Crindy
Wednesday 2nd January 2019 12:08pm [Edited]
189 posts
'Lo gappy,
I remember you providing me with some very useful feedback on one of my scripts last year, so let me try to repay the favour by providing some very useful* feedback of my own.
* extent of usefulness exaggerated for dramatic effect.
So:
- It's a good read. To put it bluntly. Plenty of decent gags, a clear plot, and a well-constructed pay-off with the painting. Though I'm not quite sure how well that particular bit would translate onto screen, there's a lot of words to read in the original baffling block of text. I know that worrying about how things will work 'on screen' isn't really much of an issue at this stage, but I think there might be a more succinct, snappier way to work that bit.
- There's a few issues with your main characters being passive, which you already alluded to I think. A lot of the time Alice and Gareth are just standing around watching events escalate around them, rather than actively getting involved in the plot, which runs the risk of making the main characters seem less interesting than (what I assume are) the one-off guests. But then, it's only 11 pages and there's a lot of stuff to get through, so I can understand that to some extent. If you were looking at re-drafting this as a full half-hour episode, there's plenty of room to focus on getting them more involved, presumably by ramping up the competitiveness between them over their two clashing events, both wanting their night to be a success that saves the shop, or wins them some sort of wacky sitcom bet, or whatever.
- Minor nitpick, but the Laurence/Lawrence names of two of the teenagers made it a confusing read in places. I thought there might be some sort of pay-off coming up about them having the same name, but they're never referred to by name in the actual dialogue, so I'd consider making the names a bit easier to differentiate, especially as all the teenagers sound quite similar anyway. (This feedback courtesy of some advice I was once given to try and make character names as 'unique' as possible, both in length and sound, to make a script easier to read - stemming from a 'bit' in an old pilot of mine involving a guy named Lindsey and a girl named Lindsay which was nowhere near strong enough to justify making the scene so confusing to read on the page!).
- You've already mentioned the formatting, so I won't dwell on this, but some action lines might help this out, especially in establishing the sort of shop this is. It took me ages to really picture where we were and who the characters were based off the dialogue, so once I figured it out I had to go back and re-read what was happening in the context of a weird occult supply shop, and then things became a lot funnier. Until that point they could just as easily have been in a Londis. Which was less funny. Although, as a side note, I'd love to see a sitcom set in a Londis.
Blah. Lots of words. Sorry. But overall, there's a lot I like about this idea. I can see the potential in the setting, I'd just want to see a bit more from the main characters if/when you decide to push on with another draft. 
Hope some of this helps. Important disclaimer: This was all the opinion of someone with zero paid writing credits who doesn't really know what he's talking about. As such, these are opinions, not facts, and the feedback provider accepts no responsibility should you blindly take his comments as gospel advice and end up with a fundamentally weaker draft for your efforts.
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