The Serious Business of Laughter

October 2006

By Bob Jenkins

With improv, sketch shows, “mockumentaries” and variations on the
classic sitcom, comedy is on the rise in Europe.

After languishing in the shadow of unscripted reality shows for the
past few years, prime-time comedy is making a comeback on European schedules.
But like many a returning exile, the genre must adapt to changing audience
tastes and viewing habits.

SevenOne International, the distribution arm of
Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 Group, represents a variety of shows with a comedic
twist. “Comedy is a very big part of our business now,” says Jens Richter,
SevenOne’s managing director. “In fact, I would estimate that around 75 percent
of the formats we currently have in distribution are comedy formats.” Richter is
especially proud of two: Schiller Strasse [Schiller Street] and Clever! Both provide an excellent
illustration of how European comedy is finding its way back into the schedules.

Schiller Street is not only an hour in length,
compared to the traditional 30 minutes, but it mixes scripted drama and comic
improvisation. The show works like this: all the action takes place in the
living room of a single woman who lives in the eponymous Schiller Street. Other characters come and go,
but there are never more than five members of the cast on stage at any one
time. When actors take the stage they only know the general topic of the
episode, they have no script, and are unaware of what has happened during that
episode prior to their entry, or in the interim since they were last on stage.
They do, however, have an earpiece through which they receive periodic
instructions from the director—instructions that only they can hear. When
actors receive such a prompt, their actions obviously take the rest of the cast
by surprise, and they all have to improvise accordingly.

Schiller Street is not only an intriguing idea
but, Richter explains, “it is very successful domestically, where for the last
two and a half years it has played in prime time, drawing an audience share
ranging between 17 and 24 percent. It has also been very successful
internationally, having sold as a format to more than 15 countries since its
international launch at MIPTV 2005.”

The other format causing hearts to flutter at
SevenOne is Clever!, which
offers another very unusual guise for comedy—science education. The show
consists of a presenter who introduces four or five scientific topics. Two
celebrities are on hand who compete against each other to correctly explain the
phenomena. Then a madcap comedian and scientist “extraordinaire,” Dr.
Know-It-All, is summoned to settle the bet by conducting an experiment directly
before a live audience.

The mixing of comedy with other genres is something
that Kevin Linehan, the commissioning editor of entertainment and music at the
Irish state broadcaster RTÉ has also noticed. “We have a series called Des
Bishop’s Work Experience that mixes humor and reality as comic Des Bishop visits disadvantaged
[neighborhoods] and picks four local people with whom to work on a stand-up
routine built around the good points and the bad points of living in that
particular area,” explains Linehan. “The show culminates with the four putting
on a stand-up act.”

Of course, comedy has always existed as an element
of other genres. “We produce around 50 TV movies a year, of which approximately
50 percent are comedies,” says SevenOne’s Richter. “And this is a big
turnaround from two or three years ago, when all German TV movies were either
crime dramas or heavy drama dealing with death and disease.” Germany is also
currently falling head over heals in love with … well, love, in the shape of
the telenovela. And here, too, Richter says, the presence of a comic element is
very important. Sat.1 recently had a huge hit with a telenovela called Verliebt
In Berlin [That’s
Life], and
Richter is convinced that “its broad streak of humor was a very important
element of its success.”

NO LAUGHING MATTER

For years, the staple TV form of comedy was the sitcom. RTÉ’s Linehan
sees signs that “the dear old sitcom is making a comeback,” pointing to his own
channel’s Killinaskully. Mario Stylianides, the editor of comedy at the British production
company Hat Trick, isn’t so sure. “I think reality TV has possibly killed off
the traditional family sitcom, because we are forever seeing real families,
warts and all, on reality TV,” he says. “So it becomes difficult to make a
sitcom that is both believable and funny.” Which is odd coming from a man who
is producing a pilot for the new comedy, Too Much Too Young, for BBC One, that sounds
suspiciously like a family sitcom. “It is about a family,” admits Stylianides,
“but much more real.” Too Much Too Young features a family of five in which the parents are
unusually close in age to their children because they had the children when
they themselves were still in their teens. Stylianides was attracted to the
project “because the writer has done some very surreal stuff for Channel 4, as
well as some EastEnders episodes.” But most important, the writer is basing Too Much Too Young on real-life experience. He has
three children and had the first one at the age of 17.

What makes a comedy project attractive is an
interesting question. Most agree that, as RTÉ’s Linehan explains, “good writing
is the bedrock of great comedy,” and that casting is also vital, but after that
it really comes down to instinct. And there is considerable variation in the
ratio between the number of comedies developed and those that make it to air.
At RTL Television in Germany, as Holger Andersen, the senior VP of comedy,
explains, the “wastage rate” is “very low, and luckily most of our comedies
give us cause to smile.”

But Keld Reinicke, the head of programming at
Denmark’s TV2 Zulu, puts the success rate at “around one in ten,” while RTÉ’s
Linehan estimates that only about one in five development projects finally make
it into Irish living rooms. Although he does caution that “it is difficult to
come up with a meaningful figure for ‘wastage,’ as projects come to us in
wildly differing degrees of development.”

But Hat Trick’s Stylianides sees comedy as a risky
proposition. “There are a number of factors that combine to make comedy a
high-risk genre,” he asserts. “For a start, it is relatively expensive to
produce, and there are more opportunities to fail. You can have a great script
but a dud cast, or you can have a great script and a great cast, but a director
that just doesn’t see it. But perhaps,” he adds, “the biggest single problem
with comedy is the lack of any middle ground with audiences. They will watch a
mediocre drama and think it’s OK, and possibly stay with it. But with comedy,
if they don’t get it immediately they walk away.” Stylianides believes that
this is a major factor behind the emergence of nonlinear storytelling in
comedies such as My Name Is Earl and Everybody Hates Chris, and also behind the revival of
another comedy staple from the past—the sketch show.

MAKE ’EM LAUGH

This is a trend also noted by Annabel Jones, the managing director of
the Endemol U.K. subsidiary Zeppotron. “Last year, all five U.K. terrestrial
channels carried a sketch show,” Jones says. She ascribes this revival to the
impact of Little Britain, a huge hit on the BBC. The show has been so successful that there
are rumors that the creators, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, are in discussions
with Simon Fuller about the possibility of developing a U.S. version.

Shane Murphy, the head of acquisitions and
development at Fremantle International Distribution, sees another reason for
the return of the sketch show. “Some comedy genres tend to travel much better
than others, and I would identify the sketch show as top of that list,” says
Murphy. He believes there are a number of reasons for this. “Firstly, sketches
tend to deal with situations familiar to everyone, and so they have a much
wider appeal, but even where that isn’t the case, and the sketch is dealing
with something that isn’t so digestible by an international audience, it will
still only last between 60 and 90 seconds and then it’s gone, hopefully before
the audience has!”

Murphy continues, “Physical comedy also travels
well, but, frankly, isn’t that easy to do.”

One company exploiting the international potential
of clip shows is France’s CALT, C’est A La Télé, with Camera Café, which airs on M6. And CALT’s
president, Jean-Yves Robin, makes no secret of why the company went down the
clip road. “Since the ’90s, French sitcoms simply haven’t sold internationally.
So, CALT took the decision to look at clip programming, which led us to produce
the hugely successful Camera Café, and we are very hopeful that we will see this success
repeated with our new show, Kaamelott.” Like Camera Café, Kaamelott airs on M6; it is described by Robin as “medieval
fiction shot in HD, with humor, audacity and an unexpected tone.”

But Camera Café is quite an act to follow. It has
sold to more than 25 territories worldwide. Robin ascribes this success to “the
show’s universal themes. It deals with the world of work, with love,
friendship, all the things that people everywhere can relate to.”

Wayne Garvie, BBC Worldwide’s director of content
and production, echoes this sentiment. “It is clear that what works for comedy
these days are themes to which everyone can relate, such as love, marriage and
work. Ultimately, all modern comedies are variations on these themes.” And
Garvie is fired up by the potential for comedy. “It is a key part of our
scripted strategy because great comedy can really deliver in the digital age,
especially for a younger audience.”

Hat Trick’s Stylianides agrees: “I think it is
important that producers understand that these days they are not just producing
for television, but also for iPod, VOD and for websites such as YouTube.”

Nor should one overlook comedy’s potential when it
comes to DVD, says Jane Dockery, Target Entertainment’s director of sales. “The
big value for us lies in the U.K. DVD market, which can offer huge returns for
a hit show.” Dockery points out that the DVDs of shows like Little Britain, Wallace & Gromit and The Catherine Tate Show sold incredibly well in the U.K.
“Inter-nationally, comedy is much more of a risk,” she says. “However, we now
represent [comedians such as] Rowan Atkinson and Eddie Izzard, and Steve
Coogan’s Alan Partridge series, so comedy is definitely of increasing importance to us.”

FremantleMedia’s Murphy also acknowledges the
importance of comedy for his company, stemming in large part from the heritage
of FremantleMedia’s production company talkbackTHAMES, which provides shows
such as Benny Hill,
Mr. Bean, Three’s
a Crowd and Man
About the House. “Over
the past five to seven years, comedy has been in decline,” says Murphy. “Now,
as the dominance of reality wanes, there is definitely something of a comedy
renaissance.”

REALITY CHECK

Comedy shows are making their way into European schedules not only
because the reality genre is starting to show signs of wear and tear, but also
because the sale of comedy formats is on the rise. Both RTL’s Andersen and TV2
Zulu’s Reinicke agree on the importance of local talent to the success of
comedy. “Only locally produced sitcoms or comedy shows are successful,” insists
Andersen. Reinicke agrees, “it is always the local comedians and local humor
that give you the hits,” although he goes on to confess, “and it is the best
British and U.S. shows that give you the street cred—so we need both.”

In addition to fueling Europe’s comedy renaissance,
the sale of formats may be having another, more subtle impact on the laughing
game, according to SevenOne’s Richter. “I think that the growth in the trade of
formats is tending to produce a more homogenized comedy,” he says. “These days,
when a producer is developing a comedy, he is always thinking about possible
format deals, and I think it is inevitable that this exchange of ideas will, to
a certain extent, lead to a diluting of the local flavor of comedy.” He does
admit, however, that “we have comedy that is culturally so very German, or else
so very topical, that we don’t even bother to offer it internationally.”

Zeppotron has just debuted such a show, Eight
out of Ten Cats,
on Channel 4, where it drew audiences of up to 3.9 million, representing a
20-percent share. While a show like Eight out of Ten Cats won’t always travel well in its
original version, it is selling well as a format. Zeppotron’s Jones has struck
a number of deals in Europe and Australasia. She is hopeful that further format
deals will follow shortly in the U.S. and India. She also hopes to generate the
same kind of sales with The Law of the Playground, which was scheduled right after Eight
out of Ten Cats
on Friday evenings on Channel 4 and which, by the third episode, was gathering
3.5 million viewers and an 18-percent share. Zeppotron also has a new panel
show in development for BBC One, and an hour-long comedy drama in development
for Channel 4.

There is universal agreement that there is no magic
formula for success—especially not international success—with
comedy. As Jones puts it, “keeping things tight helps, a good cast helps, but
ultimately I don’t think you can make people ‘laugh by numbers.’” But, given
that so many distributors are finding comedy to be an increasingly important
genre, everyone is trying their luck at finding that next elusive Little
Britain or The
Office that will
have them laughing all the way to the bank.

Target is trying its luck with its new series for
BBC Three, Little Miss Jocelyn, starring Jocelyn Jee Esien, who enjoyed huge success on
another BBC comedy, 3 Non-Blondes.

In addition to Schiller Street and Clever!, SevenOne also has high hopes for
Clueless Genius,
in which a panel of comics are asked a question that is impossible to answer,
and so have to improvise a witty response, and for Schmetterlinge im Bauch (Love Is in the Air) the telenovela that replaced Verliebt
In Berlin on
Sat.1 in August, and which Richter describes as “almost more of a romantic
comedy than a true telenovela.”

FremantleMedia is debuting a new “mocumentary,” All
Aussie Adventures,
featuring a very poor Crocodile Dundee-like character taking “Z-list”
celebrities on tours of the Australian outback. Murphy hopes All Aussie
Adventures will
do for the celebrity/reality genre what The Office did for the fly-on-the-wall
genre. And in keeping with Murphy’s belief in the itinerant nature of the
sketch show, That Mitchell and Webb Look, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb in their
own sketches, will sit alongside a new season of Comedy Inc. and a Peter Davidson sitcom, The
Complete Guide to Parenting, to complete the FremantleMedia comedy lineup.

In addition to Too Much Too Young, Hat Trick is looking to dial up
success with a new E4 show, Fonejacker, in which, as Stylianides describes, two bright
young guys make spoof telephone calls aided by visual-effects elements,
including animation.

“We have a lot of great comedy in our portfolio at
the moment, including, of course, The Office and Little Britain,” says BBC Worldwide’s Garvie.
But he is particularly excited by the potential for a new offering from BBC
Manchester, I’m with Stupid, which is based around the life of a very clever, if
somewhat cruel, man who happens to be in a wheelchair. “It is already creating
a lot of interest in the U.S.,” says Garvie.

Comedy, it seems, is back in favor, and this time,
it’s serious!