“What is funny in one country is not necessarily funny in another. You know what does travel? Cops chasing bad guys. So when you're trying to sell a show overseas that has to be dubbed into another language or has to translate more easily, people understand cops chasing bad guys. They understand murder as a dramatic device.”
The Indicator (Planet Money) · Money & Markets · November 2026
Context
The hosts explained that studios now need to sell shows worldwide to make their money back, and that comedy is cultural. Schur, a veteran sitcom creator, explains why that tilts the market toward crime dramas.
Transcript
The world is now almost completely open. And as a result, the studios need, in order to make the amounts of money, the gobs of money they're trying to make, they have to sell their shows everywhere.
And comedy is cultural.
What is funny in one country is not. Necessarily funny in another. You know what does travel? Cops chasing bad guys. So when you're trying to sell a show overseas that has to be dubbed into another language or has to translate more easily, people understand cops chasing bad guys. They understand murder as a dramatic device. They understand the nuts and bolts of like hour-long dramas just are better overseas.
So that is the baseline answer to why we still have a lot of law and order or CSI type shows and not a lot of sitcoms.
There's also a comedy physics problem. Sitcoms often need a few episodes to gel to find momentum, maybe even a season. Actors learn how to work together. Writers learn how to make their characters funny.
Mike says that the streaming world system does not give these kinds of comedies the time they need to experiment and find their footing. Audiences move on quickly. Why should I watch this show versus everything else on Hulu? Or log off and check out Amazon Prime, Netflix, or YouTube.
More from The Indicator (Planet Money)
