Universally Challenged

Just a basic outline for a sitcom.

An untidy small office on the second floor of the University of Hartlepool. A man is sprawled over his desk asleep. Another Man enters and wakes him with a start.

Pete - Urrrrh

Dave - Asleep on the job again.

Pete - Its better than being asleep with the job.

Dave - Have you seen my lecture notes?

Dave looks through his desk piled high with papers.

Pete - Just read them your usual, that's what you do every year.

Dave - No no, there's a rumour they are doing spot checks now. Anyway I'm sick of the kids mouthing the words back at me.

Pete - Whoever it is will find lots of spots here, its like a testing centre for clearasil.

Pete picks up a coffee cup and drinks the contents

Pete - Thats better... whatever it was.

Pete stretches and lights a cigarette

Dave - Pete your going to set the sprinklers off again.

Pete - I could do with a shower

Dave - Of that there is no doubt, but a damp Pete wondering the corridors all day is not a pretty site.

Pete - You know when I first started this job I had such hopes, such dreams. I was going to foster a love of literature in the hearts of our youth.Instead I sit there everyday reading great chunks of the stuff like it was the phone book. The kids sit there tweeting and tapping, picking their noses and scratching their arses. Thats what its like teaching the Itchy and Scratchy generation, the attention spans of a goldfish.

Dave - Well it might help if they could hear you. If you lifted your head off the desk occasionally.

Pete - I can't bear to look at them, with all their youth and futures ahead of them. They make me sick, little bastards.

Dave - but Pete you could at least agree to be in the same room as them

Pete - not bloody likely, that's taking it to far.

The scene shifts to two ajoining lecture rooms.

Room One

Dave - I am dave Hodges, you can call me Dave and I will be overseeing module one of this Humanities course, Elizabeth Gaskill genius or irrevelance.

Dave looks at a pretty girl in the front row.

Dave - My door is always open, any time of day....

Room Two

Pete - Hello,

Pete coughs his guts up

Pete - As I was saying, this is Humanties 201 Was Dickens really Victorian?

Pete mutters - Oh Jesus

A young lad half raises his hand

Young Lad- Pete is this exam tested or judged on coursework

Pete - Firstly don't call me Pete, I am Mr Stark. Secondly don't ask questions you will make yourself look foolish in front of your little friends.

A young girl hesitantly raise her arm

Pete - yes mimsey girl with no colour coordination.

Young Girl - I'm in the wrong room

Pete - Well you'd better bugger off then, off you pop!

Girl rushes out of the room.

Pete under his breath - Lucky escape.

Room 1

Dave - Of course Gaskill is all about sex. Repressed sexual feelings seep through her work.

Students look uncomfortable

Dave - I will be proving this to you over the next few weeks.

Room 2

A student raises his arm

Pete - yes skinny youth with the palor of an old dishrag

Student - Mr Stark isn't Dickens all about sexual repression?

Pete - What? Who told you that? No it is not. Dickens was at it like nines, he had his wife and mistress in the same house. It was like a Feydeau farce there was that was that much bed hopping going on. No Dickens is about money, or the lack of it, he was a jobbing writer banging em out to pay the rent and get the cat some kippers. Sex! everything doesn't have to be about sex you horrible spotty oik. Come back to me when you've done it. Anyone else?

Sometime later in Pete's office with two students.

Pete - Now Miss Summer's if I can just read a little of your magnum opus here.
Da ting about dicken's is he is well funny innit and that Macawber fella made me LOL a lot. Do we think this going down the right pathway?

Miss Summers - Well yea and that it was well funny although a bit old speak like.

Pete - Yes well... and turning to you Mr Dale. You really seem to have given me a summary of Dicken's financial records whilst writing Oliver Twist.

Mr dale - Well yes, I'm only on this course as a bridge to accounting 101. I really don't want my student loan getting out of hand and Dad says...

Pete - yes quite.. well if you go and read up on his tax records during Bleak Expectations, and Miss Summers if you...well just read something really. I look forward to seeing you both just before your passing out ceremony. Goodbye

A light tap of the door

Pete - Enter!

A small mousy girl enters and sits nervously on a chair.

Pete - Ah Miss Khan. I've looked at your work up to now. You have a real grasp of the subject. Your reading of Little Dorritt shows a real understanding of the text, you have come up with many relevant and interesting ideas. You understand how personal this work was to Dickens, on the whole this is an excellent piece of work.

Miss Khan - Thank you.

Pete - Is there anything you want to ask me?

Miss Khan - I'm afraid I don't know if its worth asking anything. My family are keen that I move courses to something more practical, with more of a future.

Pete - Oh I see, what do they have in mind for you.

Miss Khan - something accountancy based.

Pete - Well yes, it is an expensive business taking degrees now, I know that the humanities is not as desirable a subject as it was. I must tell you, you have great ability and empathy for this subject. Is it what you want to do?

Miss Khan - Yes it is, I love it.

Pete - It is not for me to say of course, and it must be a practical decision in this day and age, but if you decide to continue I will help as much as I can. You can see me anytime, just leave a note at reception and I will contact you. Anytime you want...

Miss Khan - thank you Mr Stark.

Pete - No problem at all, do some thinking. It is not always bad to follow your heart, you may regret it later if you don't. Let me know what you decide anyway, and I wish you the best in whatever you do, I'm sure it will be excellent whatever that is.

Miss Khan whispers - Thank you

She leaves the room quietly. Pete lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair.

University canteen. Brian sits on his own with a plate of shepherds pie going cold in front of him. He has a bent back paperback in front of him and he peers at it through a pair of half moon glasses. Other tutors are talking away in other parts of the canteen. Students look over at Pete nudging each other and laughing.

Brian - Ah Pete there you are, I tried your office and thought you may be here.

Pete - Yes well it is lunch, if you can call smash congealing over dog food a meal.

Brian - Yes quite. Now listen...

Brian looks at Pete

Brian - Pete you really do look a mess, what is that on your tie.

Pete looks down - beef stew I think, although it may be apple strudel

Brian - God Pete this isn't the go getting executive look we're going for. I mean where do you get woollen ties in this day and age, have you a time machine?

Pete - Army and navy on Chapel street. Very reasonable and lasts forever. This tie could save my life.

Brian - What!

Pete - If ever I'm trapped unable to access sustenance I can simply eat the tie. It has representatives of every major food group in it and would prove invaluable in a famine.

Brian - Well Pete, I have had some concerns raised about your teaching methods.

Pete - Oh yes?

Brian - Some of the students feel... well I too feel... well some concerns have been raised.

Pete - Little quisling bastards.

Brian - Listen Pete times have changed, we offer a service now, if that service is felt to be lacking in value, well you can see what I mean.

Pete - Oh I see what you mean, I should let them call me Pete and see if anyone wants to go for a drink and a grope.

Brian - That is an outrageous statement Pete. Listen I can only protect you for so long. They are gunning for you, they don't want your type of lecture anymore. They want power point presentations, group work....

Pete - Listen if they want power... what?

Brian - Power point

Pete - God help us

Brian - Listen I've warned you Pete, but as I said, I can only cover you for so long. I know you're a great lecturer but you have to move with the times. And for God's sake smarten up and get rid of that tie!

Brian walks off

Pete returns to his book and mutters - Yes I'll pop down to tie wrack and get one with POW! written on it like yours. The barbarians are at the gate and they are wearing they're Christmas presents.

Added some more to this to get the feel I'm going for, don't know if its worth carrying on with, kind of like it, kind of don't.

I hate giving negative feedback but I have to be honest and say that this doesn't light up and that for me makes it is more like drama than comedy.
I was given good advice myself on these boards and if you think about it, it's fairly obvious you have to grab the reader and the viewer straight away and show clearly that they are viewing a comedy.
Give your all on the first ten pages, open it up as something that is funny and has direction.
I feel a bit of a cheat repeating Lazzards advice, but I'm following it so its my honest opinion.

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ October 8 2012, 11:26 AM BST

I hate giving negative feedback but I have to be honest and say that this doesn't light up and that for me makes it is more like drama than comedy.
I was given good advice myself on these boards and if you think about it, it's fairly obvious you have to grab the reader and the viewer straight away and show clearly that they are viewing a comedy.
Give your all on the first ten pages, open it up as something that is funny and has direction.
I feel a bit of a cheat repeating Lazzards advice, but I'm following it so its my honest opinion.

View original

That's much appreciated. I think your right, although I don't think its going to be a straight comedy, which admittedly I originally had in mind. I need to mull it over, but I might go for an hour long format and head down the comedy drama format. Thanks Teddy, much appreciated.

There was a sitcom about university lecturers called Campus that bombed last year, so the chances of a production company opting to try another one in the near future are slim.

Pete seems a well drawn miserable character who'd work at least as well in a different setting: several of his one liners are worth salvaging for that. Nothing else about it in its current form grabbed me to be honest: the student interaction seem particularly forced (OK, apart from the Dickens exchange which I liked) and I didn't get the impression there was a hilarious plot twist just around the corner.

Quote: enigmatic @ October 8 2012, 11:54 AM BST

There was a sitcom about university lecturers called Campus that bombed last year, so the chances of a production company opting to try another one in the near future are slim.

Pete seems a well drawn miserable character who'd work at least as well in a different setting: several of his one liners are worth salvaging for that. Nothing else about it in its current form grabbed me to be honest: the student interaction seem particularly forced (OK, apart from the Dickens exchange which I liked) and I didn't get the impression there was a hilarious plot twist just around the corner.

View original

Again I think your right. I was writing under the impression it was a sitcm, but I don't think it is now that I've worked it out in my head. The interaction should improve when I work on it a bit more, it was the tone I was bothered about, and I think thanks to you and Teddy's feedback I can see where I was subconsciously going. Thanks Enigmatic I'm a bit thick sometimes and can't see whats in front of my nose.

Describing the student as "one with the pallor of a dishrag" =funny.

Quote: Pingl @ October 8 2012, 12:03 PM BST

Again I think your right. I was writing under the impression it was a sitcm, but I don't think it is now that I've worked it out in my head. The interaction should improve when I work on it a bit more, it was the tone I was bothered about, and I think thanks to you and Teddy's feedback I can see where I was subconsciously going. Thanks Enigmatic I'm a bit thick sometimes and can't see whats in front of my nose.

View original

I don't know about you but I'd struggle to create a drama out of something I initially considered a sitcom, it depends on how thoroughly you've fleshed out your characters away from this script. I agree with the above posters on this piece, but if you still feel like there's potential in the characters you've come up with I'd just focus on giving them more tighter scenes and less forced dialogue rather than deciding it is a straight drama after all. If you can't make it work as a comedy personally I'd sack it off as I fear when writing it you'll still be considering certain elements of it as comedic.

As somebody mentioned earlier, Campus flopped. But more recently, there has been Fresh Meat.

Funnily enough, I was at a TV seminar a couple of years back and bods from BBC, ITV, C4, etc were all basically saying, "Please wannabe writers, pleeeeeeease nooooooo more uni sitcoms. (mostly from graduates) We get 1000s, and they all revolve around students and their keerrrrrrrr-aaaaaazy lives."

And then we got Campus and Fresh Meat.

I think the only way you'll get a (yet another) Uni sitcom made is if you put a fresh spin on it.

Also...

Why don't you call it University Challenged?

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I've been working a lot on this the last few days, I know where I'm going now. I don't want to write a straight sitcom, nothing to broad, but neither do I see it as a drama. It is not soley set in a University but that is a component as Pete works there. There are major characters and situations outside, for instance Pete's mother and brother. I'm not ready to post anymore yet, I tend to write on the hoof and finesse it afterwards. The title refers to the fact Pete can't adjust to his whole life not just his job. I know I never made this clear, but I needed to figure out the tone I wanted. Thanks again, I'll post some more when I'm further down the line.

I have to say I think a programme based on Pete's mid-life crisis would be a whole lot more interesting than one tied to his workplace.

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The thing about Campus is that afaik it wasn't about students at all, but (like the script here) about university lecturers, who are in reality pretty generic middle class middle aged clever people with fairly boring conflicts workplace conflicts (try making funding crises, pitching to academic journals or disagreements over dissertations on dialectical materialism funny). Likewise, there's only room for so many comedies about white van men, dinnerladies or (even decades later) department stores once someone's already extracted the stereotypes and situation-based jokes out of those situations.

On the other hand Fresh Meat is about students, which as its creators rightly point out have been the subject of surprisingly little broadcast comedy. And they're the opposite of generic middle class middle aged clever people: an assorted mix of people from various backgrounds with little life experience and a painful but forgivable lack of self awareness. And they don't mind laughing at themselves and watch TV all day...

Unlike a particular profession, student life is a stock comedy situation that is familiar to a large swathe of society and doesn't get old. If the BBC really didn't want to see pitches about student life I can only assume it's because they were written by students and most of them massively sucked? I guess that's where you commission a couple of writers with a great sitcom behind them...

Or maybe we've misunderstood and the Beeb thought a sitcom about students was too original an idea. Another sitcom about a slightly dysfunctional nuclear family anyone?

You might guess from this extended rationalization/rant that I'm finishing a sitcom script about students. It has its problems; lack of ways to put an original spin on the situation isn't one of them.

If the BBC really didn't want to see pitches about student life I can only assume it's because they were written by students and most of them massively sucked?

You are quite right, yes. They said that most scripts were simply transcripts of "last Saturday's kerrrraaaazy night out where lots of funny things happened whilst drunk."
Sadly (or rather, thank God) crazy nights out don't equate to a sitcom.

Hey, you could cross genres and have a sitcom about a student who is part of a slightly dysfunctional nuclear family.

Another short scene

A sitting room, very old fashioned and twee except for a massive flat screen TV. An elderly lady sits in an armchair with her feet up on a pouf and nursing a gin and tonic. The gin bottle is on a side table with some unopened polish and a clean cloth.

Pete - Mum have you seen my bag?

Mum - Bag? what kind of man has a bag?

Pete - A man who carries lots of important papers around.

Mum - Your Dad never had a bag. He had a case. He was a man's man.

Pete - He was an accountant who wore a suit everyday of his life.

Mum- He did, he had beautiful fingernails and shaved twice a day. You never shave.

Pete - Mother I have a Beard

Mum - Oh I know covering up your lovely face. Ooh you were a bonny baby, people used to stop me in the street and coo over you. Not like your brother he was an ugly bugger. You know the neighbour used to baby sit him all the time, even when I weren't going out. I thought she must really love our Donald. Turns out she was putting him in the garden to keep the birds off her tomatoes. I told him, Donald Love, why don't you grow a beard, cover up that weak chin, might help you meet a nice girl.

Pete - Mother lots of babies are ugly at first and Donald is the fussiest, prissiest man on God's good earth.

Mum - Well he gets that from his Dad, never went out without a fresh hankie and polished shoes. He was quite a catch in his day your Dad

Pete - I know Mum you've shown me the photos.

Mum - I can't understand it, I said to Irene, two grown up sons both living at home. Irene I said , both unmarried, I mean is that normal. I told her, I work my fingers to the bone, never stop looking after them, I should be taking it easy now, playing with my Grandchildren.

Pete - Mother you never leave that chair except for Bingo and going to Irene's and you hate children.

Mum - Not other peoples, that go home after an hour I don't. When are you going to fly the nest Pete?

Pete - Mum this is my house, you and Donald moved in when your house was declared unfit for human habitation.

Mum - Bollocks, there was nothing wrong with that house! It were a lovely little semi, your Dad worked his fingers to the bone doing it up.

Pete - Yes Mum that's why they condemned it. The man from the council said all the electrics were held together by sticky tape and the unfinished extension had caused subsidence.

Mum - What did he know, shifty bugger. I saw him looking through my dirty smalls.

Pete - He couldn't help it they kept floating around his legs because the kitchen was flooded.

Mum - It was a faulty washing machine

Pete - It was a blocked drain that Dad had split with a sledgehammer.

Mum - Yes and that's what put him in hospital, God bless his soul. He was never the same man again.

Pete - Mum, the Doctor had told you both his DIY days were over, sledgehammers and colostomy bags do not mix.

Mum - Yes well... Of course if you don't want me and Donald here... Irene's always saying how nice it is at Sleepy Shores.

Pete - Ah yes sleepy shores, a riot of karaoke and ninety miles away from the sea.

Mum - Oh the foods lovely, Irene says they have a Sheppard's pie to die for.

Pete - Die of would be more apt.

Mum - and they have liver and bacon every second Tuesday lunch time.

Pete - Mum didn't Irene loose her sense of taste after that business with the disabled scooter, an Alsatian and that chap from save the children.

Mum - No. She can still taste, just can't smell anything anymore. That's why she'll come round here now. She always used to say there was a funny odour in this house, a cross between ajax and wee. I said to her it isn't me Irene, I can't remember the number times I've told the boys to shake, but you know they never listen.... I said to her you should see the state of the toilet seat

There's lots of funny and interesting dialogue here but to be honest it's not telling a story, so it's not doing what you want it to.

It is two people having a conversation that tells the reader lots of funny things, about the two and their lives, but it doesn't tell of a specific storyline from an episode.

I have often had similar issues myself which is why I am currently re-reading everything I have on story-structure and I can honestly say it's been of massive help to me.

Quote: Die Hard @ October 15 2012, 9:28 PM BST

There's lots of funny and interesting dialogue here but to be honest it's not telling a story, so it's not doing what you want it to.

It is two people having a conversation that tells the reader lots of funny things, about the two and their lives, but it doesn't tell of a specific storyline from an episode.

I have often had similar issues myself which is why I am currently re-reading everything I have on story-structure and I can honestly say it's been of massive help to me.

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I know what you mean, structure isn't my strong point, this is the opening episode and as such an introduction to the main protagonists. My major worry now is with the Mother, is she to broad? Donald the other brother is a nervous character, probably gay but not explicitly so, and I'm working on interaction between him and the Mother at the mo. I'm really just fleshing out the characters, I tend to just write and see what happens, worry about structure and plot when I have a clear idea who I'm dealing with. Anywaythat's enough babbling from me, thanks for taking the time to read it.