Comedy is hard, my friends.
Not everyone, whether 50 people in a room over a pub or 20,00 in an arena, will laugh at every funny line a comedian says.
Some fall on stony ground.
Similarly with TV sitcoms, people rave about popular shows that fail to tickle my funny bone. Usually because the annoying characters behave like they’re living in a sitcom.
The other night I re-watched a few episodes of Ricky Gervais’s excellent sitcom “Extras” (2005-7) which IMHO is brilliantly written and performed.
But . . . it does have a weakness at its heart…
If you’ve never watched “Extras”, Ricky plays Andy Milman a struggling actor who can only find background or ‘extra’ work in films and TV and is desperate to get a big break.
This eventually comes in the form of a sitcom script he’s written, based on his time working in a factory, which he sells to the BBC, who agree to allow him to star in the show.
Unfortunately, due to interference from the Comedy Department bosses, producers etc. the result is not what Andy envisaged. It’s full of moronic catchphrases and the characters are over-the-top caricatures.
Despite that, the series is a huge hit and Andy becomes a success . . . but at what price?
The weakness for me is, Andy’s sitcom (“When The Whistle Blows”) seems more like a throwback to broad 1970s shows than something the BBC would commission in 2005.
The ‘jollly’ opening credits and music for “When The Whistle  Blows” are designed to resemble those of “Only Fools And Horses”, while the witless characters sitting around the canteen table could easily be the idiot relations of the “Dinner Ladies” cast.
Both those shows are sitcom classics that never insulted the audience’s intelligence.
Ricky has proven his comedy ‘chops’ time and again and become a major player in the comedy world.
I realise Ricky was showing us showbiz success at any price is an empty experience, but I hope by creating a crude working class sitcom-within-a-sitcom he wasn’t having a sly dig at John Sullivan’s and Victoria Wood’s much-loved series, which can be watched and enjoyed endless times.
Comedy is hard, my friends!