Don't stop playing the game

Or: keeping the sitcom dream alive for now

So the future of UK sitcoms seems… bleak.

Earlier this year, Broadcast ran an article titled: “Is it curtains for scripted comedy?” I didn’t get the feeling the answer was going to be: “lol, no, everything’s great!” — and sure enough, it didn’t disappoint, with such fun quotes as:

• “… has rowed back on scripted comedy almost entirely…”

• “… the economics of scripted comedy are simply no longer viable…”

• “… comedy alone will be unable to sustain the indie…”

This is perhaps less than ideal, given the bio I currently use everywhere:

The partying-face emoji is doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting here

As a result, I’ve seen a lot of comedy writers turn to making their own stuff. And that’s great! I’m completely on board, and have plans to join them in 2025 (watch this space).

But I’m also not going to stop trying the traditional route.

I know that sounds like a terrible plan, given the state of things, and there’s a good chance I might’ve got this one completely wrong. But it’s the plan I’m sticking to for now, if you'll allow me to humbly lay out my reasoning…

If I had to choose the number one idea that changed how I approach my life, it would probably be The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. (There’s also: “every frying pan that claims it’s non-stick is lying”, but that’s much harder to stretch out into an essay.)

The basic idea is that there are two types of games: finite games and infinite games.

1. A finite game has known players, fixed rules, and agreed-upon objectives. For example: football, chess, or figuring out what to write in a work birthday card when everyone else has already taken all the good messages.

2. An infinite game, however, has known and unknown players, no fixed rules or even endpoints, and the objective is not to win but to keep the game going. For example: businesses, relationships, and… well, pretty much most things we do.

You can play a finite game as a finite player, and an infinite game as an infinite player. But things get messy when you try to play an infinite game as a finite player.

Because a finite player wants to win, and you can never win an infinite game.¹

So they just keep playing until they drop out, because they no longer have the will or the resources to continue. But the thing is, the game continues with or without them. So perhaps a better strategy is to play as an infinite player, which means only one thing:

Don’t stop playing the game.

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1. Keep going

The first step is to find a way to keep going. I love this quote from Bryan Cranston, where he talks about his approach to auditioning:

The best advice for fellow actors is this: know what your job is.

I realised that I was going into auditions trying to get a job. And that simply wasn’t what I was doing. It wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. An actor is supposed to create a compelling, interesting character that serves the text. You present it in the environment where your audition happens, and then you walk away. And that’s it. Everything else is out of your control. So don’t even think about it. You’re not going there to get a job. You’re going there to present what you do. You act.

So as a sitcom writer, my job is not to get a commission —

Nope, can’t say it. I would still very much like a sitcom commission, please. We can’t all have beautiful mindsets like beloved Hollywood legend Bryan Cranston.

But I’ll concede that B-Cran has a point: as a sitcom writer, the core part of my job is to develop compelling concepts, present them to the relevant people, and then spiral for several weeks wondering why they haven’t replied yet just walk away.

My favourite way to approach this is the 100 rejections challenge.

As the name suggests, the idea is to get rejected 100 times. I first came across the idea a couple of years ago via this tweet, and I’ve been using it ever since. I love how it shifts the focus from something I can’t control — a positive outcome — to something I can: making work I’m proud of and showing it to at least 100 people.

I’m not going to pretend that getting rejected doesn’t suck; I’m as prone to curling up in a ball and regretting all my life choices as the next guy.² But you do slowly get used to it, and the impact of any given rejection feels smaller if you know you’ve got more submissions in the pipeline. And sometimes, there are even advantages:

• You could still get positive feedback and forge a new connection, e.g. “I’d love to keep in touch with what you do next” / “feel free to send us future projects”.

• A script that gets rejected by one person might end up delighting another, which puts all past and future rejections of the same script into perspective.

• You begin to understand what works and what doesn’t, which helps with:

2. Get better

I’ve recently been re-playing the excellent game Hades.

If you’re not familiar with it: you play as Zagreus, the son of Hades, and the aim is to battle your way out of the underworld by defeating all the enemies in your way.

It is hard, and you die a lot.

And when you die, you’re sent straight back to beginning — after being ominously reminded that there is no escape — only to start the whole thing all over again.

Thanks for the reminder, Hades!

I know it sounds very Sisyphean, but it does get easier. You get a bit stronger, you get access to new weapons and power-ups, you remember how to evade given enemies… and slowly but surely, you find yourself making it a little bit further each time.

That is basically what being an aspiring sitcom writer feels like.³

You start an attempt, and then you get stuck, and then you have to figure out why you got stuck and find a way to get better. For me, it started with the obvious things:

1. I need to make more time for writing.

2. But then: I need to finish my first script.

3. But then: I need to finish my first script that isn’t terrible.

4. But then: I need to finish my first script that isn’t terrible but is also written in my own unique voice. (I also need to figure out what the hell a ‘unique voice’ is.)

I don’t think I’ll ever stop improving those things. But after a while, they stop being the biggest bottlenecks, and start being replaced by more specific problems like:

• I need to learn how to convert ideas into compelling premises.

• I need to learn how to write better query emails, so that I don’t cringe-collapse into a black hole every time I click send.

• I need to learn how to talk about myself and what I’m working on, without suddenly forgetting how to construct complete sentences.

It’s only by getting rejected that I could learn what those blocks actually were. And although it often feels like I’m going in circles or not making progress as fast as I'd like, I’m not the same person I was during my first attempt.

In other words, you make it a little bit further each time.⁴

This year, I made 40 submissions and got 24 explicit rejections (i.e. not including the ones where there was no reply).⁵ But I also made connections, got invited to my first general meeting, and — for the first time — got paid to write sketches for TV.

Of course, one key difference with Hades is that there’s no guarantee I’ll actually make it all the way. After a point, it might just be up to the Fates; I might get everything right but just never be in the right place at the right time. But I know I’m not at that point yet. I still have plenty of room left to grow, and plenty of attempts still left in me…

Epilogue

Out of all of the essays I’ve written here so far, this is the one I’ve felt the most cringe about publishing. Because who am I to say any of this?

I’ve made some progress, sure, but I haven’t actually got a sitcom commissioned, so who knows if this strategy actually works? Like I said, there’s a good chance this is a terrible plan, and I’ll end up needing to write a retraction: yep, totally screwed this up, lads. Should’ve quit and done something else years ago. Oh well, mea culpa!

But until then, it’s genuinely what I believe right now. I feel good about it. And I’ve seen enough glimmers of hope to feel like it’s not a complete waste of time.

And I wanted to share this, because I think it’s useful to hear optimism. Every time I read something like that Broadcast article, a tiny flicker of doubt ignites in my mind. There is no escape. But then I read things like

Dr. Julie Gurner

’s Substack, or watch this video from Will Smith⁶, or talk to my friend Ish who will literally never give up…

And it makes me want to keep playing.

Because I’m fairly sure the sitcom industry is going to be around for a while. I still love watching TV. I’m still grateful for new sitcoms when they’re good and make me laugh. So why not keep trying? The game continues with or without me.

So the only question is: do you want to play too? 🚀

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🎬 End credits: I want to start getting in the habit of this, so: thanks to

Matt Cyr

and

Becky Isjwara

for reading early drafts of this! (And thanks to everyone who helped with earlier essays, which I’ll go back and update soon…)

1. I know I’ve used the words finite, infinite, game and player a lot here, but this was the best I could do given my finite capacity for rewrites.

2. Fun fact: I actually got a pretty rough rejection while I was re-drafting this essay! And for something I was convinced I had a pretty good shot at! So although I am currently typing this sentence in a ball from the floor, at least you know I really mean all of this.

3. If you want to dive deeper into the idea of Hades as a metaphor for life, I recommend the excellent straight outta tartarus essay by

visakan veerasamy

.

4. I appreciate there are all kinds of privileges required for this approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m incredibly lucky that e.g. I can support myself by working part-time, so I have the time and energy to devote to the long game. One of my longer-term career goals is to figure out how to make everything more accessible, but in the meantime — if you’re not in a similar boat — I hope you can still find a way to move forward somehow.

5. Haha, like I said, I had to update this from 23 to 24 while I was re-drafting this! Fun times!!

6. I’m assuming it’s okay to reference Will Smith now, right?