An article from our archive. In his early 2006 lecture series, Armando Iannucci called for a return to the traditional way of shooting sitcoms, including use of the laughter track. One of our readers sent in this piece outlining their thoughts on the subject...

There's a scene in the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon, where Kaufman (Jim Carrey) is offered a role in Taxi. Less than impressed, he labels sitcoms "the lowest form of entertainment", adding that, "it's just stupid jokes and canned laughter. And you don't know why it's there, but it's there. And it's dead people laughing, did you know that? It's dead people".

The guy had a point - about the audience laughter I mean, not sitcoms being the lowest form of entertainment! The use of either canned laughter or the laughter of a studio audience has been known to work in the sitcom arena. Only Fools and Horses put it to particularly good use, as did Cheers (which famously kicked off with the words "Cheers is filmed before a live studio audience"). But for every Only Fools and Horses, there are dozens of dreadful sitcoms that have given the laughter track a bad name. They have made it appear intrusive and manipulative, associating it with smarmy programme makers who possess such a low opinion of Joe Public that they think he/she needs to be told, "this bit is funny, so be a good sport and laugh along with everybody else". Even worse, the presence of a cackling audience frequently signals a sitcom with a fatal lack of confidence in itself.

Graham Linehan's The IT Crowd is a good example of how it can harm rather than advance a show's prospects. Watching the first couple of episodes, I quickly became annoyed by the OTT laughter track. Some tired slapstick humour and several age-old jokes were met with howls of laughter, courtesy of an audience who had either been at the sherry or were just happy to get out of the house. How else can you explain the tacked on guffaws during a scene involving a character pretending to be on the phone, only to be rumbled by a colleague when it's revealed that, wait for it, the phone is unplugged? The audience found this to be the height of hilarity. I, on the other hand, found myself battling the urge to switch channels. Compare this with Arrested Development (IMHO, the best American sitcom since Seinfeld) which doesn't use a laugh track and is all the better for it - in fact, it's almost impossible to imagine the show with audience laughter.

Armando Iannucci believes that, "We needn't feel there's only one way to make a sitcom. The danger is that the method has become all. There are no set rules, you can make successful shows in front of an audience, as Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show have proved. There's no perfect solution. There's not a right way or wrong way of making sitcoms, and we shouldn't think there are."

He's right - there are no set rules. However, Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show are sketch shows and it could be argued that these are better suited to the ways of the laughter track. Sitcoms, in general, need time to develop, for the audience to get to know the characters etc, unhindered by audience laughter signposting the "funny" bits. I say "in general" because there is no perfect solution. As I've already mentioned, a laughter track does not necessarily equal the kiss of death. Then again, there are many cases where it has done more harm than good. Sitcoms like Arrested Development, The Office and The Simpsons work perfectly well without "fake" laughter. In short, there do not appear to be any hard and fast rules. I don't know why this is the case and, I suspect, neither do TV's movers and shakers.

"There's a hunger for stuff that demands to be played in front of a studio audience", argues Iannucci. Is there? The much hyped IT Crowd, trumpeted as a return to traditional values, has failed to make a ratings splash, so the reverse could be argued. In fact, all that this underperforming show really proves is that, ultimately, there's a hunger for comedy that is funny, laughter track or no laughter track. It sounds obvious, but too many recent Britcoms have flopped for the simple reason that they were woefully short on laughs. Perhaps standards would rise if the industry worried less about hitting established demographic groups and more about whether a script actually does what it says on the tin. Just a thought.