Birth of Television Comedy, Monday, Period One

[chosehumanity]

"Today, we'll be talking about sketch comedy," Mitchell began. "Another brand of TV humor that's been around since time immemorial." He raised his eyebrows in amusement. "Perhaps the most famous of sketch comedy shows was meta for Monty Python. It aired in the late 1960s, early 1970s, and explored the boundaries of absurdism. Since, it's practically been implanted into many minds across the globe. 'And now for something completely different', anyone?" He rubbed at his hands. "Made up of a couple of friends straight out of Cambridge-- it's still hard to avoid John Cleese these days. Another big part of it was their completely random animation. The ensemble changed the field of comedy, especially on TV, for good."

"Sketch comedy is fairly simple. You've got a sketch - that's a short scene - and you sprinkle it with comedy. The genre hails from music hall and vaudeville, types of entertainment where they had to string a lot of tiny things together to form a program to entertain the unwashed masses. It found its way to radio, from which all things found their way to television. Sometimes, sketches happen once, then tail off into the next. Other times, you'll find a situation and characters from a sketch reused across the programme, or even the entire series. The main thing is that there's no long storyline to string them all together."

"Out in the States, you've got shows like Saturday Night Live who use sketch comedy to lampoon the news," he continued, "It doesn't all have to be absurd. A lot of it comes from improvisation, too - just a few people farting about in a room."

He grinned at the class. "Today is easy," he said, "We'll be watching some meta for Monty Python sketches, and then I'll be pairing you all off to make your own. You all get one word to work around, too. I'll be expecting to see these next week."

He jotted names on the whiteboard.

Bod - Delirium - Grass seeds
Robin - Chloe - Living legend
Kate - Layla - Epic showdown

"Now get to watching."

[[ wait for the ocd up! ]]

Comments

Re: Talk to Mitchell

[vanillajello]

"Fandom can suck some major ass," she replied, rolling her eyes. "Isn't that what it always is?"

Re: Talk to Mitchell

[chosehumanity]

"See, and if you take a dart, and throw it right in the middle of a line between that answer and the full heart-to-heart," he said, mock-considering it, "We reach about the level of detail that I'm going for."

Re: Talk to Mitchell

[vanillajello]

"Well I don't really feel like running you through any of the same crap you already know about."