Think the Unthinkable Series 1

... is on BBC7 again! So if you missed it, or just want to remember what seemed funny about eight years ago, have a listen here.

Miranda Hart's Jokeshop on BBC7

If you missed Miranda Hart's Jokeship on Radio 2, it's being repeated on BBC7 - includes bits you might recognise from the telly, plus other shiny jokes. It's here.

Another Case of Milton Jones - Series 4

It's now out there in the ether. Somewhere. Specifically here. Series 4 of Another Case of Milton. Few things give me more professional pride than this show. It's very much the brainchild of Milton Jones who sets the tone and produces jokes that are ludicrously funny. I'm madly running behind him, weaving together loose ends, picking up debris and shrapnel and generally trying to keep up. And then it's deliciously edited by the producer David Tyler to produce 28 minutes or so of joy. Have a listen if you can.

A Comedy Poll

It's a popularity contest - and that's not always a bad thing, but usually... Anyway, the chaps at Comedy.co.uk are canvassing votes for people's favourite comedies on TV and Radio. Bless them for including Radio, which is largely overlooked by almost all other awards, despite generating more comedy than TV by a country mile.

To vote, go here. In case you're curious, apart from projects of my own (if I don't vote for them, who will?) I voted for Bleak Expectations and The Thick of It among other things. (I finally got round to watching four episodes of the last series of The Thick of It on New Years Eve - which was great, albeit a considerably large dose of bad language in a short space...)

Unlucky for Some

You can listen to the latest episode of Hut 33 here. It's called Unlucky for Some, and it was a very enjoyable script to write, albeit a very pressured one. The Big Machine episode took ages - and so the time I had to spend on Unlucky for Some (which I wrote last) was very short. It was an idea that I'd had for the show very very early on when considering storylines for Series 3. I considered lots of alternatives, including Mrs B telling Archie that he was going to be lucky in love, and Archie so determined to prove her wrong that he throws away a really good chance with a really lovely girl. I liked that storyline because Archie was paying the penalty for his own dogma and stubbornness - which is what you want on a sitcom. The characters have to be their own worst enemies, and sow the seeds of their own downfall. I rejected that storyline in the end, however, partly because it isn't very funny, and also because it did not bring him into conflict with Charles, which is very much the comic engine of the show.

The other reasons I was attracted to this plot was because of current discussions around science, religion and faith. Many are stridently opposed to religion because it appears to them at least to be irrational. Professor Dawkins and friends are furious that people still regard religion as important or worthwhile when, to them, there is simply no need for it. In fact, it is menace to society, they say. It seemed to me that Archie would espouse this view, since he is a Marxist and the Russian sympathiser. Stalin ran an atheistic regime (demonstrating that you don't have to be religious to destroying millions of lives, single-handedly killing more people than every crusade and the Spanish Inquisition combined).

(I hasten to add I don't agree with Archie in this. Christianity, at least, is not based on an irrational 'leap of faith' as many think. My understanding is that God comes to earth as a man and gives proof of himself, rising from the dead, so that no 'leap' is needed. But this is not the place to discuss theology.)

Charles however is religiously motivated, being a Roman Catholic, although his faith sometimes has the appearance of superstition. But maybe I would say that because I am a Protestant. The important thing, however, is that Charles' faith is believable and real. Gordon, the middle-man, would be an Anglican - in the worst sense of the word - trying to agree with everyone and be all things to all men. And Mrs B would naturally be superstitious and full of old wives tales.

And thus, Unlucky for Some was born. One of the advantages of writing the final episode of a third series is that you know who the characters are and how they would respond in any given situation. Take the subject of superstition and you immediately have attitudes from the characters forming in your mind. The trick of writing is to hear those characters talking to each other and trying and keep up with the voices in your head...

The Big Machine

Episode 2 of Series 3 is now on iPlayer here if you want to have a listen.

The episode is about machinery and early computers so, as you can imagine, there are lots of jokes about computers and IT. Lots and lots has been written on this subject and I have waded through much technical data in the last few years as I've written this show and the novel Crossword Ends in Violence (5) (available here). I read a book about Colossus by Paul Gannon, large parts of which I had to skim since they were extremely technical. I didn't much enjoy the book, but I was very glad that someone had bothered to write it. But it did teach me about the astonishing technical achievements achieved under such pressure.

Turing naturally gets much retrospective credit in all of this - and rightly so. His brain was a very rare thing indeed. He vastly improved the Bombe, building on the achievements of the largely forgotten Pole, Marian Rejewski who first cracked Enigma in 1932 (thanks in part to some splendid espionage by a Frenchman). But often overlooked is Max Newman and Tommy Flowers who were largely responsible for the amazing Colossus.

The machine invented by Gordon, and streamline by Archie, in this episode is an arbitrary one, designed to automate the process of trying to drag a crib through the text and spot links (since the Enigma machine never encoded a letter as itself) - it's getting boringly technical now, isn't it? This is what I'm up against, you see, writing an audience comedy show set at Bletchley Park.

I had a lot of fun writing it although, for some reason, this took the longest to write by far, going through several drafts. One of the problems stemmed from the dilemma the characters find themselves towards the end of the show. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't (I hope). But the machine that is created obviously has ramifications - but to suggest that our heroes would do something as malicious and self-serving as sabotage it is unthinkable. Still, our characters are feckless and petty, so nothing is beyond them. Naturally, they are nothing like the hardworking folk who laboured away at Bletchley for real - it's just a sitcom, remember... (In the same way, the German occupation of France did not resemble the goings-on of Allo Allo). Hope you enjoy this one.

Episode 1 - Know Thine Enemy on iPlayer

For the next week, you can listen to Episode 1 of Series 3 of Hut 33 on iPlayer - here. This episode is actually about codebreaking, which sounds obvious given the premise of the sitcom, but it much harder to do that you might think. I've had one or two people quite indignant that, as a sitcom, we don't concentrate on the codebreaking anywhere near enough. Of course, sitcoms are about characters and people, not ideas. Hut 33 is not about the war - well, it is. It's about class war. It's about the clash of world-views between Archie, the common man, whose time is coming, and Charles, the posh don, whose time is passing. Gordon is stuck in between as the peace-maker. And the war is what pushes this unlikely trio together, as was the case in the war. It is often given as the reason for Churchill's astonishing defeat after the war; Britain, for the first time, really saw how the other half lived, and they didn't like it. Anyway, hope you enjoy the episode.

Know Thyne Enemy

For some reason, this episode is called Know Thyne Enemy. I don't know where the 'y' in 'Thyne' came from, but there it is. Anyway, this is episode 1 in the new series of Hut 33 - details of which can be found here.

This episode is an attempt to actually do a story about codebreaking - which is about as hard to do as it sounds. Stories about codebreaking that are comprehensible are quite hard. To do them on the radio makes them even harder. To make them funny on the radio, well, that's a bit of a tall order. But that is, after all, the premise of the show, so it's my own fault. You can be the judge of how successful I've been with this episode. Have a listen anytime from 11.30am on Wednesday 14th October.

Milton Jones and Pozzitive

For a few weeks a year, I have the pleasure of working for the independent production company Pozzitive, writing scripts with the splendidly funny Milton Jones, a series of which is being repeated on BBC7, and can be found on iPlayer here.

And if you look on Pozzitive's flashy new website, you'll find clips, jingles, info and tremendously time-wasting trivia to fill your lunch hour several times over. Why not get a sandwich and have a look here?

BBC7

In case you missed Series 1 of Hut 33, you will be able to hear it on Sundays on BBC7 - and subsequently on iPlayer, I guess. Lucky you.

(Don't worry. A third series is in production and should be with you sometime this year. I sat in my office-shed sweltering in the heat trying to write episode 4. It's shaping up!)

Writing a Sitcom - advice from the expert (ie. not me)

There are three splendid pages of advice on writing a situation comedy from sitcom sage Paul Mayhew-Archer here at the BBC Writers Room section, which is well worth a browse. Paul gives some handy pointers. Then has a sample outline of a sitcom, with some characters and stories, and then explains why sitcom is so dreadful... Great advice. If you want to write a sitcom, read it, learn it and do it. Paul has been an immense help to me over the last ten years.

Pigs n Spivs

BBC Radio has just aired a repeat of the Pigs N Spivs episode of Hut 33. I remember this episode rather fondly. Having a pig around the place struck me as a funny thing - not least because they make a wonderful noise. Having something that sounds good on Radio is, as you can imagine, no small thing for a radio comedy. Anyway, I wrote something about this episode back in June that you can find here. And there's a link to the iPlayer to hear the episode here.

Hut 33 - Repeated

Listen to the first episode of Series 2 on BBC iPlayer here. Read more background info here.

You can also hear a repeat of my other show, Think the Unthinkable, on BBC7, also on the iPlayer.

Most Popular

Here's a nice thing. Today, Think the Unthinkable is currently the most popular show on BBC7 on iPlayer. In particular Episode 4 of Series 2. Listen here.

Think the Unthinkable

There is a repeat of a previous sitcom what I wrote called Think The Unthinkable - starring Marcus Brigstocke, David Mitchell and Catherine Shepherd. Series 2 in on BBC7 at the mo. Listen to an ep here.

Recording 1: Series 3: Hut 33

Okay, not the most engaging of blog titles, but it explains it clearly. We have a recording date for Hut 33 - for the first of three recordings. We're not entirely sure when the next two will be. Some time in July perhaps. Or September. But we have managed to pin down our wonderful cast for a day in May. 25th May 2009 at the BBC Radio Theatre in London at 7.15. It's a great night out and it's free. And when you finally hear the programme go out, you can smug about the fact that you don't need to hear it - because you were there. More details here.

M*A*S*H - Blood and Guts

Every morning from 7am 'til 8am, I look after my daughter - during which time I'm able to watch about twenty minutes of television. So this morning, I watched an episode of M*A*S*H - from the 10th series. It was called "Blood and Guts" - which sitcom geeks tell me was originally aired in Jan 1982. In this episode, Hawkeye is outraged when a sensationalistic war correspondent, Clayton Kibbee, reports irresponsible G.I. stunts as tales of military valor. What can we learn from it?

M*A*S*H works best when the characters are all getting on each other's nerves. It occurred to me that Hut 33's Archie vs Charles antagonism is akin to Hawkeye vs Winchester. But let's be honest, when you're on your 200th episode of a sitcom, you can be forgiven from bringing in outside characters and seeing how the characters react. The outside character in question is a famous fictional war correspondent - and everyone likes him. He's brought out some pints of blood with him from the readers of his newspaper, and is writing a story about how each pint is used. Unfortunately, the first two pints are used on dumb GIs injured via self-inflicted accidents, not combat. But Kibbee writes up a tail of derring-do anyway. Hawkeye is appalled and tries to get others to see that Kibbee is a phoney.

Kibbee's motives are unclear in this episode - is he twisting the facts to publish a good story for the paper? Is he trying to help the war effort by creating heroes for the readers at home? Clearly he'd be doing the 4077 no favours if he said they had to treat stupid GIs who were foolishly injured. But since Kibbee is not a central character, his motives are less interesting to us than Hawkeye's. And it's very easy to forget that when creating character that only last one episode. The audience like the regular cast - and tend to have their favourites within that. And they rarely, if ever, derive much pleasure from outside characters.

But here's the exception. Seinfeld made a virtue of creating funny one-off characters. Like the Soup Nazi. Or Elaine's Dad. Or the Bubble Boy. It can be done. But very little pressure is placed on these characters. It's all about how the regulars react - and then act, and move the story on. One should avoid outside characters being the central plot engine of the story.


For Hut 33 Series 3
One of the reasons for examining other sitcoms is to learn - and make improvements to my own writing so that Series 3 of Hut 33 is better than the last two. In Series 2, there were probably too many outside characters coming in: The Duke of Kent, the German Spy, The American. I was perfectly happy with the episodes, but the focus of the show must always be the main characters. To that end, for series 3, I have outlines for four scripts which contain no outside characters at all. Two more episodes are still to be storylined. But those episodes will be numbers 17 & 18 in the overall canon of Hut 33, so there's no excuse. I'm still some way short of an episode 200.

One other point about M*A*S*H, which is a military show, as is Hut 33. Military shows are useful from a sitcom point of view because comedy require simplicity, and comprehensibility. And in the army, everyone has clear ranks, roles and duties. There is a hierarchy that must be observed. Wars that need to be won. Anything that subverts that order is, or can be, funny. Moreover, the beauty of M*A*S*H, from a writing point of view, is that the job of the main characters is clear - cure patients, save lives and generally help out.

The role of Hut 33 is altogether harder to convey. Code-breaking is incredibly hard to do, and even harder to explain. It helps that we have a thickie character in Josh, to whom things have to be explained very simply (and to the audience), but it doesn't always work. Again, I'll be trying to tackle that head-on in this series, but add to that fact that its radio (so everything has to be said, not seen), and it's all rather demanding. So I'd better get on with writing a script now...

Starting Writing an Episode

And so I begin to write Series 3 of Hut 33. Yes, it really is written - not made up on the spot, which is, I'm sure, how it sounds to some.

For those interested in the process of writing, I plan to put things on this site every now and then - and in particular how I go about writing a six-part radio sitcom. Of course, I've already slipped up by calling it a 'six-part' series, which implies some kind of story arc. There isn't one, even though this series finds us in 1942, rather than 1941. So, for the characters in Hut 33, the war is going ever so slightly better. The Russians and Americans are in the war, but the Germans are still doing very well.

Starting to Write the Episode
So, today, I'm going to write the first page of the first episode of the Series 3. Although, because it has no real 'serial' component, it may turn out to be the second or fifth episode. Who knows? This episode is notionally set in January 1942, partly because one has to imagine it is cold, both in the hut, and in the Arctic Circle - which will be referred to a number of times throughout the show.

How do I know that? How do I know what's going to happen until I've written it?

Because I'm writing the script based on an scene-by-scene outline that is, in itself, 2000 words in length. A script normally ends up being about 5500 words (which reads at about 31/31 minutes, and is then edited. That's another story). The scene-by-scene outline I'm using is a fifth draft. I've been through it a number of times and the story is, I think, fairly solid. Each scene has a paragraph or two about what happens, and sometimes a few lines of dialogue and jokes, so that every scene is like writing a little sketch.

Writing Schedules
I hope that this script will take me about a week to write. But I've probably already spent a week on the story, the scenes and the general ideas. Once I have that first draft (which may not be finished by Friday as I have a busy week, plus my daughter's first birthday party this afternoon), I will save it, ignore it, go onto another episode, and a few weeks later, come back, go through it and cut bits, add jokes and then finally send it to the producer - as Draft 1.

I expect that Draft 1 will be lumpy and far from perfect. The producer will spot bits and flaws and possible cuts. And I'll spend a few more days on it and write draft 2, that may be anywhere between 10-50% different from Draft 1. Hopefully, Draft 2 will be readable by the cast. Hearing it read makes a bit difference and we like to read through every script with as many of the cast as we can get at least a week before the recording - since there just isn't time to fix things on the day. Especially now we record two episodes at one recording.

The readthrough, then, will probably generate another day's work - possibly two. (this is per script, obviously) And then one more pass-through for a day with the producer, adding more jokes and deleting bits and we have a script that should be ready for recording. That's the theory, anyway - and how I've written Series 1 and 2 of Hut 33, Think the Unthinkable and The Pits....

But every writer is different. Some writers seem to thrive on leaving it too late, last minute scrambles and staying up all night. That sometimes happens for me. But not usually. I'm boring, like that. 2am is a brilliant time for sleeping, I find. Not writing...

Crossword Ends in Violence (5)

If you enjoy Hut 33, and/or crosswords, you may enjoy a novel I've just written called Crossword Ends in Violence (5). It's a quintessentially British thriller about a professional crossword setter who discovers that his grandfather was accused of passing secrets to the Nazis just before D-Day. It's a comic spy novel - with a gulag and some chess grandmasters thrown in. It's like Robert Harris with jokes.

You can read long extracts of it here. And you can buy it here.

Milton Jones & Miranda Hart

As well as writing Hut 33, I get to co-write Another Case of Milton Jones, with the thoroughly delightful and eponymous Milton Jones. The show is produced by equally splendid, but less eponymous, David Tyler. You can listen to it, via the BBC iPlayer, here. And buy the previous series on CD here.

I've also been helping Miranda Hart write her Joke Shop for BBC Radio 2. It aired over the summer and is now available on CD, just in time for the Credit Crunch. Ah yes, comedy is all about timing. It's here.