Laughter and the law

Isaac: says his comedy stems from 'boredom' Former litigator David Isaac quit the profession to become a comedy scriptwriter, with entertaining results. Neil Rose caught up with him as the BBC prepared to air his new sitcom, set in a legal firm

‘I used to enjoy spending time in the postroom,’ says David Isaac of his time as a solicitor in the north-west. ‘You could have a good chat about normal non-law things.’

From an innocent skive away from his desk has grown a sitcom, ‘Admin’, the pilot of which aired on BBC3 this week. Set in the fictional personal injury law firm of Fox Carter & Co, it focuses on the lives and mishaps of five young people in the postroom (hitting the BBC3 demographic nicely), and their interaction with the legal staff, in particular supervising solicitor Mike. ‘It’s looking at a law firm from the angle of young kids for whom this is a first job,’ explains Isaac. ‘A lot of the time they have no idea how to behave in a work environment.’

There was a great deal packed into the episode, from one postroom junior’s desperate efforts to con his father that he’s a hot-shot lawyer to tensions between solicitor Danny and postroom girl Tania, who to his horror is pregnant with his child. And there was a promotion to paralegal (or ‘paraglider’, according to one of the youngsters) up for grabs.

Isaac, 38, was a litigator for many years. After qualifying at Berrymans Lace Mawer, he spent a year in commercial litigation before going off travelling. He returned a year later to work for five years in Berrymans’ defendant personal injury practice before trying out the claimant side.

In 2006, seven years after picking up his pen, he saw ‘Admin’ finally taken up, and thanks to a supportive employer at Michael Taylor Associates in Manchester (where he was a supervisor) he wound down his working week before eventually quitting the law altogether. His wife is a solicitor turned barrister.

‘I remember the specific moment I wrote my first script,’ Isaac says. ‘I was watching a trial in London about who should pay VAT on a racing car. It was just so tedious – I was meant to be writing notes but after a couple of hours gave up and instead wrote a sketch on a VAT trial.’ The sketches multiplied into a sitcom about a solicitor with weird clients, but that was knocked back by everyone he sent it to. While production company Talkback found it funny, it told him he needed more writing experience.

So began a long learning process that began with a part-time MA in scriptwriting – ‘I’ve learned that, as a TV writer, you’ve got to be able to hone your skills over a period of time,’ he says. ‘I could never have written “Admin” eight years ago.’ As writers of all stripes will agree, rewriting is key – and demanded when a production such as this goes through countless stages – so much so that Isaac found himself writing new scenes a few days before filming.

Manchester-based production company Channel K successfully pitched ‘Admin’ to BBC Comedy North as a co-production, having previously worked with Isaac on an earlier project involving sketches about taxi drivers in Manchester. He now works for Channel K one day a week, helping to develop other people’s scripts. But TV writing is a tough game and even if he likes what he sees, they have a long way to go from there. ‘A production company will work on 30 to 40 scripts at any one time, going through the rewrite process and trying to sell them, but virtually none of them will be made.’

That makes Isaac’s achievement all the more impressive. But if ‘Admin’ is commissioned for a series, the former solicitor will really have made it. The legal profession is a rich source of humour, Isaac believes. ‘You get so many characters in the law, and comedy really works against the contrast of a serious setting.’ However, he reckons that anything set in an office has to stand against ‘The Office’, ‘so it would be hard to write a solicitor sitcom’.

Isaac says his comedy stems from boredom, the product of having grown up in a small rural village and not always enjoying legal life. ‘Though it wasn’t intended at all, a lot of the comedy in “Admin” is the comedy of embarrassment. Young people in a serious world will act in an inappropriate way.’

The sitcom features different types of humour, ranging from the clever to the broad, and the pace and number of storylines sweep the story and viewer along. Isaac readily admits that ‘Admin’ has a dramatic side to it – the pregnancy storyline is clearly one that could run and run – and he has made it ‘deliberately warm’. He adds: ‘A lot of comedy can be quite sneering. It would have been quite easy to go down that road, but I’ve got a lot of affection for the characters.’

Isaac has several other scripts on the boil, including one sitcom he is developing with Johnny Vegas, whom he met after Vegas featured in one of the taxi driver sketches. He has also has written for new BBC3 sketch show ‘Scallywagga’. But for all his ambivalence about his legal career, Isaac knows it has helped him get this far. ‘If I’d never been a lawyer, I never would have written “Admin”. You write from your pain, and my pain is boredom.’


Neil Rose is editorial consultant to the Gazette