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Most US sitcoms are written to run 30 minutes in length with commercial breaks, leaving about 22 minutes of showtime, although ones made outside the US may run somewhat longer. US sitcoms are often characterised by long series runs of 20 or more episodes, whereas the British sitcom is traditionally comprised of distinct series of six episodes each. US sitcoms often have large teams of script writers firing gags into the script and round-table sessions, whereas the British sitcom is usually written by two co-writers or is the work of one person.
Despite Canada's wealth of comedic talent, Canadian TV's conventional sitcoms have generally fared poorly with both critics and audiences. One particularly notorious example is The Trouble with Tracy, regarded by many Canadians as one of the worst TV shows ever made. Other Canadian sitcoms have included Snow Job , Check it Out! , Mosquito Lake and Not My Department , all of which were mocked in their time as being particularly unfunny.
The few successful Canadian sitcoms have included King of Kensington, Hangin' In and Corner Gas.
Canadian TV networks have had much more success with sketch comedy shows such as The Kids in the Hall, CODCO, SCTV, This Hour has 22 Minutes and Royal Canadian Air Farce, and quirky dramedies such as Twitch City, The Newsroom, Made in Canada, Trailer Park Boys, The Beachcombers, and Seeing Things.
One of Canada's most enduring comedic television series airing today, The Red Green Show, is essentially a cross between a sitcom and a sketch series. Each episode unfolds through short comedic sketches rather than a conventional sitcom plot, but unlike a true sketch series, the sketches always draw from a single set of characters and no actor plays more than one role.
Early sitcoms included Joe & Koro and Buck House. Later there was The Billy T James Show (subsequently rerun in early 2004 as part of the first year's offering on Maori Television). The team of David McPhail and Jon Gadsby produced and/or starred in quite a number (such as Letter to Blanchy), with help from writer A K Grant.
Many British and US sitcoms have been popular in New Zealand, including most of those mentioned in this article.
Main article: British sitcom
The United Kingdom has produced a wealth of sitcoms, many of which have been exported to other nations or redone in adaptation. Classic British sitcoms include Only Fools and Horses, Porridge, Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army, Blackadder, Open All Hours, and The Young Ones. More recent successes have included Father Ted (a partly Irish sitcom), The Royle Family, and The Office.
The British sitcom tends to rely less on quick-fire jokes and quirky characters than plots, the analysis of the British individual and exaggerated caricatures of everyday stereotypes. There are, or course, some exceptions. Bottom gained popularity through its exaggerated comical violence and childish humour mixed with adult situations, Red Dwarf was a parody of the Sci-Fi genre, and The League of Gentlemen revolves around the macabre. There is also a tendency towards black humour - Porridge, for example, is set in a prison, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin involves a man who is suicidal, Steptoe and Son can be heart-breaking as the ambitions of Harry are quashed by his needy, manipulative father, and the end of each series of Blackadder involved the ritual slaughter of the cast.
Many British sitcoms are re-made for American audiences. For example, Till Death Us Do Part became All in the Family and the hugely popular Steptoe and Son became Sanford and Son. However, most British sitcoms usually fare better in their original forms. Re-makes of Red Dwarf, Men Behaving Badly, Coupling, and One Foot in the Grave fell victim to adaptations that largely removed the essence of the comedy and did not stand the test of time. Possibly the best example of this was Fawlty Towers, where the character of Basil became a woman. This eliminated the roles of the hen-pecked lead and the dragon-like wife. Reports of plans for a re-make of The Office, with David Brent, the comedy powerhouse who made the British version so popular in America, taking a backseat to the relationship between Tim and Dawn also seems destined for the scrap heap of British crossovers.
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