I've just read a feature in today's Independent that sets out to explain what an audience sit-com is. Are we that far removed from the form? I know The Office changed the landscape but anyone over thirty will remember a slew of classic audience sit-coms - even if the majority of them are American. Post the Office everyone wanted to make single camera comedy, the slow burn, 'reality' form that owes more to the movies than TV. The Office didn't set the bar higher - it moved the bar and put it in a different field. Comedy was no longer something that we laughed out loud at, it was something more real, more excruciating to view.
Gavin and Stacey changed the game again. Now it was okay to laugh and no-one was being really horrible. Yes life was sometimes tough but the Gavin and Stacey world existed in a kind of nice-com.
Now Miranda has broken through. The critics hate it - all those looks to camera - all those jokes - all those people laughing at funny things. This isn't comedy this is...just a crap old fashioned sit-com that people like and watch in their droves because they don't know any better.
Well, to those critics I say this - the whole bloody point of comedy is to make people laugh. It is not an examination of life, it is not there to bring down the government or cure cancer. It is there to make us laugh.
Why am I so all fired up about sit-com at the moment. Well, a) I have previous - delve back in the credits, b) I'm writing one at the moment and c) they're so bloody hard to get right.
So, is it single camera or audience? Middle class or working class? Laugh out loud funny or nuanced? These are the questions you need to ask when you set out on this path, along with gathering some brilliant characters and finding individual voices for them all.
I made my choices some months ago - I can only hope that by the time this ever gets to a screen the pendulum hasn't swung off in another different direction.
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