The IT Crowd 5.0 Page 5
I just watched the interview with Linehan on the Series 3 DVD and he thinks it only came together after Series 2.
I do love this show but I think maybe it shouldn't go too far and this should be the last series for the sake of the show and the actors and he should go on to something new.
What you talking about? If it works, keep going!
Dan
I'll judge when I see this new Series 5 ... but my gut feeling tells me, The IT Crowd still has a lot of disk space left!!!
All the best,
Cal 
Don't they mean sixth?
Isn't the one being made now the fifth...
Well, I read it as there are no more full stop. Except a Christmas special.
Though that does seem odd as I thought it had been in production a while (ie. writing and all that)
Dan
Very odd!
That's how I read it as well. I'm Kind of dissapointed, it wasn't always perfect but even the "bad" episodes were still worth a watch. I think it could have done another series.
This is what Lineham said in full:
Why no series 5?
What are you going to work on next - another sitcom or perhaps a film?
Chief reason was the fact that I just wasn't looking forward to it the way I used to. I felt that the last series was a nice strong point to go out on, and anything further might just be running on the spot. You don't do your best work when you're running on the spot.
It feels like a natural time to wind things down. Apart from anything else, we're probably reaching that stage where it begins to feel odd that Roy, Jen and Moss are still stuck down in that basement. I don't want to start giving everybody babies to make it feel like they're moving on with their lives. My kind of comedy has always been setpiece-driven...and maybe that kind of thing has a naturally short life. I did three series of Father Ted, one of Black Books, one of Big Train, so I feel a personal sense of achievement that IT Crowd made it to series 4, especially as it gave me two of my favourite episodes, 'Jen The Fredo' & 'Final Countdown'.
There just wasn't much in my idea file that topped those episodes, and I like to go into a series feeling I have some big moments lined up.
I was under the impression that you were going to have a team of writers all working on the new series of the IT Crowd to help relieve you of some of the writing stress. What happened to that idea?
Well, I had a great gang of people, but in the end we weren't able to meet often enough to create the proper atmosphere of friendly rivalry and one-upmanship to provide the amount of material I needed. It was always first and foremost an experiment and part of experiment was seeing if it was possible to create a 'virtual' writer's room, and in the end I wasn't able to. Part of this was down to the tools available. There just didn't seem to be anything out there that suited the job. We were using Basecamp, but that's such a stuffy, businesslike service that I think it actually ended up making everyone self-conscious. Once or twice, stories did sort of accumulate naturally, if that makes sense, with everyone adding a new element and the story growing that way, and it was exciting when that happened. I thought hey! This is going to work! But even with the successes there were problems. I think stories need to be 'hot' for you to write them. You sort of need to have the idea, and get moving on it as soon as possible. Some of these ideas would sit in Basecamp for a few months before I actually had time to work on the script. And by then the heat had worn off. I also kind of wanted to have the writers there all along the process...you know, so they could pitch in with ideas at every stage. Plotlines, then suggestions for scenes, then dialogue. But in the end the only way we could legally do it was by officially employing the writers for a total of three months. And that's because the money comes out of my writing fee and I really couldn't afford any more than that. All of the writers were up for taking the fee and working on past the three months, but that would have made me feel like a sweat-shop owner. I just couldn't expect people to work for free. I did try to open it up again a little bit, but I was too guilty and confused about whether I was doing the right thing to be really able to take advantage of the clever types I had working for me. Or not working for me. You see the problem.
I wanted to use the team to sort of crowd-source initial ideas, but the actual scripts were always going to be written by me in the end. It just doesn't make sense for me to farm out the job of writing scripts because that's where the lion's share of my income comes from when doing the show. And making the show is hard, man. It really takes a lot out of me. So I like to get paid.
Ah. Bummer. 
I blame Matt Stott for all of this.
This virtual team written sitcom never seems to work. Over ten years ago me and two others were commissioned to develop a sitcom. We were all supposed to work together in our own homes via the internet. We did get a script finished and accepted which was taken forward but we had to meet physically in the end and spend days in a real room!
I know Micheal Jacob did his team written sitcom exercise CLEANERS on the internet and that wasn't a hundred percent smooth either.
Shame there is no more of The IT Crowd for whatever reason though.
Quote: David Bussell @ October 21 2011, 1:44 PM BSTI blame Matt Stott for all of this.
Lineham slags off 'Basecamp' during the interview. I reckon that's a euphemism for 'Matthew Stott'.
Let's look at the evidence!
Basecamp is described as a:
tool
Which:
ended up making everyone self-conscious.
Case closed.