a different way to be

i've been thinking recently about two scenes both written and directed by armando iannucci - malcolm tucker's firing in the thick of it (2009) and beria's execution in the death of stalin (2017)

the clip from the thick of it is age restricted and cant be embedded despite it being much tamer than the death of stalin

both are very similar in content (depicting a political coup) and very similar in style, and it's the style that keeeps drawing me back. they're so chaotic. sitcoms (and the death of stalin kind of is a sitcom) tend to have a very staccato rhythm. characters will trade jokes and barbs, sometimes punctuated by a laugh track, but they always take it in turns and they're always allowed to end their sentences. these two scenes have an appropriate level of havoc to them. characters yell over each other, bang on furniture and storm off in anger. the usual clarity of jokes is abandoned and you can barely make out what people are saying, but the emotion and cadence is still easy to follow. it's a really impressive needle to thread and every time i watch these clips i can't look away

of course, i'm not saying every scene needs to be like this. they are the denoument of a television season and film respectively, but i find it a really interesting contrast to how measured and controlled a lot of comedy writing is. real conversations are very rarely so back-and-forth - so transactional - and there's a lot of humour to be found in the chaos. i'd love to see more comedies that feel improvisational despite being scripted. and i think the two examples here are some of the best examples of that