The State of UK TV comedy

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 4th, 2007

Brian Donaldson, writing forthe UK website The List:

The state of TV comedy has been a subject of much negativity among critics, audiences and telly executives for a long, long time. Where’s the great sitcom? What happened to the solid tradition of sketch shows? Will we ever see a programme which treats stand-up comedy with anything less than pity? Well, fair enough, there really hasn’t been a classic show in any of those genres for a while now, but it really isn’t all doom and gloom. The lunatics many not yet have taken over the asylum (in a good way), but there’s enough very decent comedy on the box right now to at least put a smile on the faces of telly bosses.

That “negativity among critics, audiences and telly executives” on the state of TV comedy is frustrating, especially since the execs say what they say and claim to believe it, the critics repeat what the executives say (and actually believe it!) and the audience members repeat what the critics tell them the executives say, but don’t really believe it. And thus you have your current state of American (and British) television with declining viewership and a glut of reality programs which are nearly indistinguishable from one another. One big hit sitcom and the passengers will rush to the other side of the sinking ship.

Interesting peek at the current state of comedy on British TV.