Friends:
"Five incestuous chums dick around an apartment and a coffee shop for ten long seasons"
PS. I should add that I'm a genuine Friends fan, I'm just highlighting the extraordinary difficulty in writing a logline for a show that relies so much on star performance and chemistry.
One Foot in the Grave: An elderly man and his wife attempt to deal with existence after his retirement.
Quote: Marooned @ July 30 2010, 3:16 PM BSTOne Foot in the Grave: An elderly man and his wife attempt to deal with existence after his retirement.
See also Curb Your Enthusiasm (minus perhaps "elderly")
I liked the initial trailer for Being Human, which sounded a little bit pitchy.
A vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost - share a house in Bristol.
Quote: Griff @ July 30 2010, 3:18 PM BSTBut it was cast after the script was written, right? So someone must have written a pitch for the original.
*Googles*
OK the Friends pitch (when it was originally pitched as Insomnia Cafe) was
"It's about sex, love, relationships, careers, a time in your life when everything's possible. And it's about friendship because when you're single and in the city, your friends are your family."
I wholeheartedly believe that anyone without an existing industry track record attempting to pitch a concept that broad would get absolutely nowhere.
*awaits the results of Griff's next Google*
Quote: Griff @ July 30 2010, 3:19 PM BSTDo I have to do everything around here.
*Googles*
OK the Friends pitch (when it was originally pitched as Insomnia Cafe) was
"It's about sex, love, relationships, careers, a time in your life when everything's possible. And it's about friendship because when you're single and in the city, your friends are your family."
See. This is a proper answer.
Sorry about that.
Does the pitch itself have to be funny? Because I've been told before that you should not try to be funny in cover letters and whatnot.
ARE YOU BEING SERVED: The second world war finally broke down the hierarchy of class. Not in the department store it didn't!
Peep Show:
"A flatshare sitcom about two young men, one a buttoned-up office drone, the other a delusional musician, shot from the character's POV and chock full of VO monologue."
Ugh, that was ugly. I'd be interested to know what the original POV logline looked like...
SOmetimes the pitch can be foiund in the theme sonhg.
CHEERS: Because sometimes it's good to go where everyone knows your name.
Quote: Griff @ July 30 2010, 3:28 PM BSTNo, I wouldn't think so. That One Foot pitch is ideal, to me. You know who the characters are and where the storylines are going to come from, and take it as read that someone's going to put some jokes in at some point.
That 'pitch' says nothing about the show for me. "An elderly man and his wife attempt to deal with existence after his retirement" could be a drama, a comedy, it tells you nothing at all about the characters apart from their approximate age and sex, and it says nothing about the tone of the show.
These aren't pitches, they're more like listings in TV Quick, surely. Sorry, not trying to be inflammatory honest, just not sure what the point of the exercise is really. Writing pitches is a skill in itself that's difficult to master - you have to be very concise and grab the reader with every word. Marooned asked "Does the pitch itself have to be funny?" If it's for a comedy, then the reader has to assured in the pitch that it's going to be hilarious. You can do that by including some joke ideas, general comedic concepts or I've even included brief snatches of character dialogue in pitches before. Anything to paint a clearer picture in the reader's mind - and anything that sets your pitch apart from the rest of the herd.
Obviously don't fingerpaint it in your own shit and staple your severed ear to it, that's just being TOO desperate. And anyway the writers of According To Bex already did that. 
Quote: Griff @ August 2 2010, 10:07 AM BSTMy favourite short pitch was always "Schwarzenegger. De Vito. Twins".
Yep but that pitch is genius and kinda shows a perfect comedy pitch can be funny, and informative, in three (okay 4) words. Admittedly we know the actors so that helps deliver the payload but still it's genius. And is a perfect example of the pitch that makes you laugh and want to know more.
Echo Lee, I thought a perfect pitch shouldn't seem quite so sterile. 
The Mighty Boosh - Two eccentric men bicker, causing reality to warp.
Red Dwarf - The last man alive, a inane hologram, a stylish descendant of a cat and a mechanoid travel on a pointless voyage in space.
Thanks for the advice, Lee.
Has anyone got any other tips re: pitching please? I'd like at least a fighting chance of winning this competition.