(Prefer to listen than scroll, here is the audio of the blog, Human voice, not AI)

There was a time when a sitcom could simply arrive, tell its story, land its joke, and go home. Now it has to arrive, tell its story, know that we know its story, wink at us for knowing, and then make a joke about the fact that we saw the joke coming three scenes ago.

Exhausting, really.

We are living in an age of hyper-awareness. Audiences know what a cold open is. They know what a bottle episode is. They can spot a callback, identify a B story, predict a third-act misunderstanding, and tell you whether a series has “earned” its emotional ending. They know when a character is being set up as a love interest, when a redemption arc is being hurried along, and when a finale is trying to get away with murder by playing a sad song under a montage.

Not everyone, obviously. There is still a healthy number of people who just want to watch something funny while eating toast. God bless them. But in general, audiences are more structurally aware than they used to be. We have spent years inhaling television, recaps, podcasts, YouTube essays, TikToks, memes, behind-the-scenes clips, DVD extras before those became a heritage object, and endless discourse from people who say things like “the text is interrogating itself” with a straight face.

We do not just watch television now. We watch television while watching ourselves watch television.

And I do think that changes comedy.

The question is whether it has made sitcom writing harder, or whether it has simply given writers a very handy excuse.

Because there is a difference between an audience being sophisticated and an audience being impossible.

Some of the change is practical. The pandemic changed viewing habits in ways that stuck. People streamed more, watched more, revisited older shows, and got used to consuming television as a constant presence rather than an event. Research since then has also pointed to viewing habits being shaped not just by choice, but by routine, platform defaults, and comfort viewing. In other words, people are not always hunting for the newest, smartest thing. Quite often they are going back to the thing they already trust.

That matters because it complicates the smug little argument that modern audiences are simply too clever for traditional sitcom pleasures.

If audiences were truly done with familiar structures, revivals would not keep happening. Nor would old sitcoms keep finding new viewers. Nor would half the entertainment industry still be powered by the phrase “same but different”, which is effectively “give me the thing I liked before, but flatter me by pretending it is new”.

And that is not stupidity. That is taste. Or comfort. Or exhaustion. Often all three.

People like familiarity. They like rhythm. They like knowing roughly what kind of emotional contract they are entering into. Sitcoms have always traded on that. You come back each week because you know the people, the world, and the flavour of nonsense on offer. The pleasure is not in being shocked that Basil Fawlty is a nightmare or that Frasier is pompous. The pleasure is in seeing how those things play out again, with enough variation to feel alive.

So no, I do not think audiences have become too sophisticated for sitcoms.

I think they have become less patient with lazy ones.

That is a different accusation entirely.

There is a lot of chat now, especially in writing circles, that “audiences know everything”. They know the tropes. They know the mechanics. They know when they are being manipulated. Fine. True, up to a point. But audiences have always known more than writers give them credit for. They may not have used terms like “status reversal” or “plant and payoff”, but they knew when something felt predictable, false, sentimental, or overcooked. They knew when a character stopped behaving like themselves just to service plot. They knew when a show was buying time.

What has changed is not just that audiences are media literate. It is that they now have the language to describe why something is not working.

Which, frankly, is inconvenient for mediocre writing.

It is also where AI enters the room, usually wearing the confidence of a man who has read three bullet points on screenwriting and now thinks he is William Goldman. AI has helped create this strange cultural mood where everybody feels like they understand story because the machine can produce something shaped like one. Suddenly structure is treated like a paint-by-numbers kit. Here is your premise. Here is your inciting incident. Here is your twist. Here is your ending. Congratulations, you have made content.

But a structure is not a comedy.

A machine can reproduce patterns. It can identify that jokes often escalate, that scenes turn, and that characters recur with recognisable traits. What it cannot do, at least not in the way an actual writer can, is understand the deep and infuriating human specificity that makes something funny. It can give you the shape of a joke without the point of view. It can give you competence without spark. And the more people are exposed to machine-made competence, the more they mistake recognisable structure for good writing.

That may be one reason audiences feel both more sophisticated and more suspicious now. They are surrounded by polished approximation. They know when something has been assembled rather than written. They may not say it in those words, but they feel it.

Which brings us to this other question hanging about the place: if audiences consume stories differently now, should comedy be presented differently too?

This is where vertical drama turns up, waving its phone. The format has grown fast, especially in mobile-first storytelling, with short episodes, punchy turns, fast hooks, and an emphasis on immediate emotional payoff. Industry coverage over the last year has treated microdrama and vertical storytelling as a genuine growth area, not just a gimmick someone dreamt up in a lift.

Could that work for comedy?

Possibly. But only if people stop assuming comedy is just drama that talks quicker.

Vertical drama suits intensity. It thrives on cliffhangers, secrets, revelations, lovers glaring at each other in close-up as if their rent depends on it. Comedy is trickier. Comedy often needs rhythm, silence, embarrassment, reaction shots, space for a joke to hang in the air and die gloriously before someone makes it worse. That does not mean short-form comedy cannot work. Of course it can. Sketch has always known that. Social media comedy knows it too. But sitcom comedy, the kind built on character accumulation and group dynamics, needs more than a quick hit and a dramatic zoom.

That said, I do think comedy will keep borrowing from newer forms. Tighter openings. Faster scene entry. Less hanging about. Perhaps shorter episode runs. Perhaps more hybrid formats. We are already seeing comedy become more visually flexible, more tonally slippery, more willing to sit closer to drama than the old studio model allowed.

But the danger is obvious. In trying to keep up with supposedly sophisticated audiences, comedy can become self-conscious to the point of death. It starts commenting on itself instead of being itself. It gets so busy acknowledging the trope that it forgets to make the trope funny. It confuses awareness with wit.

That, to me, is the real issue.

Not that audiences are too media literate.

Not that they know too much.

It is that some writers seem terrified of sincerity now. Terrified of simplicity. Terrified of writing a straightforward setup and payoff in case somebody on the internet notices that storytelling has, in fact, occurred.

Sometimes a joke is still just a joke. Sometimes a familiar structure works because it works. Sometimes people do not want a formal experiment. They want excellent characters, sharp writing, and the pleasure of watching a well-built comic world do what it does best.

Which is why revivals keep circling back to. (See post about revivals.) Not just because audiences are nostalgic, though they are. But because there is comfort in a known comic engine. The challenge is not in dragging the old thing back out of the cupboard and hoping for applause. The challenge is making it feel alive now. New pressures, new social codes, new blind spots, same human idiocy.

Same, but different.

That is not cowardice. That is craft.

So are we too media literate for sitcoms now?

No.

But we are probably too media literate for bad sitcoms pretending to be clever.

And honestly, that feels fair.

What do you think? Are audiences too clever for sitcoms now? Let me know by clicking here.

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