OKRE connects the film, TV, and gaming industries with researchers and lived experience to create entertainment that sparks real social change
Report
ClimateComedy

Comedy & Climate: Finding the Funny Side

Eight creative strategies
for climate comedy
Download here
In collaboration with:

Report Overview

Climate change may be many things – fascinating, terrifying, dramatic, complex – but funny?

At OKRE, we understand that in order to create true impact through entertainment, you have to meet the audience where they are.

In this report Programme Manager, Matt Nida, identifies eight key strategies to consider when weaving climate change topics into comedy. Demonstrated through mainstream comedy examples where authentic climate change storylines occur, this report helps you focus on the funny and avoid those classic climate tropes!

As comedy producers, we all instinctively know that comedy can be a powerful tool for messaging – but that it will always be judged primarily, maybe even solely, on whether it’s funny...

Matt Nida

Climate & Comedy Programme Manager
Key Findings

Go Outside

  • The landscape can be a character too, as exemplified by the beautiful – and often highly moving – BBC's Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing.

Punch Up

  • In reality, responsibility for climate collapse lies with a relatively small number of fat cats and politicians. Channel 4 special, 'Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant (2021)', use sketches and monologues to unpack how Shell has attempted to use greenwashing to distract from its ongoing polluting activities.

Experts Are Funny

  • Experts aren’t always comedians – but they can still set up a gag. They make great foils for characters like the earnest yet dim-witted presenter, BBC's Philomena Cunk.

It's the Journey, Not the Destination

  • Living a more sustainable, ecologically-aware life is something we all want to do - but it doesn’t always go smoothly, as seen in classic BBC sitcom 'The Good Life'.

Have a Character Who Cares...

  • Lisa Simpson, the eternally 8 year-old daughter from legendary US animated sitcom The Simpsons, embodies a particular kind of eco-aware young person found in the American zeitgeist at the turn of the 90s.

...Or doesn't

  • Characters who demonstrate unsustainable behaviours can be just as instructive as their opposites. Take Amanda (BBC's Amandaland), whose performative nature shows her to be environmentally conscious, yet deeply flawed.

This is How We Live Now (Or Will Do Soon)...

  • Climate themes are never explicit, but the car sharing arrangement in 'Peter Kay's Car Share' displays great climate-positive behaviour. By second episode it doesn’t seem remotely unusual.

Swing For The Fences

  • It’s okay to be bold, spiky and imperfect. A Rickonvenient Mort, a 2021 episode of the anarchic animated sitcom Rick & Morty, is a dense, multilayered look at corporatised eco-activism and eco-terrorism that sidesteps easy answers.

In collaboration with:

Stuart Goldsmith

Climate Comedian, Keynote Speaker and Podcaster

Yellow Dot Studios

Non-profit media studio
Get the Comedy & Climate Report

Partner

Climate Spring

Climate Spring champions the power of storytelling to transform our cultural response to the climate crisis.

climate-spring.org