Characters Make Comedy

When you watch a sitcom on TV you're being conned. Because what you get is not a 'situation' comedy, but a 'character' comedy.

Characters drive comedy much more than situations and I'm going to use one example to explore this.

Our subject is going to be car insurance costs Rock From The Sun. To those who never saw the show it ran on NBC (BBC in the UK) between 1996 and 2001 and starred John Lithgow and KristenJohnston. The premise was that a group of aliens Ratboy disguised as humans and sent to insurance quotes (the 3rd Rock of the title) to learn about humanity.

My contention is that this science fiction concept could have been played in many ways, only one of them being comedy. For instance this concept could easily have merged into an X Files type of show, with humans trying to track down the infiltrators. Or perhaps a serious investigation into the foibles of humanity. Luckily, and thankfully, the producers chose comedy, though the concept in itself was not new. Think of My Favourite Martian.

Our alien explorers consisted of the following. Dick Solomon (John Lithgow), was the High Commander and leader of the expedition. He played the role of the family provider and took the re mortgage of physics professor at Pendelton State University. Information officer Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was given the body of a teenager and forced to enroll in high school, leaving security officer Sally (Kristen Johnston) to be the homemaker and communications officer Harry (French Stewart) to spend his life as either unemployed or in short-term jobs.

Each of these characters displayed specific and defining characteristics. Dick was bombastic, self opionated, arrogant and petulant. Sally, though outwardly beautiful, was tough and macho. Tommy was the typically mixed up teenager and Harry was the oddball no-hoper. They were perfect American humans, but their lack of knowledge of the subtleties of human life led to many of the show's comedy moments. That could, genuinely, have been called 'situation' comedy.

But that is not what is remembered about the show, it is the characters. They overflowed with easily forgotten one-liners which only worked because they were rooted in the characters. This can easily be seen by trying to transpose a Dick line to any of the other characters. It just doesn't work. Similarly, Sally's unexplained lust for Officer Don, though hilarious, could never work for any of the others.

For the writer, therefore, it is important to recognise that character is much more important than situation when writing comedy. The Solomons, whether alien or not, could be exported to any time or place and still be funny. A situation could certainly be funny for a moment but a humourous character is timeless.

Every successful comedy rests on characters that make us laugh, and the better they are painted, allowing us to really know them, the funnier they can be.

As Dick Hilarious once told me, if in doubt, pick the guy with the funny name.

Gurmeet Mattu is an award-winning writer with a track record in print, stage, radio and television, as well as being a qualified Trainer. He is currently operating scriptschool.co.uk">scriptschool.co.uk from which he offers various writers' services ,including a critique service, his Creative Writing Guide, a range of Free Factsheets and ebooks, together with many other resources. You can also read the spoof advice column from the Scottish Sage, Willie's Wisdom.

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