Joey Tribbiani will be making new friends when his comedy series debuts in this country next year. He's deserting his faithful followers on Channel 4 in search of a fresh audience on five.

As aspiring actor Joey leaves his Friends pals in New York to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood, he's switching channels as five plays for laughs in the search for big comedy ratings.

C4, which showed hit show Friends, opted out of buying the spin-off series Joey, in which Matt LeBlanc reprises the role that made him famous. They had first choice but claimed the price was too high for its audience potential.

Five stepped in and paid what's been rumoured to be more than £250,000 an episode for the rights to screen the new sitcom, no doubt hoping to pick up many of the ten million British viewers who watched the final episode of Friends on C4 earlier this year.

The purchase is a risk as Joey has yet to air on American TV. All the five buyers had to go on was a single pilot episode. They'll be holding their breath when the sitcom begins on US TV in September to find out what critics think and the audience figures. The possibility remains that they could have bought themselves a turkey. Then find their expensive purchase will be no laughing matter.

The deal also includes the new Charlie Sheen comedy Two And A Half Men, which five is expected to team up with Joey to form a comedy hour in the New Year schedules.

While remaining tight-lipped about the price of screening Joey -put as high as £500,000 an episode by some people - five director of acquisitions Jeff Ford does say: "Five has become synonymous with quality US imports and the acquisition of these two comedy series is a great coup for the channel."

Coming on top of a deal with Paramount Comedy Channel and the poaching of the BBC's acting editor of new comedy, Graham Smith, you can see that five is serious about making viewers laugh.

Given the poor state of TV comedy, this can only be a good thing. ITV's record for making viewers laugh isn't good. Recent comedy hits are few and far between. The BBC's had The Office, Little Britain and the more conventional My Family in recent years, but still relies greatly on endless repeats of old, and admittedly good, comedies like The Good Life and Fawlty Towers. C4 has done well with hits like Phoenix Nights, Father Ted and Black Books.

Five, with its limited programme budgets, has little room for taking risks in comedy. The cost-sharing partnership with Paramount will benefit both - five gets new comedy shows and Paramount has something to replace recently-deceased hits Frasier and Sex And The City.

The two channels will split the costs, with shows being shown on five first and then on Paramount Comedy.

Five director of programmes Dan Chambers would love to get a home-grown hit like The Office or Nighty Night out of the project. "New comedy is a key way of making yourself truly distinctive from your rivals," he says.

The move is part of five's continuing campaign to get away from its early image of a channel providing films, football and something else beginning with f that can't be stated in a family newspaper. Now they want to add another f - funny.

The channel's comic successes in the past have been few and far between, although they did introduce Graham Norton to TV audiences, only to see him snapped up by C4.

Graham Smith, a former NME journalist who entered TV as a researcher on The Tube in the mid-1980s, aims to develop new British talent for the UK screens for audiences at the older end of the 16 to 34 age group. The budget will allow him to make around six pilot shows a year.

"The number of places that new talent can go at the moment are very limited," he says.

He feels the project offers the chance to do something new and interesting about British life in the 21st century, perhaps about our obsession with celebrity, youth or self-improvement.

There has been discussion about setting up a writing scheme along the lines of the BBC's New Writing Initiative in a bid to find fresh talent.

It looks like he'll be taking a leaf out of the BBC's book in nurturing ideas and not axing a show if it's not an instant hit. The BBC famously persevered with Only Fools And Horses despite poor ratings for the first series and saw it grow into a comedy classic. But in the increasingly competitive TV market there is a tendency to give up on an idea if it's not instantly successful.

"In comedy, there is immense pressure and expectation to make something that will make people laugh," he says. "It takes time, love and development to make a comedy, but you have no idea whether the audience is going to find it funny."

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