Comedy Series Research Articles

A Life in Print Preview, and: Out of Breath

A Life in Print Preview, and: Out of Breath Gabrielle Burton (bio) A Life in Print Preview My calculations—eighteen nighttime hours,on a photobook for my daughter's school.A toddler's birthday feted in circle timewith cake, and her, for once, her turn to steplightly round while holding up a globe—one "walk around the sun" for every yearof life. Four times, she'll spin around her friends.I loathed the thought of storing a large boardof pictures, stickers, words in bright pink paint.Now I'm stuck. How can you summarize a child?The computer glows: I'm just halfway.I am behind at work. The laundry's piledso high we cannot open the bathroom door.Last night's dishes crust in the sink. I stayawake and shuffle photos, write captions,click refresh. The sun slowly turns the sky to milk,and I decide that, in another hour,I'll call my parents to say hello. For now,I curse the screen, sip cold black coffee,and wait for resolution to appear. Out of Breath You lie on the edgeof your pillow, the edgeof your bed in this room at the edge [End Page 76] of the hospital.Your eyes face the window.A sliver of dim light edges its waythrough thick gray clouds and slatted shadesonto your cheek. How is it we can walk,back straight, neck strong,right into the face of death?Which comes with a tap on the shoulderfrom a mugger's dull pipeor the crackle of metal as a car compacts.Or comes in a room like this, in a slow unwindingof a heart, the last breath held ontolike a rope unraveling,frayed ends disappearing. The ground below us turns to dust.The air blooms with smoke;black particles coat our lungs.Water-borne bits soak into skinwhile rising tides of hothouse bugs and couture cropsinfuse our streams of blood.We sit like toy ships in a child's tubriding waves that grow only to return.Death comes like a lover,and we turn our cheek to catch its light.I am sorry, my friend. I cannot watch. I run from the building,run without stoppingeven though it is raining. [End Page 77] Gabrielle Burton Gabrielle C. Burton is a writer and filmmaker in Delaware, Ohio, who won the Ohio Arts Council's Individual Excellence Award two years in a row, in poetry and also in filmmaking. Burton was finalist for best poem of the year from the Hawaii Review, won the Common Ground Review prize for best poem of 2014, and won the Thomas Wilhelmus award from Southern Indiana Review. Publications also include New Delta Review, Los Angeles Review, and Connecticut River Review. Burton helms the production company Five Sisters Productions with her five real-life sisters, making features, documentaries, commercials, and recently a series of "film poems" on underrepresented voices. She directed the award-winning documentary Kings, Queens, & In-Betweens and recently won a Wexner Center artist's residency for a doc inspired by her TEDx Talk on gender and parenting. Her comedy series on ageism, Old Guy, starring her father, Roger Burton (Baskets), and Peri Gilpin (Frasier), can be seen on igtv and Youtube. Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press

The Problem with Apu, Whiteness, and Racial Hierarchies in US Media Industries

The Problem with Apu, Whiteness, and Racial Hierarchies in US Media Industries Madhavi Mallapragada (bio) Hari Kondabolu's 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu (Michael Melamedoff), revolves around the Indian American writer's mission to resolve what he conceptualizes as the derogatory representation of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian immigrant character on the animated Fox television comedy series, The Simpsons (1989–). The problem is threefold. Apu is a racist stereotype of South Asian Americans; despite or perhaps because of that, Apu is a beloved and iconic character in mainstream American culture; consequently, Apu's legacy is oppressive as it continues to shape US media industries' expectations of South Asian American representations, people, and culture. As Kondabolu sees it, the only way to make peace with his decades-long struggle with the Apu stereotype is to interrogate the context of its production.1 This essay focuses on Kondabolu's production-related challenges—notably his (ultimately futile) efforts to get Hank Azaria, the white voice actor playing Apu, to be a part of the documentary—as well as the post-release responses from The Simpsons' team. Drawing from them, I argue for the urgency of centering the category of race in media production studies and, relatedly, for examining how racial hierarchies are operationalized and maintained in production cultures. Kondabolu's film takes aim at the politics of a highly influential mainstream, white American television show [End Page 148] and arrives at a time when the lack of racial diversity in mainstream media industries continues to be a problem, despite the recent trend of diverse casting. Over the last decade, US media industries have attempted to reframe their investments around race. Such efforts include racial diversity initiatives in the media workplace, casting decisions that consciously avoid the perpetuation of stereotypes, and targeting the key demographic groups of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans.2 But most of all, the reframing of the industries' relation to matters pertaining to racism, erasure, underrepresentation, and misrepresentation is a strategic ideological move. Here, the rhetoric that the twenty-first-century media industries' ethos is one of inclusivity, offering correctives to existing inequities and giving historically marginalized voices a proverbial seat at the proverbial table, is employed widely and often. In turn, it generates and maintains a narrative that is focused on the industries' intentions (often for the future) and individual practices (looking at casting on one show, for example). Such rhetorical moves function to obfuscate the structural factors that maintain racial hierarchies and recuperate whiteness as an institutional norm.3 My brief study of The Problem with Apu exemplifies the challenges racial minorities, including South Asian Americans, face in their efforts to engage the industry on its diversity platform and to offer their critical perspectives on the industries' Anglocentric production culture. Kondabolu, who wrote and stars in the documentary, draws on the reception of Apu by interviewing his family members and South Asian American celebrities. He focuses mostly on actors, comics, and writers, but problematically foregrounds male perspectives. In characterizing Apu as a stereotype, Kondabolu essentially revisits a long-standing critique about the representation of Apu.4 Critics have long pointed to the considerable evidence that Apu is a stereotype. The character owns a convenience store Kwik-E-Mart; is a devout Hindu; has an arranged marriage and eight children; is a "good" immigrant who espouses the values of hard work, tolerance, and not disrupting the status quo; and utters phrases like "Thank you! Come again!" in an exaggerated "Indian" accent. Shilpa Davé's groundbreaking theoretical formulation of "brown voice" posits that the production and repetition of a distinctive "Indian" accent in US popular culture functions as a racializing trait.5 She notes that the performance of this accent, or brown voice, is entangled with the racist histories of ethnic vaudeville humor and brownface performances.6 She argues that brown voice, as exemplified by Apu's "Indian" accent, ultimately "reinforces a static position for South Asians regardless of their status or occupation in the United States."7 In the opening moments of The Problem with Apu, Kondabolu reasons that while it is necessary to talk to The Simpsons' writers and producers to understand their thinking behind creating...

Life’s Too Short to be polite: Exploiting impoliteness and rudeness in Gervais And Merchant’s humour about physical difference

What follows is a qualitative analysis of the use of impoliteness for comiceffect in the British comedy series Life’s Too Short written by Ricky Gervais and StephenMerchant. Because each episode centres on Warwick Davis, an actor with restrictedgrowth, or dwarfism, there is a considerable risk of superiority or disparagement-typecomedy about a taboo subject like physical difference, stigmatized in current Britishculture. In this analysis I set out to show that the authors’ use of impoliteness plays animportant role in allowing them to write comedy centred on this sensitive issue.The starting-point of the analysis is Culpeper’s proposal that impoliteness can beentertaining, which in this case is applied to scripted comedy rather than impromptuor semi-spontaneous examples of impoliteness for purposes of entertainment.Referring to aspects of impoliteness applied to entertainment, and with reference tothe concept of face, and to superiority, incongruity, and relief humour theories, thepaper suggests there are at least six techniques by which the authors use impolitenessto reprise physical difference for a contemporary comedy series.

Case Study of the Audiovisual Translation of Wordplay

This paper examines the dubbing of the British comedy series A Touch of Cloth into French. Building on existing descriptive theory regarding wordplay translation – particularly the model of translation techniques laid out by Delabastita (1993) – translation patterns are identified. A corpus of instances of wordplay is established, correlations are identified between particular types of wordplay and particular translation results, and a case-by-case examination is undertaken to determine how different factors impacted these results. A wide range of factors are found to contribute to the way wordplay is translated, notably: the languages at hand, the nature of the joke, and the audiovisual features the joke brings into play. Conclusions are then drawn regarding the technique likely to be employed on a given occasion and why, as well as how closely the translation can be expected to reflect the original segment.

Very silly party politics: surrealism and satire in the ‘Pythonesque’

2019 sees the 50th anniversary of the iconic British television comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC: 1969–74). This article focuses on the concept of ‘Pythonesque’, placing the broadly political satirical content that is evident within the Pythons’ mainstream TV work and in selected subsequent film work at the centre of the notion of ‘Pythonesque’. It will be suggested, moreover, that the Pythons’ socio-cultural critical position is embedded in a long established British literary satirical tradition. Further, this article will aim to show that ‘Pythonesque’ incongruity, whilst adopting the aesthetic of the nihilistic cabaret of the Dadaists, was further influenced by the contemporary strain of British vernacular surrealism that permeated twentieth century popular performance through Music Hall, Variety comedy and The Goons, and also borrows Surrealist satirical perspectives. This evaluation of ‘Pythonesque’ fusion of satirical and surreal elements will posit that the comedians were simultaneously behind the times; of their time; and, in their prescience, some ways ahead of their time in their construction of humorous commentary on British societal mores and their vividly underscoring of the absurdity of the institutions they targeted.

Humor in the American T.V Show “Friends Season 6 Episode 9, The One Where Ross Got High”: A Linguistic Analysis

Language analysis is one of the most important vocabulary of the language. This research is an analysis of a section of one of the famous American series. This series is known as "Friends" season 6 episode 9. This series is a comedy series. It has humor in their content. The researcher dealt with the analysis of the linguistic part of this series and gave a brief description of the linguistic aspects that can be analyzed based on what was stated in the previous studies and then the researcher dealt with the cognitive analysis of this series and the analysis of linguistic phonetics and phonology and analysis pragmatically and educationally. The researcher concluded by summarizing the importance of analysis and the most important aspects that analyzed in this series.

Unhealthy Fun: Food and Beverage References in Comedy Series

We analyzed comedy series for food and beverage references, with particular attention to their type of presentation, along with the characteristics of actors associated with the references. Because the generally positive tone of comedy series can exert affective influence over audiences, the result that clearly unhealthy products appeared more often (food: 51.6%; beverage: 40.5%) than clearly healthy ones (food: 11.2%; beverage: 19.6%) could be especially problematic. Moreover, women (56.5%; men: 47.4%) and African American characters (62.7%; Caucasians: 51.5%; Other: 44.7%) were significantly more often associated with unhealthy foods, which could prompt stereotypes of such individuals.

The comedy web series: Reshaping Australian script development and commissioning practices

This article argues that, for Australian comedy series creators, the web platform has opened a new space in which the 'rules' of script development are being expanded, enhanced or otherwise refashioned through having direct connection with and input from their audience. With the audience's potential as a 'comedy gatekeeper', the web series audience becomes integral to the ways in which these texts are developed, namely skipping the erstwhile second-guessing of demographic tastes by more traditional broadcast development executives and commissioners. Referring to a range of well-known Australian comedy web series, such as Bondi Hipsters (2011-2017) and The Katering Show (2015-17) - including what their creators, writers and audiences have said about them - we investigate the processes behind the success of these series to argue that a new form of script development has emerged: namely, that development is both facilitated and influenced by the direct line that exists between comedy creators and their viewers. Furthermore, we suggest that through such a collaborative and open-access process of script development, comedy writers and performers might also benefit from an expanded form of talent development.

Funny as it may be: Humour in the American sitcoms I Love Lucy and Modern Family

The present study explores the manifestation of humour in two American TV situational comedy (sitcom) series: I Love Lucy (1951-1957) and Modern Family (2009-present). These sitcoms are known as landmarks, each characterising a certain time period in American cultural history: the most initial period (I Love Lucy) and the recent one (Modern Family). Hence the initial assumption is that the two series pursue different types of humour. Grounded in Raskin‘s (1985) Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH), the analysis stems from the basic notion of the script, that is, a set of semantic meanings first constructed in a given excerpt of a text and then violated in a certain way, thereby producing a humorous effect. The outcome of the violation becomes manifest through the overlap of two partly or fully incompatible scripts. The present study hypothesises that, while following the general principle of script violation and overlap, the two sitcoms will tend to focus on the construction and realisation of different scripts. The latter factor has significant implications in light of the notion of the world view, which is consequently expected to be at least partly different in the given time periods. The study therefore contributes to the larger objective of building a tentative formula of humour for the relevant periods.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.33.0.20097

‘A deeply troubled organization’: Organizational satire in the BBC’s W1A comedy series

This paper analyses the ways in which a media organization implicated in a series of reputational scandals represents its own management in a comedy series. The organization in question is the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and the comedy series is W1A, a mockumentary commissioned and screened by the BBC in 2014–17. Firstly, I discuss the ways in which W1A as a ‘text’ uses satirical devices to ridicule its own management as well as management fads and fashions. Secondly, I analyse W1A as the ‘intertext’, and consider the satirical representations of management in W1A against the backdrop of the BBC’s reputational scandals. I put forward an interpretation that the intertextual references in the comedy series break down the distance between ‘us’ and ‘the troubled organization’. I also argue that intertextual reading of the series (e.g. the analysis of allusions, cameo appearances, and parallels with the real BBC) throws an entirely different light on organizational wrongdoing, opening new possibilities for organizational reintegration and the repair of broken trust. Not only does the reading of W1A change when the audience considers what is happening in the real BBC, but also our interpretation of what is happening in the BBC may change when we watch W1A.

IMPLIKATUR: FUNGSI TINDAK TUTUR DALAM THE BIG BANG THEORY

<p><em>The research basically aims at describing implicature utterances and implicature </em><em>strategy of the speech acts and its types of utterance used in the situation comedy series of The Big Bang Theory seen from the Pragmatics point of view</em><em>. </em><em>The data is analyzed and described qualitatively by examining the correlation of the implicature strategy of the speech acts and its types of utterance. The data of this research is the implicature utterances of the characters, particularly the ones that appear in each type of utterance (i.e.,declarative, interogative and imperative) and types of speech act (i.e. representative, expressive, directive, and commissive). The source of data is face-to-face conversations among characters who are Physicists and one friend work as waiter. The data is taken from the conversations in the 20 series of three seasons of the situation comedy series of The Big Bang Theory. Findings have shown that implicature utterances among characters by exemplifying declarative, interrogative and imperative. Implicature strategy of the speech acts and its types of utterancethat is subcategorized into several types of utterance of speech act, namely: representative, directive and expressive.</em></p>

There is an after-life (for jokes, anyway): The potential for, and appeal of, ‘immortality’ in humor

Abstract While the appeal of humor lies, typically, in its very spontaneity and original contextual incongruity, there is also the chance of an ‘afterlife’ for the humorous text. In most cases, the humorist seeks an immediate response for what is an ephemeral, fleeting, linguistic transaction. A permanent place in humor culture is probably the least of the humorist’s goals- after all, the immediate, positive response is prioritized as an evidence of skill. Thus, most humor studies focus on the first instantiation of humor, as being generative of the act of humor. This prioritization of the immediate surprise, over the ‘echoes’ of an instance of humor, does not address the fact that many people enjoy revisiting a familiar joke, or comic film, or an entire TV comedy series, and that these revisited texts become incorporated into group and cultural artefacts. These recontextualizations in themselves are potentially funny, but they are also important in sustaining the original instance of humor as a type of ongoing conversation: a very distinctive feature of humor’s social importance. This paper will present a theorization of an interdependency between author, text, and interlocutors for the ‘afterlife’ of texts, and will furnish high-profile examples to support this concept.

Exploring the construction of the Irish Mammy in ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’

Abstract This paper explores how the cultural concept of the Irish Mammy is portrayed in the popular television comedy series ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’. Considering the historicity and cultural aspects surrounding essential views of Irishness that have shaped the archetype of the stereotype, we draw on a corpus of (semi)scripted fictional interaction taken from the series. Using a Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach to explore linguistic patterning surrounding the use of key lexical markers (e.g. Mammy), we investigate what they reveal about how the concept is represented, (de)constructed, and negotiated. The paper discusses the construction and deconstruction of the stereotype and the extent to which it draws on shared knowledge to reflect and navigate particular cultural values and concerns (Hall 1997; Hall et al. 2013). It views the deconstruction, in particular, as a way of challenging the traditional stereotype, in light of societal change, to provide a more layered, realistic and multi-faceted insight into the identities of the Irish Mammy figure within the fictional context of Mrs Brown’s Boys.

Superior Donuts : Digestive Resistance To Gentrification

In this article I analyze how the 2017 comedy series Superior Donuts handles a rather serious topic of gentrification. The show is based on real-life processes taking place in Uptown Chicago. An elderly Polish immigrant Arthur Przybyszewski and a young African-American Franco Wicks try to keep Arthur’s donut store from closing, while also resisting gentrification. Despite its obvious flaws – after all it is a feel-good sitcom, in which problems need to be created, taken on and solved during the span of one 20-minute long episode – the series successfully presents the economical, social and cultural impact of this process, which is shaping modern cities around the world. Through this analysis I present how the show’s creators and writers are able to successfully suggest ways of resistance, while simultaneously keeping Superior Donuts entertaining for the casual viewer. The most obvious conclusion that one might draw from watching the thirteen episodes that constitute the first season of Superior Donuts is that gentrification is inevitable, so the only way to resist it is to change. Still, the change has to be made on one’s own terms, otherwise one risks being absorbed by the neoliberal economy. The most effective way to do so is to remain loyal to one’s local community. No matter how diverse, the community allows for its members to form bonds that are beneficial to everyone. It is this sense of community that in a way enforces dialogue between the rich and the poor. Otherwise scared of each other, once they learn that an actual dialogue is possible, they will at least try to understand one another, rather than immediately classify those poorer/richer as their opponents.

“Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Don’t Rape”: Subverting Postfeminist Logics on Inside Amy Schumer

ABSTRACTThis study demonstrates the possibilities of perspective by incongruity for feminism, while also noting its limitations, through an analysis of the sketch comedy series Inside Amy Schumer. Series creator Amy Schumer openly identifies as a feminist and utilizes her series to forward feminist politics. As I argue, Inside Amy Schumer’s comedy relies on three incongruous strategies: mimicking patriarchal logics, inverting the grotesque, and juxtaposing serious feminist issues with parodies of frivolous pop culture texts. While flawed, the biting satire of the series pairs with Schumer’s offstage activism to debunk the justifying myth of postfeminist culture: that feminism is no longer needed. This study illustrates how irony remains a vital tool for feminist comics even as it recognizes the importance of distinguishing irony from pseudosatire and celebrity feminisms that reproduce dominant ideologies.

Pizza and Housos: Neoliberalism, the Discursive Construction of the Underclass and Its Representation

ABSTRACTThere is limited scholarship about Paul Fenech’s television comedy series and films. What there is tends to focus on Pizza (2000–2007) and place it, and its spin-off film, Fat Pizza (2003), within what has been called the wogsploitation cycle that includes most prominently The Wog Boy (2000). In this article I discuss two of Fenech’s television series, Pizza and Housos (2011–2013), in the context of representations of the underclass. I argue that the discourse of the underclass has evolved as the Other of neoliberalism in a similar way that the dangerous class, what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, was constructed as the Other of industrial capitalism. The characters in Pizza, with their pitiful below-minimum-wage earnings, exist on the borderline of the underclass, while the characters in Housos are immersed in the underclass existence. The film Housos v Authority (2012) is a populist exploration of Australian underclass life.

Winner of the William M. Jones Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2017 American Culture Association Conference

Winner of the William M. Jones Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2017 American Culture Association ConferenceThe figure of the nanny looms large in the popular imagination. From popular films and stories about nannies (Mary Poppins, The Help, The Nanny Diaries, Nanny McPhee, Supernanny) to Nannygate scandals over cheating celebrity husbands and illegitimate children (Ben Affleck, Gavin Rossdale, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to name just a few), the nanny is and long has been a site of contestation: beloved, treasured, neglected, threatening, comforting, working, and domestic woman. Although male nannies can and do exist-as do racialized, underpaid, unregulated, and/or migrant domestic workers (Leonard; Romero)-the popular imaginary prefers its nannies to be white, often British, heterosexual, and, increasingly, young and sexualized women (Leonard).Nannies are central to discussions about working families and, more specifically, working mothers. What does it mean for children, for families, and for patriarchy to have women out of the house, working? What does it mean for capitalist patriarchal societies to have often female workers entering into the domestic family space and providing paid caregiving? As recent work on recession-era western society has observed, the divides between public/private spheres, domestic/paid labor and home/work lives are becoming increasingly precarious in neoliberal societies (Weber, Reality Gendervision). The broadening insecurity of work; the rise of affective forms of labor; and the imperative to work longer, harder and in newly monetized ways have unsettled long-standing gender roles in relation to work (Negra and Tasker). As popular culture struggles to reflect and assuage these concerns, the romanticization of the nanny figure might be subsiding. A new iteration of the young white female nanny has emerged in an unlikely place-posttelevision.1Netflix's sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015-), which was cocreated by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (the same team behind NBC's 30 Rock), speaks to concerns over domesticity, entrapment, and female caregivers. Perhaps because of its unique platform, Kimmy is a comedy series that centers on a rather unpalatable premise-the aftermath of one woman's escape from captivity. Under the pretense of an impending apocalypse, Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (played by Jon Hamm) kidnapped and held four women in a bunker in Durnsville, for fifteen years before they were rescued in the first episode of the series. Upon being set free, one of the so-called Indiana Molewomen, Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper), decides to move to New York to start her new life. Her new job, however, puts her right back into another domestic setting-a rich New York mother hires her as nanny.This move from enforced domesticity to chosen (professionalized) domesticity is unique in popular representations of nannies, and could perhaps point to some of the ways in which alternative or posttelevision platforms are offering more progressive content than that screened on mainstream networks and cinemas. By breaking with common tropes that infantilize, sexualize and glamorize domestic workers, Kimmy challenges traditional conceptions of gendered labor, the pitting of mothers and nannies against one another, and the Cinderella narrative that has come to dominate postfeminist popular culture. Instead of offering retreatism as the solution to the violence faced by women everyday-both at work and at home-Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt refuses the work/home divide that is central to capitalist patriarchal logic and offers its audience a unique, if somewhat ambivalent view on working life for women in America today.Nannies and Feminism OnscreenPostfeminist popular culture is one arena in which the ambivalence toward women's working life has been depicted. Such portrayals reflect the long-standing concerns of and around western feminism of the relationship between women and work. …

STRATEGI BERTUTUR DALAM TUTURAN MEMERINTAH PADA SITUASI KOMEDI TUKANG OJEK PENGKOLAN (TOP) (Eps. 9)

Abstrak This tendency draws interest to find politeness strategy in command. This paper is using dialog script of tukang ojek pengkolan (TOP) written by Sokat Rahman. In this analysis the writer uses speech act theory by Searl, pragmatic theory by Austin, and politeness strategy by Brown C. Levinson. Based on the analysisthe writer found some commands which uttered by pilteness strategy off record and bald record. Some charecters in this serial comedy series Tukang Ojek Pengkolan preferred off record to bald record in their commands. By using this strategy, the characters uttered indirectly or vaguely to the hearer. In this strategy, the speaker tried to avoid the direct FTA, and it removes the characters from the potensial of being imposing. Keywords: Pragmatic, speech act, politeness strategy, Tukang Ojek Pengkolan (TOP) cpt.9

The Discourse Analysis and Pragmatic meanings of ta:lʕ in Jordanian Spoken Arabic

The current study attempts to investigate the discourse analysis and pragmatic meanings of the discourse marker ta:lʕ in Jordanian Spoken Arabic as used in TV comedy series. The data analyzed consisted of some YouTube videos each one lasted approximately for 45 minutes whereas some of them lasted nearly for 15 minutes. The investigator found that, ta:lʕ has eight different meanings based on the context in which it is used. Moreover, the recordings were transcribed and analyzed for the purpose of identifying the of ta:lʕ from a discourse and pragmatics analytical point of view.

Not just for laughs: the role of the pilot in commissioning Australian television comedy series

ABSTRACTThis article examines how the inclusion of a pilot as part of the proposal for a narrative comedy series, which might include the web series as pilot, can increase the chances of the project being commissioned by a television network. It draws on a series of interviews conducted with Australian television comedy writers, producers and commissioners, and funding agencies, about the importance of the pilot in the pitching process. This includes the potential of the pilot to demonstrate style, tone and comedic nuances; to showcase particular performers; and, in the case of the web series, to generate a ready-made audience – all of which might not be possible on the page. The article refers to successfully pitched and piloted Australian narrative comedy series to give context to its findings, including Wilfred, Lowdown, Please Like Me and The Katering Show. By also drawing on the authors’ backgrounds as practitioner–academics with experiences in script development and screenwriting, the article aims to provide both theoretical and practice-based insights about the role of the pilot in narrative comedy pitching and commissioning.