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A television 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.
A situation comedy may be recorded before a studio audience. Some also feature a laugh track. Such programs originated in radio.
Today, sitcoms are found almost exclusively on television as one of its dominant narrative forms.
Traditionally comedy sketches were presented within a variety show and mixed with musical performances, as in vaudeville. The emerging mass medium of radio allowed audiences to regularly return to programs, so programs could feature the same characters and situations each episode and expect audiences to be familiar with them.
Sitcom humor is often character driven and by its nature running gags often evolve during a series. Often the status quo of the situation is maintained from episode to episode. An episode may feature a disruption to the usual situation and the character interactions, but this will usually be settled by the episode's end and the situation returned to how it was prior to the disruption. There are exceptions to this. Some shows feature story arcs across many episodes where the characters and situations change and evolve.
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.
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 broadcasted in 2007 in the Canadian channel Teletoon and was later broadcasted into the United States and Europe in 2008 through Cartoon Network, through which it became a hit as well. It was broadcasted 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, and Rumeurs. In Quebec sitcoms, the language spoken is always Quebec French.
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.
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.
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 with the first series starting that autumn. However, the BBC announced on 2 June 2010 that the 31st series would be its last.
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 6 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.
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.
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.
By the mid-1960s, sitcom creators began adding more fantastical elements to live action sitcoms. 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 and Batman a camp series based on a comic book.
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.
In the US Norman Lear is largely credited with the social issues development through his sitcoms All in the Family, based on Johnny Speight's Till Death Us Do Part in the United Kingdom, 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 most 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 the late 1970s 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.
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. 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 programs. Examples include United States and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. These were largely unsuccessful.
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, and The Nanny are also noted for their long-term story arcs.
Some sitcoms that continued to use a multiple camera setup include The New Adventures of Old Christine, How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men.
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