Microdramas: Adapting Genre to the Format

How comedy translates from cinema to television to microdrama.

Comedy films, like the ones pioneered by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, have always had one simple intention: to make the audience laugh. It’s the most universal genre because we are all amused by the same kind of things, across time and culture.

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton

Yet, when comedy had to make the transition from cinema to television, it was understood that it would require a different structure. It wasn’t just about cutting a two-hour comedy film into thirty-minute episodes with 22 minutes of content and 8 minutes of advertising. The transition of comedy from cinema to television required an entirely new format to accommodate the new format of television storytelling. This is what gave rise to the first sitcoms.

I Love Lucy, a sitcom from 1951

A sitcom is built around a recurring cast of characters navigating humorous situations within consistent settings, maintaining plot continuity across episodes while developing storylines and characters over time.

A sitcom like F.R.I.E.N.D.S., for example, is written, shot and developed specifically for the format of a 22-minute sitcom, structured around ad breaks, building on existing continuity and following through on short-run storylines (of the episode), medium-run storylines (of the season) and long-run storylines (of the show). When Joey moves out of the apartment in one episode, he stays moved out until three episodes later when he moves back in. Writers have to make a sustained effort to maintain the status quo of the show to remain consistent while also ensuring that consistent viewers feel rewarded for their constant viewing by maintaining the long-running plot of the show overall.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. (1994)

Ross and Rachel (SPOILER ALERT) getting together in the last episode of the show means nothing to a viewer that watches that episode as a standalone product, but to viewers that have followed these characters for ten years, it is a well-awaited resolution to an overarching arc.

Ross and Rachel

This is mixed in with standalone comedic moments that are funny to all viewers, new and old, like when Joey’s girlfriend tells Chandler he has great hair, and he replies with “Thanks, I grow it myself.”

Chandler Bing, known for his humorous quips

With a healthy balance of overarching storylines and short-term comedic quips, F.R.I.E.N.D.S. fits perfectly into the sitcom space for both the casual viewer and the binge watcher.

Let’s compare this to the short-lived 1982 police procedural spoof show Police Squad!, a sitcom based on sight gags, wordplay, and non-sequiturs. While the show was extremely funny and made by a powerhouse of talent, it was cancelled after only six episodes, because “viewers had to pay close attention to the show in order to get much of the humour: they had to watch it in order to appreciate it.”

Police Squad! (1982)

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Yet, when the exact same format with much of the same cast and crew went on to make The Naked Gun film series, “the much larger screen size in a cinema [increased] the efficacy of the visual gags” and the film based on the same premise as the show went on to be immensely successful, spawning three movies and a legacy sequel that released in 2025. Clearly, the story was a better fit for cinema than it was for television.

The Naked Gun film series, based on the premise of Police Squad!

The new Naked Gun reboot, starring Liam Neeson

This shows us that it is immensely important to know what format your story is best suited for. All good stories won’t make for good microdramas. But if you understand this format and the kind of stories it is designed for, you can deliver the kind of stories never seen before and create an experience unlike anything else.

Bombay Locale has been producing the vertical comedy ‘Mr. Jorwal’ for more than 7 months now, adapting comedy to the microdrama format.

This show too, balances short-run episodic storylines along with long-running show storylines, making sure every episode is entertaining to both new audiences watching it for the first time and long-time followers that have been tracking the storylines for months.

The Latest episode of Mister Jorwal (2025)

Adapting comedy for a new format is not an easy task. But innovation within the industry, and specifically within the microdrama format, has allowed for new ways for stories to be told. Ultimately, doing anything new for the first time is always a risk worth taking.