Playing Mummies and Daddies.

Still considering the theory on Anorak's podcast that a sitcom requires a mother and a father figure-they don't have to be a specific sex, the mother is caring, the father is stand offish but usually still relates to others (the other characters are craftspeople and clowns, but they aren't so important.
How does it work if there are only two characters? Is it best that they are mother and father? I think John and Kayleigh in Car Share do not act as parent characters, though there's a bit because John is Kayleigh's boss. Maggie and Andy in Extras are more parent-like, Andy tries to keep control of the things going on and Maggie is a bit behind the times with PC, which might suggest a bit motherly. Also there are a number of disabled characters for them to care about (though Andy does more of this).

You can't have a mother and father now. It's outdated. You could have two mothers or two fathers or maybe even three with one chestfeeding.

Did you read my post, Chaps? Not a mother and father but a mother and father figure.

All stories require archetypes.
The thing is they come naturally if you're any sort of a storyteller.
If you have to try to shoehorn them in to fit a 'theory', then I think the tail is beginning to wag the dog.
The other thing with structural theories such as this, is that the authors or proponents will go to absurd lengths to make things that patently don't fit, fit.

Yep you got it. The majority of so called sitcoms put out these days are not written by natural storytellers in the slightest, they are either stand ups with a modern observasional or conversational style at best, or machine gun joke tellers with no idea of storytelling, copycat writers trying to replicate their favourites or comedy course addicts who write by numbers. You should know the general rules about conflict, character hierarchy etc. if you find you're good at telling a story, it's all in there.

Lot of people out there making good money out of bad writers.
The monetisation of failure.

I disagree that a sitcom needs to have a story. The lack of story is an archetype in itself, think of the Hancock story set on a long Sunday afternoon.
I think it's a misrepresentation that modern sitcoms are written for the younger generation in mind. People who watched Toast of London for instance had to be quite old in order to understand all the references. Rebel was made for the older generation. Young people tend not to watch sitcoms.

Quote: Lazzard @ 30th December 2018, 12:14 PM

Lot of people out there making good money out of bad writers.
The monetisation of failure.

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Never a truer word.

There are a great many very reasonably priced books about improving one's writing and yet there is no shortage of people willing to pay large sums of money in order to attend a class or a course at which somebody tells you far less than a good book will tell you.

If you're a good (and preferably successful) writer, you can almost certainly make far more money teaching other people how to improve their writing then you ever will by writing anything yourself - unless you're JK Rowling, of course.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 31st December 2018, 3:50 PM

If you're a good writer, you can almost certainly make far more money teaching other people how to improve their writing then you ever will by writing anything yourself.

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This is my business plan.

Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 30th December 2018, 10:05 AM

Did you read my post, Chaps? Not a mother and father but a mother and father figure.

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I did understand what you were getting at but with PC nowadays you can't generalise.

Er, every person needs a mother and father - though an additional surrogate mother is possible. Whether they bring you up is a different matter.

Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 1st January 2019, 11:32 PM

Er, every person needs a mother and father - though an additional surrogate mother is possible. Whether they bring you up is a different matter.

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That's a very outdated and un-PC attitude.