Sitcom Pilot

Hello there. "Student Teacher" got through to the finals of the RTE Storyland competition and finished in a very respectable second place. Congrats to the Begrudgers, Philip and crew on their success, and to all the other shows. Thank you to everyone who voted.

I've spent a lot of the summer writing sitcom pilots and specs for folks. I wrote my first sitcom pilot when I was seventeen. It was a comedy set in an Irish language summer camp. The next one was about detectives in a college. The one after that was about a lurker in a hospital. By the time I graduated from college I had written seventeen odd sitcom pilots, all seventeen uncommissionable. Even a commissioning editor somewhere hell bent on being fired would think, "No, that'd just be taking the piss." These were mostly first drafts because why mess with perfection.

I think about those scripts sometimes - badly formatted, characters names changing on a whim, the same five jokes in each one - and try to will myself to burst into flames out of shame. I gave these to PEOPLE to READ. People I knew and people I didn't. Luckily, I often didn't have the courage to submit these scripts and spared some poor reader somewhere the indignity of reading about the world through the perspective of some young lad with, being alive aside, next to no life experience. The simple act of writing some many pages of bad stuff is that it helps you get all the gunk out of your system.

Since then I've written a few scripts, hopefully with less gunk, some of which I'm very fond of but will more than likely never get made, the simple fact is that television takes an age to make and costs a lot of money. I thought it'd be fun to do it in the style of a radio play with performers reading the scripts accompanied by music and sound effects.

Rob Kearns, who runs 10 Days In Dublin and produces the monthly Death Of Comedy gave us the go ahead to stage a reading of "The Greatest Actor In The World". It's about a Daniel Day-Lewis type uber thespian called Daniel Clayton who, despite being enormously successful, has fallen on hard times financially. He mentors a doofus teen sensation Sparky in beginners thespaining and has a hate-hate relationship with the never seen Sean Penn. Unfortunately for me, (but good for everyone else because they're great) Arthur Mathews and Matt Berry also have a sitcom about a brash actor so TGAITW's prospects of getting made are currently estimated at minus zilch. Fortunately though we have a venue and a terrific cast led by the hilarious Shane Langhan (Diet of Worms) supported by the super funny Jim Elliot, Colin Chadwick and Petra Sheehan.

The plot revolves around trying to rescue a cat from a tree using only acting. Myself and the cast took the first draft and did a lot of gag adding (or "gagding") that improved things immeasurably. If you have a script that needs more jokes and you can convince hilarious people to help you make it better I can't recommend this way of working enough. It's (the show) is going to go down in The Workman's, Wellington Quay, Dublin on Tuesday the 4th of September, kicking off at 8PM. Funny people including MC Conor O'Toole, Tony Law and Tom Walsh will also be playing. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Student Teacher: Second Round of Voting

Hello you.

Our RTE Storyland entry "Student Teacher" is in the second round of voting which, if you're reading this before Sunday, March 25th at 9PM, you can still vote for.

The show follows the adventures of the overachieving Conor Shaw (comedian Conor O'Toole) as he returns to his old school to complete his teacher training. If you give us a view and a vote that'd be really terrific of you and would be enormously appreciated.

You can do both over at RTE's nifty Storyland page which is conveniently located here


But Giles, how can I help you more? Well, I'm touched, but you've done more then enough, but if you twist my arm I could ask you to share it on your Facebook wall or recommend it to other sound people.


The rest of the cast is made up with funny people, both new and old to the comedy scene, including Neil Molloy (Republic of Telly), Kevin McGahern (Hardy Bucks/The Man Who Slipped On The Ice), Carol Tobin (The Panel/The Savage Eye) as well as award winning stand ups Edwin Sammon and Kieran Lawless. Our music is composed by The Nicest Man in Pop a.k.a. Brian Kelly , from my favourite band So Cow. The show is produced by Spire Digital's Rory Walsh and comedy polymath Damon Blake. Massive thanks to the Brody's and people of Athenry for their support, particularly my old school the Presentation College for allowing us to take over for a weekend.