Knowing---Comedy-drama

Comedy-drama, also known as dramedy  or seriocomedy, is a genre of television, theatre, and film in which there is an equal or nearly equal balance of humor and serious content.

HISTOTY

Theatre

Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy. A tragedy typically ended with the death or destruction of a fictional or historical hero, whereas a comedy focused on the lives of middle to lower class characters and ended with their success. The term "drama" was used to describe all the action of a play. Beginning in the 19th century, authors such as Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen blurred the line between comedy and drama.

Early television

The advent of radio drama, cinema, and particularly television created greater pressure in marketing to clearly define a product as either comedy or drama. While in live theatre the difference became less and less significant, in mass media, comedy and drama were clearly divided. Comedies, especially, were expected to maintain a consistently light tone and not challenge the viewer by introducing more serious content.

By the early 1960s, television companies commonly presented half-hour long "comedy" series, or one hour long "dramas." Half-hour series were mostly restricted to situation comedy or family comedy, and were usually aired with either a live or artificial laugh track. One hour dramas included genre series such as police and detective series, westerns, science fiction, and, later, serialized prime time soap operas. Programs today still overwhelmingly conform to these half-hour and one hour guidelines.

While sitcoms would occasionally balance their humor with more dramatic and humanistic moments, these remained the exception to the rule as the 1960s progressed. Beginning around 1969 in the US, however, there was a brief spate of half-hour shows that purposely alternated between comedy and drama and aired without a laugh track, as well as some hour-long shows such as CHiPs in the late 70s to early 80s. At the time, these were known as "comedy-dramas." The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, which aired from 1987-1991, was another good example. These early experiments also influenced general TV comedy, and later series (especially family themed sitcoms) often included brief dramatic interludes and more serious subject matter.

Recent history

Comedy-dramas have had some strong success in recent years. Scrubs, Doctor Who, House, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks, Angel, Charmed, Rescue Me, The OC, Veronica Mars, Sex and the City, Monk, Desperate Housewives, Skins, Psych, Pushing Daisies, Ugly Betty, Hung, Nurse Jackie, Weeds, Las Vegas, Glee, Californication, Bones, Boston Legal, United States of Tara, Ally McBeal, Gilmore Girls, Chuck and Warehouse 13 are examples of this.