Something advertisers do brilliantly is get to the problem and show how to fix it. It’s a thing that sitcom writers often struggle with, spending far too long on back story and set-up.

It’s some skill to tell a story in 30 seconds, and new sitcom writers could learn a lot from advertisers in creating an effective narrative quickly and clearly. I had a look at a few sitcom episodes to see how quickly they set up the inciting incident – AKA the thing that needs to be fixed. Cartoons, written for kids with their terrible attention spans, multi-screening and low boredom thresholds, are the perfect place to start.

The Amazing World of Gumball

Episode: The Puppy

Set Up: Gumball, Darwin and Anais are doing a presentation to their dad on the value of getting a puppy.

Time their Want is declared: 1 minute 15 seconds.

Episode: The Name

Set Up: Gumball and Darwin are playing an amusement arcade game. Gumball wins and has to enter his real name, which he doesn’t know. He vows to find out his real name.

Time his quest is declared: 1 minute 3 seconds.

Teen Titans Go

Episode: Staring at the Future

Set Up: Robin is developing a moustache-growing serum, but is disturbed when Cyborg and Beast Boy smash into the living room on a bull, playing Indoor Rodeo. Robin tells them they need to accept Responsibility and think about their future.

Time the problem is declared: 1 minute 45 seconds.

Episode: Genie President

Set Up: The gang are in the living room, looking into a cardboard box. Robin shows them the contents – a penny. Starfire tells them the story of Abraham Lincoln and Robin has the idea to melt down unwanted pennies for their metal value.

Time of opportunity: 2 minutes 7 seconds.

These episodes are 10 minutes long, so we’re seeing the Problem That Needs To Be Solved on page 2 at the latest. This counters with so many scripts that will be sent to Sitcom Mission, BAFTA Rocliffe and BBC Writersroom this year, many of which won’t have a story at all. I once had a comment from a new writer, “Why do you only want 15-minute episodes? My story doesn’t get going until page 10.” There’s an easy answer to that – cut the first nine pages.

But What About Longer Sitcoms?

The animated examples above usually have a single plotline and are pretty wild and wacky, but what about domestic sitcoms that run to 23 minutes? Ok, let’s look at Friends:

Episode: The One with Phoebe’s Husband

Set Up: Rachel is in her apartment telling her mother not to worry about a recent mugging when she is shocked by a pigeon flying in through the window. She manages to put the pigeon in a saucepan, but unwittingly releases it when a stranger enters the apartment and declares himself to be Phoebe’s long-lost husband.

Time to inciting incident: 1 minute 27 seconds.

Other Things That Happen in This Episode:
Chandler has a third nipple: 3 minutes 38 seconds.
Joey was in a porno movie: 4 minutes 22 seconds.
Rachel is jealous of Julie: 5 minutes 31 seconds.

Episode: The One with the Yeti

Set Up: Joey comes back from an audition and walks in on Monica and Chandler kissing. He tells them that, if he is supposed to be ignorant of their relationship (ie live and tell a lie), he doesn’t want to witness their private displays of affection. They apologise and head off to Monica’s apartment because Rachel is at work. Monica and Chandler’s quest in the cold open (the bit before the opening credits) is to find somewhere private to make out.

Time to reveal of quest in cold open: 59 seconds

Other Things That Happen in This Episode:
Phoebe’s mother sends her a mink coat: 2 minutes 11 seconds.
Ross has to sell his furniture to keep Emily happy: 2 minutes 41 seconds.
Rachel and Monica meet a new resident in the storage room: 5 minutes 2 seconds.

What Can We Learn From This?

Don’t spend pages, time and energy setting things up in the present and lots of printer ink in explaining the past, especially early on. Save it for later.

Get those inciting incidents in early. They don’t have to be huge, life-changing events – they can be domestic, observational comedy subjects that the characters act on.

Try listing ten things (eg, a bird flies in a room, a vegan is sent a fur coat, someone parks their car in front of your drive, someone finds an old doll’s house), then apply one of them to one of your characters. You may find something out about their past that you didn’t know (Phoebe has a secret husband, Chandler has a secret third nipple, Joey was in a porno movie).

It all feels a bit Blah De Blah as Diet Coke go for Grannies Behaving Badly while the meerkats return with a slightly less controversial car insurance advert than one of their rivals.

Diet Coke have gone for an inter-generational mix of two grannies, Vera and Gladys, as they swipe through a dating app and refer to their prospective dates in yoof and street terminology, like “Total Playa!!!” and “I’m in!”

Having read dozens of sitcom scripts from new writers that try to put yoof words into old people’s mouths, I’m yet to read one that works. And I don’t think Diet Coke have done themselves any favours here either. It really feels like they’ve chucked ideas at a wall and thrown their hands up and said, “We don’t know what Diet Coke means anymore!” Is it for young people or old people or fun people or bold people? Whatever happened to the simplicity of “Diet Coke break” and the shirt-off guy?

Sitcom scripts that have things happen ‘because they’re funny’ create real problems for themselves because it’s the self-indulgent wishes of the writer, not the truth of the story. You can either indulge yourself or the audience, rarely both. Del Boy didn’t fall through the open bar flap ‘because it was funny’, he did it because his self-deluded over-confidence stopped him from checking that the bar was still there before he leant on it. And this advert feels like a case of, “Oooh, wouldn’t it be funny to have two old women checking out old men on a Tinder-esque app?” “Oooh, and then they could speak like urban kids!” “Hurrah!”

So what do Vera and Gladys get up to next? Not much, I reckon, because there’s no particular relationship between them that’s of any interest, no difference of attitude, no status games to be played. Go on, DC, prove me wrong.

Compare the Car Insurance Ads

Showing how it could be done if those things were in place, High Status Aleksandr talks out loud and shares some information that Low Status Sergei accepts as an instruction because it’s his job to follow Aleksandr’s commandments. You don’t have to have a master-and-servant relationship all the time, but comedy relationships are often built on status which can then be inverted.

The latest advert heralds Compare The Market’s expansion of AutoSergei into car insurance and the comedy comes from the confusion between Aleksandr talking about the fully automated search tool on the website while driver Sergei thinks he’s talking about the car. With hysterical results.

And finally…

A rant.

I read an interesting article this week about the great potential loss to the ad industry because men were demanding flexible working arrangements. While obviously flexible working arrangements for men is a brilliant idea, surely this is something women have been banging on about for ages? And if it’s a case of ad agencies being way, way, way behind the times when it comes to reflecting modern life, how about the advertising industry stops patting itself on the back with this idea that it’s all cutting edge and taking massive risks in life. Want to prove how cutting edge your firm is? Employ some working-class people. Or some old people so you don’t come up with car crashes like the Diet Coke one above. Or, heaven forbid, some disabled people so that these demographics are part of your organic makeup and aren’t just focus groups for you to call on when it suits you. This survey just proves that life only becomes visible and change only really happens when white, middle-class, able-bodied heterosexual men are affected and want to finally do something about it.

Rant over.