Jon Petrie's Speech at the BBC Comedy Festival 2024

Published: 23 May 2024

We are now in a happiness recession

I want to kick off this fun, feelgood, celebration of UK Comedy…with some bad news. This year our audience teams have been doing lots of research into how the public is feeling about the pressures of day-to-day life and, this might shock you, it turns out wellbeing is in decline.

8 out of 10 people feel like things are getting worse. 6 out 10 are finding it hard to be hopeful about the future and 4 out of 10 said Baby Reindeer was the funniest Netflix comedy they've seen this year.

People are calling this a happiness recession with optimism at an all-time low - it's actually lower than at the worst of Covid or when you turned up this morning and realised the comedy festival was taking place in a disused warehouse.

What the people want

I don't want to say that it's all our fault, well the warehouse bit is, but 69% of UK adults say that there's a lot less to laugh about these days.

What audiences are telling us they want, more than anything else, is a laugh to combat the gloom. And it's not hard to see why.

Last year, Radio Times did a survey which showed that watching comedy actually changes the way we feel about the world. Viewers said that, after watching comedy, their happiness levels increased by 22% - the same percentage of happiness for people who think they've lost their keys and then find their keys.

Audiences are craving shows that are flat out funny. Literally, mind-alteringly funny.

And they want to laugh about things they see in their own lives - Relatable characters, recognisable worlds, familiar voices. That's why workplace and family sitcoms are so enduring and are watched again and again. They're the bedrock of the UK's incredible sitcom landscape.

This is our time

What all this means is: THIS IS OUR TIME.

I know that comedy is in a weird place right now. Even since last year, the effects of strikes, inflation, recession, and a fast-changing media landscape mean that we are now in a comedy eco-system that is much smaller than any of us would like.

And while the streamers might acquire bona fide homegrown hits, the truth is they're simply not commissioning enough culturally relevant comedy for UK audiences.

But before you all start retraining as therapists, let me quickly give you some good news. Because the reality is that comedy viewing figures are thriving. Especially on the BBC. Our audiences have never wanted to watch comedy more.

The BBC's commitment to comedy

Eight of the 10 biggest scripted comedies of last year were on the BBC, with the Ghosts Christmas Special at number one, attracting 7.2M viewers.

Last year saw 400 million hours watched of comedy on the BBC overall, and 700 million requests on iPlayer.

This month we saw a brilliant night for BBC Comedy at the BAFTAs - with Best Comedy for Such Brave Girls and best comedy performances for Gbemisola Ikumelo in Black Ops and Mawaan Rizwan in Juice, plus the Short Form award for Mobility.

And we've got an incredible year ahead, with brilliant new comedies like Daddy Issues, Spent and We Might Regret This, not to mention Only Child that will be shooting here in Glasgow, co-commissioned with our colleagues from BBC Scotland. And that's before we even mention the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special… Even the announcement sent the show straight back into the iPlayer top 10.

So, despite all the pressures on our finances, the BBC's commitment to comedy is going nowhere.

We are still the biggest investor in comedy in the UK. And contrary to some reports, we're not cutting back. In the last year alone, we've released 9 new shows and 14 recommissions and we want to continue to commit to at least 20 new and returning comedies on the BBC each year.

In order to achieve this, we will continue to invest considerable sums in pilots, tasters, short comedy films, radio, scripts and read-throughs. Our commitment to new talent also remains as strong as ever; we've just welcomed our new Comedy Collective cohort for 2024, and now we're looking forward to our 4th year of the televised New Comedy Awards.

There's no question it's a really tough environment. But the protection we get from the licence fee as our funding model means we can offer you huge opportunities…as long as your ideas are funny!

What we're looking for

This is where there's a bit of a problem... At our first comedy festival in Newcastle two years ago, I said sitcoms were what we wanted to see more of. I said it again last year, in Cardiff.

But the truth is we're still not getting pitched enough of the comedy we need to keep people happy.

Today we're announcing a few new shows we've commissioned; North East sitcom Smoggie Queens, from Phil Dunning, Northern Irish comedy Funboys, plus the recently announced Motherland spinoff, Amandaland. This is alongside recommissions for Not Going Out, The Power of Parker, Mammoth and family favourite Outnumbered, which is returning after eight years for a Christmas special.

They all point very clearly to the editorial direction we want to travel in. Firmly sitcom first, with a high joke rate. Please send us less shows that are "an exploration" of something and more that know where their funny bones are. We want less "vital pieces" and "comfort baths", and more "toe-curlingly funny", "gleeful" and "laugh out loud".

Comedy drama will always have its place, and we're really proud of our slate. But we are over supplied with them. We need to protect the comedy space for shows that really go for the joke jugular... the joke-ular.

We know that making a laugh out loud series is much easier said than done. So, in order to supercharge development in that area we are announcing a brand-new initiative for UK producers. We are committing to funding writers' rooms with show ideas originated and led by an experienced showrunner to create the next big UK sitcom with broad appeal.

We want comedy-first proposals with accessible entry points - think Ghosts, Two Doors Down, Motherland and Here We Go.

We'll fund six writer's rooms in total, anchored by experienced hands but backed by teams of established and new writing talent, and we'll be looking for them to come up with a full first series package - a pilot script, episode outlines, writing team ready to go. They'll be resourced accordingly and the brief will go live after this session, please take a look on our website.

Facing the fear

We really hope this goes some way to incentivising everyone in this room to bring us more of those sitcom ideas with big laughs that we simply don't get sent enough of.

I know there are plenty of factors at play in this. I think some of it is about fear.

Fear of failure, of course, but also fear of perception, the fear of bad reviews. Not just from writers, but producers and commissioners as well. We know nothing can get hammered like a new sitcom - even shows that have gone on to become massive hits.

We think it's worth facing those fears because mainstream comedy is what audiences love best. It's written right through our comedy heritage and is so close to our hearts. It can tell our stories and bring us together like nothing else. That's why audiences and critics feel so passionately about it and have such a strong sense of ownership.

But that's also the reason why, when we take the risk and get it right, the rewards are so great - greater than anywhere else. The BBC has the space to take risks and we're willing to go on a journey that might end up with a one star review from Digital Spy. We'd be more comfortable if it was TV Zone but we'll feel the fear and do it anyway.

But there's also fear about finance and that's why I think so many producers develop in the comedy drama space as they perceive it as an easier sell. But to that I'd say just look at the phenomenal success of Ghosts - the US remake on its 4th season, two or three more remakes in the works, the UK version shown around the world, and a Ghosts theme park being constructed right now in Guangzhou, China. Maybe.

Obviously, the traditional model is under severe strain but it is still possible to make a show on the licence fee alone, especially for new talent and especially if it is on brief.

But it's true to say that the bigger the ambition, the more we will expect shows to be co-financed. Here we will do our best to make it easier for you. In the last year, we've been committing to greenlighting projects at an earlier stage to help production companies go out and secure additional funding and we've been making plenty of introductions to co-financiers who can help unlock a creaking budget.

We've also submitted our evidence to the Culture committee for a comedy tax credit and I've met with MPs to make a strong case for comedy.

What we want in return

So we're doing our best to help, but we want something in return because we're needy too, okay? We need you to think creatively about how to make sitcoms in a smarter way.

Shows like Here We Go, Not Going Out and Two Doors Down can have a much easier journey to screen as they're more contained meaning they should not require complex funding models and plans.

When you bring us a show with huge scale or a comedy drama that isn't majorly on brief then we'll expect you to be much more entrepreneurial. We all have to be realistic that these shows cost more money. They're hard for us to fully fund and take much longer to get off the ground.

Lots of you are doing plenty of entrepreneurial thinking already and we thank you for this. The more creative and entrepreneurial you are, the more amenable we can be, and the more wiggle room we can give you to move off brief.

Save our Sitcom

This is not about a lack of ambition. In fact it's the opposite.

If our comedy eco-system is shrinking, then it's on all of us to fight for the right of UK mainstream comedy to exist. The sitcom isn't dead but it needs a couple of Berocca. And a black americano with two sugars. We're asking you to do something really ambitious and help save our sitcom. It's what audiences want to see.

For me, some of the best television shows ever made might be series like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. But I'll sit down to rewatch them once. Probably won't even do that. I cannot be arsed. Meanwhile, I've been watching Alan Partridge continuously on loop since I was 12.

The BBC has always been the place for homegrown comedy hits that people want to come back to again and again - from Gavin and Stacey to Only Fools to This Country and Ghosts. This is what we want to protect and invest in. It's the very best storytelling from across the UK and it's what our new commitments in development are all about.

We want you to take the risk, go for the big rewards, and create the next generation of classic sitcoms and immortal characters that audiences will keep returning to for decades to come, even if, by then everyone's watching sitcoms on a tiny screens inserted into their retina.

Conclusion

I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has committed so much time and energy to this year's festival. A special thank you to everyone at BBC Scotland, and in particular to Emma Barnard, Jen Parker, Ethan Andrews and Palmira Morais for running the show. Although it's only just started and there's loads that could still go wrong. Don't relax guys!

Also a big thanks to the brilliant BBC Comedy commissioning team who have definitely been slagging me off behind my back as I beg them to produce festival sessions while their inboxes are spilling over.

But mostly I want to thank all of you. I've talked about the strength of comedy on the BBC, but of course we're only as good as you make us. We've got incredible comedy royalty here today plus a brilliant new generation of talent coming through. We're hugely excited about what we can do together in the years ahead. We're here to back you, support and nurture your ideas like no one else can, and invest in you over the long term like no one else will!

Times are tough, laughs are in short supply, so my challenge to all of you today is to bring us the jokes. Give the people what they want godammit.

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