Quote: writer for hire @ February 6 2012, 7:14 PM GMTI thought this might be interesting for people to read;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/downloads/scripts/marigold.pdf
I got as far as the 'hopping off' visual gag and quit.
*makes mental note to tick all the boxes on the Equal Opportunities form*
Looks like it got him into writing for Two Pints and My Family.
Quote: Matthew Stott @ February 6 2012, 7:40 PM GMTLooks like it got him into writing for Two Pints and My Family.
Don't say that! You know what some people on here hate, more than anything else, is someone having some success.
I read that last year before completing my 'Laughing Stock' entry...
I don't think it's actually shit or anything but how did that win?! The 'first 10 page' rule must have been thrown out of the window for the competition too.
Quote: Feeoree @ February 6 2012, 9:59 PM GMTThe 'first 10 page' rule must have been thrown out of the window for the competition too.
...along with the 'next 50 pages rule' as well.
No point screaming about how bad it is, as it won.
For those of you who didn't make it to the end, it takes a very odd turn and becomes very 'smutty' and the F-word gets used a bit.
Odd.
The only glimmer of hope is that things might have changed in the last 8 years.
What does 
mean? It seems oddly appropriate.
I'd agree there's no point screaming how 'bad' it was. Maybe the wiser people might even take the opportunity to look at it a different way and work out why it might have won?
Nobody learns anything from moaning and stamping their feet!
I've read the first 10 pages of it, for useful insight. Going to pitch ny future ideas to my grandmother first.
Is Ian- James Cotter I am confused? 
That terrible old pilot script has been on the BBC writersroom website for years. That it managed to win a prize tells you a lot about the BBC at the time. It also makes the mind boggle as to how execrable the scripts which it beat must have been.
To be fair, it has everything one might look for in a pilot sitcom script: decent structure, serviceable plot, identifiable characters and is efficiently and confidently written, with a fairly decent punch rate of laugh lines. The fact that it's a desperately unfunny series of one-dimensional characters trading tedious gag lines towards each other is neither here nor there.
I'm sure even the writer doesn't look back on this script as a high point in his creative output, only as an early stab at writing sitcom. No doubt he's a much better at his trade these days..
Quote: Tim Walker @ February 7 2012, 9:24 AM GMTI'm sure even the writer doesn't look back on this script as a high point in his creative output...
Considering that the IMDb shows that he went on to write for My Family and Two Pints of Lager..., I wouldn't be so sure.
This is all really too bitchy. Someone won a BBC sitcom comp and went on to earn money by writing for two major television shows. If you're reading script-writer, well done you.
I don't mean to be bitchy, hats off to the guy in fact.
But I find reading his script better "research" than re-watching Fawlty Towers over and over. I think it highlights that the judges may focus more on the situation you create, the characters you introduce and the potential of the series, rather than how many laughs you get in (although that is still important).
Ooh good answer.
But definitely the funniest doesn't always win.
(as proved by the fact that Sootyj has never won anything except a trip to the school psychologist, after sending Tony Hart a crayon drawing of an excited horse)
Quote: Tim Walker @ February 7 2012, 9:24 AM GMTThat terrible old pilot script has been on the BBC writersroom website for years. That it managed to win a prize tells you a lot about the BBC at the time. It also makes the mind boggle as to how execrable the scripts which it beat must have been.
To be fair, it has everything one might look for in a pilot sitcom script: decent structure, serviceable plot, identifiable characters and is efficiently and confidently written, with a fairly decent punch rate of laugh lines. The fact that it's a desperately unfunny series of one-dimensional characters trading tedious gag lines towards each other is neither here nor there.
I'm sure even the writer doesn't look back on this script as a high point in his creative output, only as an early stab at writing sitcom. No doubt he's a-much better at his trade these days..
Enough to make you go Italian for a second?
Having read the first ten pages, it reminded me of 'My Family', so perhaps not surprising that the BBC liked it. This kind of comedy is definitely not my cup of tea, but the script, as has been implied already, has the bones for a workable, perhaps successful, sitcom - especially in Britain.