BBC1 are to launch a new sitcom with Lee Mack and Tim Vine to head up their Friday night schedule, going against the traditionally strong channel four 9pm slot previously held by friends/will and grace/the it crowd etc. I went to the taping the other day and it was really good (tickets are available from www.tvrecordings.com ). I just wondered what people thought about the terrestrial networks handling of 'traditional' (i.e. live studio audience, three key sets etc) British sitcom?
It'll be as crap as all the other new "sitcoms" BBC1 has launched in the last few years! All the stations biggest comedy hits have come via BBC2 at the moment!
And what a stupid time to launch it - December! Either air it before Christmas or after Christmas!
The IT Crowd was a traditional sitcom, and i really enjoyed it. I wouldn't call it an old-fashioned style of shooting comedy, I just think that the multi-camera/studio audience thing works for me as it somehow adds to the feeling of the programme. Makes it seem more real.
It was weird watching The IT Crowd at the time, because it's probably the only series style programme i'd watched in a long time that hadn't been shot single camera and with the filmic effect applied to it.
I don't tend to watch many sitcoms nowadays, except for old ones on DVD or Youtube. It's how I discovered the pilot for Nobody's Watching, which has now been commissioned for a series. I look forward to more of that.
Sadly I've tended to get away from British (though there are exceptions like The Mighty Boosh) and I'm getting into Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I really love Arrested Development - one of the best sitcoms to come out of America. If the BBC could make an equivalent for that, I would watch it.
New mainstream shows just aren't something that will keep me interested now, and I'm not saying that as an elitist fan of cult shows. They just get given a lot of attention and if they don't meet the (arguably very high) standards of BBC One viewers, then they rarely last one series. Still, Tim Vine and Lee Mack are very good, so I await how their show turns out.
I read about this sometime ago, one of the first things Peter Fincham comissioned, the show is to be written by Lee Mack. Anyway as a fan of ITV's
The Sketch Show
I'm rather looking foward to this, probably because IMO both Tim Vine and Lee Mack are rather underrated...
BBC1 seems to have lost the plot with sitcom a few years ago - shame because for 30 years before they were number 1.
In fact, even though their sitcom is now very poor - they are still number 1.
Too true! That's probably why for the last few Christmases they've brought back old sitcoms (Only Fools and Horses, Vicar of Dibley, As Time Goes By) instead of Christmas specials of new sitcoms (excepting Green, Green Grass).