Writing A Sitcom Pilot: Theme

You watch a sitcom on TV, and it seems so easy.  You come up with some silly situation.  You dream up a bunch of funny characters.  How hard can it be?  And then you try to do it yourself, and it seems rather daunting.  What situation should I create?  What characters should I include?  Where do I begin?

In a previous post, I suggested that you start with the main character.  If you have a main character, the premise should follow logically.  Is your main character a single woman?  A married man?  A disc jockey?  A dermatologist?  More important than a job or marital status, is your main character insecure or competitive?  Is he or she an introvert or an extrovert?  Is your main character basically happy or unhappy?  Is he or she practical or a romantic?  All you need is one aspect of the main character’s personality that inspires you, and you can build the character from there.

Sometimes you start with a premise.  I once wrote a pilot about two sisters, based on two sisters that I knew.  One of my pilots was about steel workers who lose their jobs and try to open a restaurant.  I got the idea from a Springsteen song.  I wrote another pilot about two women sharing a job and an apartment that was basically a version of what is now Two Broke Girls.  I wrote a pilot about a cable TV news station, and another pilot about a guy who loses his job.  I wrote a pilot about an Anglo guy who falls for a Hispanic girl.  That pilot became a series, and it lasted about as long as Rob!

If you don’t have a main character in mind, and you’re not sure yet about the premise, you might start with theme.  What do you want to write about?  Are you interested in a sitcom about what it’s like to be single and in your twenties?  Are you interested in writing about marriage or parenting?  Do you want to write about a bunch of blue collar guys?

Writing a sitcom is the most fun – and the least frustrating – when you are writing about something.  I got a lot of creative satisfaction from writing Hayden Fox on Coach because he was such an outsized character.  He was a male chauvinist, he wasn’t that bright, he made lots of mistakes, everyone was always mad at him.  But he was also very human and likeable, and you rooted for him.  I've said many times that I knew that Coach would be a hit because every woman in America has a Hayden Fox in her life, whether he’s her overbearing father or her bone-headed boyfriend or her impossible husband or her loudmouthed brother, every woman knows a Hayden Fox.  Coach was about how difficult it is to be a moral person in an amoral world.

Sitcoms work best when the writers have a theme to explore.  Frasier was about the folly of trying to make your life meaningful through external accomplishments.  Frasier and Niles were always trying to improve their social status or outdo each other.   I think The Big Bang Theory is about discovering that we deserve to be loved.  Leonard and the guys have had to tear themselves away from comic books and Star Trek in order to get a girl, and Penny has gradually opened herself up to a different kind of man than she ever imagined being with.

Every successful sitcom has a theme.  If you look beyond the jokes and the characters, the best shows are always about something.

In looking for a theme for your spec sitcom pilot, you might ask what is important to you.  Is there some subject that means so much to you that you’d be interested in writing about it all the time?  Most writers have a subject like that.  Most writers, consciously or unconsciously, return to the same themes over and over again.   Philip Roth, the famous novelist, once said that his entire writing career had been about trying to explain himself.

At some point in the process of developing your spec sitcom pilot idea, take an afternoon to think about the theme of the series.  Is there a central idea that you’d like to explore or get across to an audience?

When I was working on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, it occurred to us pretty quickly that the series was about how Sabrina didn’t really need her magic.  Every kid dreams of having magical powers.  That’s why Harry Potter was such a sensation.  Sabrina used her magical powers in every episode, in order to try to solve a problem or achieve a goal that was just out of her reach.  Sabrina’s magic always backfired on her.  It always left her further from her goal than when she started.  Sabrina always ended up solving her problems using her intelligence, her courage, her compassion, or her sense of fairness.  Sabrina didn’t really need her magic to lead a happy life, and that was what the series was really about.  That was our theme.