60's &70's comedies and their WRITERS.

The sitcom is my favourite genre of comedy.
Makes sense, because as a kid you grow up with sitcoms.
I didn't  grow up with too many sketch comedies, there were a few but sitcoms were on every day of the week , whereas sketch comedies were on for 6 weeks and then disappeared until the next year. Also, they were more for the adults.  Also you couldn't see a new release film in my era, you had to wait a few years for television release. As one of the greatest Woody Allen fans the first Woody Allen film I saw was BANANAS late one night on Channel Ten in 1977, and as a kid I only saw stand up comics doing bits on TV specials.

But sitcoms, they were comedies kids could watch.

Why doesn't Australia have great sitcoms.
Answer: You need great comedy writers and the reality is that great sitcom comedy writers are not easy to find.
 Here is a list of some of my favourite comedies. ( in Chronological order) and on the right side are writers who had major involvement in these shows

ROCKY & BULLWINKLE      Chris Hayward  Allan Burns
THE MUNSTERS      Chris Hayward, Allan Burns
GET SMART   Chris Hayward Allan Burns Arne Sultan
MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW  Allan Burns
BARNEY MILLER   Chris Hayward  Arne Sultan

Or
McHALES NAVY  Laurence Marks
F TROOP  Laurence Marks   Arthur Julian
HOGANS HEROES  Laurence Marks   Arthur Julian
MASH Laurence Marks ( Larry Gelbart)

Hollingsworth Morse was a director on all these  "service" shows.

For the record I don't find Hogan's Heroes at all funny. Love Bob Crane but it's a drama with dubbed laughter.

I've just mentioned 8 of the most popular and best sitcoms of all time plus Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Although many writers collaborated on these show it's my belief that there are very few great sitcom writers and this list shows the strong influence of the great writers of this period.
The same thing is happening now with American sitcom.
More on the 70's through to now later.

For the record  and we all love lists.GET SMART, THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW  & BARNEY MILLER all would be in my top ten comedies of all time. MASH would miss out because I just didn't find it funny after Henry Blake and Trapper left. It became a drama with Hawkeye Pierce.

ALL IN THE FAMILY had a different set of writers and is in my top ten. I'd lose credibility if not mentioning it and including it in my top ten.

MORE SITCOM THOUGHTS

My favourite genre of comedy is the sitcom. I think that applies to about 95% of people.
Sure we can love paying $200 to see Robin Williams or Billy Connolly. (Once in a life time experience)
Sure we love going to the flicks to see a good comedy movie and it rarely happens. ( Most comedy movies stink)
Sure we get big belly laughs from the great comedy sketches of great sketch comedians. (But we can't watch them over and over again)
But sitcoms are like our best friends.

I don't like defining sitcom. I consider half hour comedy shows in which we get to know the characters as sitcoms. So GET SMART to me is a sitcom. (yer it's satire but it's the format)

Australia doesn't do good sitcoms and there's a simple reason why.
But I digress. I've come up with a great sitcom idea and think it could be a success but here's what it needs.

For the purpose of this article I'll call it AUSSIE FAMILY (that's not the title)
AUSSIE FAMILY if gone through the procedure of every other Aussies comedy will fail no matter how good I think it's potential is.

So back to the heading.
HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL AUSSIE SITCOM?

1. Take all the key elements from the best U.S comedies. Not the British. The British don't seem how to nail a punchline.

2 Get all the best comedy writers in Australia on board. Have 20-30 writers if need be.
Australian comedies fail because of our "closed shop" mentality. We are too protective, which means scared of our project being shared.

3 Get an American from a successful sitcom to be the script editor or supervisor.

4 Forget about creating characters as such , create funny lines of a certain style for each character. Then their characters will evolve from the their lines. Look at Carla in CHEERS she evolved from just being a wise cracker.

5 Every character must have an angle no matter how small. The perfect example is Larry in NEWHART. 

 6 The characters all live in the now, the past is not part of the sitcom world.
e.g CHEERS Sam had a brother. His appearance in one episode was the extent of his involvement. Never mentioned before, never mentioned after. Same with Ted Baxter in Mary Tyler Moore Show.

GUEST STARS
Not a big thing in U.S sitcoms but for Australian sitcoms it's necessary.

That's most of my ingredients for an Aussie Sitcom.