British Comedy Guide

Office based sitcom synopsis

The Social

Log Line:A group of civil servants battle boredom, sanity and each other as they try to forget how undervalued, underpaid and unhappy they are in their work.

Pitch:Scrubs meets Father Ted

Tagline: It’s not what you do, it’s what you do to get you through the day

The social features a wide array of diverse characters, a benefit fraud investigation team who think they are the Sweeney, hanging around in strip clubs to catch gyrating lap dancers who are claiming Incapacity benefit, dressing in bear suits on fun runs to catch benefit cheats, and joining Karate clubs to catch those able bodied folks fiddling the social.

"Shotgun" Jimmy who is favourite in the office pool to one day come in and kill his colleagues, who still lives with his mother at 38 and stalks people when the go out at lunchtime and tells them how he hates the young bitches who bully him in work

Paul who is too smart for the job, but too lazy to find another one and spends a large amount of his time bored in work, at the pub, or moaning too his girlfriend about how crazy the people in his work are.

"Lucky" Lucy who is exactly the opposite of her name. A woman who comes back from her woman’s self esteem group to find her boyfriend nearly killing himself after replicating what he’s seen in a documentary about Michael Hutchence and who gave her bank details to a "nice man" from the Nigerian consulate.

Eddie, a boss with the patience a of saint, who puts up with complaints ranging from people eating onions with their lunch, electronic staplers that are too loud, a radio rota which needs more work than an Israeli-Palestine peace agreement, and an employee who never comes to work using excuses like "I was living in the wrong house for two years"

Ryan, a barely functioning alcoholic who tells tales no one believes and is unfortunately in charge of customers security details (think tax credit information leaks)

The big boss, rarely seen except when wanders around the office with his hand deep in his trouser pocket playing "pocket billiards"

Immediate thoughts:

As soon as I read 'Office Based Sitcom' my heart sank. And I don't have to read five of these a day. Imagine how the average script reader is going to feel. To get round it, I'd put the emphasis on what they do rather than where they work. The pitch perked up as soon as you got past that. Civil Servants acting like they're in The Sweeney - that's funny! Kick off with that.

The rest of it is all over the place. You've bombarded us with all these characters and anecdotes without giving any indication of how they relate to each other or what their goals are. You're obsessing over the minutia at the expense of the big picture.

As above i'd have thought the words "office based...." was like a sleeping pill to a producer.

Also - is the synopsis that important? It seems it can never do justice to your script so keep it short and let the reader get to your first laughs in the script without delay.

I sent 10 pages to babycow a week ago and a very, very grief synopsis because they asked for one. I sort of wrote it hoping it could be whizzed through and a producer would find himself stuck into the script before he'd got bored and was looking at the next one in the pile....got an email yesterday asking for the rest.

Quote: Monkey Stephen @ June 27 2008, 9:01 AM BST

The big boss, rarely seen except when wanders around the office with his hand deep in his trouser pocket playing "pocket billiards"

See thats a good example - how does knowing that theres a character that walks around playing with his balls encourage the script to be read? What producer is going to get that far and think "wow, if i read the script i'll find out all about this bloke playing with his tackle"

Dont mean to go on but you need to treat EVERY word, EVERY sentence as being of use. When you write a line know what your trying to achieve with it....if you cant think what the line adds, drop it.

You only get one chance at a 1st impression, dont blow it by taking bollocks (or writing about them either!)

I think it's an ace idea, and I got it into as I read on.

Mind you above are right about calling it office based. Why not go with set in a busy local authority?

Also you don't mention how any of these people relate to each other.

It's a nub of an ace idea, but it needs development. The relationships more than the characters will sell it.

Concentrate on writing it, rather than pitching it with a synopsis.

Quote: Seefacts @ June 27 2008, 1:24 PM BST

Concentrate on writing it, rather than pitching it with a synopsis.

next you'll be saying the choice between bone and tortoise shell for the A4 you print it on isn't important.

Quote: Seefacts @ June 27 2008, 1:24 PM BST

Concentrate on writing it, rather than pitching it with a synopsis.

That said, writing a decent synopsis is a great way to work out what your sitcom is about before you go to the trouble of writing it.

Quote: David Bussell @ June 27 2008, 1:32 PM BST

That said, writing a decent synopsis is a great way to work out what your sitcom is about before you go to the trouble of writing it.

Plot it out first then.

A synopsis is a waste of time unless you're going to a network.

95% of production companies don't need to see one.

thanks for the feedback. it's only the start of an idea at the moment and the characters definetly need to be worked on. i'm currently working on the first episode just now and hopefully when it's finished i'll first post the first 10 pages.

Quote: Seefacts @ June 27 2008, 1:36 PM BST

Plot it out first then.

A synopsis is a waste of time unless you're going to a network.

95% of production companies don't need to see one.

What I mean is that writing a synopsis can be a good way to crystalise what your sitom is about, similarly to writing a logline. It gets you familiar with the notion of conciseness - something I think a lot of newcomers to writing lack.

I'm with you on that David. Certainly doesn't hurt to have one. Shows how you see the show's legs apart from anything else. Especially if it is set in a lapdancing club.

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