Frasier creator James Burrows says sitcoms have evolved to be less funny
Burrows also spoke about his distaste for reboots despite directing two episode of the new Frasier "continuation"
Aux News Frasier
Even though James Burrows—the legendary director and creator behind Cheers, Friends, Will & Grace, and many others—has made a career out of making people laugh, he doesn’t think there’s anything funny about the current state of the multi-camera sitcom.
When The New York Times asked Burrows how he’d seen sitcoms evolve over the course of his career, the director answered: “The one evolution I’ve seen is that a lot of them aren’t funny anymore. The prime requirement of a multicamera sitcom is you’d better be funny.”
He attributes this devolution partly to the rise of the single-camera model, a more cinematic approach to the sitcom that he says gets “chuckles” rather than “guffaws.” It’s also partly because of the streaming model, which allows more creativity with timing and structure (as opposed to the traditional 21-minute slot with space for commercials), to the detriment of the script in his opinion. “You can go up to 30 minutes with a comedy. After that, it gets taxing,” he suggested. “I do love a joke a page. Sometimes two jokes. That doesn’t happen often now.”
His opinion of the recent sitcom revival boom isn’t much sunnier, despite his involvement with nü Frasier (the conceptualization of which he insists he was “not involved in”). “I don’t even call it a revival. I call it a continuation, because it’s not really a reboot. It’s a character moving on, and he’s surrounded by a whole new set of characters, so it’s not really a reboot,” he said, with a definitive follow-up of, “I don’t like them.”
Still, despite this bit of cognitive dissonance, Burrows “had a ball” working on Frasier with his “dear friend” Kelsey Grammer. “That laughter behind me is so rewarding for my soul. If somebody sent me a great script, I would almost do it for free,” he said. “[I]t’s nice to be able to go back to what happened to me 50 years ago and still have this feeling of creativity. When pilot season comes this year, I hope there is a pilot that I like.”
Frasier is currently streaming on Paramount+.
85 Comments
From the headline I was fully expecting this to be an old guy ranting about how you can’t do racist jokes anymore, so that was a nice surprise.
You’re SO brave.
LMAO you are a sad saggy bald dork.
nah.
Okay fine, but I’m not bald. I have a thick coat of downy, white vellus hairs all over my saggy body including my saggy, tendril-like tits. Still, no one cares what you think. Except me.
Basically I look like the bottom creature. And yes, it makes me sad.
No really, I think you are brave. Sometimes my compliments SO come off as unintentional sarcasm because I capitalize random words (I have textual Tourette’s). Sorry about THAT.
Multi-camera sitcoms feel incredibly dated, particularly the “this is the funny part!” laugh track (live studio audiences, that laugh on command, are functionally equivalent). James Burrows is definitely an outlier, but most sitcoms from the 80s and 90s do not hold up.
Single-camera shows also have ways to scream at the audience where the funny part is supposed to be, through sound effects, music, and smash cuts. It’s not a better or worse model, just a different one, and both are exactly as manipulative as the other.
looks directly at camera
Yes. Except the opposite of that. Laugh tracks tell the viewer what is funny. And they’re usually wrong.
Exactly; that’s why they scrub the laughter out of standup specials.
Its not the presence of laughter that makes old sitcoms cringe… its the “Barely funny joke-> 2 seconds of uproarious laughter” cycle that happens multiple times per minute that’s the problem. Have a live studio audience, that’s fine, but don’t force them to laugh with a blinking light, and certainly don’t used canned laugh tracks
they do?
I don’t know that it’s a “laugh on command” thing. I think it’s probably the excitement, the crowd, the interaction. I know when I watch a stand-up comedian on TV, I may laugh a little, smile. But when I see one in person with an audience, I’m always laughing out loud. It’s contagious I guess.
You do understand that they shoot each take multiple times, right?
…you’re talking to the same groups of people who think that any movie that isn’t Marvel isn’t worth seeing in cinemas, because how could being a part of an audience make a comedy better?It was a whole big argument here a few months back.
Cheers and Fraiser are two of the handful of old laugh track sitcoms that do hold up, I think mostly because they had a strong focus on endearingly flawed characters, which is ironically something the newer breed of single-cam comedies tends to emphasize. Burrows may not like the newer shows but they definitely took influence from his style.
What I find interesting is my ability to tolerate laugh tracks with classic sitcoms—I Love Lucy and M*A*S*H and Cheers and Frasier are all still perfectly watchable—but contemporary multicams just come across as unbearably awkward. I keep wanting to compare it to filming a contemporary film in black and white, except I feel like there are still artistic reasons for doing so, while multicams feel like a truly dead format.
I’m trying to remember if there are even any real multi-cams anymore, or at least well-regarded ones. What was the last great one? NewsRadio?
Oh, CBS has been keeping the multicam home fires burning–The Neighborhood, Bob Hearts Abishola–for a long time now, and apparently the Night Court revival was a big hit for NBC.
Yeah, CBS and Chuck Lorre continue to crank them out, it seems, although I’m less sure if any of them are any good. I am surprised to hear the Night Court revival was a big hit, but I also haven’t watched it so I have no idea how good it actually is.
Maybe you don’t consider it “great” – but The Big Bang Theory was on for years, was the highest rated comedy for many of those years, and is a very traditional multi-cam laugh-track heavy show. Which runs in syndication on several channels multiple times every day. So pretty big show that one.
Yes, I definitely don’t consider it “great.” Chuck Lorre does seem to be able to generate multi-cam hits about as easily as breathing, so I know the style hasn’t died, but I also don’t think I would consider any of his shows actually good.
I have not been able to stand watching a show with a laugh track for years. If I hear one, I’m out.
Finally. The word “reboot” attached to shows that are clearly sequels is obnoxious. Burrows is right on with this. Call it a revival or a continuation or a sequel, but it’s not a reboot. I dunno about his other take but I suppose it depends what you’re watching? I’ve laugh OUT LOUD, often, at Parks & Rec, Brooklyn 99, Archer, Letterkenny, The League, Community. I also chuckle because there is a lot more wry humour these days since four-cam is built more like a play, in front of an audience. *shrug*
I mean, three of those ended in 2015.
truth lol
Sure, but they are all shows in the style that Burrows is talking about: single-camera comedies without laugh tracks which lack the stagey feel of traditional sitcoms.
Exactly. If the new Frasier is a “reboot,” then isn’t the original Fraiser also a “reboot” of Cheers?
…cause it’s a spin-off
Regarding your second paragraph, I agree. My first thoughts were Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office, but as you pointed out there are many examples. I Burrow’s opinion more or less boils down to an old guy being an old guy.
I laughed out loud at Jon Hamm pretending to be Larry David. “Who is that racist against? Susans?? How about indefatigable Susan, or ambidextrous Susan!”
and what about the rest of the dreck that out? you like some of the best comedies out last 10-15 years. its still a lot of crap out here.
Animal Control is pretty funny, too. Also there was a show several years ago on Fox called LA >Vegas, and it was hilarious. Sadly cancelled after one season.
Those are both pretty fun shows. I feel like there have been some solid network sitcoms in the last decade or so that basically get entirely ignored by critics (and possibly audiences as well). Seems like it’s pretty much impossible to get a network sitcom noticed by critics unless Michael Schur is involved.
Which is insane because it’s not as if there are *tons* of network sitcoms. Critics find time to watch 15 buzzy new hourlong dramas but can’t spare 23 minutes for a fun sitcom.
American Auto, Grand Crew, Home Economics, Kenan, Pivoting all come to mind as recent network sitcoms that got cancelled in the last year or two. They ranged from “perfectly pleasant” to “often very funny” (American Auto season 2 is the real standout in this regard), but none of them deserved to be ignored to the degree they have been.
I don’t know if people are too cool to laugh these days, or too depressed.
Too cool, I guess? Who has time for actual sitcoms, when there’s imitation prestige drama product, the latest series from various IPs, or prestige “comedies” that aren’t funny to watch?
But weirdly they’ll also give attention to nostalgia trap sitcoms like Fuller House and the Frasier sequel? It’s maddening.
Nu-Frasier is even more properly a spinoff. Same character but new setting and new cast? Spinoff.
There are certainly fewer sitcoms. But Burrows may be doing that thing old people do, where they compare the absolute best of the past against everything from the present.He’s not wrong that Cheers and Frasier are better than, say, The Neighborhood.But is the The Neighborhood really that much worse than The Flying Nun?And you could do an entire podcasts about terrible spin-off sitcoms from the 70s/80s/90s. This thing isn’t new.
None of your examples are multi-camera sitcoms. There’s mockumentaries (Parks, Brooklyn), single-camera sitcoms (Letterkenny, The League, Community) and an animated sictom (Archer). Recent multi-camera sitcom examples:-Lopez vs. Lopez-The Neighborhood-Call me KatThe “sitcom” is alive and well and produces incredibly funny stuff (Shrinking, Insecure, Reservation Dogs are a few that come to mind for me) but the last multi-cam I ever remember actually enjoying was Everybody Loves Raymond.
B99 is *not* a mockumentary. It uses a non-stationary camera, and that’s about the only comparison.
Ah, I may be misremembering the first season where I thought they looked at the camera. But you’re right: we’ll call it a non-stationary sitcom then 🙂
Yeah, but that person is saying that in response to Burrows’ assertion that modern single-cam sitcoms only provoke mild “chuckles” and not the laugh-out-loud “guffaws” of a classic multicam, and saying that they don’t think that’s really true, they laugh out loud at modern single-cams (the ones they listed) all the time. So you’re not really differing.
Ah fuck me, I totally read right over the clarification where that line was about single-camera sitcoms and not a continuation of the previous bit about multi-cams. Read the damn thing too fast.
Old guy says things were better in his day.
(watches furtively to see if Blutowski ever comments on how pre-Kinja AVC was better)
“A dear friend of Kelsey Grammer thinks sitcoms aren’t funny anymore”🤔
From the sadly cancelled show Reboot: “Here’s what’s brilliant. It is both the funniest thing you’ve ever read, and you won’t laugh once.”
I’ve seen a movie or two that was funny for more than 30 minutes. And one time, a stand-up comedian.He’s right about “reboot” though.
I agree it’s silly to say that any comedy show starts to fall apart after 30 min, but I’m somewhat sympathetic to his point. I just rewatched Arrested Development for the first time in years, and the most damning thing about the Netflix seasons was how sloooooow and flabby the scripts were compared to the Fox years. That could just be the quality of writing, but I wonder how much of it was due to not being thos constraints Burrows is talking about.
Counterpoint: I’ve never thought Frasier was funny. Annoyingly absurd given the presumed intelligence of the main character(s), but not funny.
It also annoyed me that Frasier won Best Comedy at the Emmys for many many years at a row at a time when other sitcoms (Seinfeld, Larry Sanders) were muuuuuch funnier and deserved the accolades.
I think Frasier’s funnier than either of those.
Bad take
Your mom’s a bad take.
The jerk store called. It’s running out of you.I also slept with your wife.
Larry Sanders is one of the most over-rated shows I’ve ever seen.Don’t get me wrong. it was good and funny. But the way people revere it is odd.And it seems like you have particular taste. A lot of people confuse their taste for objective quality.
I find Frasier to be funnier than Seinfeld, which i struggled to get into, but as with most American sitcoms, they all go on for far too many seasons, it’s best to judge then by the first three. After than they are usually past their best
It certainly says something that the best episode of Frasier is “Brother From Another Series”
Did we not just have an article about this the other day?
‘”Did we not just have an article about this the other day?”’We had an article about why we still need Frasier. It was essentially built to justify the reboot. Today’s if anything is a stab at another angle around that reboot. Regardless, I never watch Frasier old or new. Cheers was boring to me, too. Who cares if everybody knows your name?
No, there was another one where he doubted the future of sitcoms.
This is the reboot.
Yep! But I guess he shared similar thoughts in a different outlet, so now we get to talk about it again?
AV Club
A joke a page seems really low to me. Maybe that was Burrows being facetious?
Yeah, if anything, joke density has increased since Fraiser’s time, especially since you no longer need to pause for the laugh after each gag. A page equals roughly one minute onscreen. How many jokes could, for instance, 30 Rock or Parks and Rec pack into a minute?
Kenneth, 30 Rock’s only page, had multiple jokes, and generally more than a minute of screen time per episode.
It’s weird even for the old shows. Burrows directed stuff like Friends. There were scenes where practically every line was a joke. Something’s weird about that quote for sure.
“joke density has increased since Fraiser’s time”That’s his dumb point, more than one or two jokes per page is too many.Sitcoms aren’t funny anymore because there are too many jokes.
this is not a good era for TV comedy, but that doesn’t mean we need more frasier
Funniest thing Kelsey ever did was fall off a stage
Dying will be the second funniest thing.
No, the funniest thing he ever did was when he crashed his Dodge Viper into a helicopter.
I do think we’re in a kind of bad time for the straight-up comedy. Brooklyn Nine Nine was one of the last, and it ended two years ago (I just realized that was two years ago, wow). Abbott Elementary is one, but there aren’t too many comedy shows getting a lot of acclaim nowadays. Most comedy shows nowadays are other stuff, too. I think it’s incredibly funny that Barry and Succession are roughly the same 50/50 comedy/drama split, but Barry always competes as a comedy at the Emmys and Succession always competes as a drama. It’s all about the way they’re presented, even though I think Succession is probably more consistently funny than Barry.Another semi-related thing I’ve been thinking of – Community is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I feel like they always tried to prioritize being clever over being funny. Most of the time it was both, but if something in that show wasn’t clever, it probably wasn’t a joke. Same goes for Arrested Development. I feel like the most straight-forwardly comedic single camera comedy show might be 30 Rock, and that’s why I love it.
Though not a multicam, American Auto was consistently hilarious, biting, and…oh yeah, cancelled after 2 seasons.
Happy Days was a single cam its first season, until some exec decided girls screaming at the Fonz was better.
We didn’t cancel all the Boomers just so these Silent generation types can come in and complain that there are too many jokes.