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at the end of the 2024 summer season, two major s+ programs, iqiyi's "the king of comedy stand-up season" and tencent video's "talk show and his friends" are coming one after another. yunhe data shows that as of the time of publication on august 27, the two respectively ranked first and eighth in the real-time variety show list, fully demonstrating the strong strength of comedy variety shows.

(the picture shows the ranking of variety shows as of 15:00 on august 27)

in fact, tencent video's comedy variety show "a wonderful night" was launched as early as the end of june this year, and won impressive broadcast results. it still ranks fifth in the popularity of real-time variety shows. in the future, youku's "solo comedy competition", tencent video's "haha maker department store" and "comedy conference", dragon tv's "on air! situation comedy season 3" and other comedy variety shows will appear on large and small screens, covering black light comedy, stand-up comedy, one-man comic, talk show and other forms of expression, creating hilarious and fresh "electronic pickles" for the audience.

and what is the reason behind the popularity of the show?

one

social pressure is increasing, and the public's tension needs to be vented

at present, the cost of social operation is gradually rising, and the work pace of ordinary people is fast and stressful. when people's material life generally presents a "bitter" background, the demand for "happiness" is multiplied by a phenomenal level.

comedy variety shows combine "comedy" and "variety shows", with the humor of comedy and the ease of variety shows, allowing the audience to forget their troubles while laughing heartily, while at the same time retaining the connotation. they truly resolve life troubles with humor and respond to social issues with happiness.

in the first episode of "talk show and his friends", the new talk show star daguoshou boldly innovated and opened up a philosophy talk show track, presenting the work "master of philosophy, keep your "look" or "car"? ", telling the story of his repeated struggle between driving a motorcycle and studying philosophy when he was unemployed. in the more than six-minute talk show, daguoshou standing on the stage looked full of depression, but he spoke with witty remarks.

in addition to joking about her inability to find a suitable job as a master of philosophy, she also introduced a unique perspective: her motorcycle broke down, and she needed to make money by driving a motorcycle taxi to redeem it; to make money by driving a motorcycle taxi, she had to redeem the motorcycle first. others faced the problem of trams, but she faced the dilemma of motorcycle taxis. the strict contrast between the words and the logic of the text made people smile. but after the laughter, we can gradually touch the edges of reality, feel the bitterness of life, and also appreciate the creator's profound insight into the philosophy of life.

others include, "i have no money, so i can only choose between repairing the motorcycle and saving my boyfriend. i thought, why not break up first and talk again when he gets better; but i can't bear to do so because he is quite handsome. i feel that life is like playing chess, saving the coach or the motorcycle" and "kobe philosophy of driving a motorcycle is much easier, because i don't need to ask where he comes from, i only need to ask where he is going."

these simple sentences reveal the harsh reality of life and shine the light of philosophical truth, successfully reaching the hearts of the audience. people release their inner anxiety by watching comedy shows, thus adjusting themselves to face life with a more positive and optimistic attitude.

two

innovation in comedy formats injects vitality into content quality

in the 1980s, with the cctv spring festival gala as the main battlefield, chen peisi and zhu shimao became the mainstay of the domestic comedy scene and became textbook figures of non-property performance; in the 1990s, classic combinations such as song dandan and huang hong, zhao lirong and gong hanlin, cai ming and guo daduo emerged, and created classic lines such as "palace jade liquor, 180 yuan per cup" and "big head, thick neck, either a rich man or a cook", leading the trend of popular language in the whole society that year.

since the new century, as the above-mentioned excellent sketch actors gradually faded away, new generation actors such as shen teng, ma li, and jia ling entered the comedy world. but with it came the problem of increasingly strong values, which troubled the creators and tortured the audience. a large number of works were required to forcibly sublimate the theme at the end, deliberately sensationalize truth, goodness, and beauty, and focus on magnifying the educational function of the works, which runs counter to the basic laws of aesthetic acceptance and is far from the form that the public likes to see. therefore, under the continuous scratching of the itch, the influence of domestic comedy works has gradually declined.

however, in the 2010s, especially in the early 2020s, new chinese comedy forces represented by li dan's xiaoguo culture and ma dong's miwei media jumped into the spotlight with new creative concepts, giving people a refreshing feeling. for example, in tencent video's comedy variety show "wonderful night", it continued the genes of the original "annual comedy competition" and focused on sketch comedy.

the so-called "sketch comedy" originated in the united states and is generally believed to have originated from vaudeville performances nearly a hundred years ago. compared with the logic of the structure of introduction, development, turn and conclusion followed by traditional domestic sketches, sketch comedy is good at deconstructing redundant story preparations, and directly extracting short and interesting scenes in life, creating a unique narrative perspective, capturing hot topics and emotions that the public generally pays attention to, and focusing on these hot topics and repeatedly performing them, repeatedly amplifying emotions to the extreme, bringing the audience an unparalleled, spiraling emotional aesthetic experience, with the advantages of being more direct, light, and flexible, which is in line with the characteristics of the current era of fragmented and emotional media information.

for example, in the first episode of "a wonderful night of pleasure", the quantum mechanics group brought a sketch comedy "the world of sketches", which focuses on the core story: the world is a huge sketch, and the people in the sketch suddenly wake up one day. although its creative core is similar to the movie "the truman show", such a dramatic setting is still exciting. the program is not a complete copy of the original american culture, but a localized adaptation: paying tribute to classic clips of spring festival gala sketches, exploring the family education issues of children in adolescence, and integrating the understanding and empathy of chinese family affection...

when "master huang with big hammer and small hammer", "aunt baiyun", "the policeman shouting i'm proud", "the elephant in the refrigerator" and other characters appear one after another, the collective comedy memory unique to chinese audiences is vividly awakened. the son played by actor lv yan constantly declares to "smash the wall" in the play, which not only means to smash the cage and trap that belongs to him in the world of drama, but also to smash the "fourth wall", smashing the heavy ideological burden that has plagued chinese comedy for a long time.

at the end of the play, the son played by lv yan said, "if we were really doing a skit, i would like to see whether the audience outside were happy or embarrassed." this line immediately drew applause from the audience. "the world of skits" uses a playful and deconstructive approach to raise the voice of chinese comedy and return it to its original purpose of happy entertainment. as zhao benshan said in an interview many years ago, "the purpose of comedy skits is to make the audience happy, not just to pursue educational significance."

three

differentiated development among program models to form their own characteristics

comparing "amazing night", "the king of comedy stand-up season" and "talk show and his friends", it is not difficult to find that there are subtle differences in the production modes between the programs. it is this differentiated and unique innovative development that can form the characteristics of each program.

"wonderful night" mainly divides the contestants into groups. in the first stage, 20 groups take turns to perform their comedy programs on stage. after comments by ma dong, qin hao, huang bo, and jia bing, the audience votes to decide whether they will be eliminated or promoted. after the contestants finish their performances, they can immediately receive professional feedback from the judges and understand the market tastes of the audience. compared with the single-person performances of other programs, "wonderful night" retains the multi-person collective creation mode of traditional sketches, making the creation programs larger in size and richer in content.

the king of comedy season focuses on stand-up comedy. 44 groups of outstanding comedians are divided into four teams, led by four big demons. they will compete on the stage in six stages, and experience multiple rounds of competitions such as the battle for position, demon challenge, group high-energy team battle, theme competition, etc., to train the players' flexibility and improvisation ability, and finally win the annual stand-up comedy king. guo qilin, wu zhenyu, xu zheng, yang tianzhen, and jiang long form the atmosphere group, sitting on the scene and giving professional guidance to the players. in comparison, the confrontation of the king of comedy season is more intense.

"talk show and his friends" also focuses on stand-up comedy, but before the show starts, the contestants are asked to self-classify into three levels: big laugh circle, funny circle, and smiling circle. the first round of the competition is an internal competition among the circles, and the promotion ratio of each circle is different. the top 30% of the smiling circle can enter the next round, which is relatively easy and safe; there are 1v1 mic grabbing competitions in the funny circle and the big laugh circle. if someone grabs the mic, the one with the higher votes will advance. in addition, if the two contestants in the 1v1 of the big laugh circle both get more than 185 votes, they can both advance. the promotion quota is naturally first-come, first-served, and the competition is fierce. once the right to go on stage and grab the mic is handed over to the contestants, a lot of human factors will inevitably appear, and there will inevitably be absurd results of high scores being eliminated and low scores being promoted. to a certain extent, the competition and pushing and giving in among the contestants has also become a major highlight of the show.

in general, the three major comedy variety shows all adopt the main model of professional competition, creating subtle differences in their respective program schedules, thus affecting the program positioning. in addition, each program also advocates the perspective of small people, not only vigorously inviting newcomers and rookies in the comedy industry to appear on stage, providing a new way to cultivate comedy talents, but also encouraging contestants to focus on small people topics in their works, starting from their own experiences, combining topics such as male appearance anxiety, self-deprecation, lying flat, feminism, etc., to increase the audience's sense of substitution and empathy. this repetition has made comedy variety shows widely watched.

four

there are still hidden concerns behind the popularity, and creators are urgently needed to optimize and adjust

of course, in addition to the above factors, the audience's consumption shift, the luxurious upgrade of the program lineup, and the continuous optimization of the competition method also have an overlapping impact on the popularity of comedy variety shows.

but despite being popular, comedy variety shows still face hidden concerns, such as the huge gap in quality between different jokes, the lack of humor and depth in the jokes, and excessive personal labeling of actors, which can easily lead to the audience's aesthetic expectations being dashed and becoming fatigued.

in view of this, creators need to constantly get rid of their impetuous mentality, optimize and adjust the program system and mechanism, and present more exciting and enjoyable comedy masterpieces to the audience.