British Situational comedies have evolved over the years but many at the moment just do not hit the mark. This is down to three elements that comedy writers and producers need to take note of if sitcoms are to continue to be a part of our televisual comedy future.
First of all, canned laughter, or even live audience laughter. This one worked well and helped to heighten the humour in many classic British comedies, as well as American ones, but these days comedies don’t suit this extra layer of audio and just distracts from the humour and atmosphere of the comedy. Maybe it’s to hide the lack of humour, like in Mrs Brown’s Boys. Even American sitcoms are guilty of laughter noise crimes. Big Bang Theory, though popular, I can’t concentrate because of the ear-piercing laughter that torpedo’s into your hearing. I don’t care if it’s been filmed in front of a live audience, I’m purposely watching at home because I don’t want to hear a live audience!
The second Sitcom no-no is trying to stretch a comedy over an hour instead of half an hour, across never ending amounts of series being produced. The possible biggest sitcom of our time (or indeed any) is Benidorm. The first couple of series were amusing enough, with half hour episodes poking fun at cheap and cheerful holiday resorts and the types of people that frequent them on an annual basis, but then they got greedy and tried to make more and more series with hour-long episodes, but without adding half an hour worth of jokes. In fact, with each series comes less and less jokes, to the point that the latest series contains no joke at all!
The third and final misconception is that a concept people can relate to is always funny, because it is not. Some can be, I can relate to Friday Night Dinner, which has me on stitches (though those who can’t relate don’t find it funny at all), but others are just plain wrong. PhoneShop is a prime example of this. Yes, many of us has been into a phone shop before, or had worked in retail. Some of us may even have been unfortunate enough to have worked in a Phone Shop. But unless you can put some sort of funny spin on things, or introduce interesting and charismatic people. PhoneShop does none of this. No joke, dull characters. Why bother even making a comedy with no comedy value?
The hope is that British Comedy sitcoms evolve for the best and discards the bad habits picked up from unfunny and ill-conceived comedy programmes. Only time will tell!
Simple-Human 
January 19th, 2015 at 10:01
Very interesting post, thank you. 🙂 That said, I find that sitcoms often need laugh tracks. Not because they’re not funny and they need bursts of laughter to reassure us that they are, but because it’s what we’ve come to expect. When watching ‘M*A*S*H,’ which utilised a laugh track inconsistently (it was omitted for whole scenes and sometimes whole episodes), I find it distracting and awkward when half the time I’m provided with a cue to laugh and the other half I’m not. Of course, some American sitcoms (e.g. ‘Modern Family’) which are filmed with a more documentary-style approach and are subtle in their humour don’t need laugh tracks, but I can’t say I’ve ever found one jarring or unwelcome. I also think it’s a unique reminder (this applies only to shows with actual studio audiences) that the episode was filmed in front of fans, which gives me personally a kind of warm, welcome feeling – even though I wasn’t there personally.
The exceptions to that rule, I suppose, are of the lower-budget children’s sitcoms. An example would be ‘Dani’s House’ – which I loved as a youngster but even then felt would have been funnier without the so-obviously-fake canned laughter.