This one starts out very academic, then turns too British, before striking brilliance and ending with a shaky, rushed landing. There's a ton of useful information in here; you just have to do some parsing. As a stand-up, I enjoyed most of the book, especially the sections about story and characters. I would recommend it more to comedy screenwriters. But it's worth checking out if you've exhausted the other popular options.

Firstly, I was so looking forward to reading this book, and feel absolutely chuffed to have read it.
As a considerable chunk of my education, I studied humour theories/theories on and of humour.
I would like to say that the scholarly literature around these topics are still rather limited and developing in comparison to our understanding of writing, making, conveying pure drama.
I wanted to see if there were any new materials on comedy, but mostly, because of my familiarity with the author’s comedy writing, I wanted to learn some practical tricks and information about making comedy.
The author promises to give the secrets to comedy in the end, and throughout the book.
I agree with his summarisation, and enjoyed many examples and tips, and his insights.
Perhaps due to my specific needs, I believe this book will be more liked by those who are starting to read about comedy, making, writing, analysing comedy. I am glad it exists.

I was pleasantly both surprised and amazed by how much detail Morris covered in this book. Humour and comedy is a topic that is clearly so close to his heart and he did great justice in tackling the topic in a scientific way whilst also infusing his own relationship with comedy into the mix.

Usually not a topic I'd be super enthusiastic about but it's hard not to become passionate when reading this. I learnt so many things about comedy and humour's role not only in personal life but in society's since the beginning of time, really. 'We like what we like. We don't like what we don't like and that tells us what we're like' has to be one of my favourite observations from this book that just caught me completely off guard.

I really think not a single stone was left unturned with this book and there was so much care taken in addressing how Morris handled topics. Even the analogy of reserving 'the right to enjoy some of the beautiful buildings, even if I might not want to have dinner with the. architects' was just put so eloquently that I couldn't fault Morris one bit. He completely and unapologetically understands the role of comedy in life and the mechanism of how it works.

Joel Morris is a very funny man. With his writing partner, Jason Hazeley he has written for Diane Morgan's great comedy creation, Philomena Cunk, helped write both Paddington films, has contributed to adult comic Viz and wrote the hilarious series of Ladybird book parodies which were bestsellers a few years ago.
Here, however, he does not really talk about himself but draws upon his vast wealth of experience and knowledge to provide a thorough and in depth analysis of how comedy works. All of which makes this book sound a lot more pompous and inaccessible and a lot less fun and interesting than it actually is.
How exactly do jokes work? What is an anti-joke joke? Why do so many situation comedies rely on similar formula for their set-ups and storylines? For example, both Only Fools and Horses and Father Ted use three main characters; one old man (Grandad/Uncle Albert and Father Jack), one more ambitious middle-aged man (Del Boy and Father Ted himself) and one young idiot or "plonker" (Rodney or the hapless Father Dougal) as their foundation. Other shows such as Friends are almost mathematically calculated to maximise the comedic possibilities of utilising the six main characters to best service the various storylines.
Morris also dissects existing comedy scripts (such as the screenplay of animated comedy hit, The Incredibles and the episode of Peep Show featuring Mark's disastrous wedding to Sophie) to examine the mechanics of the comedy in detail.
Some may find it exhausting at times but overall this is a very thorough and enlightening text which also finds the time to be genuinely funny in its own right.