Something for everyone in the audience

The traditional sitcom format has been written off many times, but somehow, it keeps coming back. With 'The IT Crowd' back on our screens, Shane Hegartylooks at how sitcoms are having the last laugh

FIVE YEARS ago, it seemed that the laughs were going out of the sitcom. Literally. The traditional method of wheeling a studio audience into the set, then revving them up with a couple of beers and a stand-up comic, was being replaced by the faux documentary style of The Office; the realism of The Royle Family, Marion and Geoffand Early Doors; and the uncomfortable surrealism of Nighty Night, Green Wingor The League of Gentlemen.

In 2005, Victoria Wood used the 2005 British Comedy Awards to decry: "Sadly the sitcom is dead. The likes of The Officeare so good that you can't go back. Everything is very naturalistic now, whereas before it used to be quite contrived."

It echoed the general sentiment within the media and a couple of months later, former ITV director of programmes David Liddiment made a 90-minute Channel 4 documentary Who Killed the British Sitcom?which traced the medium's supposed decline through the 1980s and 1990s. The programme was an autopsy on the corpse.

And yet, the sitcom has proven to be anything but dead. In Britain, in fact, it has once again become a mainstay of comedy. It is similar to the chat show, which was handed its death cert around the same time, only for it to gasp and rise from the sick bed.

There have been some innovative and often brilliant comedies which continue to drive the genre forward – most obviously Channel 4's Peep Show, influential political satire The Thick of Itand slow-burning BBC hit Outnumbered– but there has been a resurgence in back-to-basics shows such as ratings-grabber My Familyand, more recently, Caroline Quentin-starring The Life of Riley. Between 2008 and 2009, five of the 11 highest-rating BBC comedies were in the traditional scripted format.

LAST FRIDAY NIGHT, Graham Linehan's The IT Crowdbegan its fourth series and it is a reminder that, throughout that swing away from the traditional sitcom format, Linehan stuck with it. In fact, he didn't just hang in there; with Arthur Mathews he crafted one of the best sitcoms of all time ( Father Ted) and with Dylan Moran wrote one of the best sitcoms of the past decade ( Black Books). He was also appeared in I'm Alan Partridge, which built a four-walled studio and brought in an audience who could only watch the action on monitors. At the start, there were complaints about the "canned laughter" that wasn't. Now, you can't imagine being any other way.

Linehan has long argued in favour of the scripted sitcom, saying before The IT Crowd'sfirst series: "I find it quite comical that everyone is doing the same kind of shaky camera, audience-free sitcom just because it's in vogue. For one thing, studio sitcoms are a very good way to get your script from 70 per cent perfect to 90 per cent perfect. Nothing focuses the mind of the cast and crew like the idea that they may be standing in front of an audience and not getting any laughs."

When it misfires, those factors somehow accentuate the problems. Irish television has long struggled with the traditional sitcom, with weak jokes played out in front of an audience too meagre to create an atmosphere. RTÉ's last attempt at the traditional sitcom was The Cassidysalmost a decade ago, when Ed Byrne led a game cast in a battle with the script. RTÉ raised the white flag after that.

About the same time, the "shaky camera, audience-free" approach of Paths to Freedomand Bachelor's Walkput paid (more or less) to the old joke about RTÉ comedy, even if it has not quite replicated that brilliance outside of sketch shows. Killinaskullyhas proven enough of a ratings success, but for all its traditional (you could argue hackneyed) humour, it is made in a relatively modern style – out of the studio and without a laughter track.

In the UK and the US, though, comedy hit a purple patch a decade ago, when some truly great sitcoms were being birthed or were in full flight.

Even as the British were mourning the death of the sitcom, Frasierand Seinfeldwere still being hailed as unsurpassable peaks of popular culture. Now, there are few great comedies on terrestrial television, with some of the quality stuff – 30 Rock, the US version of The Officeand Flight of the Conchords– becoming box set hits rather than getting prime time slots.

The quality on this side of the Atlantic is not nearly as strong as it was a few years ago, and the genre is being hit by the lack of cash in British television. Perhaps the return of traditional sitcoms in recent years has to do with a natural trough after a golden period, but it also reflects its value as a genre that will always be integral to television. They don’t always succeed, and when they’re bad they are truly terrible, but the sitcom refuses to die. It’s a zombie format marching slowly on. With often hilarious consequences.