A new online sitcom called Acting Up is being broadcast online for free - see our news story for more info.

I've just watched episode one and was quite impressed with the professional level of production and the fact there were actually some jokes in it (something missing all to often from sitcoms, especially pilots/series produced without having been through an established production company).

Let us know your thoughts. We'll have a full guide to the show on the website shortly.

I just watched this and have to say I've seen a lot worse make it to telly.

There were some funny moments and in particular the upper class guy doing the voice-over made me laugh.

If I have one criticism, it's that the script didn't broaden out enough and beat the porn gags to death a bit.

If it were on the TV though, I'd tune in if I was around.

Just watched it. Some funny moments and good performances although, as Blenkinsop said, they didn't make the most of the premise and some of the gags were a bit tired.

It would be great if this became a viable way of getting your work out there, thus reducing the importance of the BBC etc. As they say on their website: "the 'real telly' people all have their own ideas and agendas, and we want to do things our way. In any case, the internet and 'real telly' are merging, slowly but surely. New technology, new viewing habits - just look at Sky+ and TiVo and all that jazz. Pretty soon, all telly will be maggot-shaped."

Hi Craig Castell (the Director of Acting Up)here.
Thanks for watching our first Episode, thanks for the comments as well, all noted.

We realized that we could do a lot more with each episode early on but because of the online formate we could not re-hash what we have all seen on the google box a million times before.
We needed to keep the episodes short and yet try and get the situation going.

Porn is the longest episode by about 5 mins, we have stuck to a 10 minute or less formate for the next five episodes.

Its not every day that you actually get the chance to make a sitcom not just because of the establishment. So we are bound to make some mistakes but I hope you have the time to view all six episodes before you cast a final judgement on us.

We are relying on revealing more about characters as the episodes progress. We Have also discussed back stories and actually seeing the finished job that they are casting for, but as I said before time on the web is short for most viewers so we could not do all that we wanted and the budget was an issue as well.

We are in the pre-production on the next 6 episodes and we always felt feed back from the viewers will help us to improve what we are producing.
Hopefully we will get some idea's for episodes from our audience as well as constructive critique.

And If the demand is there we could develope this formate much further.

I'm angered that I signed up on their promise of download access, only to find no such thing. Grrr! I hate watching stuff online!

We never said promise we did say download, but our tech guy Si is going to get involved in a minute so I will leave it to him.

Hi I’m Simon, I handle the maggot.tv website.

Aaron, yep I’m with you all the way, watching stuff online, i.e. streamed, can be a bind. We are working hard to make the online experience better for our visitors, in fact we have a rather nifty bit of Flash in development right now that amongst other things will incorporate smart buffering, playlists and our first shot at the ‘holy grail’ decent full screen playback.

Now the downloads... we will be offering downloads of selected stuff very soon, but there are a few issues to deal with. First and foremost is money, or more specifically our lack of it Maggot.tv is a start up company, cash is very tight, storage and internet bandwidth is expensive. Porn, the first episode of Acting Up, streams out at 50Mb, the high quality mpeg is 510Mb, so, in these early stages by only offering a Flash video stream we can reach 10 times more viewers for the same bandwidth usage.

DRM is also an issue, we won’t be producing everything that is available to view on the maggot website and some content owners will, rightfully, want to maintain control over the distribution of their copyright, so no matter what, some content may never be available for hi res download.

Reliability: again it’s early days for maggot, the IT Infrastructure that our budget allows us at the moment would struggle to handle multiple half-gig downloads, flash streaming and people browsing the site all at the same time.

Stay with us folks, we’re new but we’re moving fast. We are listening to your comments on both the content and the site, Maggot needs viewers, so you can guarantee we will be doing everything we can to keep you coming back for more!

Cheers
Si.

Quote: Simon Owen @ November 17, 2006, 10:43 PM

Aaron, yep I’m with you all the way, watching stuff online, i.e. streamed, can be a bind. We are working hard to make the online experience better for our visitors, in fact we have a rather nifty bit of Flash in development right now that amongst other things will incorporate smart buffering, playlists and our first shot at the ‘holy grail’ decent full screen playback.

View original

I wouldn't find it anywhere near as annoying if I had a second monitor I could play it on - I really don't like being forced to sit and watch one window like that! Oh well, I've downloaded the flv for now, so will watch it later.

What a whinger. There's no pleasing some people.

I agree with Wheeler. Great performances (Esp Rick - top acting), and fantastic production. What equipment did they use?

The theme music was worth a mention too, kind of mellow 'office' meets USA

I don't want this to come across as harsh but the whole porn genre has been parodied to death. It's also hard to parody a film genre that bases its dialogue on weak double entendres because the foundation for writers to take it to another level is missing. Because of this, a lot of the jokes were stale or, at worse, unfunny. I'm thinking of the girl at the beginning talking about peaches. The idea was so worn-out in the Sixties by the Carry On series, I almost turned off.

The first time I smiled was when the posh bloke was adding VO. That was very good because they broke free from stereotype. It made the rest of the episode worth watching for that single moment so the writers deserve credit for a moment of greatness.

I'll watch the other episodes with interest to see how they develop the dynamic between Rick and his assistant as there was little in the first episode (only the very first scene) and that didn't spark much wit between them. Good sitcom relies on character interaction and it was weird to have a first episode where relationships between the key players weren't developed. I understand they had issues with time constraints but eventually the show will succeed or fail on the handling of Rick and his assistant.

Aaron is isn't whinging. The website says:

"Register FREE today and get instant access to hi resolution downloads of this item."

There is a promise of "instant access to downloads". Like Ronseal, people expect something to do what's on the tin.

Hi slag,
Yes some of the stuff is tried and trusted, don't think the David Hasselhoff line has been done before, Jane is a compulsive liar, she will say and do anything if she thinks it will give her an advantage, as most actors will.

How many sitcoms have you scene on the web?, there is no formula, yet it has to be familier. not an easy balance.

I would love to see how they develope to, opps sorry: I already know, there is development though let me promise you.

Have you ever seen so many characters in one sitcom in the first 15 mins of an episode.

Six episodes: an hour and a bit of life, in bite size pieces, over the next six weeks.

Stick with us, the last episode is well hard and well different.

I made that comment with tongue firmly in cheek, SlagA.

I enjoyed this episode. Excellent production values, some funny moments and good acting. Well done to all those involved.

hill street blues/bob james meets badly drawn keyboards.

It gets in your head.

DSR main camera on progressive and Z1/HD casting camera, shot interlaced.

Don't think I was having a downer on you at maggot.tv. I think you did a great job and gave credit where credit is due. It was the area of the episode's material and not your talents that I thought was the biggest problem. Where the writers excelled was the moment they broke away from the norm and then it was excellent.

How much was adlibbed, how strictly scripted? The main camera is better than HD, i take it?

Jass, I guessed it was tongue-in-cheek but sorry it came across so gruff.