Last week QI and Blackadder producer John Lloyd claimed interfering TV executives were ruining British comedy.
He said he despaired of the modern commissioning process where office-bound execs insist on meddling with scripts when they should be putting their faith in talent.
His comments echoed a recent speech by former BBC factual production controller Tom Archer, who said commissioners were an "uncreative crust".
Of course Lloyd is right. But it's only once you've been through the process that you realise just how destructive that interference really is.
My sitcom was picked up in 2010 for a pilot by Danny Cohen, at the time BBC3 controller, after he saw it performed at a live reading - Martin Freeman, Simon Day, Una Stubbs were all in the cast. As a writer I was unspeakably happy. And so I should have been. It was a great script. And then ... it got handed over to BBC in-house comedy ... oh dear.
So there I was ... sat in a comedy exec's office. My pilot was to begin shooting in a few days' time and I was worried it no longer resembled the show it was meant to be. The sitcom was about a northern pub. A carvery on a Sunday lunchtime. The twist was that you never saw the bar, you just went from table to table where different groups of people had different problems.
But suddenly it was nothing to do with me any more. I felt like a spare part while decisions were being made without me. It had been youthed-up, dumbed-down, two episodes had been merged into one, characters had been removed because they were deemed "not part of the BBC3 demographic" and one producer actually wrote a few bits himself. Oh, and now you always saw the bar.
Back in the room, the eyes of the exec went wide. An idea! He touched his nose with a finger. And spoke:
Him: "You know what's really popular right now?"
(A fearful silence from me)
Him: "Vampires!" (his hands make an "offering" gesture)
Me: "Right..."
Him: "Do you think we could bring in a supernatural element?"
Me: "It's a pub."
I knew at that point that not only was my show doomed, but that I never wanted to work in TV ever again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/30/tv-commissioning-sitcoms
Be careful what you wish for........
