T.W.
Tuesday 7th February 2012 9:24am [Edited]
15,786 posts
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..