Writing Television Sitcoms

Writing Television Sitcoms
Author: Evan S. Smith
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1999
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780399525339

Describes the writing method called premise-driven comedy, examines how comedy affects character development and story structure, discusses guidelines on script layouts, and offers advice on establishing a career

Television Sitcom

Television Sitcom
Author: Brett Mills
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2005-11-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

Despite its global reach, longstanding popularity, and immense profitability, sitcom has been repeatedly neglected in theoretical work on television and media. This book demonstrates that this lack needs to be sorely addressed, by dragging analysis of sitcom up to date, with a wealth of contemporary examples, a range of new approaches to the genre, and examination of the roles sitcom and comedy play within society. The book takes as its starting point the variety of ways in which sitcom has traditionally been explored. A chapter on genre examines the history and development of sitcom, and the institutional structures which produce it. There is also analysis of differences between sitcoms produced in a range of countries, and what happens when a programme gets sold abroad and remade. A chapter on representation explores the debates about the ways in which sitcom chooses who to make jokes about and why, and whether this matters. And a chapter on performance argues that this is a vital, and underexplored, aspect of sitcom's funniness, and interrogates the ways in which comic actors make their performance funny. With specific case studies on Will and Grace, The Office, and The Cosby Show, as well as analysis of a broad range of contemporary and historical examples throughout, this book will be of interest to students of sitcom and comedy, as well as those of television and popular culture.

The Sitcom

The Sitcom
Author: Brett Mills
Publisher: TV Genres
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780748637515

This book offers an overview of the debates surrounding the sitcom genre.

Television Sitcom and Cultural Crisis

Television Sitcom and Cultural Crisis
Author: Holly Willson Holladay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2024-06-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040086330

This volume demonstrates that television comedies are conduits through which we might resist normative ways of thinking about cultural crises. By drawing on Gramscian notion of crisis and the understanding that crises are overlapping, interconnected, and mutually constitutive, the essays in this collection demonstrate that situation comedies do more than make us laugh; they also help us understand the complexities of our social world’s moments of crisis. Each chapter takes up the televisual representation of a modern cultural crisis in a contemporary sitcom and is grounded in the extensive body of literature that suggests that levity is a powerful mechanism to make sense of and cope with these difficult cultural experiences. Divided into thematic sections that highlight crises of institutions and systems, identity and representation, and speculation and futurism, this book will interest scholars of media and cultural studies, political economy, communication studies, and humor studies.

Beyond Sitcom

Beyond Sitcom
Author: Antonio Savorelli
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2010-04-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786458437

This book explores the mechanisms that have driven the evolution of televisual comedy from the classic sitcom, a genre deeply rooted in its theatrical origins, toward a more mature stage of television's history. It analyzes four comic series--Scrubs, The Office, The Comeback, and Ugly Betty--revealing how each separates itself from the traditional sitcom archetype and shows increased awareness of the comic genre. Throughout the author focuses on two cardinal themes: the relationship between comedy and euphoria; and the relationship between comic texts and reality.

Sitcom Style

Sitcom Style
Author: Diana Friedman
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2005
Genre: House & Home
ISBN:

From Archie Bunker's Barcalounger to the framed peephole on Friends,a sitcom's decor sets the tone of the nation's favourite shows - and defines the lives of its characters. Sitcom Style brings readers a behind-the-scenes peek inside more than two dozen of the most recognisable TV homes and offers readers design tips for their own homes.

Camp TV

Camp TV
Author: Quinlan Miller
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-05-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781478003038

Sitcoms of the 1950s and 1960s are widely considered conformist in their depictions of gender roles and sexual attitudes. In Camp TV Quinlan Miller offers a new account of the history of American television that explains what campy meant in practical sitcom terms in shows as iconic as The Dick Van Dyke Show as well as in more obscure fare, such as The Ugliest Girl in Town. Situating his analysis within the era's shifts in the television industry and the coalescence of straightness and whiteness that came with the decline of vaudevillian camp, Miller shows how the sitcoms of this era overflowed with important queer representation and gender nonconformity. Whether through regular supporting performances (Ann B. Davis's Schultzy in The Bob Cummings Show), guest appearances by Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly, or scripted dialogue and situations, industry processes of casting and production routinely esteemed a camp aesthetic that renders all gender expression queer. By charting this unexpected history, Miller offers new ways of exploring how supposedly repressive popular media incubated queer, genderqueer, and transgender representations.

Tribal Television

Tribal Television
Author: Dustin Tahmahkera
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2014
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1469618680

Tribal Television: Viewing Native People in Sitcoms