The star of Pulling, Angelo's and Free Agents celebrates comedies with a more selective appeal
There is a surprising amount of merit in going to all the time and trouble of making a sitcom only to have a risible number of people actually watch it. In fact I would go so far as to say it's an inadvertently important act of importance. Some of my favourite sitcoms have only ever been seen by a tiny number of people. (And when I say tiny I mean comparatively tiny. Not Richard & Judy on Watch tiny. Just not enough viewers to keep it on air or get it sponsored by Doritos sort of tiny). If I'd have researched this properly I reckon the list of really good sitcoms that failed to make it big would be as long as my arm. And my arm is pretty long. I like to call this group of comedies "the lesser-watched-sitcom". It's an enviable group: Arrested Development, NBC's dysfunctional family comedy with bad chicken impressions; 15 Storeys High, Sean Lock's tower-block based sitcom where it's not unusual to house a horse; Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a comedy horror set in a hospital over the very gates of hell, Romford; Party Down, where a failed actor joins a catering team of other failed actors in Los Angeles still hoping for a break; Better Off Ted, a satire on big business and corruption whose employees are all happily aware of the evil; Nightingales, a (thanks Twitter) Pinter-esque surreal sitcom based around three night shift security guards; Freaks And Geeks, the original and best slacker comedy on TV; How Do You Want Me?, which not only had Dylan Moran being hated by everyone but incorporated my love of turkeys. All these shows managed to be either cancelled or forgotten about or at the very least not adored by the masses as they should have been. As they deserved to be. And even sitcoms that fared better in the ratings like Black Books, The League Of Gentlemen, Nighty Night and more recently Grandma's House and Getting On still haven't had that mainstream success. (And by mainstream I mean they've been watched by your granny or your 12-year old niece or, even, your bank manager).
All of which is a shame, because these programmes have that special combination of being original and perfectly formed with detail and nuances that make you feel like you're watching something that's been made especially for you. Some of the lesser-watched sitcoms can end up becoming sleeper hits and finding a second life through word of mouth, DVD sales or the internet, so it's not always a sad story. But some just vanish. They might pop up on a blog here or there, written about wistfully by some romantic comedy nerd, but apart from that they die young and pretty.
'With a smaller audience you're more likely to push boundaries; you can do a lot of things a mainstream sitcom would like to but can't'
Which seems unfair because a lot of the more successful, stronger-at?birth sitcoms owe a debt to these smaller, sometimes darker, definitely riskier shows. The League Of Gentlemen paved the way for the hugely successful Little Britain, and Arrested Development is widely regarded as influencing, well, everyone. So despite their untimely demise these sitcoms will always be culturally important because they set the tone and blazed a trail for the bigger, broader comedies. With a smaller audience you're more likely to push back boundaries ? you can do a lot of things a mainstream sitcom would like to but can't for fear of not appealing to a wide and wieldy demographic. Want your main character to be a misanthropic recluse? No problem. Why not have a dead character for an entire series? Fancy doing your entire show with bad continuity, wooden acting and cheap special effects? Sure you can. Just don't expect to be buying your second home any time soon.
Of course it's never a deliberate plan to have a small audience tune in. The plan is to make a sitcom that billions of people watch and subsequently talk about in offices and schools across the land, quoting lines from and generally making their creators buckets of cash? DON'T BE AN IDIOT! You know what you've written ? it's never going to happen. But that's OK because if all the above doesn't convince you that you're doing the right thing, here's a list of less up-their-own-arse reasons why making a sitcom that gets fuck all viewers can be a good thing ?
SHARON HORGAN ON THE JOYS OF THE LESSER-WATCHED SITCOM
1 If a lot of people watch your sitcom that's a lot of people who can now potentially hate you. Comedy connoisseurs are renowned for getting very angry about jokes and humour and stuff like that. It's not like drama ? which you can apparently make quite a shitty job of and not have to worry about becoming a target for hate. Comedy fans take it as a personal affront that you could deign to write something that hasn't tickled their specific funny (angry) bone. So the fewer comedy fans who watch your sitcom the fewer psychotic blogs and tweets there will be with trolls discussing how much they want you and your show to die. Result!
2 Your mum doesn't have to know. Because British TV, God bless it, doesn't cancel shows halfway through a series or after one episode just because no one's watching. OK, they might move it around so much that only a Radio Times addict would be able to find it, but they won't just take it off the frickin' air. So the show still gets shown. There's no humiliation. As far as your mum's concerned it's on the telly and that's the important thing. She doesn't need to know about "audience figures" ? the only people outside of the channel who would know how many people are watching it would be the nerds. And luckily your mum's not a nerd.
3 Having a sitcom that not many people watch means that it's a 79% more likely to become a cult classic. Take Arrested Development. It was watched by a relatively measly amount of people before eventually being cancelled. Now, through word of mouth and just by sheer virtue of the fact that it's brilliant, it's become as big a part of comedy history as the worldwide phenomenal hit (but equally brilliant) The Office. So there you go.
4 There's a good chance more people will watch your cult classic sitcom on DVD because they didn't get a chance to watch it on the TV. So there's a likelihood it could become a sleeper hit! It could very well end up making money on the long tail so in 100 years your children's children could quite possibly be on their way to owning their first robot butler.
5 There are many, many happy jokes you can make on set about how there are more people in the crew than will end up watching the first series! It's good for morale. Trust me, you can make some really great lifelong friends bonded by the simple fact that you're pouring your heart and soul into a great show whose last episode had a 0.0 rating. It makes you stronger, people.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/25/sharon-horgan-lesser-watched-sitcoms
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