Sitcom

In practice

A sitcom, short for situation comedy, is a comedy series built around a fixed set of characters in a recurring situation: a family, a workplace, a group of friends, an apartment. Each episode puts those characters in a new predicament and gets laughs from how they handle it, then usually returns them to where they started so the next episode can do it again.

The situation is the engine. A sitcom's premise (a bar where everybody knows your name, a paper company in Scranton, six friends in New York) creates a world of people who cannot easily leave each other. Conflict comes from who they are, so the best sitcom jokes are about character rather than one-liners that anyone could say.

Sitcoms began on radio and moved to television in the late 1940s and 1950s. I Love Lucy (1951) set the pattern for decades by filming with several cameras in front of a live audience. Today the form splits into two traditions: multi-camera sitcoms like Friends and The Big Bang Theory, and single-camera sitcoms like The Office and Parks and Recreation.

A cold open in a small office

This is a cold open, the short scene before the opening titles that most sitcoms use to hook the audience. It establishes the situation (a small dental office), the two characters and the dynamic that will power the series: Priya makes rules, Hal finds loopholes. Nothing here depends on plot. The joke would work in any episode, which is exactly what a sitcom needs.

What a sitcom is

A sitcom is a series comedy that returns, episode after episode, to the same characters, settings and relationships. The "situation" in situation comedy is that fixed arrangement: who lives or works together, what they want and why they are stuck with each other.

Traditional sitcoms are episodic. Each episode tells a complete story, and by the end the characters are back where they began, which is why classic sitcom episodes can be watched in almost any order. Many modern sitcoms add serialized threads, such as a slow-burn romance or a character's career, without giving up the self-contained episode.

Most network sitcoms in the United States run about 22 minutes without commercials, filling a half-hour slot. Streaming sitcoms vary more, but the half-hour shape remains the norm for the form.

Multi-camera vs single-camera sitcoms

A multi-camera sitcom is shot on a few standing sets with several cameras running at once, usually in front of a live studio audience whose laughter is part of the soundtrack. I Love Lucy established the method in 1951, with the cinematographer Karl Freund lighting the set so that three film cameras could shoot each scene at the same time. Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends and The Big Bang Theory all followed the pattern.

A single-camera sitcom is shot like a film, one setup at a time, on location or on sets, with no audience and no laugh track. That allows faster cutting, more locations and visual jokes. The Office (U.S.), Parks and Recreation, Arrested Development and Abbott Elementary are examples; the mockumentary style of several of them uses the camera itself as part of the comedy.

The two forms also look different on the page. Multi-camera scripts traditionally double-space dialogue, put action lines in capitals and label scenes with letters, which makes them run much longer than single-camera scripts of the same episode length. Single-camera scripts look like ordinary screenplays.

How a sitcom episode is structured

Most episodes begin with a cold open, a short scene before the titles that may or may not relate to the episode's story. Then come two or three acts, separated by commercial breaks on network television, and often a tag, a final short scene during or before the credits.

A typical episode runs an A story, the main plot, alongside a B story and sometimes a C story for other characters. The stories often connect thematically and may collide at the climax, which is one of the reliable pleasures of the form.

The shape of the story is a problem that escalates. A small decision or lie leads to a complication, the complications compound, and the climax brings everything to a head before the characters land back in their usual place, sometimes having learned something and often not.

Examples of sitcoms

Family sitcoms: I Love Lucy, The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond and Modern Family build comedy from home life, from the conflicts that come with living with the people who know you best.

Workplace sitcoms: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Abbott Elementary turn colleagues into a substitute family, a premise that has proved one of the most durable in the form.

Friends and roommates: Seinfeld, Friends, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory are about chosen groups. Seinfeld became famous as "a show about nothing" because its stories came from tiny social problems rather than events.

How to write a sitcom

Build the situation first. Choose a setting that traps a group of characters together and gives them a reason to clash every week. Ask what the series is about underneath the jokes: in many great sitcoms, it is a family, whether of blood, work or friendship.

Write from character. Give each character a clear point of view, a want and a flaw that creates trouble. The best sitcom jokes could only be said by one character, and the best stories start from a flaw: the lie someone will not admit, the rule someone cannot help breaking.

Learn the format you are writing for. A spec episode of an existing show should match that show's structure and page style, whether multi-camera or single-camera. For an original pilot, establish the situation, every main character and the kind of story the series will tell each week, all in one episode.