Sitcom

For the satirical film by François Ozon, see Sitcom (film).

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features recurring characters in a common environment such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue. Such programs originated in radio, but today, sitcoms are found almost exclusively on television as one of its dominant narrative forms, and art forms.

A situation comedy may be recorded before a studio audience. Another feature is a laugh track.

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History

Comedies from past civilizations, such as those of Aristophanes in ancient Greece, Terence and Plautus in ancient Rome, Śudraka in ancient India, and numerous examples including Shakespeare, Molière, the Commedia dell'arte and the Punch and Judy shows from post-Renaissance Europe, are the ancestors of the modern sitcom. Some of the characters, pratfalls, routines and situations as preserved in eyewitness accounts and in the texts of the plays themselves, are remarkably similar to those in earlier modern sitcoms such as I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. The first television sitcom is said to be Pinwright's Progress, ten episodes being broadcast on the BBC between 1946–1947. In the U.S., director and producer William Asher, has been credited with being the "man who invented the sitcom," having directed over two dozen of the leading sitcoms, including I Love Lucy, during the 1950s through the 1970s.

Australia

Australia has not had a significant number of long running sitcoms. Several US and UK sitcoms have been extremely popular in Australia. UK sitcoms are a staple on the government broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Several other UK sitcoms were traditionally shown by the Seven Network. American sitcoms dominate the comedy line up of the three commercial networks.

While there has been a significant number of Australian sitcoms throughout the history of Australian television, they have most commonly run for just a single season - usually 13 half-hour episodes. Many successful Australian sitcoms have been somewhat similar in style to UK comedies, and several closely followed the premise of earlier UK programs. An early successful situation comedy was My Name's McGooley, What's Yours? (1967) about a working-class Sydney family. Other popular sitcoms of this general period included The Group, and Our Man in Canberra.

In the first half of the 1970s it was the popular soap operas Number 96 and The Box that provided the main forum for Australian-grown sitcom style comedy. These shows combined melodrama and sex with large amounts of comedy. In 1976 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a sex-comedy television sitcom Alvin Purple, based on the hit feature film of the same name. Like the films that preceded it, the series of Alvin Purple featured Graeme Blundell in the title role.

By the late 1970s Australian versions of popular UK comedies were produced using key personnel from the original series working in Australia. These productions retained the title and key cast members of the original programs and operated within the same story world of the original even down to explaining how the characters came to leave their original UK locale and be temporarily resident of Australia. These comedies, Are You Being Served, Doctor in the House (as Doctor Down Under) and Father, Dear Father (as 'Father, Dear Father in Australia), transplanted key original cast members to Australia to situations markedly similar to those of the original series. During this same general period, one of the UK producers of these shows also launched The Tea Ladies in Australia. Also during the late 1970s Crawford Productions, best known for their successful police drama series, also created situation comedy series. These include The Bluestone Boys (1976) on Network Ten, and Bobby Dazzler (1977) on the Seven Network.

The late-1970s sketch comedy series The Naked Vicar Show spawned successful a sitcom spin off, Kingswood Country, in 1980. This series was immensely popular, running four years. Its situation was somewhat similar to the British comedy Till Death Us Do Part and Australian comedy series The Last of the Australians.

In the early 1980s there were few Australian sitcoms, with soap operas being the more common genre produced in Australia. During this period however the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced Mother and Son, which emerged as an enduring audience favourite. In the late 1980s and early 1990s several new Australian sitcoms achieved significant success including Frontline, Hey Dad...!, Acropolis Now, All Together Now which all had relatively long runs. The Adventures of Lano and Woodley ran for two seasons, in 1997 and 1999, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Other programs such as Hampton Court and My Two Wives were only moderate successes, lasting just one season. This period also saw many short-lived failures such as Late for School and Bingles. In 2002 the successful sitcom Kath and Kim began its successful run.

Canada

See also: Canadian humour

Canadian sitcoms have often fared poorly with both critics and audiences. One notorious example is The Trouble with Tracy, regarded by many Canadians as one of the worst TV shows ever made. Other Canadian sitcoms have included Snow Job, Check it Out!, Mosquito Lake and Not My Department, all of which were mocked as being particularly uninspired. There have rarely been more than one or two Canadian sitcoms airing new episodes at any given time, although this has changed in recent years with the growth of original programming on cable television.

Successful sitcoms have been produced in Canada, however, including King of Kensington, Trailer Park Boys, Twitch City, Hangin' In, Odd Job Jack, Little Mosque on the Prairie and Corner Gas, the latter of which is the most popular Canadian sitcom of all time. Generally, however, Canadian television networks have had much more success with sketch comedy and dramedy series than with conventional sitcoms.

In 2004, Fresh TV released the Emmy winning animated sitcom 6teen, created by Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch. 6teen shows on Teletoon in Canada, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon in the US, Pop Girl in The UK, Studio 23 in the Philippines, Z@PP in the Netherlands, ABC3 in Australia, in Poland ZigZap, in Israel Children's Channel, in The Netherlands Z@PP and Disney Channel (Netherlands & Belgium), TV7 in Bulgaria, and 2x2 in Russia. It's mostly viewed by children aged between 10–18, because of the mature subjects such as dating, kissing, sex, and language and TVPG-D rating shows later at night. 6teen has many good reviews. It is in its fourth and final season ending in 2011.

Another highly popular Canadian animated sitcom is the Total Drama Series, a show which satirizes reality television, its conventions and its characters. The series began with the first season, entitled Total Drama Island, which was first broadcast in 2007 in the Canadian channel Teletoon and was later broadcast into the United States and Europe in 2008 through Cartoon Network, through which it became a hit as well. It was broadcast in Latin America in 2009 through Cartoon Network too, where it also became a hit, particularly in Argentina. The second season of the show, Total Drama Action aired in 2009 in North America and Europe and in 2010 in Latin America. The third season, Total Drama World Tour, will premiere in North America on June the 10th 2010.

In the francophone province of Quebec, notable sitcoms have included Histoires de filles, Moi et l'autre, 4 et demi, La Petite Vie, Dans une galaxie près de chez-vous, Il était une fois dans le trouble and Rumeurs.

India

Sitcoms have been very popular in India since the late 1980s. Shrimaan Shrimati and Flop Show became extremely popular and are still remembered for their hilarious scripts and impeccable performances by Jaspal Bhatti and others. The introduction of private TC channels has brought good TRPs for sitcoms. One of the popular ones was Sarabhai vs Sarabhai on the channel STAR One. Some other popular shows are Khichdi, Tarak Mehta ka Ulta Chasma, Office Office, Tu Tu Main Main, Lapataganj, All The Best, Shararat and Hum Paanch.

China

China, mainly Beijing's television studios, has produced a strong number of comedies with high episode counts. The first multi-camera sitcom was I Love My Family, in 1993. While inspired by American sitcoms, I Love My Family used actors with theatre experience to display comedic and dramatic talents. Home with Kids is another Chinese sitcom heavily based on Growing Pains, which dealt with real-life family issues and ran for over 350 episodes. It was known for featuring child actors, who have prominent roles throughout the series.

For the teen audience, China has produced the Friends-inspired iPartment. Like Friends, the Shanghai-based iPartment follows a group of neighbors in their escapades. The series uses fast-paced editing and surreal pop culture references for comic effect. iPartment has 20 hour-long episodes and is filmed on-location and closed sets. Despite this, the series contains a laugh track, which is an uncommon practice used for single-camera programs.

Hong Kong has a strong number of sitcoms that differ from Mainland China's programs. An average sitcom does not use a studio audience nor a laugh track to fill-in more dialogue for the characters. Also, many programs used large sets and locations to film more dynamically.

New Zealand

New Zealand began producing television programs later than many other developed countries. Due to New Zealand's small population, the two main New Zealand networks will rarely fund more than one or two sitcoms each year. This low output means there is less chance of a successful sitcom being produced to offset the failures.

Early sitcoms included Joe & Koro and Buck House. Later there was The Billy T James Show subsequently rerun in early 2004 as part of the first year's offering on Māori Television. The team of David McPhail and Jon Gadsby produced and/or starred in sitcoms such as Letter to Blanchy with help from writer A K Grant. The most popular and successful NZ sitcom from this era was Roger Hall's Gliding On, based on his hit stage play Glide Time. Another Hall play, Conjugal Rites was also made into a sitcom but by Granada in Britain.

In 1994, Melody Rules was produced and screened. Critically and commercially unsuccessful, it has become part of the lexicon within the television industry to describe an unsuccessful sitcom, for example, that show will be the next "Melody Rules". Another sitcom to have its roots in a stage play was Serial Killers (2003), about the scriptwriters of a medical soap opera. Since Melody Rules aired, no American-style sitcoms have been produced in New Zealand.

Most recently the duo Flight of the Conchords have created and starred in a sitcom of an eponymous name. The show stars three Kiwis (including Rhys Darby), is written primarily by the two leads, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie (along with contributions from Kiwis Duncan Sarkies and Taika Waititi), but it is shot entirely in New York City, was co-created by an Englishman, James Bobin, and is funded by HBO, an American premium cable channel. It is the most popular sitcom ever produced featuring Kiwi comedians.

The most successful true NZ sitcom to date, which also utilizes the one-camera approach is the Jaquie Brown Diaries. The show is an advanced concept for New Zealand domestic television production for the fact that it stars Jaquie Brown, as herself, as a C-list celebrity in Auckland. The show revolves around Jaquie's life as a light relief reporter on a current events show (a job she used to actually have on TV3's current affairs show Campbell Live) and her desire to be a socially relevant pop cultural media figure in New Zealand. Brown, who had not acted seriously prior to this production, excelled in the role and displayed a panache for naturalistic comedic acting. It was also written by two novice writers, Gerard Johnstone (Who also directed) and Jodie Molloy. The first season (July 2008) ran for 6 episodes. The second season (Oct 2009) ran for 8 episodes.

Many British and American sitcoms are and have been popular in New Zealand.

It is commonly claimed that the primary difficulties for New Zealand comedy production are a prevailing attitude of cultural cringe wherein domestic products are viewed as automatically being inferior, and the market demand for profitability due to New Zealand having no strictly commercial-free channels. Both government-owned channels TVOne and TV2 are broadcast with commercials and cannot survive on government subsidies alone. Some suggest that Kiwi comedies which are viewed as commercially unreliable are often relegated to poor timeslots and not promoted by their networks. James Griffin, creator of TV3's Outrageous Fortune, has noted that often Kiwi comedies get neglected to death such as his show Diplomatic Immunity did.

United Kingdom TV sitcoms

Main article: British situation comedy

The United Kingdom has produced a wealth of sitcoms, many of which have been exported to other nations or adapted for other countries. There is often also a tendency towards black humour. A frequent theme in British sitcoms is that of people trapped in an unpleasant situation or, more often, in dysfunctional relationships, a good example of this is the very popular sitcom Only Fools and Horses.

British sitcoms have also tended to shy away from the folksy homespun nature of the American sitcom and into more adult or intellectual territory - Yes, Minister being a fine example of the latter.

Political sitcom The Thick of It is currently, (2009), being adapted for an American audience, also under the same name. However, most British sitcoms usually fare better in their original forms. Re-makes of Red Dwarf, Men Behaving Badly, Absolutely Fabulous, Coupling, and One Foot in the Grave (Cosby) fell victim to adaptations that largely removed the essence of the comedy.

Possibly the best example of this was Fawlty Towers, in which there were three attempts to Americanise the show. The first attempt was a proposed series titled Chateau Snavely in 1978. A pilot was produced for ABC, but the series was not picked up by the network. The second attempt at Americanising Fawlty Towers was Amanda's, where the character of Basil became a woman played by Beatrice Arthur. This eliminated the roles of the hen-pecked lead and the dragon-like wife. Amanda's was picked up by ABC in 1983 but never attracted an audience and was cancelled soon after. The final attempt to remake Fawlty Towers was Payne, in which John Larroquette played the title role. It was seen on CBS in 1999, but like Amanda's it was soon dropped by the network.

The UK is home to the world's longest running sitcom, Last of the Summer Wine. The show's pilot was broadcast in early 1973, and thirty-one series followed until the program's cancellation in 2010.

United States

Most North American sitcoms are generally half-hour programs in which the story is written to run a total of 22 minutes in length, leaving eight minutes for commercials.

Sitcoms made outside the US may run somewhat longer or shorter than 22 minutes. US commercial broadcasters have traditionally been very reluctant to run shows that run too short or too long. Thus, very few UK or British Commonwealth sitcoms run on US commercial television.

US sitcoms (like other American television series) typically have long season runs of 20 or more episodes due to the way they are produced. Canadian sitcoms typically only have season runs of 14 on average. British sitcoms have much shorter seasons in comparison where there are usually six episodes.

American sitcoms are often written by large teams of US resident script writers during round-table sessions, but some US sitcoms often do have episodes written by a guest writer. Most British sitcoms are written by one or two people, with four writers sometimes being the norm for some series in the recent past. These divergent writing styles result in vastly different kinds of sitcoms being written.

Usually sitcoms from the U.S. have satire and slapstick comedy in their status. America has made countless sitcoms since 1947, including sitcoms aimed specifically at children and teenagers. A sub-genre of U.S. sitcoms, seen as early as the 1950s but more prominent since the 1970s, is the black sitcom, a sitcom featuring a predominantly African American cast.

Sitcoms on US radio

The situation comedy format was born on January 12, 1926 with the initial broadcast of Sam 'n' Henry on WGN in Chicago. The 15-minute daily program was revamped in 1928, moved to another station, renamed Amos 'n' Andy, and became one of the most successful sitcoms from this period. It was also one of the earliest examples of radio syndication. Like many radio programs of the time, the two programs continued the American entertainment traditions of vaudeville and the minstrel show.

The Jack Benny Program was another important and formative sitcom (which also functioned as a variety show, depending on the week's script and guest stars involved). The radio version began in 1932 and lasted until 1955. A televised version of the show ran from 1950 to 1965. In total, the show was broadcast for a third of a century.

Blondie was a situation comedy adapted from the Blondie comic strip by Chic Young. The radio program had a long run on several networks from 1939 to 1950.

Fibber McGee and Molly was one of the most successful sitcoms of all time, airing on radio from 1935 to 1959. The show starred vaudevillians James "Jim" and Marian Driscoll Jordan and also had its roots in Chicago.

In 1947, Beulah became the first radio sitcom featuring an African-American actor in the lead role.

Sitcoms on US television

1940s–1950s

In the late 1940s, the sitcom was among the first formats adapted for the new medium of television. Most sitcoms were a half-hour in length and aired weekly. Many of the earliest sitcoms were direct adaptations of existing radio shows, such as or The Jack Benny Program, or vehicles for existing radio stars such as Burns and Allen (The Burns and Allen Show) and film stars such as Abbott and Costello (The Abbott and Costello Show). Early sitcoms were broadcast live and recorded on kinescopes or not recorded at all.

Mary Kay and Johnny was followed by The Goldbergs which first aired on January 17, 1949. The television adaptation of Beulah in 1950 became the first TV sitcom with an African American in the lead. Both The Goldbergs and Beulah were early examples of sitcoms without a laugh-track or studio audience.

Early sitcoms done on film, though without the multiple-camera setup, included The Life of Riley with Jackie Gleason, and Stu Erwin's The Trouble with Father. Eventually, sitcoms began to divide themselves into domestic comedies and workplace comedies. The earliest domestic comedies include The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Honeymooners, and Make Room for Daddy. The earliest workplace comedies include Our Miss Brooks and Mr. Peepers, both set in high schools, and The Phil Silvers Show, was set on a US Army post.

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy brought a new way of filming sitcoms, with Desi Arnaz, the early innovator in the history of sitcoms, who is credited with the first successful use of the multiple-camera setup, where three cameras shoot the action on stage simultaneously and the best shots from each of the cameras are later edited together. The show starred Lucille Ball (Lucy Ricardo) with her husband Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo). They created it together with actors Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz) and William Frawley (Fred Mertz), and a creative writing team. I Love Lucy was also among the first to record all multiple-camera episodes on film. With their Desilu Productions studio company, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are credited with foreseeing the viability and prosperity of the rerun television program series.

1960s

A trend beginning in the 1960s was the expansion of the domestic comedy beyond the nuclear family or married couple. The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons featured widowers and their children. At the end of the decade, Sherwood Schwartz's The Brady Bunch focused on a blended family.

By the mid-1960s, sitcom creators began adding more fantastical elements to live action sitcoms in the so-called "high concept" style. The regular characters of The Munsters were modelled on the Universal Monsters and the eccentric The Addams Family sprang from a series of cartoon comics. Genies and witches featured in I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, respectively. Sherwood Schwartz created Gilligan's Island about seven stranded castaways including a movie star, a millionaire, and a professor. The Monkees was a psychedelic musical about a fictional performing group. Get Smart was a spy genre parody series , Batman a camp series based on a comic book, and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. was a Andy Griffith Show spinoff about a dim-witted Southerner who joins the United States Marine Corps, named Gomer Pyle.

Sitcom production of the 1960s mainly used the single camera filming style, which was more practical given the visual effects used in these shows. This allowed for the careful creation of special effects and sharp editing, features which were not possible with the same finesse in a multi-camera production. Many of these programs were not filmed before live audiences, and featured a laugh track.

The animated sitcom was born during this period with Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones and The Jetsons. The latter show was the first example of the science fiction sitcom subgenre.

1970s

In the early 1970s sitcoms began to address controversial issues in a serious way, and largely returned to the three-camera shoot before live audiences. Many programs of this era were recorded on videotape as opposed to film. About half of the sitcoms on broadcast television airing between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s were shot on video.

In the US Norman Lear often used the sitcom format to address social issues through his series All in the Family (based on Johnny Speight's Till Death Us Do Part) and its spin-offs Maude, The Jeffersons, and Good Times, all in the US. Also in Britain was Ray Galton and Alan Simpson's Steptoe and Son, which also had a US remake in Sanford and Son. In a major departure from earlier American sitcoms, these programs also had racially diverse casts.

Women's liberation was the backdrop in a series of female-led sitcoms produced by Grant Tinker: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and its spin-offs Rhoda and Phyllis.

The topic of war was addressed in the sitcom M*A*S*H. The producers of M*A*S*H did not want a laugh track on the show, arguing that the show did not need one, but CBS disagreed. CBS compromised by permitting the producers of the show to omit recorded laughter from scenes that took place in the operating room, if they wished. When it was shown in the UK and Germany, episodes were broadcast without the laugh track. Ross Bagdasarian also refused to use a laugh track in his production of The Alvin Show, as did Jay Ward on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Also during this time, Bob Newhart adapted his deadpan club act for television in sitcom format with The Bob Newhart Show, which was at once a throwback to the early vaudevillian origins of sitcoms and a harbinger of the 1980s - 1990s stand-up comedian sitcom trend.

In the mid-1970s, Garry Marshall had several huge hits in the US with his sitcoms such as The Odd Couple, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy. Nostalgia for the 50s was a major theme in both Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley.

Sex and titillation became a theme in late 1970s Jiggle TV with the UK sitcom Man About the House and its US remake Three's Company. Two soap opera parodies, Soap and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, are also notable shows from this period which pushed the envelope of what was acceptable in television sitcoms.

1980s

In the 1980s, stand-up comic Bill Cosby starred in the sitcom The Cosby Show, which was the earliest of the current trend of successful sitcoms built around a stand-up comic's stage persona. Comedienne Roseanne Barr continued the trend in the late 1980s with her eponymous sitcom, as did Garry Shandling (It's Garry Shandling's Show and Larry Sanders). More recently, Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld) and Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) have also made the transition from stand up to the small screen with self-starring sitcoms.

To some extent, many American sitcoms of the 1980s such as Full House, Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains returned to themes of family life and parent-child relationships, and centered less on the social issues that defined many 1970s sitcoms. Cheers, a show about the local customers in a bar, focussed on the evolving relationship between Sam and Diane. Long-running sitcoms, such as the Jeffersons and Alice contrast sharply between topical episodes of the 1970s and the less controversial subject matter that prevailed later in the series. By the end of the decade, a backlash emerged against the dominance of family-oriented sitcoms, with both more acerbic takes on working-class family life in Roseanne, Married with Children, and The Simpsons as well as programming such as Seinfeld that focused largely on relationships between single adults.

By the mid-1980s, the growth of cable television, additional broadcast networks, and the success of first-run syndication meant that television audiences were fracturing. Programming could now be targeted at specific audiences rather than at a general audience, and this included sitcoms too. Children were one of these audiences, and among the sitcoms made specifically for children were Saved by the Bell and Clarissa Explains It All.

The 1980s also saw a few comedy drama "Dramedy" programs. Examples include United States and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. These were largely unsuccessful.

1990s

The early 1990s saw the rebirth of the animated sitcom, a trend which continues to this day. Most notable is The Simpsons, the longest-running sitcom in US history. Other successful sitcoms in this subgenre include South Park, Futurama, Beavis and Butt-head, Family Guy and King of the Hill.

This era also saw a significant return to film origination. The main reason for this was that it was seen as "future proofing" productions against any new developments such as HDTV. Programs shot on standard definition videotape in general do not convert well to HDTV, while images on 35 mm film can easily be re-scanned to any future format. In addition, recent developments in film camera and post-processing technologies had eroded the advantages of using videotape.

In the mid-1990s several sitcoms have featured ongoing story lines. Seinfeld, one of the most popular U.S. sitcoms of the 1990s, featured story arcs. Friends used soap opera elements such as the end-of-season cliffhanger and gradually developing the relationships of the characters over the course of the series. Home Improvement, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Frasier, Roseanne, Moesha, Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Matters, The Nanny Friends and The King of Queens are also noted for their long-term story arcs.

2000 and after

The early 2000s saw a rebirth of the single camera shooting style for half-hour sitcoms, with shows such as Malcolm in the Middle, The Bernie Mac Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, and Scrubs. Unlike earlier single camera shows, these sitcoms do not use laugh tracks. Recently, a pastiche from the UK has been utilized in American sitcoms, as many are being shot as a pseudo-documentary (aka mockumentary), such as The Office, Modern Family and Parks and Recreation.

Newer sitcoms that still used a multiple camera setup (before live audiences) include Gary Unmarried, How I Met Your Mother, Mike & Molly, Rules of Engagement, $h*! My Dad Says, The Big Bang Theory, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Two and a Half Men, Yes, Dear and Hot in Cleveland.

See also

• List of comedies
• List of sitcoms

Further reading

• Lewisohn, Mark (2003) Radio Times' Guide to TV Comedy. 2nd Ed. Revised - BBC Consumer Publishing. ISBN 0-563-48755-0, Provides details of every comedy show ever seen on British television, including imports.
• Padva, Gilad (2005) Desired Bodies and Queer Masculinities in Three Popular TV Sitcoms. In Lorek-Jezinska, Edyta and Wieckowska, Katarzyna (Eds.), Corporeal Inscriptions: Representations of the Body in Cultural and Literary Texts and Practices (pp. 127-138). Torun, Poland: Nicholas Copernicus University Press. ISBN 83-231-1812-4

External links

• On the buses fan forum
• Classic British Sitcoms Forum
• Situation Comedy Bibliography (via UC Berkeley) — mostly USA programs.
• Sitcoms Online
• The Classic TV Database
• British Sitcom Guide
• Russian Sitcom Guide
• Comedy Series Guide