# Why is the Britcom season so short? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 23, 2004, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-britcom-season-so-short/230708 "2004-02-23T18:07:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2004, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-britcom-season-so-short/230708/1 "2004-02-23T18:07:51Z")
The title says it. Why is it so few episodes are made in a season or series in Britain? I’ve been watching _Coupling_ on PBS and it’s just about to the end of the available episodes. I think there were 22 and that’s three seasons worth. I saw on the web that season 4 is in production or will be soon, but why so few episodes at one time? What are the contracts like for the cast? ---
**Author:** ![Dizzy\_Fingers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dizzy\_Fingers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dizzy_Fingers)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-britcom-season-so-short/230708/2 "2004-02-23T18:26:34Z")
From [snpp.com](http://snpp.com): > [@](#): > > Richard Copping writes: > > Most British sitcoms are only written by 1 or 2 people rather that the big committees you get in the US, and it’s done a bit less scientifically. I remember reading somewhere how on sitcoms like Friends they have to make sure there are a certain number of jokes on each page of the script, whereas in Britain it’s just one or two guys writing a whole series on their own, which also accounts for the way there are only 6 (or occasionally 8) episodes per series. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2004, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-britcom-season-so-short/230708/3 "2004-02-23T21:53:00Z")
I’m a big fan of _The Good Life_. It ran four series of seven eps each plus two specials. On the DVD’s is an interview with the show’s creator and writer. He said there were only so many shows he could write about the show’s primary plot (40-yr-old man and his wife quit the rat race to become “self-sufficient”) without duplicating previous stories. Think of most any long-running US sitcoms that re-hash the same story 2,3, or more times. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2004, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-britcom-season-so-short/230708/4 "2004-02-24T00:42:50Z")
You have to remember that historically (certainly when you’re considering oldies like _The Good Life_) the British TV industry operated in a much less commercial, more “public service” environment than US TV, the idea being that the unfettered market did not provide the public with the best possible TV. On the one hand, this freed it, to some extent, from vulgar commercial responsibilities such as making TV programmes that people actually wanted to watch (or, to put it another way, allowed it to take creative risks, and to let programmes die when their writers ran out of ideas). On the other hand it limited its income, which was already much smaller than that of the US industry, which meant that it couldn’t have afforded to hire enough writers to make sitcoms that were still funny after 100 episodes if it had wanted to. But should a sitcom run for 100 episodes? I’m glad _Fawlty Towers_ didn’t, I’m glad _Frasier_ did. It has to be said that the American system does seem to have produced better shows than ours in recent years.