Put the greatest comic improvisers in the world into a studio with cameras turning, and what kind of end product do you get?
If it’s a scripted comedy show, you get the words as written by the writers, with just a few adjustments. Because “scripted” still means “saying what we wrote” for some very good reasons indeed (not necessarily having all that much to do with the, you know, writing, either):
by Christy Grosz
Comedy might have the reputation for being loose and spontaneous, but when it comes to garnering laughs for TV series, writing and refining is often the key to the humor. While some shows leave room for improvisation, both HBO’s “Veep” and Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” (pictured) achieve their style from a heavily scripted process.