BBC giving up on solo written comedy?

Whilst announcing 20 more episodes of After You've Gone there was a slightly worrying quote from Kenton Allen, the BBC’s head of comedy talent: ‘American style team writing is now alive and kicking within BBC comedy.

‘This fantastic commitment to After You've Gone means we can now deliver family sitcom in consistent volume to BBC One with all the genuine benefits that team writing brings.’

This seems to suggest they would want to move away from one writer style sitcoms. How the hell do you become a team writer??? Write half a scene?

Write all the parts for Actor A and leave the responses blank for someone else to fill in, is my guess.

I fear for the Beeb. I really do.

Quote: SlagA @ January 17, 2008, 3:47 PM

Write all the parts for Actor A and leave the responses blank for someone else to fill in, is my guess.

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Its a bit like our punchline thread!

I've always thought Kenton Allen was a bit of a knob.

I thin the showrunner plans out what happens/needs to happen across the series and then episodes are farmed out to a writer/writing partnership to come up with a story. So 20 people/teams write an episode each. Then they all come together in a room and thrash out the funniest possible lines for each episode.

Or something along those lines.

Dan

It obviously works very well in America, but I'm not sure it's translated here terribly succesfully. Fred Barron's used it, and none of his shows exactly set the comedy world ablaze.

I would imagine they might use this model of working more for the very mainstream BBC1 type shows, so they can pump out a large volume; rather than for every show.

I'm using team writing on Newmans. Its working out really well, there are four of us so its a small team but the quality of work and speed it can be produced with more bodies to throw at the plot has worked wonders .

The team writing model is certainly becoming more prevalent over here. Team written comedies are the biggest winners in terms of ratings right now, thus the model is clearly 'working' (from a commissioners point of view anyway).

I know for a fact BBC One is looking to continue this style of writing for their sitcoms. Their target, originally setup by Peter Fincham, is to cultivate filmed-in-front-of-an-audience, mainstream, suitable-for-the-family-to-watch sitcoms... which, to help fill the schedules, last longer than the standard six episodes. The team model is perfect for this.

I don't think it any surprise therefore that My Family, Not Going Out, The Green Green Grass and After You've Gone all have new seasons commissioned that are greater than six episodes.

BBC Two however would appear to still be focusing more on the single / pair writing model for that closer, more intimately controlled character development across a six episode sitcom run so don't give up on this type of comedy if that's what your aim is.

As for to how to get into a writing team - looking down the list of people writing these series (and previous team-written comedies like Green Wing) in almost all cases their background seems to be in sketch shows.

I guess that makes sense - after all, when writing as part of a team you're often actually working on your own mini 'sketch' which will form part of the larger comedy.

If you want to eventually be writing for BBC One, a skill to practice might be to write an episode using characters established by someone else. There's always been a need for this type of writer - and probably more so than ever now as established names like Fred Barron and John Sullivan appear to be starting to make a hobby out of setting up sitcoms only to start farming out the writing should the show hit a second season.

I think it's a great idea, more work for more writers, I'm up for grabs.

and cheap as chips

Let's just hope we don't see the type of writers strikes coming over from America either, getting rid of writers like yesterdays newspaper because they didn't come up with anything funny.

To some extent they are pumping out as much comedy from these shows as possible and I feel this tit of comedy will be sucked dry! (Yes I said tit of comedy).

You have a point though Mark, that in some circumstance it can work, but I feel only if a group had the idea to begin with and developed it, like your example with Green Wing.

A writing team is just a focus group with people who think they are funny so they inevitably aren't.

Actually if you ever seen The Aristocrats it shows the writing process for a writing team and they laugh at the shittest things. Its exactly like a focus group in fact.

EDIT: I'd better declare a vested interest in hating writer teams cos i work on my own or with an equally talented partner (up to you which way you take that Leevil )

Quote: ajp29 @ January 17, 2008, 8:19 PM

EDIT: I'd better declare a vested interest in hating writer teams cos i work on my own or with an equally talented partner (up to you which way you take that Leevil )

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Surely it's more important how your partner likes to take it?

Quote: Griff @ January 17, 2008, 9:10 PM

Which brings up the oft-mooted question of the "spec script", ie writing an episode of an existing sitcom as a calling card. This is industry practice in the States (read www.janeespenson.com for lots of great insights into spec script writing), but supposedly frowned on over here.

I say "supposedly" because the Writers Guild of Great Britain are currently researching whether this system is gaining ground in the UK: http://writersguild.blogspot.com/2008/01/trial-scripts.html.

Anyone got any insights on this ?

(Actually I don't think writing a spec script would such be a bad thing to work on, although I haven't tried it. It might be quite motivating to write an episode of Fawlty/Blackadder/Partridge/Peep Show and you might find yourself writing some great lines or plots you can then reuse in a "real" script.)

NB granted it might be difficult to reuse plots created for Elizabethan Blackadder.

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I immediately have an adverse reaction to this because it smacks of fandom rather than writing creativity.

I can see the benefits of it; I suppose I can just see it attracting a lot of misled writers who are really not-talented-enough fans. But then, I suppose there's enough of them around anyway. Maybe that's why Writersroom was set up. A gas chamber for hopeful writers.