Blackadder producer John Lloyd hits out at BBC commissioning
Celebrated comedy producer John Lloyd has strongly criticised the modern BBC's comedy producing and commissioning structures.
Speaking last night, Lloyd said that executives now are not experts, but have backgrounds in "scheduling, marketing and car parking" rather than comedy.
"TV used to be world beating," he said. "We used to be brilliant at it and we're not anymore."
With titles including The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Blackadder and Not The Nine O'Clock News under his belt, he explained: "Comedy is a disaster on television, and it is more acute in comedy than anything else because so few people know how to do it. Few people know how, consistently, to produce comedy."
Speaking at the launch of a new series of Sky Arts' The South Bank Show, one episode of which is dedicated to his own career, Lloyd also took time to criticise the politically-correct "tokenism" of the BBC's recent edict to have at least one female guest on every episode of its panel shows, "just because she's a woman".
He said: "It's insulting to everybody and not good for the programming. Half the stand-ups are now women and that is because it's what the people want, what the audiences want, and telly as ever is miles behind what is going on in the rest of the world.
"But creativity will find a way round the train crash that is the modern TV commissioning system, which is a thoroughgoing disaster," the Telegraph reports
Lloyd also expressed fear for the future of the BBC, saying: "What will sink the corporation is nothing to do with whether people trust it, the licence fee. Nobody gives two pennies' worth about the licence fee - it's tiny.
"But they really care if the comedy isn't funny. If it isn't, they won't go there anymore and that is what will sink the corporation. Everyone will be jolly sorry when there is no BBC anymore. I personally am going to leave the country."
Lloyd told how experienced producers with track records of comedy hits were being forced to "beg" for commissions alongside "any wanker who's flown in from Middlesbrough who says 'I've got 3,000 hits on YouTube with my animation'".
He explained: "There is another problem at controller level, which is frustrating. The difficulty is at producer level because they are talking to a commissioner who is not an expert.
"Most comedy commissioners have never done five minutes of stand-up, couldn't write a sitcom, have never written a funny line but they are in the department and it's their job to decide what the people will see.
"When [commissioners] see something they like they then go to the channel controller who is suddenly expected to be an expert on arts, documentaries, drama, comedy, cookery and everything else.
"It's like you go this person who is in charge, and he or she is expected to diagnose your illness, fix your motor car, advise on the architecture of your kitchen extension and a thousand other things.
"It's completely absurd and no-one in the system - if they've got any sanity - is happy. The controllers are sitting there all day terrified because there's going to come a subject about which they do not understand and do not like and they are expected to give an opinion on it."
John Lloyd highlighted Sky for praise, noting they understood they only needed to "find good people at producer level and give them a chance to get it right by learning on the job".
He concluded that "I am speaking for tens of thousands of people in the industry who are too frightened to speak out because their jobs depends on it."
Asked at the same event about continued rumours about a revival of 1980s sitcom Blackadder (pictured above), he described the series as "difficult to top", adding: "For Christ's sake there is a whole universe out there. Does everything have to be a retread of something else?"
The South Bank Show focusing on John Lloyd will be shown at 9:30pm on Thursday 22nd May, with contributions from Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson.