(Yes, this is schoolwork. Wonderful, glorious schoolwork. )
The sitcom has been around since the golden era of radio, and yet, as an art form, it’s never gotten much respect. People look down at it as one of the lowest forms of television, despite the fact that over the years, sitcoms have consistently been some of the view audience’s favorite shows, and the shows that touch them the most deeply on a personal level.
And whenever there is a cultural juggernaut like Friends or Cheers, pundits scratch their heads and wonder what makes this particular sitcom different from all the others. In this essay, I will attempt to answer that question with what I believe to be the secrets of making a really good sitcom.
The first and most important ingredient is the characters. People might watch an episode for the premise, but they come back for the characters. The characters need to be founded, understandable stereotypes that either already exist or are easily conveyed with casting, costume, and action. Ideally the viewer should be able to get the basic idea of the character just by looking at them. And while this might seem limiting, there are actually a lot more stereotypes to choose from than most people think. When you bring up sitcom stereotypes, people will think of ones like Short Tempered Boss, Wacky Neighbor, Unrealistically Hot Mom, and so on. But what about the Know It All At Work? Or the Funny (that’s funny, not “funny”) Uncle? Or the Nerdy Kid? How about the Chick Who Has No Idea How Hot She Is? Or the Aging Swingers? Or even that old standby, the Snobby British Couple?
Any writer sufficiently literate in the genre could come up with dozens more. And remember, these are only the foundations of the characters, not their totality. A starting point rather than the finish line. Once you have chosen your stereotype, you can then add the details that make your Sleazy Lawyer different from all the others.
Most importantly, the characters have to be likable. That doesn’t mean they have to be a bunch of cookie-cutter Mouseketeers, though. A fairly wide variety of characters can be likable as long as the writers understand that even the less-nice characters have to operate within certain moral boundaries.
Which brings me to the next key ingredient, which is heart. Think of this as the editorial voice of the show. The show itself must be gentle, caring, and warm. No matter how outrageous or edgy a show is, it has to have a moral center that defines the line between edgy and too far, and that demonstrates that the show cares about the characters as much as it wants the audience to care about them.
Only then will the show engender the kind of trust in the audience that lets people really connect with the show on an emotional level, and make them lifelong fans who watch the show not just to be entertained but to spend time with the characters they love.
Once you have those fundamentals down, then you can worry about making it all funny. People will watch a show with likable, warm characters and mediocre jokes long before they will watch a show with loathsome, cold characters and very funny jokes. Wit is very important, of course. People tune in to sitcoms to laugh, after all.
But if they can’t stand the characters or the show seems callous and cruel, they will not tune in for long.
Once you know you can write funny jokes for warm and likable characters, then you can worry about petty details like the premise. People, mostly Hollywood (or rather, Burbank) types, like to think that premise is the key to a good sitcom because they like to thing that the whole thing can be reduced to formula, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The massively successful sitcoms of the past owed very little of their success to their premises. all had very simple, easy to understand premises that sound ridiculous when stated, like “a suburban family” or “the people who work in this particular office” or “what goes on in this bar”. Nothing fancy, nothing splashy, nothing that makes you sit up and say “By jove, that’s a show I want to see!”.
In fact, being premise-heavy can doom a show. Having your show be about an alien or a kid who’s a robot or a bunch of astronauts severely limits the kinds of stories you can tell while automatically making the situation (and quite likely, the characters) less relatable. That’s a very big barrier to have to overcome in terms of connecting with your audience. You are basically betting that you are so good at the other aspects of sitcom writing that it will overcome that barrier, and that’s just stacking the deck against yourself.
The only important thing about the premise of your sitcom (besides whether it gets the pilot made) is whether it is open-ended or closed. Ideally, it should be open-ended enough to allow for a steady stream of colorful and memorable characters who can deliver the kind of comedy that won’t make sense coming from one of your regular characters. This keeps the show fresh while both allowing the writers the freedom to do nearly any sort of humour they like while also giving you the chance to incorporate very funny character actors and actresses who would not be suited for inclusion as a regular character but who shine like diamonds in a limited role.
If you are lucky, through this process you will develop a small number of recurring characters that can appear once or twice a season and give the fans something to wonder about. Will my favorite recurring character be in this episode?
Therefore, premises like “life in a bar” or “what happens with this squad of detectives” are to be favored over relatively closed ones like “this suburban family”.
Obviously, no essay of this sort could hope to be exhaustive. There are so many other aspects of making a successful sitcom that they could probably fill a whole series of books.
But I think if you have good characters that people like being around, a warm and gentle heart, reasonably funny writing, and a premise that doesn’t get in the way, you will do just fine.