We can be more distinctive and creative, programme-makers say

Britain’s TV comedy producers are not only accepting the reality that they’ll have to make shows on a shoestring budget - but finding the positives in the new world.

Last week, the BBC’s director of comedy Jon Petrie said the era of American co-producers injecting money into the UK industry was over – if it ever really happened – and that programme-makers would have to get used to working within modest BBC budgets instead.

But despite the effect on production values, other industry insiders at the BBC Comedy Festival in Belfast agreed with his sobering appraisal, and talked up the advantages of a simpler – if reduced – funding model.

A panel of producers painted a picture of a struggling industry but hoped such a reset might save it.

Sarah McGettigan, head of television production at Pinewood Studios, brought home the scale of the crisis by saying that between 2007 and 2019 they were making seven scripted comedy shows a year, whether specials, pilots or series. And from 2020, to 2025, they’ve done seven in total. ‘That's shocking, really,’ she said. 

Ash Atalla of Roughcut – makers of  The IT Crowd and  People Just Do Nothing, pictrured above,  – said: ‘The BBC are having a good run [of comedy programmes] but it’s really hard to make the numbers work. The industry has been complaining and licking its wounds for quite a long time, and maybe, it’s time to turn the page and have some solutions. 

Phil Clarke, below, of Such Brave Girls producers Various Artists Limited said: ‘Editorially there's some fantastic shows around, but financially, it's very hard to make a comedy show at the moment, to make the numbers add up and to get the show on screen.’

He said the economic model independent production companies had been run on since the 1990s was broken and ‘sometimes the question is raised, "Is it worth us doing this?" We earn so little from this show. 

‘I think you run an indie to make shows, that's the primary function, but you need to make profit to do that. It’s an important distinction. But finding the money to get on on screen is very difficult at the moment.’

Atalla agreed, saying: ‘The days of building your company off the back of half-hour sitcoms have gone.

‘Everywhere you look in terms of additional funding, it become tighter’, adding that the collapse of the DVD market ‘must not be underestimated, because comedy used to sell really well. That was just money coming into production companies that would help keep the doors open and lights on. Gone.’

He added: ‘British comedy has stopped travelling around the world. I don't know quite why this has happened.  So that’s the distribution model closed down, and then domestically, the budgets have gone down.  So it's a triple whammy.’

Brassic co-creator Danny Brocklehurst pointed to the rising cost of production, saying: ‘Everything’s got a lot more expensive, ridiculously so.’

He said it was difficult to maintain a unique British voice, given the demands of co-funding to make things that appeal to America.

‘It used to be that we were doing comedy on a modest budget, made for Britain, and if it sold elsewhere, great.

I want to do stuff that feels very British… I pretty much set everything in Manchester unless I'm told to set it somewhere else!’

It is the simpler model that seems to be the future, the panel agreed, with Janet Shaw, head of production at BBC Studios Comedy, producing figures to prove that many shows - especially mockumentaries – could be entirely funded by the tariff the BBC pays producers.

Clarke – a former head of Channel 4 comedy – welcomed the move back to a single broadcaster funding a show, saying: ‘When I was a hands-on producer, you'd sell a show for broadcast, and they'd give you the money, and you can make the show. So really straightforward, that was it.’

He said the model shifted so the broadcaster wasn’t covering the full costs, so programme-makers would get an advance from a distributor who would then sell it overseas. 

‘What's happened now, because there's a cold wind blowing through the market, you’re going to a distributor, and more often than not, they'll say, "No, we won't give you the money, because we don't think we can sell your show". 

‘So you really are high and dry. You're going back to the broadcaster and saying,  "I'm sorry, we can't make your show. We want to, but we literally haven't got enough money."

‘Then the conversation, which has started, is that we're going to have to find some editorial solutions if we still want a British comedy industry, which I think we all do.

‘The broadcasters have to make room for shows that perhaps aren't as glossy or as ambitious as some of the American shows. The difficulty for British TV is that now people watch a lot of American television, and it's very expensive, very glossy, so we're being compared in a way that we weren't before.’

Atalla said: ‘The answer is pragmatism. And I know it's not very sexy word, pragmatism, but there's nothing glamorous about not getting your show made. 

‘There's something quite simple and old-school and beautiful about getting a commission and that being the money that you have for the show. But  that does mean that people on this stage need to cut their cloth. 

‘Look at my own CV. It's mostly people talking. There's not a single explosion.  There are millions of examples of the best comedies being in pubs and offices and IT departments and other things I’ve made!

Brocklehust, below, agreed that comedy could be made relatively cheaply. ’There are  plenty of brilliant comedies that have been about limitations, he said, citing The Royle Family, Him And Her, The Office and Colin From Accounts, with its limited cast of characters in  funny situations. ‘I don't think stuff needs to be that expensive,’ he said.

‘Kids are watching rubbish on YouTube and laughing their head off. They’re watching the content, not necessarily going, "Oh, what a beautiful drone shot.'

‘If you cut your cloth accordingly, you can make comedy that's very warm and genuinely funny. That's the other thing. Let's make comedy funny.’

Clarke said that as a producer he would have to start  talking to writers in a different way.  

'You always want to say to a writer, what is it you want to write? Because that's going to be the best thing. Now it's slightly different conversation, which we should be saying, "imagine you were going to write something for the stage". You would then accept the limitations that the stage gives, and you would find the creative ways to do that. 

‘Imagine you could only have five or six locations and a cast of 10 people. So how would you write your idea to that?

‘Another thought, and this is a big ask of broadcasters, but to keep the unit cost of each shows down is to not commission one series, but to commission two series up front. And that makes things suddenly much more doable. So I appreciate that is a very big ask from the broadcaster.’

Shaw said it was ‘unlikely’ that series one and two would be commissioned together but ‘second and third, or third and forth’ might be realistic. Or she suggested ‘even just an extra episode, it  all helps.’

Clarke also there were ‘hidden cost savings’ in ditching co-production, as it now takes an army of lawyers to put together the deals. ‘The amount of money that we now spend on legal things is extraordinary. That's all money that's not going on screen.’

He also welcomed Petrie’s policy of making more shows cheaply than a few blockbusters, saying: ‘If you look at the amount of comedy shows the BBC makes, it dwarfs the amount of shows that streamers make. 

‘The BBC is popping up in the comedy industry, and the ambition from Jon Petrie to keep making lots of shows is terrific. I think that's spot on as well.  Because if you’re a broadcaster, and you decide to shrink the number of shows you commission, it doesn't sustain an ecology of production. 

Atalla agreed: ‘I'm absolutely on board with the BBC aim here, and there's no point being angry with the BBC or Channel 4 that they don't have the money, because that's the money that there is

‘So it's up to us on this panel, so either take it or leave it. And the answer is, we want to take it. We just have to be smart about how we how we do that.

‘What I would urge the broadcasters to do is to be fast, because that's how they can help us, because speed means efficiencies. Quicker decisions. Don’t see three scripts, decide off one, because there's no meat on the bone any more.’

» BBC comedy chief says funny CAN come cheap : Jon Petrie's keynote speech to the BBC Comedy Festival
» What's happening with British TV comedy? The three biggest cheeses in the industry reveal all...

Published: 27 May 2025