frightened of using them, don't say to yourself "mine's got to be completely different, I mustn't use any of these". What you've got to do is take those aspects of the characters and put your own individual spin on them. And the other thing I would say about characters, to help focus them, is to give your character a story. What are they doing? However many characters you've got, it doesn't matter. Look at the American sitcoms, they're a classic example of that; every character has a story, in every episode. Even if Hank, in Larry Sanders, all he's doing is trying to sell a car. You can have 2 characters and all they're doing in each episode is playing battleships or a game of chance. One of them is always winning, so the other one is getting more and more morose, they lose even at games of chance. Some slight thing that is developing the characters and giving them some kind of story. What it does is help you so when you re-visit those characters in the episode instead of thinking "my god, what are they going to be talking about", you think "they're still playing that game" or "he's still trying to sell his car" or "he's still worried about his exam results". It just gives a sense of continuity through the episode.

And the final thing I would say about characters is they are bigger then normal people. When you think about characters don't think about "he's quite stupid", these characters should be bloody stupid. Or "he's a bit mean", no, he's got to be the meanest man in the world, mean on a Rigby scale in Rising Damp. I think the reason we all remember Driving School was because Maureen was the worst driver in the world. And these are the characters sitcoms should be about. Basil Fawlty was the worst hotelier ever and that's why he's such a famous sitcom character. So push your characters big. They've got to have a root in reality, they've got to have something which says I recognise this person as being like a real person but then they're pushed. And the other thing an American producer Caryn Mandabach [Cosby, 3^rd Rock from the Sun, Cybil, Grace Under Fire] said, "take your character up a tree and then lob rocks at them". Make life difficult for your characters.

And finally I would say hack away at exposition, I wrote down "exposition is the Satan of sitcom" but basically there's nothing worse than loads of exposition whether it's backstory or "we came on the bus". Whenever I write a first draft I always think it's important to say it's two hours gone by since the last scene so I have a line but people don't care.

And one last thing, don't let rejection put you off just keep going as you will get rejection everywhere in life. Whatever level you get to you still get rejected. Every writer I know, even if they've just had an enormous hit the next one could be a complete turkey. I was talking to John Sullivan who was absolutely chuffed because Roger, Roger had good reviews and it was the first time in his career he ever had good reviews in the newspapers. This is the man who writes Only Fools and Horses. You will have a tough time as writers but don't let it put you off. If you enjoy writing just keep going.

<As a writer who should you write for?>

You. You can't write for anybody else. To a certain extent you've got to say I think this will work on BBC1 or I think this will work on Channel 4. If you write sitcoms you could be writing it for years, if you don't like it, it's really sad. The most exciting time for me is that moment. I couldn't write something I felt contempt for or didn't like.

<Writing with a partner>

This is the first time I've ever written with anybody, with Richard Curtis. We never write together. Our method of working is - which he did on Blackadder - is one of us writes a draft and the other one plays with it. We decide on a storyline, we have a brief chat and one of us writes up a storyline and then we discuss that and then one of us plays with it and it is passed back and the other one plays and rewrites and we sort of end up constantly rewriting.

I can't emphasise this enough, we would have four or five drafts before the cast re-read it. And then after they read it - a couple of weeks before we started filming - we then re-wrote them again and then we would have another reading a week before we did any actual filming And even then after we'd made it - we tend to over-record it by about six minutes- we would then re-shoot little bits because we would edit bits out. It's a constant process and I love that and I did find that very exciting. I'm incredibly lucky because Richard Curtis is the nicest and cleverest man. If you get the chance to work with Richard Curtis you couldn't choose anyone better. He was doing magical things. A lot of writers are talented but he has magic. I'll give you an example. In the very last episode, which was the wedding, because Anne has gone on her honeymoon, she's telling the joke to David and he gets it, all Richard did was at the end of the scene David suddenly said "stay". It was a lovely affecting moment, he has that way of assessing the mood. If you find it easier to work with someone then do.

<Control over work>

It is a collaborative process. You shouldn't have any ego about jokes. Ultimately I write jokes, am very pleased with them, think they're funny then and they're chucked. You can't get desperately worked up. If the show itself turns out better... If the show turns out to be shit because someone's buggered it up - then you can get worked up.

<Outline?>

The initial outline is just a thought - a Radio Times billing. But because that's all it should be. But an episode outline - mine are about 6 or 7 pages. I do a scene by scene breakdown so I know how the A plot and the B plot go together and how they all work in the time structure which is very important and they all have something to do but I realise all these are crutches to help me - it just makes it easier.

1: Meet the writers: Paul Mayhew Archer
2: Meet the writers: Jenny Lecoat
3: The Actors Kick Back
4: Working with Comedy Producers
5: Meet the Commissioners