POSTED AT 9:17 AM EDT Monday, May 28 (Canadian, Globe and Mail, May,28, 2001)
American sitcoms draw praise
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Reuters News Agency Hay-On-Wye, Wales � One of Britain's top
comedy-writing teams said on Monday that U.S. television comedies
are funnier and better written than British ones. Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, whose 20-year
string of award-winning hits have ranged from Birds of a
Feather to New Statesman, painted a bleak picture
of today's British situation comedy and acknowledged that
the United States was the international master of
the genre right now. "The BBC is suffering a crisis of confidence. But
one great comedy will reverse that trend," Marks told Britain's
leading literary festival in the Welsh border town
of Hay-on-Wye. "In America, they make 100 pilots to find five
shows." He said no subject should be out of bounds for
comedy writers and complained: "If you stop having targets
because of political correctness, you stop having
comedy." It was all about money. "The Americans pay writers
as a full-time job and so they can choose the best. At the
moment they are better because they treat the
subject seriously." Gran, who combined with Marks to write 16 hit shows
from Shine On Harvey Moon to Goodnight
Sweetheart, said Britain had its priorities all
wrong. "In America, 15 to 20 per cent of the budget goes
into the writing. In Britain, it is 3 to 5 per cent. In this country,
a half-decent script will have to do. "It is not only money but they (Americans) really
care about the words on the page," Gran said, adding that with
U.S. television now fragmented into several
networks, a hit show need only have a small market share. "Ironically, shows like Frasier, Seinfeld and Third
Rock From The Sun are niche shows, but they are still hits,"
he said. "When we were working in the States," Marks said,
"we worked with eight other writers in the same room from
nine until eight in the evening. This was a show
called Mr Sunshine. And it still flopped despite all the effort." The godfathers of British sitcom have been writing
together for 20 years. Marks had been a journalist, Gran a
civil servant.
===========================================What's "ironic"?