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Funny business. British comedy writing is in crisis, but why?

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Last week, I wrote about the key differences between copywriting and 'writing'. And while I attempted to make the challenges inherent in copywriting clear, I wouldn't say the profession is in crisis. Unlike the art of writing comedy. Quite when the crisis started, it’s hard to say. That, I suppose, is the nature of a crisis. But somewhere between the last episode of 'Extras' and the first episode of 'White Van Man', TV comedy stopped being funny.

There have been glimmers of real genius like ‘Peep Show’, ‘The Inbetweeners’ and the current run of 'Modern Life Is Goodish' on Dave - but they are merely the diamonds in the manure.

There was a time when the presence of actor Kevin Eldon was enough to guarantee a programme’s pedigree. However, when he eventually bagged his own headline show on BBC2 last Spring, that seemed an awfully distant past. It was nicely offbeat, quite inventive even, but it just wasn't funny enough.

Last week saw the final episode of 'The IT Crowd' - an underrated sit-com from Graham Linehan - creator of Father Ted. A shame, because it was a genuinely enjoyable show. But perhaps 'enjoyable' isn't enough. I hate to say it, but place 'The IT Crowd' alongside 'Veep' (a fantastic American show, with Julia Louis Dreyfus from Seinfeld) - and the quality gap is marked. For almost a decade, American comedy writing has blossomed while our has withered. Where now is the frantic, character-driven fun of the 'Fast Show' or the platinum sketches of 'Big Train'? Has the threshold dipped so low, we are forced to accept the woeful 'Big School' on primetime BBC1?

I completely accept that humour, like music, is subjective. We don’t all laugh at the same things. For instance, to some benighted souls 'The Simpsons' is just a kids’ cartoon. But comedy isn’t as arbitrary as we imagine. Anyone claiming ‘My Family’ is more amusing than ‘Fawlty Towers’ would rightly be regarded as a person who didn’t quite ‘get it’. Which is why I recently made a point of canvassing reactions on social media as 'Big School' aired and, while not a scientific survey, found it impossible to locate a single person enjoying it. Indeed, “Who commissions this stuff?” was the general consensus. Perhaps commissioning editors would do well to undertake similar audience research before spending buckets on this or the absolute nadir - Ben Elton's horrific 'The Wright Way' (arguably the worst 'comedy' show of the last 20 years).

Of course, my harsh criticism is all very well (and I would be extremely cautious if asked to write comedy, as it is such a tall order), but if there is a crisis, what exactly is going wrong?

Put simply, scripts which would never have progressed beyond a commissioner’s desk a decade ago, are now being green lit for production. This can only be through laziness, incompetence or nepotism – and I suspect the latter. It is so easy for a section of the creative media – whether that is radio, copywriting or TV comedy – to become a hermetically sealed community whose residents are too close to one another, too self-regarding and too lacking in objectivity. Such a community rapidly becomes resistant to both constructive criticism and talented newcomers. It also becomes rather powerful and as such, is handed almost unrestrained freedom to produce pretty much anything. You can see this process in the diminishing work of Ricky Gervais. Undeniably a skilled and sometimes brilliant writer and performer, the obvious flair Gervais demonstrated in the aforementioned 'Extras' and 'The Office' (when he still had to accept  interventions from producers) stands in stark contrast to the desperately flawed ‘Life Is Short’ and worrying 'Derek' – made when his star was so ascendant, the BBC and Channel 4 were just grateful he’d come back from LA to spend some time with them.

So as Shane Allen, Head of Comedy at the BBC, considers new comic offerings, I’d make this appeal to him:

Shane. It doesn’t matter who’s in it, who wrote it, whether it’s trendy, or where it came from. Before you commission it, just  make sure it’s funny.
After all, that’s your job.

Magnus Shaw is a copywriter, blogger and broadcaster

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