By Neal Gabler
As WWII ends, a new wave of comic talent in New York City sows the seeds to create a style of humor that changed comedy forever.
Hour-long Series | Comedy, Drama
Synopsis
When America invented modern comedy
Seriously Funny is told through the lives of three young comedy hopefuls brimming with the comic spirit of the great humorists of that era and before—a time of enormous ferment in comedy but also in radio, television, and pop music. Their lives and adventures reflect America in that dynamic era.
The characters have grown up with and revered a traditional Catskills-style of comedy but have their own comic voices, far more rebellious than their idols (such as Jack Benny, George Burns, Milton Berle, and Groucho Marx). They want desperately to talk about, report on and mock the new age that has emerged after World War II. The threesome is reminiscent of the great comics of that era: Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Tom Lehrer, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Joan Rivers, and many others.
The protagonists are fully assimilated into the American mainstream, seeing US life through a common sensibility embedded in their comic DNA. Their take on American life in 1945 and beyond mirrors changes in the country as well, much as the uniquely humorous slant of comics like Alan Sherman, Mel Brooks, Jackie Mason, and Woody Allen would become part of the American grain and whose intellectual “tummeling” changed the country’s idea of what’s funny—all of which the show’s characters schmooze about as they shape their comic personas. The show is set against a backdrop of real-life events, rife with political/social/cultural upheaval, from Joe McCarthy’s crusade of hatred to the Korean War, and from Elvis Presley and the explosion of rock music to the rise of a powerful new cultural force—teenagers.
Script
Bible
