Find a funny angle for your Chort (or any comedy sketch)
By Chris Head
Comedy writing coach and director Chris Head asks:
“Looking for a funny angle for your Chort or any comedy sketch? Try these three approaches and one of them will unlock a funny angle you can work with.”
And see below for info about Chris’ inspiring live Zoom sketch writing course (the next run starts on Sept 7th).
Chorts is now open for entries, so here are three ways into finding a comic angle on a subject you want to write a sketch about. Take your situation and try applying these changes to it:
CHANGE WHERE – change where the action is happening
CHANGE HOW – change how people behave in the situation
CHANGE WHEN – put the action into the past or future
Here are some examples to make the approach clear. Inspired by a 2020 Chort, I’m basing them around parodies of the Antiques Roadshow but of course you can apply this thinking to any kind of subject matter, whether parody or situational, and to illustrate this I also come up with different versions of a hen-do sketch.
CHANGE WHEN
Let’s start with the final one on my list above, change when, as I was inspired to write about this blog by an entertaining 2020 Chort, Antiques Roadshow 3000.
In his brilliantly executed idea, they took the venerable antiques TV programme and changed WHEN it happens – in this case putting it into the year 3000.
You could also of course take the Antiques Roadshow format into the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is already a stone age roadshow sketch. It writes itself, with various cave people showing different rocks to the caveman expert.
So here’s a first approach:
Take your situation and change when it happens.
For our situational example, let’s imagine your sketch is about a hen-do – using this technique you could set it in the past or the future, but keeping all the recognisable modern day behaviour. This could work really well! I’m picturing our drunken hens in a sci-fi type situation or in a Regency world.
CHANGE WHERE
A different way into a comic angle, or game, for a sketch is to keep it in the present day but change where it’s taking place. Sticking with Antiques Roadshow, rather than the show taking place in a picturesque country house setting, I’m imagining a sketch where the show is taking place in a prison.
In this case, we have the familiar kind of expert, very posh and well mannered, being brought a series of items by rough prisoners. And it’d be the kinds of things that get smuggled into prisons. So guns, cigarettes, drugs and drug paraphernalia…
Here’s an 80s sketch from Smith & Jones that takes a different ‘change where’ approach to Antiques Roadshow:
So in this approach:
Take your situation and change where it happens.
Applying this to our hen-do sketch we could have the hen-do taking place in a war zone. Again this could be a winning sketch as the women behave as regular hens but have shown up at the frontline of a conflict, hitting on the soldiers and dancing drunkenly.
CHANGE HOW
A more straightforward option – and the most common way into finding a funny angle for a sketch – is to keep everything as it should be but change how one or more of the characters are behaving, so you are in some way making them behave inappropriately or strangely for the situation.
Here’s a Peter Serafinowicz Antiques Roadshow sketch where the expert is behaving strangely:
And here is one from MadTV where the member of the public is behaving inappropriately.
On a side note this comes at the end of a sequence of sketches where the expert is being crude and in this one he has the tables turned on him.
And I couldn’t resist sharing this one despite the person who uploaded it videoing it from their TV!
This Antiques Roadshow sketch features the brilliant pairing of Bob Mortimer and Matt Berry and the simple change how is to have the expert repeatedly burping – so the normally very refined expert is behaving uncouthly (I’m wondering if this was inspired by Bob Fleming’s constant coughing on the Fast Show).
So in this approach:
Take your situation and change how the characters are behaving.
In a ‘change how‘ version of our hen-do sketch, we could have the hens, dressed up as you’d expect and out on the town, but behaving very quietly and politely.
So here are three ways into your Chort. Whether it’s a parody like our Antiques Roadshow examples, or a situational sketch like our hen-do one, take your situation and try applying these changes to it:
CHANGE WHERE – change where the action is happening
CHANGE HOW – change how people behave in the situation
CHANGE WHEN – put the action into the past or future
Finally, once you have decided on your change then ask yourself:
Is it a ‘weird world’ sketch where everyone accepts this changed reality as normal. Or do you have a ‘voice-of-reason’ reacting to the change? To see the difference, think again about the Peter Serafinowicz sketch. In his actual sketch, the woman is not troubled by him eating the valuable antique letter. A different way of approaching the same idea would be to position the woman as a voice-of-reason who would be appalled at his behaviour and trying to stop him. Both ways could be funny. So with your idea, decide which way to play it: weird world or with a voice-of-reason.
Good luck!
For more great sketch writing inspiration, check out Chris’ live Zoom course:
And for techniques and inspiration for sitcom writing, Chris also runs this live Zoom course: