Frank Skinner on Shane

You can hardly blame him. The network's reputation for comedy is somewhere south of Abu Hamza's thanks to decades of playing it blandly, tediously safe.

But now it's Skinner's task to change all that after network executives looked at their biggest comedy investment ­ and commissioned him with the Herculean challenge of creating a hit prime-time sitcom.

The result is Shane, the third comedy in recent years to revolve around a cab driver, after Rob Brydon's much-lauded Marion And Geoff, and Johnny Vaughan's much-slated Orrible.

Perhaps surprisingly for our prime commercial broadcaster, it's actually funny. Not so surprisingly, Skinner's eponymous hero isn't far removed from his usual comic persona ­ a sharp-tongued, slightly sexist, cheeky, sex-obsessed middle youth.

The show would horrify the self-styled experts who lecture in sitcom-writing. Against conventional wisdom, it's driven by quickfire, wisecracks rather than character and plot, and against the trend for realistic, low-key production, it's shot conventionally, in a studio, with an audience. It doesn't suffer in the slightest for going against the grain.

"I write jokes," Skinner readily admits. "I tried to write character stuff, but I'm still learning that.

"The multi-camera set-up we use is really a step backwards, when we're told the future is The Office, The Royle Family or Marion And Geoff. But in some cases, people go for the single camera because they are worried about whether people will laugh or not.

"I didn't want to write a cult classic, I wanted people to watch it."

Though gag-laden, Skinner has tried to stay true to one tenet of sitcom-writing: the underlying misery of a hopeless situation. Shane isn't having much fun in his life, feels trapped in an 18-year marriage and can only find refuge in the local boozer.

"It's working-class and bleak," he said. "I like the fact it's a bit dark. There's a few bits where it's a bit grim ­ a grim-com.

"Sitcom characters are supposed to be likeable, but they're generally not. Even someone like Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army, he was a nasty, pompous piece of work."

Skinner admits the lead character is at least based on himself ­ even though he's long been off the booze, and his relationship troubles are the stuff of countless headlines.

"The stuff that you don't like isn't me," he adds as a qualification. "I'm obviously guessing when it comes to being in a long-term relationship.

"And it's nice to have children for just six and a half weeks. I imagine Anthony Hopkins has the same feeling about being a cannibal."

As for the lead character's name: "I called it Shane because the day I started writing the pilot, the cricketer Shane Warne was in the news for taking drugs. It's a good job it wasn't one of the Pakistanis, that would have been confusing."

Writing the series proved something of a change of pace for a comic most used to the quickfire banter of live work, the ephemeral nature of the chat show and the improvised framework of Unplanned.

"Most the stuff I do is fairly instant," he said. "It's nice to have the chance to hone something, and make it as good as I can get it."

Being so critical for ITV's comedy credentials, the show - which Skinner describes as "if Samuel Beckett wrote a Carry On film" ­ will inevitably attract the attention of the critics.

"You accept the fact that your putting your genitals on the chopping black when you do a sitcom," he says. "But I recovered from the Brits, I can get over this."

Skinner's no stranger to sitcom failure, either, as 14 years ago his seven-part Channel 4 series Blue Heaven failed to take off Ironically, it used a single camera and no studio audience long before the realism trend Shane is now bucking ­ and it suffered for it.

And should he want another perspective on flops, he has to look no further than his comic partner and one-time flatmate, David Baddiel, whose heavily-promoted Sky One sitcom Baddiel's Syndrome was one of the most widely panned in recent times.

That only provides an added incentive to succeed. "If this sitcom goes well or it goes badly, at least one member of the Fantasy Football team will be happy," Skinner jokes.

And on the strength of the first episode, chances are it'll be him.

* Shane starts on ITV1 on April 21.

First published:April 2, 2004

Published: 22 Mar 2009