Sitcom is short for Situation comedy (duh) the characteristics of the genre is that the situation is always fixed and the comedy bit is pretty self explanatory. I think the best bit about a sitcom is the way the characters can develop and the way in which the situation is used to drive the comedy a sketch show has to be funny in 30 seconds or the sketch is boring where as in a sitcom you could have 30 seconds of silence and that would be funny (The Royale Family). A characteristic of sitcom from the 70s and 80s was laughter tracks (Only Fools and Horses, Fawlty Towers) this is something that has become un-cool to use in modern sitcom (The Office, Phoenix Nights) the thing I think has become cool in sitcom is the elaborate situations we now see sitcoms based in smoking rooms (the smoking room) research labs . A characteristic of most of the characters from the shows I have already listed is the illusions of grandeur on the part of the main character, Basil Fawlty thinks that his hotel is on the cusp of the upper class, the same for Brian Potter in Phoenix Nights, with David Brent his illusion is that he is liked and this is something that made me fall in love with The Office as soon as I saw it.
The script I have written is meant to be a pilot for a mini series which would build on the characters relation ships with each other plus when writing it Liam and myself felt like there was a structure to an episode of one day so the next episode would be another day where in the morining he sets himself up for something to happen in the night. This is something that I will be working on now the production is over and by the end of the summer I will hopefully have 2 more episodes written.
