While we were having our workshop last week, I received the sad news that Paul Makin had died. Paul was a unique comedy voice, who created a wonderful show called Nightingales, which wasn't like anything else before or since. We worked closely together on Goodnight Sweetheart, and he will be missed. Laurence Marks wrote his obituary in the Guardian today (15 July), which is findable online.
It was Nightingales which inspired Susan Nickson to want to be a comedy writer, and Susan was one of our guests at the college, together with Paul Mendelson and Hugo Blick. They each talked about their writing lives and experiences, which were extremely diverse. While Susan entered and won a competition when she was 14, Paul was first a lawyer, then worked in advertising, and turned to writing when Nicolas Roeg, who had been directing one of his commercials, gave Verity Lambert a humorous novella which Paul had written about a Jewish ghost. The BBC felt the world wasn't quite ready for it, so Paul then created May to December with Verity as producer. Its success meant that So Haunt Me was commissioned, and led to what I think is a unique experience of a single writer having two shows transmitted one after the other on the same night.
Hugo Blick began as a child actor, playing the Joker's son in Batman, before becoming involved in the BBC's drama department, where he came across a script called Operation Good Guys. He moved to comedy, taking the script with him, and persuaded its writers - Ray Burdis and Dominic Anciano - that it would work better as a comedy, and so it was. It was also the first fly on the wall comedy documentary, and thus had an influence on the style of The Office.
From Good Guys, Hugo found some money to write and shoot a series of ten minute programmes with Rob Brydon about a self-deluded driver. Marion and Geoff launched Hugo's singular career as an auteur who writes, produces, directs, films, edits and delivers his work.
Mr Ashton has already blogged about Ms Nickson, who is preparing a new series of Grownups, gearing up for a further series of 2 Pints, and has a new project in the pipeline. What's notable about Susan's work is its autobiographical content and its strong base in real world experience.
The three guests were all quite different and all extremely honest, providing what I had hoped for - a patchwork of experience which suggests that for comedy writers there is no single way to break in and no single way to do it.
In the afternoons we read and discussed scripts by the 'students', which was a fascinating exercise, since each of the six writing units has a different style and voice. The scripts ranged from audience to single camera, from high concept to low concept, from scripts with jokes to scripts with funny dialogue. It was really exciting.
The week also included a visit to a recording of After You've Gone and a session on team-writing with Ian Brown and James Hendrie, who moved into narrative after some years writing sketches.
With the 100th My Family being recorded in the studio next door, there was an extraordinary atmosphere at Pinewood, with more comedy writers in one place than has been seen since the last BBC party.
The week began with a marathon session from me on the history and essentials of sitcom from 1926 to 2008. With a break, before we all died. The history bit took an hour and a half (with clips) and is far too long to post here. But, with apologies for references which may be strange or unknown, here's the bit about essentials, which I hope may be of interest. And by the way, my conclusion is that, Nightingales and a very few other shows aside, sitcom is more about reinvention than invention.
Sitcom themes and essentials
From The Goldbergs, Amos 'n' Andy and I Love Lucy to The Office and Not Going Out, there is a strong and lengthy strand of shows being created by writer-performers. From Pinwright's Progress to Peep Show, there is an equally lengthy strand of shows being created by writers, sometimes in collaboration with performers or with performers in mind, sometimes not.
So what are the recurring genres? They are the two-hander (from Amos 'n' Andy to Peep Show), the family sitcom (from The Goldbergs to After You've Gone), the workplace sitcom (from Pinwright and Bilko to The IT Crowd) and, closely linked to the workplace show, the ensemble sitcom set outside the workplace, a more recent innovation, of which Dad's Army is an example.
Of course, genres are fluid. Is Cheers, for example, a workplace show or an ensemble show?
And finally there is the show built around a star, essentially a one-man or one-woman show with support, ranging from Jack Benny via Alan B'Stard to Alan Partridge and possibly David Brent. Was The Office a workplace ensemble or a show about an embarrassing boss? It's impossible to be doctrinaire about these things.
Is it possible to join the sitcom dots and find areas in common? Well, one common theme of hits across the years has been a connection with real life. Sam and Henry's move from rural America to the city reflected a reality. As we have seen, Hancock, Steptoe, The Likely Lads, Till Death, The Good Life, Only Fools and Horses, and Men Behaving Badly, to pluck a few from the list, were all inspired by their writers' experiences of the world.
Another common theme, even in ensemble comedy (arguably, Friends was a rare example of a true ensemble in which each character had a story strand and episodes were arranged around the strands rather than in a 'story of the week, which is also true of Two Pints') is that of two central characters at the centre of a show. From Sam and Henry to Will and Grace in America, from Hancock and Sid James via Mainwaring and Wilson and Rodney and Del to Ben and Susan in My Family and Mark and Jeremy in Peep Show in Britain, a central and contrasted duo seems to unite successful shows of different styles.
A third uniting quality is aspiration. People want to change their lives. In America, then tend to succeed more than they do in Britain, which might either reflect native pessimism or British love of the underdog. The Goldbergs made it to the suburbs, Hancock would never make it out of East Cheam. Bob in The Likely Lads made it to a starter home, but Terry didn't. Aspiration is a word much used in commissioning discussions, but aspiration as a character trait is a staple of comedy.
In comedy as in drama, every character has to want something, a given which applies as much to a shop assistant with a single line as it does to a star. It's a McKeeism that every line should move the story forward, and every scene should change emotional temperature from its beginning to its end, and the way to achieve that is through frustrated desire, contradiction, or complication.
The fourth uniting quality is recognisable characters, characters who reflect our views, share our desires, voice our frustrations or, obversely, are so comically monstrous that we empathise with the surrounding characters who have to deal with them, characters like Alan B'Stard, Alan Partridge and David Brent.
If comedy takes and then stretches reality, our comedy heroes have to be people like us, with real emotions and frustrations, people who, if we were less inhibited, we might become, or people who make us cringe and make us feel relieved that we're not their employees/friends/other halves.
The fifth uniting quality is that all successful sitcoms tell a story. It can be a big, plotty story, or a small story, but the rules of Aristotle and Evanthius apply to all stories, whatever their size. We want to know what story we're being told, we want to enjoy it as it develops, and we want to feel that it has reached a satisfactory conclusion, and ideally a clever and unexpected conclusion, driven by the characters who have been involved in it. Of course, a satisfying story can't make a bad sitcom good, but a sitcom without a story is empty comedy for the sake of it.
A sixth quality, not to be overlooked, is physicality. Television is a visual medium. Visual and physical comedy not only works, but can provide some of the most memorable comic moments. For example, Basily Fawlty beating the car, Del Boy falling through the bar, Michael Crawford's endless mishaps in Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em, Alan Partridge and the chocolate mousse, David Brent's dance ... physical comedy makes shows memorable.
Seventh, casting. Every successful show has had actors who made their parts their own. Harry Enfield isn't remembered in Men Behaving Badly, but Neil Morrissey is. When Dervla Kirwan and Michelle Holmes left Goodnight Sweetheart, and good as their replacements were, it stopped being magic and became a sitcom. The pilot for My Family was shot with different leads, and failed to convince. Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker convinced. Would Steptoe and Son have worked if Galton and Simpson hadn't been able to get their first choices (they had two different actors in reserve)? Another one for debate!
Finally, and most important of all, which is why we're here, is writing. Without a script, there is no show. A strong performance in a weak script remains a strong performance. A strong performance in a strong script means memorability. Whether a script comes from the American tradition of table writing, or from the British tradition of a single writer or pair of writers, it is the foundation of sitcom. While few writers have the recognition factor of actors on the screen, it's the writer who creates the star.
Sitcom history is littered with examples of big names, popular with audiences and commissioners, whose shows have bombed because of bad writing, and that is why writers are the most important people in production. Of course, others will have things to say - the producer, the director, the cast, perhaps a script editor, the executive producer, not to mention the commissioner and, in BBC terms, the channel controller, but everyone knows that if the writing doesn't work the show doesn't work.
Writing is the beginning and the end of it all.
