Sitcom format may have hope yet
If funny is money, network television’s Sitcom Bank & Chucklehead Trust is flat broke.
Over the past two years, such dependable, long-running mirth machines as “Friends,” “Frasier” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” signed off.
And even before the Emmy-honored trio departed, millions of disenchanted viewers and numerous industry experts had pretty much decided the sitcom was dead. Again.
“There’s no freshness. There’s no originality,” says Joe Keenan, who as one of the creators of “Frasier” certainly knows funny. “It’s all characters you’ve seen before, situations you’ve seen before, jokes you’ve heard before.”
From “Hope & Faith” to “Yes, Dear” to the woeful “Friends” spinoff “Joey,” the once grandly successful and often genuinely amusing sitcom format has devolved into cliched, laugh-track cacophony.
But hold on. What’s this?
My goodness, there are encouraging signs from the upcoming fall season that network television may have rediscovered its funny bone. We might have a reason to laugh again.
The happy buzz has been building for “Everybody Hates Chris” (UPN, 8 p.m. Thursdays), which features comic Chris Rock narrating a sly, irreverent and, yes, funny, autobiographical chronicle of his own hectic teenage years.
The other amusing rookies in the fall sitcom boomlet:
• “My Name Is Earl” (NBC, 9 p.m. Tuesdays), a smart, rowdily imaginative buffoon lampoon that traces the cockeyed karmic journey of a shiftless loser and petty thief (Jason Lee, “Almost Famous”) as he tries to right all his past wrongs.
• “How I Met Your Mother” (CBS, 8:30 p.m. Mondays), a playful, offbeat romantic comedy with a loopily appealing ensemble cast that includes Alyson Hannigan (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Neil Patrick Harris (“Doogie Howser, M.D.”). It’s also blessed with a refreshing infusion of youthful creative wit from two former writers on “Late Show with David Letterman.”
• “Out of Practice” (CBS, 9:30 p.m. Mondays). The most traditional sitcom of the funny foursome, featuring a cast of familiar faces that most prominently includes Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler, revolves around the screwball kinship tales of a family of physicians often at odds with each other. The old pros in charge of the old pros are Emmy winner Keenan and his fellow “Frasier” producing partner Christopher Lloyd.
But let’s not get too giddy just yet.
The fact that there are four promising new fall comedies – and a few more planned for midseason – doesn’t mean the sitcom renaissance has begun. Not yet. Not until we get a breakout sitcom version of what ABC did last year while kicking new life into prime time with the dramas “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost.”
“One hit can get the audience’s faith back that a comedy can be good,” says Keenan. “They’ve been exposed to so many dire, bad half-hour shows that the expectation is that any half-hour comedy is going to be the same stale stuff we’ve seen. So there’s a disinclination to sample them.”
That shouldn’t be a problem for “How I Met Your Mother” and “Out of Practice,” both of which are being plugged into the successful CBS Monday night lineup following the popular “King of Queens” and “Two and a Half Men,” respectively.
“Comedy was really our first priority heading into development season, and we wanted to reinforce Monday,” says Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment. “And with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jenna Elfman, we have two big star vehicles for midseason.”
“Seinfeld” alum Louis-Dreyfus will enliven “Old Christine,” portraying a newly divorced working mother coping with children, career and the emotional jolt of her ex-hubby’s new girlfriend, also named Christine.
Meanwhile, “Dharma & Greg” star Elfman anchors the midseason romantic comedy “Everything I Know About Men,” which co stars Dabney Coleman as her father.
Other promising midseason sitcoms include “Sons & Daughters” (ABC), a fast-paced, neuroses-laced tale of familial relationships from “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels; and “The Loop” (Fox), a stylishly wigged-out farce about a young corporate executive (Bret Harrison, “Grounded for Life”) and his slacker friends.
Both shows – like “Everybody Hates Chris” and “My Name Is Earl” – are given the modern comic edge of being filmed like little movies, minus the pesky traditional laugh track.
But no one’s going to strike it rich with a big, fresh sitcom hit if the networks don’t also wise up and settle down, suggests Keenan.
“The networks are increasingly impatient. A show has to be a hit out of the gate or they’re not going to stick with it,” he says. “If the prevailing mood now pertained back in the ‘80s, there would have been no `Frasier’ because there would have been no ‘Cheers.’ Because ‘Cheers’ would have been off the air by the middle of its first season.”
What’s needed today, Keenan says, is the kind of patience that NBC had with “Cheers” and “the kind of faith Fox is demonstrating in ‘Arrested Development.’ That if you put it on and leave it there, if it’s a good show, sooner or later people will come to it.”