More Than Yuks Redux

By James Poniewozik

A few years ago, everybody knew how to make a sitcom. You'd get a few cute actors, maybe a stand-up comic, a nice couch and some of those big cappuccino mugs from Pottery Barn. Take a few meetings, punch out a few scripts--then sit back and wait for the Brinks truck to pull up.

O.K., that's a gross oversimplification. (Without gross oversimplification, there would be no sitcoms.) But the business of TV comedy has fallen, and hard, since Jerry Seinfeld poured his last bowl of cereal. As recently as 1996-97, the year-end Nielsen ratings listed seven sitcoms in the top 10. Today there are two: Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond, which are seven and five years old, respectively. New comedy hits--Will & Grace, Malcolm in the Middle--have been rare. Last fall's one debatable success, CBS's Yes, Dear, was scheduled between established hits. Familiar names (Michael Richards, John Goodman) landed in familiar situations and met familiar ends. Says ABC president Stu Bloomberg: "It's not that all sitcoms are crappy, but after 40 years of this form, audiences are looking for an additional type of storytelling."

Don't get the wrong idea: those erstwhile viewers are not spending that time doing anything crazy like reading novels, making love or helping the kids with their homework. By and large, they're watching dramas or reality shows instead. But having strong sitcoms is still important to networks. Comedies rate far better than other shows in reruns--Is anybody really interested in catching a repeat of The Mole?--and sell more easily to syndication. Which may explain why some programmers and sitcom producers are resorting to a desperation move, somewhere between getting Vince McMahon to start a new football league and formally declaring bankruptcy: innovation. Rejecting the conventional pacing and look of sitcoms, trusting viewers to laugh without an elbow in the ribs, a small set of new shows--including ABC's dark police sitcom The Job and Showtime's behind-the-music comedy The Chris Isaak Show--are attempting to redefine funny.

Few dispute that the genre could use an overhaul. Executives and writers cite the growth in networks as a reason for weak offerings. Says Frasier executive producer Mark Reisman: "There aren't enough [funny actors and writers] to meet the demand." But TV comedy hasn't disappeared so much as migrated to hourlong shows such as Ed, Gilmore Girls, the resurgent Saturday Night Live, the plethora of late-night comics, and even reality shows like Survivor and dramas like The West Wing. The true culprit may be an overly cautious development process. "Networks give writers development deals and then interfere with development," says Larry David, co-creator of Seinfeld, who last fall debuted the discomfitingly funny, semi-improvisational Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. "Ultimately, anything not in their formula scares them." That formula--set-up, joke, canned laughter, repeat--might as well be encoded in our DNA.

In 1999 Alan Ball saw the release of the Oscar-winning satire American Beauty, which he wrote. He also created ABC's Oh Grow Up, the sort of instantly forgettable sitcom a character in Beauty might have been shown watching as a metaphor for the soul-killing blandness of suburban life. The premise wasn't revolutionary--gay man with straight roomies--but Ball says development slowly ground down any edge the show might have had. "[The network's] notes were condensed into two thoughts," he says. "Make everyone nice and articulate the subtext. Remove the conflict and spell everything out. Comedy executives don't understand that comedy is cruel." (Like David, Ball can afford to trash the nets. In June he debuts Six Feet Under, an hourlong series about undertakers for HBO.)

So how do you make the nonformulaic comedy? Naturally, there's a formula. Call it Larryism, for The Larry Sanders Show, HBO's behind-the-scenes talk-show comedy of the 1990s and a forebear of today's genre-busting sitcoms. You ditch the laugh track, which removes an artificial distraction (and caters to educated, affluent viewers' sense of superiority). For a cinematic look, you film with a single camera, not the standard three-video-camera setup. You lead with a vain, self-destructive or otherwise flawed protagonist. You may interject moments of drama; you certainly eschew such pedestrian devices as "jokes." "We don't do traditional jokes," says Isaak's co-creator Andrew Schneider. "We excised what jokes we found in the script," echoes The Job's co-creator Peter Tolan (a Sanders alum).

It's easier to do this on subscription networks like HBO, where Darren Star's Sex and the City is a "hit" with 2 or 3 million viewers. Roughly the same numbers got Star's adventurous teen-TV satire Grosse Pointe canceled at The WB. Jokes Isaak: the lack of fetters at Showtime "is like having a substitute teacher. They would never let me do this on regular TV." Isaak's one-hour comedy (Mondays starting March 12, 10 p.m. E.T.) looks at the fictional life of the real rock star--O.K., minor rock star--and his band mates. It's one part Larry Sanders (industry intrigue, celebrity guests playing themselves), one part Sex and the City (there's plenty of look-Ma-I'm-on-cable nudity). What's missing is the one part Chris Isaak. After an awful pilot, the show occasionally amuses but never gels, and Isaak is written as an amiable nonentity, with few defining characteristics besides a Jack-Bennyish cheap streak.

Still, pay cable's envelope pushing in story telling and content has upped the experimental ante at the networks too. ABC, whose last sitcom hit was Dharma and Greg four years ago, is staking its hopes on the decidedly un-Cosbyesque Denis Leary, star and co-creator of The Job (Wednesdays starting March 14, 9:30 p.m. E.T.). While playing a cop in the remake of the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, Leary hung out with a police adviser and was fascinated by the stress and mundanity of police life. "They don't catch the bad guy every half hour," he says. "I was attracted to how dedicated and screwed up they are." In The Job, cops chase a few crooks and a lot of demons. Leary plays Mike McNeil, an abrasive detective who drinks heavily, cheats on his wife (and his girlfriend) and scarfs pain-killers like breath mints from a metal tin. "That box and a bottle of Bushmill's is the only thing keeping me from taking a hostage," he says.

Like its drama-inflected ancestor Sports Night, The Job incorporates elements that would be trite on a plain-old drama, such as the shaky, handheld camera. But here they're starkly funny and McNeil an arresting (sorry) puzzle. He's also the sort of character who makes network execs pop Mylanta as he pops pills. So Leary and Tolan were surprised when ABC actively recruited them. "We said, 'You'll never buy it,'" recalls Leary. "'We're not going to change the language. We're not going to change the behavior.' And they said, 'Don't worry about it.'" Indeed, Bloomberg boasts, "No character in prime time has ever been so flawed. If we can make this work, we have expanded the comedy landscape."

They'll have help. Fox has had a mini-streak of sitcom success in the past couple of years with risk takers like Malcolm and Titus (as well as with That '70s Show, laugh track and all). And it has two appealingly unusual and very different sitcoms on the way. Undeclared, from producer Judd Apatow (another Sanders alum), is a laugh-track-less coming-of-age comedy that, like Apatow's Freaks and Geeks, relies less on zingers than low-key humor and well-drawn characters. The Tick is an outlandish spoof (based on a comic-book series) about an inept superhero (Seinfeld's Puddy, Patrick Warburton).

And all the networks have nontraditional-comedy pilots in contention for next fall. NBC is considering a live-improv sitcom. Dharma & Greg creator Chuck Lorre is working on an interactive sitcom, whose viewers will vote on plot twists, for Fox, which is also developing a series about a bunny puppet who lands a starring role in a children's show. But the networks are hardly abandoning the traditional sitcom. ABC is hedging its bets this spring with two very conventional-looking ones, starring Damon Wayans and Joan Cusack. Even Apatow says, "I like cinematic comedy, but I still think the best show on TV is Everybody Loves Raymond. When the writing and the cast are that good, you don't need to do any tricks."

History suggests that something--be it a Wayans brother, a pill-popping cop or a fluffy rabbit--should surprise and win over the audience soon. In 1983-84 there was one sitcom--Kate & Allie--in the top 10. The next year The Cosby Show debuted. With the Friends soon to receive their Modern Maturity subscriptions, the right attention-grabbing comic at the right time could end up one lucky bunny.

--With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles