10-09-2021, 01:21 PM
JK1985 post_id=38782 time= user_id=1347 Wrote:In one history book about TV, someone wrote that the reason why ITV sitcoms generally failed was that their running time was shorter than BBC sitcoms. They wrote that a half hour BBC sitcom like Only Fools would run to around 29 minutes, whereas any ITV sitcom had to run to around 24-25 minutes due to commercials. They said these vital 5 or 6 minutes less led to lazy writing, less expansion in character development and caused a lot of ITV sitcoms to not be big hitters.
This was generally accepted, though, within the industry. It was actually Galton and Simpson who first observed it, writers of some repute of course with Hancock and Steptoe, and who wrote many shows for both channels. They always referred to those extra five minutes as "integrity time", because that was where you could include character development and some more subtle humour which was always the first thing to go when you were cutting down scripts to fit, and it was those things that ensured a sitcom really cemented itself in the public's affections.
It's true that in America they were working wonders in 22 minutes, let alone 25, but it's also worth remembering that they also had many times more episodes than a British show. They'd have 26 weeks, not six.
I do know The New Statesman's scripts were particularly short by commercial TV standards because in the first series the audience laughed so much all the scenes went on far longer than they were anticipating and they had to lose loads of jokes, so in later series they only wrote about twenty minutes of material to leave more space for laughter. They could also rely on Rik Mayall making the most of anything he was given and improvising wonderfully, but I do remember an interview with Rik where he said he had a New Statesman script which said "B'Stard reacts - chance for a genius to improvise" and he was so terrified they were expecting something brilliant, he couldn't think of anything at all.