The sitcom is in the doldrums, but is it just the quality of what's on offer that's the problem, or are audiences starting to expect something more?

ITV's latest foray into sitcom has ended in tears - of despair, not laughter. The new Johnny Vegas comedy Dead Man Weds, one of the channel's increasingly rare comedy series ventures, might as well be re-titled Dead Loss after failing to pull in the viewers.

The final episode has suffered the indignity of being switched to a later time on a different day, the ITV equivalent of casting the show out into the snow to freeze to death.

Despite the star power of Vegas and a script by Phoenix Nights co-writer Dave Spikey, this comedy set in a local newspaper office has given ITV bosses nothing to smile about. Even though the preceding drama Distant Shores has been pulling in more than seven million viewers an episode, Dead Man Weds could only manage 3.4m the first week. That's now dropped by more than a million.

In the light of its less-than-illustrious record with sitcoms, the failure of Dead Man Weds isn't too surprising (although I confess that I rather like it) but the BBC has been struggling with its new comedies too. Only a month of 2005 has gone by and the comedy casualties are piling up.

The BBC has got into the habit of putting dud sitcoms on Friday nights, presumably in the hope that as people are relaxing as the weekend begins they'll be more tolerant of unfunny comedies. Apparently not. According To Bex debuted on 4.7m last month and has been dropping ever since. The Bob Mortimer hosted comedy panel quiz show 29 Minutes Of Fame is clearly 28 too many for viewers. A mere 2.9m bothered to watch the first show in a Friday night peaktime spot.

Dom Joly's switch to BBC1 began well with World Shut Your Mouth opening with 3.6m, only to shed more than a million the following week. Clearly they weren't impressed by what they saw the first time.

Little Britain has been the only real new comedy success for ages, giving BBC3 record audiences before being rapidly repeated on BBC1. And, at Christmas, Dawn French showed that there was still life in the mysteriously-popular The Vicar Of Dibley as the Christmas Day special attracted a massive 12.59m viewers, making it the seventh most watched show of 2004. My Hero and My Family, another pair of BBC sitcoms, continue to draw decent audiences.

While entertainment shows, thanks to the likes of Strictly Come Dancing and Ant and Dec's Takeaway, have made a comeback, sitcoms are in the doldrums.

This lack of humour isn't a problem confined to British screens. America, for so long the home of slick and successful sitcoms, is struggling to find replacements for Friends, Frasier and Sex And The City, all of which ended last year.

The days when US screens, and then British ones, were filled with long-running comedies such as I Love Lucy, Roseanne or The Mary Tyler Moore Show, have vanished. As Entertainment Weekly magazine said of the lack of sitcoms, "There's no genre on television that's more starved for a hit".

Will And Grace, now in its seventh season, is one of the few that continue to raise laughs and attract viewers. So does Everyone Loves Raymond - but only in the US, here C4 shows the series at breakfast time. Arrested Development has won an Emmy but few fans for its BBC2 screenings.

Nowadays, US audiences like their comedy served with a dark and witty edge in quirky series such as Six Feet Under and the hottest new show Desperate Housewives. They don't fit neatly into either a drama or comedy niche but walk a fine, not to say quirky, line between the two.

Others get away with the type of outrageous, un-PC humour that would never be allowed by doing it in cartoon form in The Simpsons and South Park.

Americans also laugh at British imports, including Absolutely Fabulous and The Kumars At No 42. Camp comedian Graham Norton is a hit across the Atlantic, while at home the BBC struggles to find the right format to showcase its £5m signing. He was poached from C4 in 2003 but has so far only presented a Sound Of Music special for BBC1.

All of which makes the launch of five's comedy zone next weekend such a risk. The channel will premiere Joey, the Friends spin-off starring Matt LeBlanc, for which it is rumoured to have paid nearly £500,000 an episode. It won the rights for the 24-episode run after seeing only the pilot episode. The series later debuted well in the US.

That will be followed on five by another US sitcom Two And A Half Men, which stars Charlie Sheen.

The 8pm Sunday slot is a tough one as the comedies will be up against top-rated dramas Heartbeat or The Royal, the usual occupants of the ITV1 slot at that time.

But five is determined, despite limited budgets, to increase its comedy portfolio. It's recently done a deal with Paramount Comedy Channel to develop new comedies. They may yet have the last laugh over ITV and the BBC.

Published: 05/02/2005