The question is asked: ‘Why are American shows so slick?

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Lawrence Marks, who has worked in the US, says that typically a team of eight writers will work for eight weeks on one script , compose endless re-drafts, and then to top it off a guy was paid $100,000 to make the script ‘75% more funny’- in other words his sole job was to pepper a script with gags.

Julian Friedman mentions that the burn out rate on US shows (not to mention ulcers) is enormous. Lawrence adds that when he wrote at a studio called ‘The Writers Block’, they employed a studio psychotherapist to address this situation. Lawrence told her: ‘I don’t need a psychotherapist, I come from England’. Six weeks later, he was seeing her twice a week.

Taken from a discussion at a TV writing conference.

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