NJ Sexist Exec

F/X door opening

Maria - Hello, I'm the new culture secretary Maria Miller, are you Lord Stereotypical Television Executive?

Lord - Yes. You're the woman who - buzzom! - wants more womens sport on television - (mimics a car engine) - and you think all television execs are sexist - Oh Mammy! We're not

Maria - That would be more convincing if you weren't randomly grabbing my breasts!

Lord - Sorry - Cambridge. Oxford

Maria - Stop it! Did you treat my predecessor in this fashion?

Lord - Me and Jeremy Hunt went to the same public school - so our relationship was very sexual

Maria - Look, the Olympics showed an appetite for female sports so we should feed that

Lord - My dog has an appetite for his own poo but I don't garnish it for him

Maria - I don't think that's a fair analogy

Lord - It's a simile

Maria - As a member of the government and therefore an occasional tax payer I demand you put more female oriented sports on television

Lord - Time of the month, is it?

Maria - My menstrual cycle has nothing to do with you being a sexist pig! Now are you going to do as I ask or do I have to go over your head?

Lord - Fine, I concede. No ugos though

Maria - Of course not, who wants to see ugly women? I'll see myself out

Lord - Wait (Mimics car horn) Thank you

END

It's just two people talking; no action and nothing happens. Stuff needs to happen to keep listeners interested.

Dan

There's no punch at the end and period jokes are a bit 80's.

Safe to say this sketch does not work. Back to the drawng board

Quote: swerytd @ September 25 2012, 6:45 PM BST

It's just two people talking; no action and nothing happens. Stuff needs to happen to keep listeners interested.

Dan

View original

Thanks Dan. Can you expand on that please, the problem I have with sketches (one of many) is that aren't all two hander sketches just two people talking? I thought I overcome that problem by having the groping to try to make it more than just two people. Any advice on the two hander structure would be appreciated

Not really. You need to have a direction in a sketch that you follow, pulling the listeners in, then a twist of some sort, surprise one (to the listener) is best, and that takes it off in another direction. Usually the twist would lead to some 'action'. It doesn't need to be 'physical' action, but more action in the sense 'something exciting happening'.

So, for example, in your sketch go down the path of TV exec being the massive sexist the listeners expect, but then at some point it needs to twist expectations, so maybe it turns out he is being deliberately sexist as a new approach to feminism, and that could result in the woman actually being the old-fashioned sexist.

In general, NJ like a left-field, unexpected or clever twist so that is the angle to look for that a sketch could take.

Dan

Thanks for the reply Dan. I've very recently turned to books to try to learn structure so still quite confused, but replies like this help