The Stage

Good Life writer slams TV commissioning structure

Published Tuesday 9 March 2010 at 15:49 by Matthew Hemley

Acclaimed sitcom writer Bob Larbey, whose credits include The Good Life and As Time Goes By, has criticised television’s commissioning structure, claiming writers have to deal with too many executives and “jump through hoops” to get a commission.

Larbey, who together with writing partner John Esmonde created hits such as Please Sir! and Ever Decreasing Circles, said television had become too concerned with “focus groups” and “strange men in suits with strange ideas”, who he claimed know nothing about writing comedy.

“When we were writing earlier, the chain of command was so much shorter, so much simpler. You saw a head of comedy, you had a cup of coffee and a fag, and talked to him. Then, if he liked it, he commissioned it. It sounds so easy but that’s the way it was. Today they [writers] have to go through god knows what to get something on. I think it’s a total hindrance,” he said.

“If you form a committee with a small c, everybody thinks they should have their opinion, otherwise they are not worth their job. Well, if you ask 12 people to say something about a comedy idea they are not all going to say the same thing. I think that very often the idea gets totally distilled by the time this lot have finished with it.”

The comedy writer said that he had experienced this first-hand a few years ago, when he was asked by a TV producer if he would be interested in turning one of his stage plays, Building Blocks, into a sitcom.

Larbey claimed an executive had tried to tell him how to rewrite the piece. He added: “I thought, after all this time, I really don’t need telling what I need, I think I have got some idea.”

Speaking about comedy today, Larbey also criticised broadcasters for trying too hard to shock and for focusing too much on appealing to younger audiences.

“They [broadcasters] use words like edgy, but that is bollocks, because they don’t know what edgy means. They swear a few times and they think it’s edgy. Till Death Us Do Part was edgy, Steptoe was edgy,” he said.