Will the audience sitcom ever return?
Multi-camera, studio sitcoms have fallen out of favour. Will they ever be back in vogue? I ask a lot of questions and deliver very few answers...
Back in 2012 the BBC ran a writing competition called ‘Laugh Track’ which was looking for the next big audience sitcom. It was when Miranda was riding high in the ratings and multi-camera sitcoms seemed to be coming back in vogue again? Maybe?
I did reasonably well in the competition with a studio sitcom called ‘Am Dram’ about an amateur theatre company and their feud with a karate club who share the same town hall. I was in the final 20 and the final 8. I’m not sure who actually won. I don’t think any of the scripts were taken forward for further development. But the fact they were running the competition at all made it feel as though audience sitcoms were back on the table after falling out of favour around the millennium.
But since then, there has been no big resurgence. It’s been slim pickings for audience sitcoms on British TV with the only two currently in production being Mrs Brown’s Boys which is set to record another series next year after years of Christmas specials - and Not Going Out which is due to record season 14 in 2025. Are there any I’ve missed? I’m struggling to think of any more. Let me know if one springs to mind.
Kate & Koji, an audience sitcom written by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin ran for 2 seasons on ITV between 2020 and 2022 but did not get recommissioned because of a drop in ratings.
Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow (which I was lucky enough to have a small role in) ran for 3 seasons between 2016 and 2020 but the BBC announced last year that it would not be recommissioned.
In the late 90s-early 2000s there was a big shift to single-camera sitcoms like The Royle Family, The Office, Spaced and Phoenix Nights. These were shows that filmed on location or on a set with no audience, often out of script-order. They looked slick and felt very fresh. Studio sitcoms rehearsed like plays and were performed mostly in script-order in front of a live audience.
There are some interesting hybrid cases. I’m Alan Partridge filmed in front of a live audience but utilised some single camera filming and lighting techniques and steadicam giving it a low-key authentic feel. There’s a lovely blog about it here.
In its later seasons Still Open All Hours recorded on a set in a studio but without an audience. The recording was then shown to an audience and their laughter recorded for broadcast.
Similarly, Tracey Ullman’s Show (a sketch show I worked on) was all filmed on location- but the recordings were then screened at the Radio Theatre in front of an audience whose laughter was recorded for broadcast.
Nevertheless, despite these few outliers, once single-camera shows took over, the prevailing wind was that multi-camera audience sitcoms felt a bit dated. Some writers and performers managed the transition seamlessly. Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge went from audience shows like Knowing Me, Knowing You to non-audience shows like This Time with Alan Partridge and they both work brilliantly. The League of Gentlemen had an audience for their first two seasons which reflected the live act they started out as. Then they dropped the audience in the third season and Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith went on to create Psychoville and Inside No 9. Two fantastic and gorgeously filmic single-camera shows.
But if you try to pitch an audience sitcom from scratch today it feels like you’re trying to publish an illuminated manuscript on a Kindle. You’re going completely against the tide.
Does it have to be this way? Whenever I see an article about audience sitcoms, it’s always framed as a competition. ‘Which is better? Single camera or multi-camera?’ But why is it a competition? I would argue that they’re just completely different beasts. It’s like pitting soap operas against cop shows. They’re both dramas but they’re not really trying to do the same thing. Yes, single-camera and multi-camera shows are both comedies, but they come from completely different traditions. Single-camera sitcoms are taking their cue from film, multi-camera sitcoms have a theatrical tradition.
I’ve been lucky enough to both work on and be in the audience for a number of audience sitcoms and the atmosphere is absolutely electric. The oft-repeated complaint of ‘canned laughter’ is mostly spurious. It’s not canned; that’s a real live audience you’re hearing and, yes, they were laughing that much. It’s really exciting watching a TV show come together in front of your eyes and studio audiences love it. Between scene recordings on Upstart Crow, Ben Elton would chat to the audience about the tradition of multi-camera sitcoms and how it’s a unique hybrid of theatre and television.
So I don’t think it should be a competition. But unfortunately, it’s a competition to get anything made at the moment. It’s a rough time for the TV industry:
UK TV production sector income falls by £400m as programming budgets cut
Survive until 2025: British TV and film workers battle a jobs crisis
And particularly for comedy
Top producers and broadcasters come together to discuss the current state of the genre and what can be done to ensure the laughs keep on coming
Comedy is seen as risky. And risky projects are the first to be dropped when budgets are cut. When money is tight, you need something you can be sure will be a hit. And sitcoms are incredibly divisive. Audiences don’t react with such fervour and fury when they don’t enjoy a drama. Disliking a comedy seems to produce much more extreme reactions. And in the age of social media, the reviews come in as the show is going out- before you’ve even reached the finale of the first episode. So it’s understandable that producers, channels and commissioners are a bit wary when it comes to comedy. It really is so hard to get right. And when you get it wrong, audiences react strongly.
But, despite that, every comedy commissioning brief seems to be saying ‘we want BIG funny comedies packed with lots of jokes.’ And whenever I read that I do find myself thinking ‘that’s what studio sitcoms are really good at’. Could we make a few of those? Or one? I’m not saying they’re better than single-camera sitcoms, just different. It would be great if we had a TV landscape that had room for both.
But so much TV at the moment seems to be either ultra-low budget or incredibly expensive prestige programming. I don’t think sitcoms comfortably fit into either category. They’re not cheap-as-chips reality shows, quizzes or panel games. But they’re equally not huge high-end dramas expected to compete visually with Hollywood. They’re mid-range and there doesn’t seem to be much of that type of programming at the moment. In fact, earlier this month, the head of PACT said UK broadcasting chiefs were ‘callous and cloth-eared’ for publicly proclaiming the death of mid-budget shows.
But I really believe the risk is worth it. Whenever there’s a Reddit thread asking for the best British TV shows of all time, most of the top answers are sitcoms. Closely followed by sketch shows. But comedy completely eclipses drama and documentary.
The live comedy circuit in the UK is full of new exciting acts. Surely there’s a way of capturing that fizzy live atmosphere for TV? No-one thinks the audience laughter on Live at the Apollo is distracting or fake. I understand that there’s a fourth wall in sitcom which modern audiences feel is broken by the sound of an audience, but still. Surely the right script and production can overcome this misgiving? I like to think so, anyway.
In one of his books of essays, Stephen Fry tells a story about an argument with a friend in which his friend insisted there was no audience laughter on Fawlty Towers. They had to go and buy a Fawlty Towers VHS to settle the argument. There is, of course, audience laughter on Fawlty Towers. But if you’re wrapped up in the show and laughing as well, that laughter isn’t annoying. In fact, it isn’t even noticeable. If you’re not laughing with the show, the sound of an audience of people bursting their sides with laughter rankles. Again, we’re back to comedy stirring far stronger negative reactions than drama when it doesn’t chime with a viewer.
Some of the best British sitcoms of all time were filmed with a live audience and they didn’t feel distracting, whacky, too bright, over-the-top or ‘fake’ (some of the criticisms levelled at multi-camera sitcoms today). But now that people think of sitcoms as slick looking, moodily lit, single camera programmes, can that genie ever be put back in the bottle?
So my answer to ‘will the audience sitcom ever return?’ is… I don’t know. Maybe? I really hope someone comes along with a really fresh new script which reinvigorates the studio sitcom completely and makes it feel new and vibrant again.
Actually, I’ve got a really good script about an amateur theatre company if any producers want to get in touch…