Rules for writing a Sitcom
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- Опубликовано: 28 июл 2024
- #FormerNetworkExec #CallMeChato
As promised, here are my rules of sitcom.
00:00 Rambling Intro
04:34 Rules of Sitcom-Location
06:04 Premise
08:21 Distinct Characters
10:31 Distinct Casting
11:24 What is a Sitcom?
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Thanks for all the wonderful comments. Someone already observed when us Tubers avoid STT (Standard Triggering Topics) that real conversations take place in the comments section. So, once again love the fave sitcom suggestions. Some reminded me of shows I watched and forgot to include:
Mary Hartman Mary Hartman (Was addicted to this. Not so much funny as surreal.)
Fernwood Tonight
Bewitched
I Dream of Jeannie
Wonder Years
Red Dwarf
Green Acres
Yes Minister
It's About Time
Gilligan's Island
Two and a Half Men (Guilty pleasure. Seriously huge disturbing laughs)
Here's one I missed. A Ryan Reynolds sitcom. Two Guys and a Girl. Check it out. ruclips.net/video/4Kt6RjuRllk/видео.html
Since you listed Blackadder, Father Ted and Blackadder, may I recommend you spend some time watching Bottom with Rik Mayal and Ade Edmonson. Easily one of my favorite sitcoms.
Thanks for the video. Some smart friends and I discussed the lack of character development. I think our best conclusion was the sitcom was a Joke, and the characters were there to tell the Joke by means of several smaller jokes enhanced by their particular personalities. And we tried to come up with a sitcom that had character development and determined that fell into the realm of Dramedy.
Still Standing?
Faulty Towers
@@mdruane the young ones too
edit: and black books
I really think you could give a couple of breakdowns of individual episodes that we would love to see! Not a great deal of crit on sitcoms on here
I feel like Home Improvement is an underrated premise, being simultaneously a neurotic comedy about a catchphrase-spouting celebrity, a family sitcom about a dumb dad, a slapstick show about a terrible handiman, and a show about a guy who has deep conversations with his worldly neighbor, and it still somehow seems like a singular premise where these different elements interact organically.
It wasn’t a bad show at all, but I didn’t feel like watching it every week. I felt the same way about *Fresh Prince of Belair, Martin,* and *Living Single.* I would also like to hear this channel starts on cable TV sitcoms of that era, and whether any of them live up to the hype.
"My intention is not to turn this video into a lecture."
PLEASE turn this video into a lecture -- or maybe put the occasional one hour long masterclass behind a paywall. I will buy it!
Thank you
I probably would as well.
Mitch has the right idea
Yeah! What this guy said!
Please, make a Master class and take my money!
For the love of Zeus please do this
I love the older sitcoms. They are a great reflection on society depending on which decade they aired with the perfect twist of humor added.
Early MASH is damn funny. It gets awful later, but the early seasons are DA BEST.
And i love your profile picture.
@@davidlacoste thank u 😁 its a classic
The only way I can justify seasons 4 through 11 is by saying that they are the last things Henry Blake saw before he died. Alan Alda’s Hawkeye was not a patch on Donald Sutherland’s in the movie, and when he got political he could be as obnoxious as the meathead if not more so. Larry Gelbart‘s work is aging even worse than Neil Simon’s. I rewatched Tootsie recently and still cannot understand how this was considered worthy of an Academy award.
@@Attmay Ever see the Irrevrent / Maudlin switch on Bender in Futurama?
I wish more human beings understood that the magic happens within rules, strictures, limitations. It's true in life as well as art. Start within the rules and cultural understandings, then creatively take off from there. It's a delightful citizen or artist who knows this well.
So much of this wisdom stretches across most creative fields. Learn your craft BEFORE you try break the rules. Love this channel!
Exactly. It's like I tell other writers, "I learned the rules so I could consciously conceive of why I should break them." :)
This is what we're told in music theory too.
the rules are there to break u
It’s why so much modern art is terrible. Too many artists look down on craft.
"Learn your fundamentals."
Yep, it's everywhere. And for a good reason.
You know what I miss about the sitcoms of yesteryear?
Competent writing, and actually funny jokes.
Also, they joked about a whole lot more.
But it seems as if the world of comedy is slowly turning into the comedic equivalent of drab grey Soviet architecture.
@@007Thanos007
I've always wanted to see a show that is basically MASH set in a Gulag.
Last Man Standing only ended in Jan of 2021. Granted it might have held on for a bit too long, but it's still one of my favorites.
@@007Thanos007 THIS, OMG, THIS!!
I dearly miss an actually funny joke.
“Total freedom does not make for great work - constraints do.” A great piece of wisdom that can be applied to just about any creative endeavour or life situation.
I mean, Just look at friends. Because of costs problems they made a ENTIRE SEASON with only the Basic sets of apartment and coffee. Most of them not even leaving the apartments
I like this. I think it brings a interesting topic to the “water cooler”
We need sitcoms.
We need comedy.
I’m sure we could all think of many funny ideas and situations that sadly couldn’t or wouldn’t be made today.
Unfortunately the "left" owns all "the means of cultural production" and they have no sense of humour. If it's truly funny it will be banned and pushed to the far reaches of the internet. Sometimes there will be a breakthrough, but it will be rare.
A time traveler goes to 1930s Germany in the hopes of getting Hitler into art school in the belief that it will avert WWII, but no one believes him that some shitty artist is going to end up killing millions of people if he doesn't get to be a painter.
You are damn right! It's not normal that nowadays comedy mainly lurking in a shadow in a form of podcast or yt video! The situation feels very artificial.
@@nonamenoname1942 That's because it is artificial. Way too many people get way too upset over stupid shit now, and everytime someone gets upset over something, we need a damn movement with hashtags, flags, and all kinds of other stupid shit.
But, we cannot have comedy any more. Comedy risks giving offense. Someone is always the butt of a joke. In our current hyper-sensitive world, it just won't work. Unless the target of the joke is a majority group (i.e., white males). God forbid you should ever laugh at a minority character.
Overlord DVD is my favorite sitcom. The main character Dicktor Van Doomcock just wants to take over the world. But every week he gets distracted by some piece of genre media that is so awful it can't be ignored. With the help of his two wacky sidekicks and sometimes help from his rotating cast of guest stars, the horrible piece of media is put in its place and Doomcock is ready to go back to planning his domination of earth. Until the next piece of bad media comes along. *sad trombone, wah wah*
i prefer the manga lol
One of my favorite sitcoms was Married With Children. Never failed to crack me.
Jack Kirby, the greatest Comic Artist of all times, in his heyday, drew as many as six comics a month. He simplified his page formatting into six panels, usually joining two to make a five-panel page. EVERY comic used this structure, this pattern, this template.
A sitcom is like that panel layout. Simplify the structure, hang amazing stuff inside the familiar panels. The beauty of the sitcom is _variations on a theme._ The greatest example is probably Green Acres. Every character in that show had a very specific bit they would do. You could say it was the same joke every time. Mr. Haney was a swindler, Mr. Kimble was a scatterbrain, Ralph Monroe was man-crazy. And yet, this show is incredibly watchable, it's the same KIND of comedy every time, but it's always new. Watching something familiar that still surprises, is the art of the sitcom. I know there have been a LOT of trash comedies, the really good sitcom writers were few and far-between, but still, as an art form, it's iterative comedy style really doesn't exist anywhere else.
I was a real stickler for Jack's pencils being inked by Joe Sinnot!
When it was Milgrom or others I felt betrayed...
Love comics.
@@harrisfrankou2368 Yeah, reading "Al Milgrom" in the credits was... not great.
Green Acres was a bizarre show. Yes, it was predictable in the way you’ve mentioned, but otherwise it was a solid half-hour non-sequitur.
@@BillLaBrie Ain't it grand?
@@trublgrl It's funny some scatchy inkers work well...like Klaus Jansen on Frank Miller...
And Bill Sienkewtscz...just does his own thing.
Same with Alex Ross.
But Classically looking greats needed a Joe Sinnot style...or a Joe Rubenstein Bob Layton type.
Deodato Ribic etc same.
Could you imagine Bob Layton on Kirbys FF!!
No disrespect to Joe he was the "Kirby of Inkers"
But Layton on on Man was awesome.
This is one of the more important writing primers I've seen in that the heroes journey and character development are diametrically opposed to Sitcoms (and most writing primers out there is about the heroes journey). That you've explained it has done the advance of human knowledge a great service.
Thank you.
dan Harmon was obsessed with the heroes journey and used a modified version of it to write all of community. you can find videos and podcasts of him talking about it, you should check it out if your interested, he's uh a character lol
@@CallMeChato It's not rly my thing but I am interested in the writing and history, so this is great. 😄
The “hero’s journey“ is the credo of the hack. It’s just another way of projecting the story structure of Star Wars onto everything. It’s just another way of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Joseph Campbell was a huckster and a bigot whose pseudo-philosophical word salad has enabled more bad movies than anybody else since Ed Wood died!
I hated when sitcoms tried to deal with serious issues. I want to laugh when I watch a sitcom.
"Total freedom does not make for great work, constraints do!" Thank you! I've been trying to find a way to say this for a while, it seems like everyone wants to throw out all the constraints, whether it's alignment in Dungeons and Dragons or Tolkien's definition of Middle Earth. Constraints force you to take something other than the path of least resistance, they force you to make interesting choices you wouldn't make in your mundane, real life.
If constraints aren't important, why is Mary Sue a bad character archetype?
Need to read Thomas Sowell - A Conflict of Visions
I used to have a saying. Everyone wants to be Michelangelo, very few want to do the work. I think the way he says it works. I like to point out Jaws as an example. If the shark had worked, we'd probably never have had the great tension we had with the the main trio like we do in the theatrical release, and that's what makes the movie great. The forced constraint of writing around the technology failing, probably created a much better film.
I like "Creativity loves constraints".
@@Rikalonius Your comment on working around limitations leading to greatness reminds me of a scene out the 1953 film "The Wages of Fear". Two teams are driving two trucks over a mountain range and through a jungle to deliver nitroglycerin to an oil well blaze. The cargo of the first truck detonates, but the budget did not allow them to detonate a large amount of explosives in a truck and film it, so the camera is pointing into the cab of the second truck, a flash of light strikes the crew from behind the camera and we see the crew's reaction to what has unfolded in front of them.
Mary sue is a bad character type because It leaves no charscter development nor progress to make. And yet THERE ARE examples of WELL DONE Mary sues. Look at Goku from dragon ball séries. He is the Mary sue clear and transparent, but he is also likable, charismatic and people DO NOT expect character development from him, Just cool fights. The character development comes from the side characters like Bulma yamcha vegeta Gohan and etc.
The problem is that like most stereotypes, Very few people know How to write them in a way that people enjoy. ALL the feminist woke show make Mary sues that lack the charisma necessary to make It enjoyable and by centering everything on the Mary sue without giving the side-characters a chance, the shows are doomed. Just look at Star Wars. It had potencial, but not only Ray was a bad Mary sue, they side-tracked and cornered the OTHER 2 PROTAGONISTS. That was their doom. They end up with a show of a bad character with no charscter development and the developed charscters forgoten on the side
One of my professors in college, who was an expert in all things Shakespeare said that if he were around today (the 90s) the great bard would be writing sitcoms.
I've recently caught a few Taxi reruns that I haven't seen in decades and it's amazing how well organized and written that show was.
The best of MTM did that.
Coca leaves...from South America...Peru, I believe...Southern Peru...'Seventy-four, before the rains.
You're right: the lines hold up even without the visual of Christopher Lloyd at his finest, crumbling, listening to, snorting, and eating a cookie. Man, I miss shows like that.
Taxi did a great many things right. Good and sympathetic characters, good development, and not afraid to do a fantasy episode every now and than.
Love how I, a 90s kid who grew up watching The Nanny with my family, can easily use that show to visualize every point made here. Such a simple and effective structure, I love it.
I love *The Nanny;* it’s like an 80s sitcom without the very special episodes.
Have you seen that one Three's Company episode where someone overhead part of a discussion and misconstrued the situation and then hilarity ensued? It was a great episode! 🤣
I believe that was every episode. :-)
This was a Friends joke. Chandler said something like, "oh, I think this is the episode where there is a misunderstanding."
@@googleislame Chandler references Mr. Furley overhearing something. Similar to that episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy tries to trick Ricky into putting her in the show.
@@shuntguy ruclips.net/video/kwi8mvkPzNs/видео.html
This is why I, despite being a 15-year-old boy, never liked that particular sitcom.
I am reminded how I hated comedies like Mad About You or King of Queens that towards the end of their runs introduced plots which caused the couples to split for a number of episodes before getting them back together at the finale. It violates my prime law - When you put Nick and Nora together never tear them apart.
You are the genius behind Tai Kwan Leap, Chato? My goodness.
Boot to the head.
The thing I miss most about old sitcoms, are the intro songs that explained the entire show setup.
Beverly Hillbillies and Fresh Prince are probably my favorites.
"Lady Godiva....was a freedom fighta....
She didn't care if the whole world looked"
Imagine the She Hulk intro song...
🎵"I am the best around nobody will ever slow me down..."🎵
@@theghostofmaximumvolume3414 Don't forget "Let's talk about me"
@@007Thanos007
Don't you mean the quintessential woman line:
"We need to talk."
The dreaded moment men know we are about to be femsplained.
Perfect Strangers will always be one of my favorite shows of all time.
Loved Frasier.
When my son was a teenager, we weren't getting along as it happens, but we could watch Frasier and share a laugh.
One day, I caught my tough guy son watching Antiques Road Show by himself. Thanks Frasier for a well constructed laugh.
Thank you Sir for your videos.
Informative and humorous.
Nile’s quips were so spicy 😂
Frazier was pretty solid, but I like the Frazier origin better (Cheers.) That show REALLY holds up. Great thing to leave up streaming.
The best bits of antique roadshow are when people come on thinking they have something priceless and it's worth 50p at a car boot sale.
@@slashsigh9600 ruclips.net/video/mg-xmFf_Trc/видео.html&ab_channel=mrbeirut23
The better laugh was brought to real life! Now *that's* a powerful SitCom! xD
Ah Chato..you bring back so many amazing memories. It seems like the golden years of sitcoms has come and gone. I only hope the newbies take the time to learn from the amazing shows of the past. Barney Miller was legendary, Cheers, Night Court, Frazier - elegant and witty, Family ties, Archie Bunker…just so much for the writers today to learn from.
One of my favorites was Hogan's Heroes. Pretty much hit on all your points, interesting location. Good premise, distinct characters and reset itself after every episode.
Oh god yes! I loved Hogan's Heroes. "I know nothing, nothing" 😀
Can't watch it after Auto Focus
Brilliant
Hogan’s Heroes was on when I was eight to 14. I liked it then but over the years started to develop the idea that it was just too silly. Much to my surprise, when I started re-watching on MeTV a few years ago, I realized it was a classic.
I loved Hogan's Heroes. Very underrated. I liked it at the time, but I grew to love it later as I was just a kid when my dad and I would watch it. I never realized how smart it could be at times. Of course, as great as Bob Crane was, it would have never been as good without John Banner and Werner Klemperer playing off him.
So many good ones to choose like Scrubs and Blackadder. Sometimes the most memorable ones are not the funniest episodes. The Scrubs Brendan Fraser episode with the song "Winter" is truly heartbreaking. Blackadders last Ww1 episode is an absolute masterclass in pathos. As Bob Ross said, "Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come".
Married with children!
never got old for me, not even a little bit
I can listen to this stuff for days. Ramble about sitcoms any time you’re stuck for channel ideas. We won’t mind, I promise.
I just got finished rewatching all 12 series (plus movie) of Red Dwarf. A series I watched on PBS all the time as a kid. I even read all the books this time. It ticks all the boxes you mention here, I’m just wondering if it would be considered a high concept idea. Either way, I never get tired of the bunk quarters. 😂
Total high concept and I'm embarrassed I missed it.
Glad to see RD get a nod.I couldn't get my Sci Fi friend to care in the least for it.
@@tim2269 That’s too bad, because it does tackle common sci-fi concepts. And the science is pretty accurate. They do stretch some things for ease of story telling but it’s not completely out of the blue.
Red Dwarf was brilliant. My family watched so much of it that it has become part of us. My oldest kid loved it when he was 2-3 years old so it was easy for us to watch as a relief from Thomas the Tank Engine and other kid favourites. I keep meeting characters in real life that remind me of Rimmer or Lister.
I really didn't like the 7th and 8th seasons (series). I don't know what they were thinking with those. But they managed to get back on track after that.
I always had it in my head that the Frasier creators thought a certain number of Cheers fans wouldn’t take to Frasier as the lead because Frasier was a snobbish and stuffy. And that’s how we got Niles. He humanized Frasier and made him more relatable. Between Niles’s over-the-top stuffiness and Martin’s Joe Sixpack persona, Frasier landing closer to the middle (while still being the snob we knew from Cheers) made him someone the audience could empathize with.
Great video. I loved me some Frasier. I was never a Cheers watcher, but for some reason I really got hooked on Frasier. The banter between Niles and Frasier is great. The retired cop dad with the injury, great. Daphne, the snarky British housekeeper. Great! And, I agree, the dialog was witty and at least had the appearance of intelligence, plus, Kelsey Grammer's delivery and... expansion of the character from Cheers really sold it for me. Thank you for delving into this. I'd love to write a screenplay. I have about a dozen half finished, but you've made me think, maybe I should just work on some 22 minute stories. I know it's not a Sitcom (well maybe it is), but Sealab 2021. I've never seen anyone put so much funny into 12 minutes.
I loved Frasier, but, almost every episode he would be so embarrassingly pompous that I would literally have to get off the couch and leave the living room for a few minutes.
I must be the opposite because I liked *Cheers* but couldn’t get into *Frasier.* Bob Newhart he ain’t.
@@ronstewtsaw That’s what I loved about Frasier - he just couldn’t help himself. He and Niles were incurable snobs and I relished every minute of it!
Coach - "How are you doin' Norm?" Norman - "Cut the small talk and give me a beer" I miss these days. I don't need much exposition to get in the spirit.
"Married with Children" was always my favourite and still is.
How is it not on that list? Those rules apply perfectly to it.
And of course it isn't about character development, you have to end where it started. If you missed an episode or watch them in the wrong order it shouldn't matter (in MWC there were very few exceptions to that, where a story spread to two episodes, but even then you could watch each on its own and be entertained).
About the unique characters: It's important how each individual pair of them will interact, ideally there should always be some kind of clash between them. That way from just e.g. 4 characters one gets 6 unique pairings already. Add just one more and 4 more unique interactions are to be explored.
In the book publishing world, I've heard that writing good short stories gives you the practice you need to write longer stories, novels, book series, etc. Sounds similar to your recommendation about a 22 minute script.
Agree. When I was learning how to write, it helped that my instructor emphasized short story writing. When I got an idea to write a novel, I broke it down by chapter and approached each chapter as if it was its own short story, with each chapter ending on a cliffhanger as a way to make the reader want to turn the page and read the next chapter.
One of the great challenges to writing short stories is it forces you to consider character development within a limited structure.
It’s the same with academic writing: a few short published articles go a long way toward improving a long thesis.
My favorite sitcom of all time is Night Court. I think it's the best sitcom of the 1980s and the only other sitcom that can rival it is WKRP In Cincinnati, which is, in my personal, honest opinion, the best sitcom of the 1970s. Although it technically had started in the year 1986, I think that Married...With Children is the greatest of the 1990s sitcoms. Nothing beat it once the show had really peaked by 1990 and it still dominated until it just burned out in 1997. As far as the 2000s and up, it was all a blur. So many sitcoms came and went that they all blend into each other. Most of the early 21st century had sitcoms that only lasted one season. With some principal exceptions of course. But still, despite so many good ones out there that I have watched, the one that I love even still to this day, is Night Court. John Larroquette as Dan Fielding is the greatest of all time, lol! 😂
Killing Phil (then bringing him back) was a travesty, and making Dan “decent” was comedy murder.
I still think occasionally about the episode of night court with the turtle guy who walked and talked slowly. that was a good bit
@@keithmichael112,
Dan speed reads through his statement for his hot date, only for her to have chosen the guy with _tortoise nervosa_ because “he takes his time.”
@@fuferito a classic
@@keithmichael112 "Tortoise Nervosa". When Roz tapped him on the shoulder as he passed by, _"Hey, Lightnin', where's the fire?"_
Michael J. Fox was brilliant in all his Sitcoms. He is very much missed. Night Court is one of my favourites and diverse without even trying, so was Bernie Miller.
The other night I was watching *The Goonies* on 4K UHD disc since I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, and then I noticed it was the 40th anniversary of this show, so I watched the episode with the actor who played chunk in it. Still holds up pretty well. Chato was wrong, dead wrong, though to say Michael J. Fox, is the only one you remember from this show. Far, far better than that overrated Norman Lear schlock. Steven Keaton would never have walked out on his wife and children the way the meathead did, and that talentless shit Lib hack Rob Reiner could never pull off a role like a Burt Gummer in *Tremors* the way Michael Gross did after this show went off the air.
Don’t take it from me, though. I also prefer *Webster* to *Diff’rent Strokes* simply because that racist buckbreaker Norman Lear had nothing to do with it and because Paramount’s mixed race family show never had a character as singularly repulsive as Sam McKinney. His kidnappers could keep him!
Thank you for clarifying the difference between character development and expansion, I was having trouble with that when you mentioned it in another video. I remember reading a quote from Patrick Stewart where he wondered why he can watch a two hour comedy movie and only get a few mild laughs from it, while a single episode of Cheers would yield him at least two or three loud guffaws. My thought was that it was due to the familiarity we have with sitcom players and the understanding we have of their characters, something much harder to get in a single film.
I grew up in a midwestern town. Shows like Sanford and Son, Good Times, the Jeffersons, Chico and the Man were the only real exposure I had growing up to minority humor and comedy. Fred, Jimmy and Mr Jefferson used to make jokes that used to catch me so off guard that today I consider it such brilliant writing that it will never be equaled and sadly, probably too edgy for our society today.
3rd Rock was Beverly Hillbillies from space.
"Before you break the rules, follow them first."
This is an excellent piece of life advice.
I think I understand now why I so often end up hating movie versions of serialized shows I love. They tend to stick in character development. Things are often fundamentally different at the end of the movie, and it disrupts this permanent setting I liked.
Roger Zelazny wrote some of the best prose in the English language in SF and Fantasy.
Good writing and acting is wonderful. My favorites are Red Dwarf, Father Ted, and the IT Crowd.
I'm interested in the rules.
Another Zelazny fan. He definitely is not known well enough outside SciFi/Fantasy. I was sadden by his passing, definitely my favorite author.
My point was really that good writing is good writing, whatever the genre. For example, Dashiell Hammett is still to be found within the pulp fiction/mystery literary ghetto. Nonetheless, the mini-story of "Flitcraft" to be found in THE MALTESE FALCON is one of the finest philosophical passages I've ever read.
All that being said, the fact that one of the writers of one of the greatest comedy albums ever made, and one of the finest Canadian comedy characters ever (Second only to Zap Rowsdower) Ed Gruberman (Yes, I know about Red Green and The Lodge---which you do not mention, Mr. Chato, although you should---but Ed was forever memorable with only about 10 lines) actually noticed me, is an incredible thrill. Made my month.
Fantastic. I'm definitely a fan boy of Mr. Chato's work.
Zelazny is the finest American prose stylist of the 20th C.
Chronicles of Amber is a favorite of mine. I hope they don’t try to adapt it into a tv show
I love your informative, behind the scenes knowledge. It gives you serious credibility.
This is the best, most unique media criticism I've seen in years because of his credibility. This is incredible content.
Meh .. Knowledge and the insight is valuable, Credibility is just a gift-box.
How wonderful:
1. Learn Your Craft First
2. Learn To Love The Rules
3. Total Freedom Does NOT Make For Great Work
4. Constraints Do.
Bravo and thank you
"I find myself brilliantly amusing." This kind of attitude is actually necessary in making any kind of art that you enjoy, whether it be music, writing, or TV. :)
Sitting on Norm's stool has sold me on your fandom of sitcoms. I've always luv'd and still do sitcoms. Bravo Sir! Thank you for your insights.
Three's company, Newhart, Northern exposure, Larry Sanders, Cheers, Home improvement... I could go on for hours
First year of NOrther Exposure was great.
@@CallMeChato Loved that show! And having first nations actors in it was original.
@@CallMeChato Chato are you the one who put Kids in the hall on air?
@@lunarmodule6419 No but I was an early champion of the group and employed two of them when they had no income.
This was great! Thank you!
I think The Wonder Years was one of the greatest sitcoms ever. When it aired on TV I was about the same age as Kevin and I found the show very relatable. When I re-watched it as an adult (and father) I totally related to the dad. That is some excellent writing.
That’s what’s so fun about growing up and enjoying old favorites-suddenly we can see and appreciate the perspective of the moms and dads, of the arch enemy, or other characters we never resonated with before.
Me as an adult: “You know, King Triton really had a point there. Ariel is 16. What the freak does SHE know about the world?? What a brat…” 😂😂😂
The list of all the sitcoms at the end was literally every one i have ever really liked, especially Keeping Up Appearances.
Don't discount what this man is saying he knows exactly what he is fucking talking about. Thank you for posting this very insightful video
I've always really liked Dad's Army, it has it all;
Location: Warmington-on-Sea.
Although I think probably about 90% was shot inside the church...
Premise: A (mostly) bumbling crew of men unsuitable for front line service engaged in the last line of defence against the might of the German Army.
Distinct Characters: From all walks of life, and all either too old, too stupid, too crooked or physically unfit for service or in a reserve occupation. None of whom would probably associate with one another otherwise.
Distinct Casting: Arthur Lowe - short and round, John Le Mesurier - tall and lean, Ian Lavender - young and awkward, Clive Dunn - old and excitable, Arnold Ridley - Ancient and calm.
And the others are all unique in their own way.
And finally, every episode seemed to decend into complete pandemonium... 😁
Arthur Lowe could get more laughs by adjusting his glasses than any script could convey.
Minor interesting bit of trivia, but Pike takes a great deal of inspiration from 17 year-old Jimmy Perry's own life (joined his local Home Guard at 17, and his mum worried he'd catch cold when out at night, saying that she didn't go quite as far as making him wear a scarf, but it was a close run thing, and in It Ain't Half Hot Mum, another Perry/Croft sitcom, Bdr Solomon come dangerously close to being 20 year old Jimmy Perry after he was called up and posted to an Anti-Aircraft Battery that would be sent to India in 1944, where he was heavily involved in the camp's concert party.
"I find myself brilliantly amusing." Brilliant!
In my opinion, Frasier had the best written dialogue and, well, in general really.
14:45 "Learn to love the rules. Total freedom does not make for great work. Constraints do." Such a simple idea, but so very, very important!
For me, sitcoms and procedurals are alike in writing style. The set up happens, the characters are introduced to the set up, the set up gets a sense of danger and then some miracle payoff happens at the end. The outlines are exactly the same episode to episode which makes them easier to write and follow. The stiff outline is important, The most popular shows (including "reality shows" have very stiff outlines. An example of a stiff outline is the same character shows up exactly two minutes into the show and says the exact same type of joke such as Al Bundy telling his family how his day at the shoe store went.
The stiffer the outline, the less one has to tweak. and the longer it can last. The only changes in Dragnet scripts were the things Officer Smith was doing as a side project and the crime. Everything else was the same. This goes with sitcoms as well including the jokes. If you know 30 fat jokes then you are good for 30 episodes and those jokes will always show up at the exact time in every episode. If you know 30 knock knock jokes, those will show up in the episode at another time although the same time in each episode.
My favorite sitcom was Red Dwarf which was a British sci-fi series.
My job also requires me to serve the morbidly obese, so I understand how Al Bundy feels.
Wow!!! Thank you!!!
I took a full page of tiny notes watching, and I really wish it WERE the full lecture. I hope you sign up to give a MasterClass on this. When you posted the video saying you were going to make this one, I asked: “Can you explain to us what sitcom is ABOUT?” And you did EXACTLY that, at 13:07. Blew my mind! And understanding that really demonstrates for me the nobility of the medium.
Man you triggered so much of good fussy vibes by highlighting all those wonderful sitcoms of my youth given my age is around yours. Those were the gold age of great sitcoms for sure. Even as just a viewer and not some sitcom writer or in the industry, I appreciate your insightful comments and remarks on what makes a good sitcom.
My favorite sitcom is the mostly forgotten "Step By Step"
I started watching Barney Miller recently after remembering it briefly in my childhood but having the ability to watch it now as I’m older. I think one of the things between this and Taxi is how the locations didn’t seem like a comedic type area one would think but it made it work because it drew out the comedy that happens . The interactions between everyone, the leads may be not as foolish and obvious to being a comedian,but they do seem to keep things together. I miss these types of shows and I would rather watch them than a lot of today’s shows. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and the logic behind the rules here. Love this channel.
Thank you. The genius of Barney Miller was that a person would always be brought in against their will (arrested) and so a new story organically unfolded and the tension of the person who was innocent or a liar or whatever just naturally came out as a great story. Then they were gone.
Niles and Frasier's minute differences is where the a lot of the humor between them lies; under stress, Niles becomes more neurotic and Frasier a blowhard, and this is very well represent by the dialogue then wholly delivered by the acting. Somewhat similar conflict progression for Patsy and Edina.
(I am also a huge fan of Frasier and Ab Fab)
Sitcoms were always hit or miss for me, but the ones that hit really hit. I adored Frasier, loved I Love Lucy, strangely enjoyed Married... With Children, and rather liked Cheers from time to time (at least when Coach was in it). There were some British sitcoms, like Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf (yeah, I consider that a sitcom) that I was crazy about. I never quite landed on the Seinfeld train, but I understood the cultural impact it had. Anyway, you probably didn't care to hear all that, but I wanted to show that while I didn't love the format, when they were done well, they could be quite wonderful. I miss when that was the case. Doesn't seem to be true any longer. Oh! Blackadder, too. Your scroll reminded me about it. Loved it.
“Total freedom does not make for great work, constraints do!"
Couldn’t agree more. A game, for example, IS iits rules. The rules-and staying within them-are actually the fun of a game!
Though I loved many on your list, some of my more recent (“recent”) favorites are 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Community, and Arrested Development. I also liked The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt. Night Court, however, was my OG sitcom in the 80’s.
Great discussion of sitcom theory! Super interesting.
These are great. I was going to post them myself but I also wanted to add Scrubs and New Girl to the list.
Night Court! o.o eEp. Forgot that one! It was a regular too! xD
Honestly, this vid felt like I was watching one of those MasterClass episodes like the ad I usually see for Aaron Sorkin’s lecture on how to write a TV episode well. I really enjoyed hearing your insights into how sitcoms are structured and made. I sincerely hope you do more vids like this!
Sitcoms were the mortar of my childhood. From Mash to Seinfeld... there were 10,000 amazing hours of television.
The Picasso-Dali analogy was spot on! How many modern day tv writers think that they can run before they can even walk…
Thanks for the video! Very informative and amusing as ever.
That was the video I'd hoped you'd make. Excellent overview of how a sitcom is supposed to work. Many of the shows on your list were shows I watched regularly. Some of the 60's and 90's sitcoms I watched way back when I find harder going now, or even unwatchable though I never missed seeing them back in the day.
Remember that sometimes these shows have a few minutes trimmed out or are also sped up to fit in more commercials, so you aren't getting the first run experience.
Funny, but last week I went to visit my mom, and she was watching Barney Miller, from the 2970s, and we both sat down watched and laughed.
@@ScottRuggels I watched Barney Miller in first run and I have the first season DVD, that one actually holds up quite well.
@@jcjc4164 I'm 60 years old, so I did see some of these sitcoms in first run, my reaction to seeing some shows years later has nothing to do with run time, more to do with a reaction to a script that aged badly, something I thought was funny as a young person made the older me cringe a bit when seeing them again years later.
I have a degree in VFX and am a writer as well. I have to say that if some of your more recent videos had come out a few years ago they would be tutorials for some of my classes.
Grew up watching That 70's Show, still one of my favorites. Sitcoms are comforting. I typically fall asleep to them because of this! Turn on Family Guy, MASH or Cheers going to bed. I think almost every single human being has a sitcom that they enjoy.
As someone who doesn't have much interest in writing a sitcom, I still found this video quite insightful.
Great primer on sitcoms. I'm going to add The Addams Family and Green Acres to that list. You mentioned Salvador Dali. If he had been born in America he would have written for Green Acres. One of the most surreal sitcoms ever produced by a major network...
Very surreal. Loved it. Missed it from the list. DAmn.
Loved the Doctor series. Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. So glad you mentioned WKRP. I went to TV school because I wanted to be Johnny Fever. School cured me of that in about two months.
Oh, Reginald Perrin. The most comedy in the fewest episodes ever. Have you tried watching the sequel without Reggie? If you haven't, don't.
@@anonygent I didn't get where I am today by watching bad sequels!
@@shuntguy I haven't used that as an excuse for my failures in life... perhaps I should. "Why aren't you successful?" "Too many bad sequels." "Oh."
@@anonygent ruclips.net/video/R5Os_SrLJ0w/видео.html
Thank you for sharing. One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention was how the American version of The Office is in such high demand on Netflix, years after it had been cancelled, that I even heard that Netflix took a dive in profits when they removed The Office from their availability. Although I don't watch TV much anymore, sitcoms are still very dear to my heart. Some of my favorites are Third Rock From the Sun, Married With Children (first few seasons), Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle. There's more but I think I better keep this list short.
It’s like the writers of WKRP got into a time machine, rocketed into the future, watched this video, and travelled back to write! Excellent work!
If you go back and watch the first season of Cheers, it's practically Mamet level writing quality. It sets everything up really quickly. You're in the bar for about two minutes before you figure out the moving parts.
Personally, I loved Newsradio, which had sharp writing and the ensemble cast, but which might have been too hip for its own good.
Yes, the pilot for Cheers was one the best pilots of all time.
I love sitcoms, both old and new. Sitcoms are always my first choice in television viewing. During the pandemic and the summer of madness, I made it a point to watch the works of Norman Lear. I have Hulu just so I can have access to (many of the current) network television sitcoms. (I certainly don't have Hulu for the film library.) I wish I could write my own sitcom and actually get it picked-up by a television network in the US (just so CTV or Global will have to buy the right to air it in Canada).
Interesting and spot on analysis. I love sit coms and really enjoyed Wandavision's homage/parody of classic sitcoms along side its comic book roots.
I just started re-watching the Frasier series on Hulu. What a breath of fresh air. A tour deforce in how to write and develop a quality sitcom.
Thanks Chato this was awesome. I'm gonna make my boys watch this just so I can get across to them the importance of constraints and rules in their writing.
When will Canada have another great sitcom? I miss SCTV, Kids in the Hall, Red Green.. corner gas.. there's room for many.
SCTV, Kids and Red Green were not sitcoms but great sketch shows. Something we excel at.
Canadian television production is too woke now, particularly the CBC
@@CallMeChato Let's write one.
I grew up on the classics from the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's and I loved them. Because you could relate to the characters and see a little bit of yourself in them, and since back in those days (I came up in the 70's and 80's) America had a collective sense of humor? We could laugh at each other and more importantly at ourselves, in the end for it. We were better off for it. My all time favorites are "I Love Lucy", "Taxi", "Sanford and Son" (the "gorilla cookies" line still cracks me up to so much as think about it), "Happy Days", and "The Honeymooners", with an honorable mention to "Married...With Children" and "The Cosby Show". Brilliant writing, relatable characters, and impeccable comedic delivery and timing in all those shows. None of which is extant in what passes for sitcoms these days; modern sitcoms are as offensive as they try to accuse everybody around them of being, because they lack all those elements that made the classics work in exchange for plugging a woke narrative. File under sad but true.
As a child of the 80's and 90's I loved Sitcoms, like you said, they were familiar characters i knew that we would invite into our living rooms during the evening. Why now, Whenever I need just sometime to turn off my brain and relax, I'll turn on an old Sitcom and just enjoy the convo's and laugh.
Thank you. I love hearing theory craft for different arts and this was a great breakdown of sitcoms. I love the organism under attack metaphor and the idea of returning to the stable healthy state makes sense for the needs of an episodic show. Medium affects style - does the shift from TV to streaming explain the shift from sitcom to whatever we have now (comedic serials 🤷)? Is it that TV necessitated keeping the organism steady because there was no guarantee that audiences would see all episodes in order while streaming services make it more difficult to skip episodes or see them out of order? Thank you again for the great content.
Writer's strike was the end of sit-coms and other shows which required, well.... writing. Enter shows that need little to no writing and writers who can't write (reality shows).
I like most sitcoms (guessing that 70s show counts, and if it does it’s probably my favorite from growing up, along with Fresh Prince and Family Matters)
But super agree about Super Store. I work at a grocery store and…it just hit too close to home lol.
"Total freedom does not lead to great work. Constraints do."
I'm stealing this because it's a distillation in two simple sentences of WHY there needs to be creativity, and it needs to be leashed
I don't think of sit-coms as high art, but you made them seem interesting. Also, having gotten back into painting after many years, I was thinking about how important it is to set the scene of the painting, and how difficult that really is - framing, I guess you'd call it. Every part of the picture has to be considered if the painting is going to be worth the dozens or hundreds of hours you are going to devote to it. Thus, I appreciated your reference to Picasso and Dali for my reason. If you have your scene and characters right, it will be much easier to develop! Thanks!
I agree with your conclusions Colin, but your opening statement caught my attention. Some sitcom episodes are at least moderately-high art. I think that if you create something so funny that people talk about it for decades (WKRP Thanksgiving episode), that has to be high art.
@@ronstewtsaw hahah. I think a few Seinfeld episodes might qualify too!
I would love to see a video on your thoughts about how an aspiring writer could break into the business. From what I’ve heard it’s near impossible to get a screenplay looked at unless you know someone
Hollywood wants you to be successful locally. Write a cheap film and get it done wherever you are. Take it to festivals. That is the best way.
@@CallMeChato thanks!
@@CallMeChato You continue to amaze me. Who on youtube takes the time to help someone out like that. Bless you Chato.
@@staciepaul I am the best.
@@CallMeChato I don't know a former network executive, that has hackintosh videos, that is better than you on RUclips!
Thank you for this clear, brilliant summation of the construction of sitcoms. Really amazing to hear how it all works.
A show that really understood the format was the severely underrated Titus.
Have you watched Dan Harmon's Community show? I'd love to get your thoughts on how he succeeded or played with the sitcom formula and tropes - apparently often to the chagrin of network executives, but often in a very millenial-friendly meta-breaking manner.
Dan Harmon's "Story Wheel" is a great model for writing in any dramatic format -- comedy or drama, TV or feature films. I find it even more useful than Campbell's Hero's Journey.
Community is definitely the 'high-concept' type of sitcom. It also doesn't specifically re-set 100% (but then again neither does Friends, or Frasier to name two examples) and is just all over the place stylistically with homages and complete left-field ideas. I like the 4th wall stuff in that it's not often done directly in a crass Deadpool / She-Hulk talking TO the audience way. most of the time it's very subtly thrown in.
Just a shame that the Harmon situation deteriorated and led to his removal and a very shaky 'gas-leak' season, before the two added-on seasons, which missed a lot of the dynamics of the full cast.
It's also an incredibly depressing reverse hero's journey for Jeff. He starts out as the guy a lot of men aspire to be like, but know they're really not - and that he's not really a good guy, to being in a situation most people watching know they are, but really don't want to be....
As he becomes more and more 'real' he becomes more mundane; and the show loses the spark that drives it to a large extent. Tho he's still the central character, it's a character that seems to end in entropy by the end of S.6.
@@OsellaSquadraCorse thanks for the insightful write-up, can agree
II really liked sitcoms in the 80s and 90s and into the 00s. I'm not sure any good sitcoms were created after 2010, maybe Brooklyn 99 but they eventually floundered. I fear The Big Bang Theory dealt sitcoms as a whole a mortal wound.
Community and Happy Endings. Yeah, I know Community started in Sept of 09, but it's close enough to 2010 that I counted it.
People throw the term "underrated" around too much... but that word perfectly describes Happy Endings.
Yes to Brooklyn 99. But I would include How I Met Your Mother as a more recent sitcom. Big Bang started out ok (you might say with a bang) but I think it ran out of steam around season 9 or 10. Plus I came to loathe Sheldon as a character. And I started out mildly disliking him.
I came across this channel just last week and thought, "this guy looks just like one of the Frantics. I used to love Four on the Floor back in the day."
Turns out there was a really good reason.
Another ballpark hitter. Awesome as always Chato.
Nick at Nite changed my life in the 90s.
This reminds me of a thing I heard once. "If you want to break a tradition properly you have to understand why we have it first."
Me and my gf have been watching the original addams family show. It's such a kind heartwarming show, it's so refreshing to see such a gentle loving family. What a contrast to currant day nihilism.
Former radio show producer here (albeit, nowhere near as storied and successful as our gracious Mr. Chato). I contend that the best comedy sketch shows and performers (SNL, The Frantics, and Monty Python, among many others) are all absolute masters at the one-act sitcom.
Every element described in this video as an essential ingredient for the conventional three- or four-act sitcom is equally present for almost every successful comedy sketch. The main difference is, you typically have to establish the location, the premise, and the distinct characters (with distinct casting) within the very first lines.
The dilemma vector is almost always inherent to the premise, even if the premise sometimes takes a minute to be revealed. With the evocative setting, dilemma-rich premise, and distinct casting and characters established, the sketch quickly launches into disturbing the equilibrium and then unleashing characters on that disturbance. As with the traditional sitcom episode, the sketch ends when that disturbance is resolved. The main difference between sketch comedy and traditional sitcoms is that the sketch's resolution does not have to return to the same equilibrium as it had at the start, although it certainly can and recurring sketches usually will.
An extremely short list of the very best examples of sketch-as-one-act-sitcom could include:
"The Cheese Shop," Monty Python
"Last Will and Temperament," Frantic Times
"Celebrity Jeopardy," Saturday Night Live
"Papyrus," Saturday Night Live
"Argument Clinic," Monty Python
"Some Weather," The Frantics
WOW. This is the best video on how to write sitcoms on the whole internet. I'm a TV writer, and this is better than many, many books and courses out there.
Excellant advice. This should be a lecture. Would add that Andy Horton’s book “Writing the character centered screenplay “ would be a valuable addition to any sitcom writer’s library.
It feels like the "22 minuet monologue in the elevator" idea was a similar basis to the "Free Churro" episode of Bojack Horsemen, and as its one of the best episodes of the series, the writers nailed it.
You just made me realise I’ve watched way too much television.
Great video 👍
My top 10 sickcoms in no particular order:
1)ALF
2)The Muppet Show
3)Family Members
4)The Cosby Show
5)I Dream of Jeaney
6)Frazier
7)South Park
8)Red Dwarf
9)Mama's Family
10)Animaniacs