ABSTRACT
Evident in the material presented so far is the centrality of precarity to the experience of working within the television comedy industry. This precarity is something all workers spend much time mitigating, often producing a large number of ideas in order to increase chances of getting a commission. This precarity is predicated on the fact that television production is, on the whole, project-based work. Yet there are periods in creative careers where precarity is lessened, and this is when programmes individuals work on receive ongoing commissions, thereby becoming long-term providers of work. Such commissions give job security to those working on them, and can be financially lucrative, depending on the specific contractual aspects any individual worker might have. This chapter therefore explores the creative process that takes place beyond programmes’ first series, instead examining how creative workers experience working on second or third series. The analysis here works from the assumption that there are differences between the creative processes required for the initial setting-up of a production and those necessary for the maintenance of long-running series. So, while longer-term commissions might mitigate against the precarity the majority of creative workers regularly encounter, they also require those workers to find ways to manage the need to produce large volumes of creative material. This chapter explores, then, creative workers’ experiences of the specific kinds of labour necessitated by ongoing series, and the impacts (both positive and negative) these might have on creativity. This focus points to one of the specificities of broadcast television. That is, television typically employs serial, episodic formats whereby extended narratives can be delivered within discrete episodes over many years; the soap opera is perhaps the most obvious example of this. While other media, such as films and books, can similarly develop recurring franchises and long-running narratives, their serial aspect is far less embedded within their form. The broadcast nature of television, however, encourages serialisation, and the vast majority of television programmes are episodic. This enables a longer-term approach to the creative process, whereby production teams
can work for many years on multiple series of a programme (though it is unlikely this will be the only thing any individual will work on during that time). The long-term, episodic nature of television means that the kinds of creative ideas that would be appropriate for another medium are unlikely to get commissioned for broadcasting. There are relatively few one-off comedies, for example; though broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4 do experiment with such material via their ‘Feed My Funny’ and ‘Comedy Blaps’ schemes. The intention behind such one-off commissions, however, is the hope of finding an idea that can then be turned into a long-run, episodic series, which means these function as pilots. This episodic necessity is therefore built into the creative process, and some of our interviewees noted there was little incentive to come up with ideas that would work only as a one-off. The serial nature of broadcast television is thus one of the key contexts within which the creative process takes place, and examining the production of later series of programmes enables the ways in which creativity and medium-specificity are interwoven to become clear. Programme-makers therefore have to find ways to build longevity into their programme ideas, precisely because broadcasters are interested in long-running series. For creative workers, though, spending large amounts of time working on successive series of the same programmes can inevitably lead to creative boredom. Given that creative workers accept poor working conditions as a necessary trade-off for the pleasures and excitement associated with constantly changing projects and colleagues, the security of long-term work can actually be unpleasurable for those motivated by novelty. Chris Bilton argues that discourses within which debates about creativity circulate often overly celebrate change and difference, and it is the normalisation of these discourses which enables workers to be exploited. He argues for the value of ‘uncreativity’, which he defines as “resistance to new ideas” and which can “encourage individuals and organisations to recognise the value of continuity over change, of laborious, painstaking effort beyond the momentary flash of inspiration and insight, and to reconfigure and refine existing ideas rather than inventing new ones” (2015: 154). It is precisely this kind of ‘uncreativity’ that takes place when more and more episodes of long-running series are made, and Bilton insists that the value of such labour is vital to creative work. That is, that too much focus is placed upon those moments that align with typical understandings of ‘true’ creativity, such as Margaret A. Boden’s definition of it as “the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are new, surprising and valuable” (2004: 1, italics in original). Yet much of the labour of actual creative work is that which Bilton defines as being often understood as being ‘uncreative’. It is this ‘laborious, painstaking effort’ employed to ‘refine existing ideas’ which is, then, explored in this chapter, as that effort is used by members of the television comedy industry to continue refining a comic idea across multiple episodes and series.
