Climate change meets scripted comedy

Is there a place for climate change stories to be a part of comedy? Well in a word – yes. Given it’s an issue that touches all our lives in one way or another it makes sense that it would also have a presence in any creative content that we make – including comedy.

But what does this look like in reality? Well as a comedic panel, and live audience, who worked together to come up with a pitch idea for a sitcom that has climate stories embedded within it recently showed, it’s about weaving it into everything from location to character choice. Expertly showing climate storytelling can be rooted into a comedy set up and be funny and educational a panel of top writers, producers, commissioners and comedians built hilarious scenarios in real time as part of a live BAFTA albert Green Light event.

Here’s what we learnt…

During an interactive storyboarding session the panellists discovered that aside from considering what would be a funny situation and location, factoring in how environmental issues could impact both of these made it easy to incorporate the climate theme. Having toyed around with audience suggestions they eventually settled on a hospital setting with a Derby location and were guided by two experts in a so called ‘climate corner’ of the stage to see how well this leant itself to embedding climate storytelling.

Matt Nida, Climate & Comedy Programme Manager at OKRE, explained: “From a climate point of view a hospital waiting room is an extremely good location… If you are looking for a range of climate stories, climate as a health issue and the way it’s going to affect lots of different people you’re going to have lots of different stories each week.”

Additionally, “Derby has been hit very badly with flooding, so bad for Derby but good from a climate storytelling point of view”, he added.

Possible scenarios coming out of this set up of a potentially flooded hospital in the Midlands are:

• the smell due to blocked drains and sewage overflow,
• danger as water saturates electrical items,
• the spread of disease.

“In terms of a good location, with a flooded hospital you’re going to get stories and situations out of it,” says Nida.

Being smart about the characters you chose to feature in your comedy can also create easy opportunities for you to present your messages. For example our comedy panel found their choice of a 43-year-old woman, as their main character and an injured boy as a secondary character created space for cross-generational conversations that would enable them to weave in climate themes. While giving the adult a role of authority within the setting leant itself to the audience seeing her as a figure of trust.

Matt Winning, climate change comedian and lecturer, explained: “It’s actually quite good adults and children having conversations. One of the biggest influences on adult opinions around climate change are their children. And in particular young girls have a very large influence on their fathers.”

With workshopping taking them down the path of a sitcom the panellists realised that a sitcom set in the hospital canteen would give them lots of options for laughs and climate conversations. Using this familiar background to each proposed episode would enable audiences young and old to connect and create a space in which it’s expected for people to be talking about a wide range of things.

Possible scenarios, with a climate storytelling angle, that could be fit into such a setting included:

• fish shortages – with the canteen sneakily switching out the type of fish in their fishfingers
• going veggie – with the canteen going meat free for ethical reasons and reactions to this
• generator breakdowns – with the canteen generator going down because of flooding and struggles to keep food safe

The opportunities for embedding climate themes in a situational comedy are vast, and with a little extra thought fairly organic to include. As Nida reflected: “From a climate perspective there is so much you could do with this are so many opportunities in every single episode to have situations where you have characters coming in, or food situations… or stuff that is organically going to create funny situations for these characters to have to deal with where you get to talk about climate.”

• The live comedy workshop was hosted by Kiell Smith-Bynoe, and featured comedy panellists Desiree Burch, Darren Herriott, Gina Lyons, Joel Morris, Andy Brereton and Sarah Asante, and ‘climate corner’ experts Matt Winning and Matt Nida. It was produced in partnership with Laughing Matters, OKRE’s initiative supporting the growth of bold, climate-conscious comedy.

BAFTA is excited to be hosting the Green Light Season, a series of discussions and screenings designed to inspire content makers to take our collective commitment to sustainability to new heights. Through this season of activity we’re asking for the industry’s help to explore how we can create TV and films that support an inclusive conversation about climate change where everyone feels part of the mission.

With thanks to our Official Partner – Universal Production Music. Listen to the official Green production music playlist.

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