The cost of British comedy is just getting more expensive — news that doesn’t make great reading for the UK’s comic talent base.
Budgets for UK comedy shows are now closer to drama budgets than entertainment, with prices rising quickly in the past few years due to inflation, according to BBC Studios Comedy boss Josh Cole. This has stunted the chances of low-fi, low-budget comedies such as BBC3’s This Country from cutting through, he added.
“Comedy has got more expensive over the past could of years, even since when we made This Country,” he said. “Comedy was always closer to an entertainment budget and now it’s closer to a drama budget. You don’t necessarily have that two-tier system anymore. A gradual evolution added to inflation means the money doesn’t goes far in comedy.”
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, with Cole pointing to BBC Studio’s audio comedy programming as a stream for new talent, while other execs referenced Channel 4’s Blaps and BBC’s comedy shorts and social media as increasingly useful places to find potential stars.
Cole said the rush to make comedies infused with straight drama had impacted the ability for producers to land broader comedies that play it for laughs, following the mega-success of BBC3 series Fleabag.
“Comedy is guilty of taking itself a bit too seriously in the past few years and the first rule of comedy is make people laugh,” he added. “Audiences love that, but there’s maybe been a move away from it and it would be great to see more of it.”
The difference with Fleabag compared with others — none of which he name-checked — is “Fleabag is very, very funny.”
Earlier in the session, the panel, which also included BBC Head of Comedy Tanya Qureshi, debated how the sentimentality of shows such as Ted Lasso had impacted comedy in recent years.
“The way we consume comedy is evolving,” said ITV Head of Comedy Nana Hughes. “The way young people are looking at and discovering comedy. The tone is less cynical but it’s very hard to be funny. We have to be less offensive and very sensitive to everyone so that therefore stifles comedy. It’s finding the right place to land jokes without being scared alqwys comes back to risk. Do we lose the audience if we go hard like Ricky [Gervais]?”
