| JAKE AND RANDALL |
| Woodsey here, or, if you don't like the letter 'o', Wdsey. Do you remember Bitter Little Story? It's in the Comedy Archive, and was a cod fairytale about writing a sitcom for the BBC during their New Sitcom Awards, ingeniously disguising the fact that we had indeed written such a comedic script (Jake And Randall), the feature in question being a satirical swipe at the corporation rejecting us (and - libellously - claiming they hadn't bothered to read it - the Wacky Media Zirkus and its workings are alien to us amateurs), and each passing day lessening its impact as we slowly realise that they were right, pre-emptive attacks on Garry Bushell aren't funny, nor are incomprehensible in-jokes involving sitcom marketing techniques. We were angry, and the smart thing to do would have been to instantly admire their time and goodwill spent constructively criticising us and build on that to hone our comedy talents. We didn't, we wrote immature diatribe about them. Ka-phut. But we are back, FOUR years later, overcoming our faults and not disguising them with unprovoked arrogance anymore. Paul is currently shored up at Norwich and I am with my beloved collection of S E Rogie, so all is well, physically speaking. Mentally is where the problem lay for some time, but now me and Paul are once again opening our eyes to the possibilities of situation comedy. Jake And Randall then, an overview for the interested: Jake is 18, a down-to-earth eternal innocent. Having acquired the necessary A-Levels he makes it to university where, looking for accommodation, he winds up sharing an upstairs flat with Randall. Randall is 25 and lives above the Army & Navy store he runs alone (save for temporary assistant Danny, an ex-academic hippy) and continues to run despite virtually zero business. Compared to Jake's happy social life (Jake almost immediately makes friends when he gets to university, among them Conway, a peculiar individual with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts), Randall has found it hard to make friends, his only companions to date being his cat Lewis, and his old school-friend Theodore who visits the store now and then. Theodore, having cut his teeth as a highly paid, dubiously talented middle-class businessman in an upwardly mobile advertising firm, is an intensely spiteful and hate-filled individual who only talks to Randall as an alternative outlet for his stubborn and cynical views he can't discuss with his equally narrow-minded city friends. Naturally Theo takes an instant dislike to the working-class Jake, who remains blissfully unaware of his animosity. With this central triangle of Jake, Randall and Theo (and to a lesser extent Conway, but that makes a square, doesn't it? Ka-phut again) we feel many comedic situations can arise - it's really about the interplay between the three, not a sitcom based on their specific lives (how easy to make a student sitcom, a tinpot shop sitcom or a high-flying executive sitcom). To date 4 episodes have been written (my files tell me that episode 1 is entitled Pending, that can't be right) and despite being apart we've managed more in the last month than we have in the last 2 years. Who knows what the future holds? (apart from brain strain) (and crippling self-esteem problems) "I'm sorry I'm late, I overslept and dreamt I had the day off." |