Sketch comedy

Sketch Comedy has its origins in vaudeville and music hall, where a large number of brief but humorous acts were strung together to form a larger program. In England it moved to radio with such shows as ITMA and then television with such shows as Monty Python, Saturday Night Live and Not the Nine O'clock News[?]. Sketch comedy seems a bit out of vogue at the moment but some new sketch shows are still made.

Sketch comedy programs consist of a series of short unrelated 'sketches' rather than anything more sustained, and relatively few sketch comedy programs are successful. However, the ones that become popular often remain on air for a long period of time, and survive the test of time. The sketches are generally performed by a relatively small cast, and reuse 'stock character's in subsequent programs or sketches.

Here is a partial list of sketch comedy shows

Table of contents 1 Australia 2 Canada 3 UK 4 USA 5 External Links

Australia

• Fast Forward
• Full Frontal
• The D-Generation[?]
• Australia, you're standing in it[?]

Canada

• The Frantics[?]
• Kids in the Hall
• The Royal Canadian Air Farce[?]
• SCTV[?]
• This Hour has 22 Minutes

UK

• The Dave Allen Show[?]
• The Fast Show
• Harry Enfield's Television Programme[?]
• The League of Gentlemen
• Monty Python's Flying Circus
• Not the Nine O'clock News[?]
• The Two Ronnies[?]

USA

• In Living Color
• Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
• Saturday Night Live
• The Silly Spider Monkey Fiasco

External Links

• SketchFest (http://www.sketchfest.org)
• The Silly Spider Monkey Fiasco (http://www.spidermonkeyfiasco.com)