ARTSCAPE:LOTS OF COMICS at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe would have been hoping for their big break, the Fringe having long ago turned into a massive trade fair for TV-hungry performers.
If any of the performers ventured over the wall to the Edinburgh International Television Festival, they might have caught master of the genre Graham Linehan (Father Ted, The IT Crowd, Ralph and Ted from The Fast Show, Black Books), who gave a writing masterclass on how to create a hit sitcom. John Plunkett, in the Guardian, distilled his advice into an 11-point guide, as quoted in full below:
1 Don't be afraid to procrastinate. "It is a very important part of the process," said Linehan. "Even something like playing a computer game is valuable. The subconscious goes to sleep and when it wakes up it panics. The point of procrastination is to get the subconscious thinking." But how to best procrastinate? Linehan likes to get a box set of his favourite TV comedies and watch three, four or five episodes in a row. Which doesn't sound like a stretch for most of us. Currently he's watching Frasier. "Hopefully I will get all that stuff into the bloodstream and use it later."
2 Don't be precious. "Writing is rewriting. The first draft is not important, it is something to work on."
3 Censorship is good. Just because you can say wank, f**k etc - you don't have to. "The Two Ronnies had more words for breasts than Eskimos have for snow," he said. One episode of Seinfeld, he said, was all about masturbation - but they didn't use the word once. "That is where the craft and the fun lies."
4 Cutting is not a bad thing. "When you are cutting good stuff it means you are on the right track."
5 Don't try to compete with the web. Attempting to imitate the shock tactics of internet is not going to help your script. "Television is aping some of the internet's worst qualities," Linehan said.
6 Taboos can be fun. One of Linehan's favourite films is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. "It is about treating disabled people terribly, but in such a way that no one can be offended."
7 Classic moments. In each episode you need two or three "classic moments" - and a bunch of gags to link them together. "The way of writing sitcoms is to think of these set-pieces first."
8 Show, don't tell. If your show has a cynical lawyer, don't introduce him as the "cynical lawyer". Show how he is cynical in the plot. Obvious - but often ignored.
9 Find someone to write with. "Writing with a partner is paid socialising. Writing on your own is work."
10 Go against the grain. Linehan wrote The IT Crowd as a traditional studio set comedy because, after The Office, no one else was doing it. What to do next? Not a sketch show where the same characters return again and again and again. "It drives me mental."
11 Don't write a treatment. "You are reviewing a show that doesn't exist yet. How do you know you can write a sitcom until you write one?"
So there you have it.
• Linehan delivered the last of his new six-part series of The IT Crowd a few weeks ago and location filming starts soon. On his blog (http://whythats delightful.wordpress.com) he writes, "With only three weeks till we begin location filming, that's cutting it pretty fine, but the scripts seem to be in good shape so I'm only waking up in a cold sweat three times a night rather than seven." He invited viewers (via his blog) to help design the third series. "By now, most of you know the kind of things I like . . . weird toys, indie comics, sci-fi, geek references, internet memes, boardgames." (Former journalist) Linehan later took the mickey out of a BBC online journalist who described this as him "appealing" for props. "Why are journalists such drama queens? I love the way this journalist has me 'appealing' for props, like there's some sort of prop famine going on. It's just a bit of fun, you ninny!"
ITV's director of entertainment and comedy Paul Jackson was also at the TV festival and criticised many sitcoms as being like "drama done rather badly" and that, post Royle Family and The Office, some comedy scriptwriters were "actively eschewing the joke". He advised scriptwriters to use a pen to mark every joke in their script. "If there is not at least one joke a page then you have got a problem. He said "observational, postmodern and clever does not interest me. I think there should be jokes."
Pinter at the Gate
It was a magical night at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday. Four complex and satisfying performances in what was a very personal and tricky Harold Pinter play, No Man's Land. The actors - Michael Gambon, David Bradley, Nick Dunning and David Walliams - got a standing ovation, then Gambon gestured for quiet and pointed out a member of the audience who some might not have seen in the auditorium: Harold Pinter. The standing appreciation continued, long and warm, for him.
Pinter and his wife, Antonia Fraser, came over for a couple of days to see the opening, and she celebrated her birthday in Dublin on Wednesday. The playwright isn't in the best of health these days, so had hired a private aircraft for the journey. He told Michael Colgan after the performance that it was absolutely terrific and that the direction and acting were wonderful (Colgan said the play's not bad, either). The show, which Colgan has been trying to pull together for two years, is at the Gate for just four weeks before it transfers to the West End in London (a Gate production, presented by Sonia Friedman, who was also at Tuesday's opening).
Not one but two of the world's great playwrights were in the auditorium: Brian Friel was also in Dublin for the opening, having been at the first read-through of his version of Hedda Gabler, which is at the Gate for the Dublin Theatre Festival. Friel and his wife Anne, Pinter and Fraser had dinner together before the show.
Also at the Gate were two former deputy directors at the theatre, Anne Clarke and Marie Rooney (not together), as well as writer Enda O'Brien and Abbey acting literary director Jimmy Fay (who did come together), and Fiach Mac Conghail and Garry Hynes (not together, obviously).
• Enda Walsh and the Druid team must be smiling broadly after an excellent review of The New Electric Ballroom in the New York Times, by Charles Isherwood, who saw it in Edinburgh. "For the second year in a row the Irish playwright and director Enda Walsh supplied the most intoxicating and original piece of writing with his pitch-dark but tender-hearted play." It "does not hit you with the explosive wallop of The Walworth Farce, certainly, but its vision is fundamentally truer. It does not conclude with blood-letting and mayhem - those reliably sexy climaxes to fiction onstage and off - but with regret, resignation and a return to the familiar patterns that provide the solace of routine even as they close off the possibility of life offering us anything new . . . The beauty and humour of Mr Walsh's writing flares into unforgettable life in the performances of the superlative cast. Ms [ Rosaleen] Linehan and Ms [ Val] Lilley are both extraordinary . . . Ms [ Catherine] Walsh . . . reveals the chasms of yearning underneath Ada's businesslike exterior . . . Mr [ Mikel] Murfi provides much of the antic comic relief as the awkward Patsy." Isherwood concludes that the play "affirms Mr Walsh's growing reputation as a contender to take his place in the long, distinguished line of great Irish playwrights".
• The Dublin Fringe Festival starts next Saturday, with a very strong and enticing line-up of more than 100 shows of international and Irish work (see W7). Take your pick after negotiating your way through the bewildering and inaccessible programme."Enda Walsh and the Druid team must be smiling broadly after an excellent review of 'The New Electric Ballroom' in the 'New York Times'