Tape 170: Find Your Position Of Strength
I’m enjoying 2025 so far. It’s the first year since 2022 where I’ve gone into January pretty much knowing what the year has in store for me, or the first half of it at least. The last two Januaries very much played out in a spirit of “I’ll just sit on my hands for a bit until I work out where things are going.” (Don’t try this at home! Your hands become numb). There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but I think after two consecutive uncertain, hesitant Januaries, it’s nice to spend this one in a bit of a rush of activity. I’m also currently dedicating a lot of thought towards the fact that a lot of that activity is once again centred around that most complicated significant other in my life, the Edinburgh Fringe (Hooray! Boo! Hiss! Hurrah!).
I’m planning on going back there with a new show, and I’m also directing several shows as well, so for the first time in three years, the majority of my effort is turning around that one month again. I’m making sure I don’t lose all my time and focus to it, as I’ve got lots of other scripted projects to keep across, but it does look like it will be the driving force behind my year. I’ve been wondering why that is given that the last time I did a full run there I came away feeling a bit like I had been carrying a really big bag of sand on my head for 28 days, and maybe it was time to explore other models for making stuff.
The answer, I think, has a lot to do with that phrase “Survive ‘Til ‘25.” If you work in the creative industries, particularly in TV or film, you’ll have heard it a lot throughout the last year. I first started hearing variations on it in early 2023. As the money dropped out of TV comedy commissioning, people started saying “Just wait until April. There’ll be new budgets announced in the new tax year, and things should pick up a bit.” Then in April 2023 people started saying “I think it won’t be until November that we really see momentum pick back up.” Then in November people said “Things will improve in 2024, just hold on until then.” Then in early 2024, people said “We’ve just got to wait for the new budgets to be announced in April with the new tax year.” Then around April last year, someone came up with “Survive ‘Til ‘25” and at least that stopped everyone asking awkward questions for a good eight months.
I’m told that since 2025 is upon us, the phrase is now “Suck Dicks ‘Til ‘26.” (I’ve been told this by about seven different people, at least three of whom claimed to have come up with it, so I sadly don’t know who to attribute it to). Now, I’ve written here before about how I’m no longer interested in despair and doom-mongering around the state of the TV comedy industry. This week’s newsletter is a sort of follow-up or companion piece to that one, maybe.
I’ve heard people wonder if the ongoing fingers-in-ears insistence that it will get better soon, just hold on, we promise better days are around the corner, is actually masking the fact that TV is in terminal decline and doesn’t know how to confront it, and it will end up actually being impossible to make high-quality long-form scripted comedy. I fundamentally don’t believe this. I believe TV is in crisis, but I believe people will always want to be entertained, and it’s up to us as artists and makers to find the right models and frameworks in which to offer that to them. I genuinely believe some new and exciting way of making great stuff on a mass scale will emerge from the crisis, but it’ll take some continued soul-searching by all of us to work out exactly what it will look like.
But my big problem with all the “Survive ‘Til ‘25” stuff is that it’s so passive. “Just go and find a way to survive for a bit, the old way of doing things will be here for you in the meantime, honest, so just do whatever you need to do to survive.” Like I said, I don’t know if the old way of doing things will be there. I think something new and currently indistinct might be there. And even if things do go back to exactly how they were, I don’t think that “surviving” and holding on and hoping that someone will come back to you further down the line and go “Well done, now where were we?” is going to produce much in the way of results.
Not only that, one person’s version of “surviving” might involve going to work in a completely different industry for a bit, stabilising their income and trying to put time and effort into their creative projects in between the work they’re doing on other things. Somebody else’s version of “surviving” might involve feeling comfortable enough to rely on their substantial savings for a while and putting all their time into their creative projects. As usual, the de facto line being handed around is one that disproportionately empowers and benefits people with money.
About halfway through last year, I decided I couldn’t be bothered with this “Survive ‘til ‘25” stuff. I replaced it with “Find Your Position Of Strength.” I didn’t want to spend a year just doing whatever I could to get by in the hopes that the TV and film projects I was trying to develop would suddenly come good in January.
This man from the past has found his position of strength. It is being a strongman, but it might not be that for you, just as it isn’t for me. You must find your own path, like he did.
I wanted to spend a year thriving and putting my energy into things that I really believed in that delivered results I could be confident about, so that as and when the crisis in TV and film has eased a little, I could step back into that world feeling confident and secure, rather than desperate and half-starved. I decided I wanted to be really honest with myself, look at what I’m good at, look at what I’ve been good at it in the past, and work out what I could do that I could be in total control of and could produce good results if I put my heart and soul into it.
For all its faults, that’s still the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s not as important as it once was, and it’s not as fair as it once was, but it is still the place where you can have an idea that would struggle to find an audience in most other settings, and believe in that idea and turn it into something meaningful. More to the point, it’s the thing I learned over a decade to be really good at.
So I find myself back at it, working across several shows as well as my own, and I’m so pleasantly surprised by how much fun I’m having. I forgot that I love doing this.
The last time I made a Fringe show it was right after the pandemic, and that whole Fringe had a really anxious, cynical energy to it that I didn’t enjoy. It felt like everyone was desperate to prove something to themselves and to the world in the wake of what they’d been through, and that includes me. Covid had hit immediately after my first show to be an unqualified success, and I spent a lot of it feeling down about how it had robbed me of my momentum. I tried not to get too hung up about it, because it did that to everybody, but I went into that Fringe in 2022 keen to get back to where I was. The show went really well and I was really proud of it, but it didn’t become one of the big hits of the year in the same way and I left feeling burnt out and exhausted.
This year I find myself making work in such a healthier, happier space. I’m not going because I want to prove something or achieve something or unlock some sort of special reward. I’m doing it because I’ve remembered it’s something I’m good at. I’ve made a show, and I started making it simply because it was an idea I was enjoying, and now I’ve made it, I really like it. And now I look at the show, I think the Fringe is the best place to go with it. It’s the place where it’ll reach the most people and make the most sense. So off I go, and that’s all there is to it.
I used to make Fringe shows with this mindset – “I’ve made a thing I like, I hope other people like it too” – every year. Those days are long gone – nobody can afford to do back-to-back Fringes like that any more. But the attitude, and the spirit of making something in that way, feels like an old friend and I’m so happy to be reunited with it after more than five years. I’m doing my best to instil the same spirit into the artists whose shows I’m working on as well, because I think it’s the only way to work. Hopefully I’m doing an ok job of it.
As for TV and film, I’m pleasantly surprised to notice that things have been getting a little bit better in the last few months. A few more things going into production, a few more things being optioned and commissioned. It feels a long way away from being totally healthy again, and I know many people still struggling for work, but I hope there are signs of improvement. So my question to other people who’ve been hit by the downturn in commissioning over the last two years is – what’s your position of strength? If this business continues to take its time to rebuild and reconfigure and reshape itself, then what’s a place you can go to where you know you can just make good work that will produce results all by itself, without you being reliant on a creaky industry? Most of us who work in this business started out just doing things all by ourselves and learning how it works. We all still have the ability to do that, but now we have the skills and knowledge and experience of years doing it professionally. Imagine what we could all make happen if we put our minds to it.
Speaking of, one last shout-out about Eggbox on Tuesday at the Pleasance, where Miranda and I will once again be showcasing some of our favourite short films and new scripts that we’ve encountered recently, from an amazing lineup of filmmakers, writers and actors, as well as sharing a couple of our own recent projects. The show is really filling up, so do book ahead if you’re planning on coming!
A Cool New Thing In Comedy – The BBC Comedy Collective bursary scheme is open for applications again. Miranda was one of its inaugural recipients last year and gained so much from it in the way of skills training, networking opportunities, shadowing and so on. Well worth a look for aspiring writers, directors, producers and editors.
What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – Until yesterday, I had never seen “David’s Dead.” If you’ve never seen it, then the necessary context is that in 2016, while taking part in Celebrity Big Brother, Angie Bowie tried to inform Tiffany Pollard that her ex-husband, David Bowie, had just died simply by saying “David’s dead,” forgetting that David Gest was also a contestant in the house with them. I have since watched it over a dozen times and I think I will never stop watching it.
Book Of The Week – I’m still on Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Making slow progress on the books front this year, all a bit busy. Might have to lower my target on Goodreads. Excellent book, though.
Album Of The Week – Dear Life by David Gray. Remember this guy? He’s got a new album! It’s good. Someone told me this week that a friend of theirs toured with David Gray and the guy’s completely insane. Like, properly mad. I find that very funny. His music is so mellow and calm. Apparently he’s off-the-charts bonkers.
Film Of The Week – A Complete Unknown. Honestly, I don’t think I’m a reliable judge of this film. Miranda and her mum seemed to enjoy it, but I came out absolutely buzzing. I can’t tell how much of that is because it’s a good film and how much of it is that I’m an obsessive nerd about old music, so I spent the whole time floating in my element and feeling like I could eat the film. “Whoa, no way, Joan Baez! Alan Lomax, whaaaaaaaat?” I’d say to myself. “Sonny Boy Williamson, amazing! Oh shit, Johnny Cash!” It could be a really dogshit film, I honestly have no idea.
That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoyed the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d really appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time,
Joz xx
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PPS Got some new promo shots, hope you like em:
