Short Tales - some thoughts on tone

I've written one and a bit episodes of Short Tales, and have a few scenarios for future stories. So I've worked out the tone I want to set with the series.

The working title is Short Tales About Love and Sex. The Sex part should give a lot away. There's going to be some adult subject matter, our Tales will be quite dirty.

When I think of an adult/dirty sitcom three titles come to mind. Two of them were brilliant, one was rubbish. This isn't going to be Gimme Gimme Gimme, for example, where screamed swear words passed for humour and the main characters were one dimensional at best. Nor is it going to be Men Behaving Badly, great as that series was. For the first few episodes at least, I think it's going to feel most like Coupling (in fact, the blurb on the Amazon page for Coupling sounds a lot like the way I'd describe Short Tales).

Some of the stories I've got planned drift into, and occasionally beyond, Coupling territory. Without going into complete plot breakdowns there'll be tales about earth shattering orgasm (or the lack of), shopping for sex toys and sexual fantasies. Mostly details are going to be conveyed in conversation, but people are going to end up in bed. I'd like to avoid the L shaped blanket (and as many as possible of the other cliches in the list), but still keep all nudity implied rather than seen. There'll be lots of head and (bare) shoulders shots and the occasional bare back but nothing more (well, male characters can have bare chests exposed I guess). I know it's a visual medium and you're supposed to go for show, not tell, but you can always show that a character has no clothes on without having any nipples on display.

The benefit that Short Tales will have is that it's about a rotating cast of characters, so we don't have to leave the same four or six people in limbo with occasional disturbances. We can go away and concentrate on someone else for a while once it's established that, yes, A and B do end up together and they are happy. There are many reasons for this, the most pragmatic of which is that this is a low/no budget production and I want my actors to go on to better things when they get the chance (and then come back when they're famous to give Short Tales a bit of extra cool). This turn over will allow a greater number of subjects without falling into soap opera-ness.

This isn't the final word on tone and themes by any means, but I hope it serves as an introduction. I shall expand upon it as episodes are written and shot.

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