Comments on: ENTITLEMENT

By: Griff

Griff — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:33:39 +0000

I’ve got NO idea if you’re kidding with that one. But I bet if you pitched it to a commissioning editor they’d bite your hand off.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:41:29 +0000

Or how about ‘Poles Apart’, in which a couple of emigre Poles settle in the UK, to discover that one of them embraces the new lifestyle while the other hankers for home. Oh, my eyes, they are bleeding…

By: Griff

Griff — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:19:52 +0000

Agreed there are some awful shows with those kinds of titles, eg “Never The Twain”, where you know they found the cruddy title first and then developed a premise.

Anyway I just went and checked the funeral litany (the Catholic Dies Irae) and who can deny that “Doomed To Flames Of Woe Unbounded” would make a GREAT title for a sitcom.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:50:08 +0000

Apologies for the ‘Pushing Daisies’ snafu. And while some of the shows you mention might be good — also including ‘One Foot In The Grave’ for that matter — I stand by my aversion to that route to titling. On some dark days, I wonder whether every single line of the wedding vows or funeral litany will end up being used as a title for a show.

By: Griff

Griff — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:16:33 +0000

We’ll have to agree to differ about sitcom titles…

I think “Pushing Daisies” (not “Pushing Up The Daisies”) can hold its head up on the originality front, being one of the most off-the-wall concept shows for a while.

And “In Sickness And In Health” was the obvious name for a sequel to “Till Death Do Us Part”, a title which perfectly encapsulated the horror of being trapped forever with a monster like Alf Garnett. (And also one of the finest sitcoms ever.)

I’m not convinced that the modern vogue for naming sitcoms after the lead character – “I’m Alan Partridge”, “Father Ted”, “Blackadder”, “Frasier”, “The Vicar Of Dibley” etc is any more interesting or enticing than using idiomatic phrases. But each to their own!