Bonus! Who invented the first sitcom?
Recently somebody asked me, "when was the first sitcom?" And I started to answer multiple times before I realized that there's a story about sitcom history that goes back a lot further than you might think. So in this week's bonus video, I want to think a bit about what makes something a sitcom -- and not just a funny story -- and how far back into history you could go and still recognize the way that people are laughing together.
Backup link to the bonus video: https://youtu.be/bKm9Ya6FXrU
Comments (10)
Strangely enough I was listening to an old interview with Stephen Sondheim, who wrote "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," and he said it was based on Plautus, who established the conventions of the situation comedy -- which when I looked it up, include "stock characters, domestic chaos (plots center on everyday domestic misunderstandings, romantic mix-ups, elaborate deceptions) and contrived gags (running jokes, fast-paced dialogue, and farcical situations resolved within a tidy, episodic structure). Generally if Sondheim said it, I buy it!
Oh now that's very interesting, thank you!!!
I'd throw in "The Goldbergs" as one of the first 20th century models?
Oh yes for sure! I just have to be careful not to cause confusion when talking about that one, since there's a newer show with the same name that (as far as I know???) is unrelated.
Was Punch and Judy a sit com? You mentioned the Radio show Amos and Andy where the black characters were played by white actors. I vaguely remember the T.V. Version, and the T.V. actors were black. I don’t know the story behind that.
Now this is a good question: Would Punch & Judy meet the criteria for a sitcom? I hadn't considered that show but ... I think yes! Short stories with recurring characters, novel antagonistic situations, constrained time and place. The only quality that I think might diverge from my (personal and arbitrary) definition is that they may be more slapstick than dialogue.
Okay, if we're going right back to Ancient Athens anyway, I don't think Aristotle is actually your best bet, as the unities were only intended to apply within individual plays, not from play to play, also I'm reasonably sure the comedies lasted longer than half an hour. You might want to check out satyr plays, which were based on traditional mythological characters (so you'd see the same characters from play to play) plus I think they tended to be shorter? Not sure, but I think so. They don't all take place in the same location in terms of where they're set, but all the plays were performed in Athens and I think (but again, am not sure) that the satyr plays were sometimes a bit what we would now call post-modern and involved interacting with the audience, so maybe you could say that they're all kind of set in Athens in a way, given that the characters do seem to kinda sorta know that that's where they are. So I think the satyr plays would be a better bet for your five criteria than Aristotle or the comedies generally. I hope that helps!
This is extremely helpful, thank you! I haven't looked at the satyr plays yet but they sound like a lot of fun.
I've seen and performed in recreations of Comedia Dell Arte, and, at least in what I've seen and performed in, it is not mostly silent. While there is physical comedy, there is also quite a bit of wordplay involved. I think the misunderstanding comes from the use of the word pantomime to describe parts of Comedia Dell Arte. They had limited props and sets so they had to pantomime using objects that weren't there.
That makes sense -- from reading further, it seems like the silence was more a French thing in the late 1700s, as a way to evade censorship laws? I need to look more deeply into Moliere, I suspect a lot of modern sitcom episodes would be familiar to fans of his comedies of manners.