What we’re looking for:

Sitcoms that can be staged.

If you find you’ve written ‘EXT. OXFORD ST.  NIGHT The Harrier jump jet lands on the talking pig.’ you’re not writing for us.  Think John Godber.  Simple staging, minimal costume and lighting changes etc. Entire episodes of Men Behaving Badly used just two sets: a bedroom and a front room. The humour sprang from brilliantly realised characters, rather than a dazzling variety of locations.

Another thing to remember about live sitcom is that while you blithely  write ‘we see the note on the table.  We pick out the words ‘Dear John, I am so sorry...’  What an audience actually sees is a table with a piece of paper on it.  AND NOTHING ELSE. And even that only applies to the people at the front. Those at the back see a table.  Don’t write anything that relies on close-ups.  You’re aiming ultimately for your work to be filmed, of course you are, but initially you have to accept that your work is being showcased LIVE.  Grasp that and welcome to the top 2% of entries.

Sitcoms that are only 15 minutes long.

Industry Producers have specifically requested that we keep individual sitcoms to no longer than 15 minutes. This may not sound like much, but it can be done; the winning writer from 2007 is now in discussions with Geoff Posner’s Pozzitive Productions.  To attract people of that calibre we need to offer them the chance to sample as many scripts as possible. More sitcoms equals less time.  It’s vital, too, not to underwrite.  If you submit a script that is only 10 minutes long the audience will feel cheated because the other 3 scripts it sees that evening will set up expectations.  Yours will feel somehow ‘wrong’.

Sitcoms that have series potential -ie a minimum of 6 episodes

No-one is going to cast something and then build a lot of expensive sets unless there’s some mileage in it.  Look at your sitcom.  Does it have series potential?   Is it really just a sketch or are there at least 6 episodes that you can think of using these characters and these sets?

Sitcom with no extraneous characters

It’s so easy to  write ‘Enter Robin Hood with 5 of his (non-speaking) merry men.’  It’s practically impossible to cast it.  Our actors look on this as a showcase too.  Why would they bother trekking out to the West End to say...nothing?  Better to write ‘Enter Robin Hood with Friar Tuck.  They are in the middle of a furious argument.’  Now you’ve got a character with attitude.  Actors love playing those.

Another thing to beware of is having too many characters.  You’ve only got 15 minutes.  Do you want to give us 10 characters of whom we learn very little, or 5 characters we get to know well?

No Children and no pets (talking or otherwise)

I hope this is self-explanatory.

No awkward props

With sex and death being two  comic obsessions it’s natural that a lot of scripts feature beds and coffins.  These are really bad news.  A bed has to be stored in the wings and then Stage-Management have to carry it on. Your actors in the bed scene are either naked or in pyjamas/nightdress,so you can’t use them in the next scene because while the audience sits and watches the bed being laboriously carried offstage they’re frantically changing into their day clothes in the wings.  Only there’s no room to change because they’re fighting for space with a bloody great bed.

If you write a scene with an actor in a coffin you have to make or hire (and subsequently store) it. Before your scene can start you have to carry it onstage unoccupied (too heavy otherwise), balance it on two trestles (you won’t see inside it if it’s on the stage floor) angle it so the audience can look inside, and now finally get the actor inside the coffin.  Only you won’t find an actor who wants to play a dead body (it’s a showcase for him, too, remember?) and even if you did you’ve have to find one who won’t blink/sneeze/cough/twitch for 15 minutes. If he so much as flutters an eyelid the audience will stop watching your living, breathing characters and focus entirely on him to see if he does it again. At the end of the scene the audience has to sit impatiently while you get your actor out of the coffin, carry it offstage (where there’s no room to store it) get Stage-Management to come back for the trestles etc, etc.  All this is dead time.  You’ve got 15 minutes, don’t eat them up with scene changes.

Keep the focus on the characters and the dialogue.  One of the best scripts we’ve been sent is about 2 people in a flat.  It’s about their odd couple relationship, not their surroundings.

A catalyst

Also known as an inciting incident a catalyst is something that sets the ball rolling for this week’s episode.  If you don’t have a catalyst you probably don’t have a plot.  If you don’t have a plot we don’t have a reason for wanting to find out what happens next. Too many entries consist of a group of broadly similar people sitting around aimlessly exchanging jokes.  The plot doesn’t have to be huge (a meteor on collision course with the earth, for example) it can be fairly trivial,  but you’d be well advised to make sure that it’s there.  It will give your sitcom the drive and momentum that the audience has been trained to expect by all the other sitcoms they’ve watched. 

Of course all this will be self-evident if you..

Watch Sitcoms.

Too many entries turn up written by people who seem (bizarrely) to have never seen a sitcom. There are plenty of transcribed sitcoms that you can read (for nothing) on the internet.   You’ll find several at  Drews Script O Rama.  The whole of Frasier or Will and Grace, can be found online for absolutely nothing.

Or why not see a sitcom being performed live?  That way you’ll find out the kind of stuff that is being commissioned right now.  You’ll see how few sets are used, how many jokes per minute are expected, and you’ll know not to write something similar.  You can get free tickets for BBC shows at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/tickets/

Sitcoms that are funny.

‘Well, durr..’ you’re probably thinking.  But you haven’t had to wade through hundreds of entries that aren’t.  You need to be funny from page 1.  Just as important, you need to keep

our interest for the next 15 minutes.  Why not go through your script with a highlight pen and mark the bits that you think will get a laugh?  Then count them.  A recent episode of Will and Grace got 124 laughs.  In 22 minutes.  You’ve got 15 minutes, which means...oh, you do the maths.

Checklist

Before emailing your script, do yourself a favour and make sure that you can say ‘yes’ to all the following:

If you’ve answered all four questions with a ‘yes’ (and only then) we want to read your script.

email it to: info@every1sacritic.com

Deadline for new scripts* is AUGUST 15TH

* You can enter as many times as you like.

Finally...good luck.