Is it just my impression or have there really been no remotely successful sport-based sitcoms?

I thought the Bassett thing was lousy but people may have other opinions.

Football especially, the national sport, is crying out for something based on it. I can just imagine something based around the dressing room, the half time talk, the players bar and a few wacky characters.

I gather something is upcoming:

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2008/02/20/6438/absolutely_duo_pen_football_sitcom

.. and hope that it's worth the watching...

There have been a few things, and of course Trevor's World of Sport which was a huge Radio 4 show and treated appalingly when on BBC One, but no, none "remotely successful", as far as I'm aware. I think there was a thread about football in sitcom very recently.

Americans have Sports Night, which is pretty good.

Well, OK, it's more about sports TV journalists.

There was the 19th hole, filmed at one of my local clubs at the time Pinner Hill, starring Eric Sykes and penned by Johnny Speight which I believe got pulled half way though its run. I vaguely remember it as being pretty poor.

But Outside Edge, Cricket based, with it's origins in a play, was a very successful sitcom and did little harm to the stars in it's careers.

'Thin Ice'....an ice skating comedy, not that successful but not too bad either.

I wouldn't have said it was cricket based but yeah, well remembered. Good show, that.

Quote: Writer2K @ April 16 2008, 1:00 PM BST

'Thin Ice'....an ice skating comedy, not that successful but not too bad either.

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You're skating on - wait for it - Thin Ice to call that show a comedy.

Problem with sports-themed sitcoms is that the tend to limit an audience. It's fine to have characters related to sport (e.g. Sam Malone, ex-baseball player) in sitcoms, but to mine sports for sitcom yields fairly little. Saying that, there's good potential for any sitcom that can use sport as a backdrop to its characters. There was a very funny TV play in the 70/80's which used a Sunday league footy match as its background. I'm sure there would be a good sitcom based on what goes on with a team of characters around the actual match.

Yeah, I'd probably definitely avoid a show which was so solidly centred around sport.

Exactly, Aaron, such a show would just polarise a potential audience. I do think there is a good show to be made about the peripheries of sport. And in sitcom that would not be professional sport, as (British) sitcom is the champion of the mediocrity. So it would have to be related to amateurs.

Quote: Aaron @ April 16 2008, 1:05 PM BST

I wouldn't have said it was cricket based but yeah, well remembered. Good show, that.

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Well it is only cricket based in the same way as the office is work based, or Porridge is prison based or birds of a feathers is neighbours and sisters based. I.e it's about the characters primarily not the setting. Hang on a minute maybe that's the answer to writing a good sitcom... concentrate on the characters!

Haha, very good Marc.

The former.

At least they'd be understandable when they spoke.

Jossy's Giants; football's just another branch of science.

Edited by Aaron.

One episode of 'Seven of One' titled 'Spanners Eleven' was about a bad football team written by Roy Clarke. John Sullivan wrote a football sitcom after 'Citizen Smith' starring the late great Brian Wilde but due to a boxing sitcom starring Robert Lindsay, the Beeb didn't want two sports sitcoms. With this failure, Sullivan wrote another sitcom. I forget what it was called but it was something on the lines of 'Only Fools and Horses'

I'm trying to remember, didn't Timothy Spall do a cricket based sitcom?