Alfred J Kipper
Sunday 24th January 2016 11:56am [Edited]
Aldershot
8,311 posts
I presume Dave means sitcom, as doing a show like Live at the Apollo with the audience gagged would be a bit daft I think.
There's no doubt the trendies in comedyland don't like laugh tracks on sitcoms and have been following RG's lead since The Office. The results have not been good for sitcom with barely a classic sitcom made since The Office. Yes I know some will shout Peep Show but they are wrong - a cult sitcom isn't always a classic sitcom and Peep Show's the defining example of this.
The one saving grace I gave NGO was its laugh track, Mack got that right, and making it funny, if nothing else.
The trouble isn't with the studio audience/lauhg track format, it's with the quality of sitcom scripts. They're getting less funny, less subtle and much less well crafted. IMO because commissions are being given to the wrong people. And maybe we're more demanding after being given classic sitcoms week in, week out in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Sitcoms just need to get back to being funny and characterful and sitcommy and the prods won't have to get their cans out/manipulate the audience laughter to serious fraud levels like they do now. Morning, as you were.
Quote: Dave @ 23rd January 2016, 7:15 PM GMT
A show without a track, however, can get away with being far less funny because there's no real proof that it isn't.
Very true and the reason why we've had so many multi series sitcoms in the last 15 years which were really half hour comdrams.