Comedy news: Sky’s still going all-balls out on comedy then

We wrote a frankly delicious piece after the British Comedy Awards over at Digital Spy about how the whole shebang was a major embarrassment for the BBC and rather successful for Sky. Today’s summer roster of comedy announcement for Sky 1 only underlines how that seems to be an emerging trend rather than a one-year wonder. 

The shows announced for summer really are rather an embarrassment of riches. Top of the list is a new comedy with Steve Coogan and Peep Show’s Matt King, Starlings, about an old man having to move in with his family after problems at his retirement home. ‘Grandad has to move in with family’ isn’t the most original of premises, but the calibre of the talent involved surely bodes well.

Gates brings together Joanna Page, Sue Johnston and rent-a-comedy-hunk Tom Ellis in what will surely be the warmest comedy of the summer, while Spy is finally putting Darren Boyd in the leading role he has been destined for since Kiss Me Kate. 

These all sound like they will be very watchable. And crucially, these are shows that are doing tricky things in comedy: nailing the family sitcom market that BBC One is only now scrabbling to fill since My Family finally collapsed of exhaustion. It arguably does a better job at tackling the breadth of Britain too, rather than setting everything in the front room of Middle Britain as Beeb family sitcoms lean towards. From Stella in the Valleys to Mount Pleasant in Manchester, not to mention interesting takes on family sitcoms covering intergenerational comedy and different combinations of family units, there’s a lot of interesting shows on offer.

Any quarms? Well, the obvious one is that there aren’t any new faces on show here. There is obviously This Is Jinsy over on Sky Atlantic, but there is a risk that that could become a fig leaf rather than a proud column of new comedy if Sky isn’t careful. One could argue that Sky is a commercial broadcaster and new comedy is the job of the BBC, but given the scale of their comedy operations, there is surely room for some fresh blood.

(One other criticism here: only yesterday, Sky dropped channel Current from its pay-TV line-up, a channel that gave early breaks in to TV for comedians including Holly Walsh and Jeff Leach. It’s one thing to not get around to creating new stars; it’s another to actively sabotage a route for new ones...) 

And one other bugbear that we’re not expecting to get much sympathy for: covering comedies on niche channels is a rather tricky business. It was very noticeable at the Comedy Awards that no journalist covering them actually knew the Sky shows up for awards or the people involved, and were instead chasing the Fresh Meat cast. Articles on Sky shows don’t pull in audiences for sites or publications that write about comedy. For a populist range of comedies, they are weirdly difficult to bring to the attention of mainstream audiences. 

Still, the upshot of all of this is that if you like TV comedy then it’s worth paying closer attention to what’s on non-terrestrial channels than you may already be doing. And if we’re really lucky, the BBC will properly up its game to match the calibre of Sky, who will (hopefully) not be in the quality commissioning game for just the short time.