Writing Sitcom

Matthew Carless

The idea has to be one that genuinely excites you, and that you have some genuine reason for writing - it touches on your own obsessions or experience. If someone asks why you want to write the idea and your only response is 'because it hasn't been done' chances are it will be a piece of uninspired tosh. You have to be able to bring your own unique comic insight into a particular situation or world - you can probably only do that if you care about it. Having too narrow a theme, and over-working it, can be as dangerous as having no focus at all. Often there's a main theme, and some sub-themes. Goodnight Sweetheart is not just about time travel. It is equally about adultery - and there are some other themes as well. Many new writers stop at one idea, and over-work it.

Characters
All your characters should have an original slant, comic potential and mileage. What are their comic flaws? How do these comic flaws keep leading them into hot water? What are the key relationships? Work out how they can interact with each other to create comedy, but also keep them believable. Characters should be likeable, even if they aren't 'nice' - some of the most memorable characters, like Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army or Victor Meldrew in One Foot In The Grave, or Blackadder, aren't 'nice'. Sympathy normally comes through making your characters really suffer for their mistakes. Or, by making them blissfully unaware of their faults - they believe they are doing The Right Thing (Captain Mainwaring usually believes he is doing what is best for King and Country). There may be a host of other ways of making your characters sympathetic. No number of 'good deeds' will make a character likeable or enjoyable. We tend to like characters because of their faults, and their attitude to those faults. It is those comic flaws which should be the starting point for your stories. Del Boy's main comic flaw, for example, is that his ideas exceed his ability to carry them out. Therefore many stories begin with an over-ambitious plan. Generally speaking, the more selfishly or foolishly a character behaves, the more he must suffer the consequences. Unpunished folly or malevolence is rarely satisfactory. Nor is it usually satisfactory to have you characters fall victim to a series of mishaps and bad luck - they should, in part, be the victim of their own weaknesses.

Originality
Many people think originality is all about the setting. Wrong. A show about a transvestite starfish running an internet café set on the dark side of Mars is not original, it's a desperate attempt at novelty. You don't have to think of an original environment. It's more important to give us a new perspective on something familiar. Or a fresh style. What could be less original than setting your sitcom in suburbia? But when David Renwick decided to turn dull, uneventful suburbia on its head by making it hellishly chaotic, he created something fresh. It was his unusual 'take' on suburbia that helped give One Foot In The Grave its originality. Having an original take at a familiar world is a key ingredient of many a sitcom. Ask 'what is my subject?' and also 'what is my take on that subject?' Originality can also come from style. Much of the originality in Father Ted is in the style. Long before Fawlty Towers, a hotel was considered to be a highly unoriginal setting for a sitcom. It was the character of Basil Fawlty, among other things, that made it fresh. So originality can come from the 'take' or 'attitude', the style, or the characters. Comparatively rarely does it spring from the setting and situation.

Structure and Narrative
Telling stories is important. It is often handy to have two or three stories running in parallel. They don't necessarily have to interweave in a clever way - they can be relatively independent of one another. It is sometimes easier to sustain three stories of ten minutes each than one story for thirty minutes. The main story should probably relate to your main over-riding theme. If your comedy is about how ambition can lead to disaster, then the main plot should demonstrate that basic point. The main story can't really be about a lost dog. It's much safer to have several storylines - spreading the comic possibilities. Do not spend a lot of time 'setting up' the premise, or going into the history of the characters, and how they got to be in the situation they're in. Get on with telling a story from page one. Generally, we want to see things happening now, not be told about past events. We do not, for example, need to know how Basil Fawlty happened to marry the awful Cybil, why he employed the ridiculous Manuel, why he bought a hotel in Torquay, or how someone as mad as him wanted to go into a service industry. It's all in the past - it doesn't matter. What matters is now. Sometimes it's better to write episode three or four instead of episode one - which is so often hampered by 'set-up' material and fails to represent the series as a whole.

and Finally...
Write what you personally think is funny, however individual or unique you may think your sense of humour is. Do not simply try to match some mediocre show you saw on TV last night. Make sure the humour is driven by the characters and stories, and not just people saying funny things. Avoid characters sniping sarcastically at each other "in a funny way" where possible. Too many writers assume that writing comedy is just gag writing. It's a good idea to limit the number of formulaic lines that begin 'that's like a cross between…' or 'that's about as healthy as…' or 'I haven't seen anything as bad as that since…' Avoid factual exposition. The audience very, very, VERY rarely needs to know much about a character's past, or how they came to be in the situation they're in. How much do you know about the pasts of: Steptoe, Fawlty, Del Boy, Blackadder, Captain Mainwaring? If you can come up with more than a word or two you're doing well. Most importantly, your script must be funny. 'Gently amusing' is not enough. One very funny scene or a funny character is worth a million pages of competently plotted 'gentle amusement'. One really funny scene is enough for us to think 'this person can write funny' and that is what opens doors.

Matthew Carless was a Script Associate in the BBC Comedy Development Unit until 2002.