It didn’t really dawn on me until reading Becker’s post on Miranda: British comedy takes so many forms. In two hours yesterday afternoon, we saw four different kinds of comedic formats. In the same amount of time on NBC’s Thursday night comedy, we’d typically see a cinema verite/mocumentary and a single-cam. I can’t think of something like Stewart Lee’s… on network (NBC, CBS, ABC) at all, unless you count the stand-up bits on Seinfeld, which would be a stretch.
Each of the US networks seems to have their comedy format of choice: NBC does CV/mocumentaries, CBS does multi-cams, and Fox and ABC have their single-cams. Obviously there are exceptions to that very broad generalization, but those are the formats that stick out to me. All of the shows we watched yesterday came from a BBC channel, and a couple comfortably shifted from a lower channel to BBC1 or BBC2, so obviously the BBC is seeking to be innovative and to expand its broad-spectrum programming with the number of comedy formats. I find that very interesting and admirable.
I went to radiotimes.com to see what kinds of programs there were programmed around some of the BBC’s comedies, to see if a British audience ever experiences a potpourri of comedic forms the way we did yesterday. Obviously they seek to spread out their programming, but I’m pretty sure Becker said that they either do or had done some kind of comedy night on one of the channels.
Since Twenty Twelve is on right now, I decided to look at that specifically. It airs on Friday night at 10PM and this week is preceded by Brick By Brick: Rebuilding Our Past, a show about disassembling and rebuilding historical houses (which sounds like a hoot and a half to me, although I doubt that’s the intention). It is followed by QI XL, which is a quiz show where Stephen Fry asks celebrities questions and “awards points for the most interesting answers.” It sounds like it could be funny, but isn’t a scripted comedy like the ones we saw. So, the short answer seems to be that comedy is generally spread out with everything else.
When I went to the BBC’s website to look up info on some of the shows I was seeing, I went to the Comedy page and saw they had broken down the comedies into categories:
While I understand that genre and form are two different things, I still thought it was really interesting that they broke their scheduling down like that, and into more categories that I would have expected. I thought that what we saw yesterday was an interesting mix, but to think that there’s even more – enough to split “music” into its own separate comedy category – is mind boggling. I realize that these shows are split among the BBC family of channels, but it’s crazy to me that the same outlet is producing so much different and successful content. The BBC is known over here for The Office, but it seems like it would be hard to peg it the way I did
I have two major questions coming out of this brief research: (1) Does the variety of formats and subgenres just within Comedy mean that the BBC is using its money well? Does having so many formats mean that there’s not only programming, but COMEDY programming for everyone? (2) Is there value to the mixed schedule when it comes to comedy? Can we appreciate the different forms more when we spread out the laughs and have something funny to look forward to on different days? Is the US idea of “comedy night done right” better? Why?
This is a really great post, Brenna. Before I get to your possibly-hypothetical-but-I’m-going-to-take-them-literal questions at the end of your post, I want to touch on one thing about “Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.” The show was actually by far and away my least favorite of the four we watched yesterday, but I don’t think it was out of lack of familiarity with the form. It’s style actually REALLY reminded me of Comedy Central’s “Important Things with Demetri Martin.” Martin would pick a topic for the week’s show (power, games, brains, even chairs) and would perform stand up intertwined with sketches. If I remember correctly, “Important Things” had more sketches than Lee’s show, which may be why I liked it better. Or it was just more amusing since I never saw Martin lay on the floor making the same joke for four minutes that seemed like an eternity.
But I digress, I’m going to avoid your first question because I feel like that is a senior thesis topic. However, I really enjoy your second question about the mixed schedule vs. the American comedy nights. While I am obviously biased toward the US style, I could see where the mixed schedule would be advantageous. When I watch NBC on Thursday night (yes, I admit it, I watch that crappy network [My name is Chris, and I have a problem]) I could see how I sink into a rhythm and don’t necessarily give credit to the later shows because I’m no longer engaged (which I guess could just be because NBC sucks). If the US had a mixed schedule, I could see myself enjoying comedy a little more and maybe giving it more respect.