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Sketch Comedy Shows

  • By: Brett Mills
  • In: Encyclopedia of Humor Studies
  • Edited by: Salvatore Attardo
  • Subject:General Media, Communication & Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture

Sketch comedy shows, also called sketch shows, are a common form of television and radio comedy produced throughout the history of broadcasting and evident in a number of nations. This entry outlines the key characteristics of the majority of sketch comedy shows, and examines how the humor within them commonly functions.

Defining Sketch Comedy Shows

Sketch shows are considered a radio and television comedy genre, that is, a certain kind of comedy that has a set of characteristics and is assumed to have enough in common to constitute a set of norms or traditions. While all genres encompass flexibility and genre definitions can never be concrete or fixed, defining sketch shows is perhaps more difficult than doing so for other comedy genres, such as sitcoms.

Indeed, perhaps one ...

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