There’s a weird thing where a lot of the best comedies, certainly in this country, seem to come from a place of coming up with really good clever set pieces and then finding a way to join them… conversely, it’s also where a lot of the worst comedies come from, because people come up with set pieces and then find this sort of artificial way of sellotaping them together.
In the second half of this episode of the What Are You Laughing At? podcast, UK sitcom script editor Andrew Ellard (The IT Crowd, Red Dwarf), regular guest James Cary and host Dave Cohen discuss, among other things, finding the middle ground between writing gags and set pieces and motivating characters in believable ways, and the value of writing for dramas and soaps as training for writing comedy.