College students create TV pilot

Internet buzz surrounds London students' TV show

Students at UCL, SOAS and London College of Communication have teamed up to make a pilot episode for a new British sitcom, a faux-documentary about four university students who move into their first house together. In the comedy, which runs the gamut from dry deadpan to silly slapstick, the characters find that the dream of living with your best friends soon gets overshadowed by the uglier sides people reveal living in close proximity. As in shows like 'Seinfeld', 'The Larry Sanders Show' and 'Peep Show' before it, it's life's little foibles which test the strength of life-long friendships.

Sam Baron (20) and Raphael von Blumenthal (20), who co-created the show with LCC journalism student Jack Miller (20), are the METRO-award winning creators of 'Lazy Sunday UK', and have been showcased on the BBC, Channel 4, UKTV, Sky One, MTV, ITV, CNN, Trouble and more. They've been making short films together since they were 12 years old, many of which have gained popularity on website YouTube. When YouTube took off, largely from the popularity of viral video 'Lazy Sunday' from the US TV show 'Saturday Night Live', the pair appointed themselves spokesmen for Britain, hitting back at the Yanks with 'Lazy Sunday UK', a spoof rap video in which they discuss the wonders of the English cuppa, as well as football hooliganism, the Queen and Harry Potter. Their response also went viral, being downloaded millions of time and garnering international attention for the pair, as well as the METRO award for 'Best Internet Video' in 2006. Shortly afterwards, they won a contract from MTV to produce a 'global warming awareness' video in Japan, which was shown around the world Al Gore's Live Earth events in 2007, and screened on MTV worldwide.

They applied to universities in London so the film-making could continue, and moved in with Jack Miller (20), an old school-friend who had previously acted in their low-budget endeavors. Within the first month of living together, the trio decided to work on creating a fictional TV show about their lives. “Setting our show in a student house gives the world an opportunity to peek into London life in a new, and hopefully entertaining, way”, says Miller.

“House of the Rising Egos” , the sitcom pilot in which Sam plays 'Sam', Raphael plays 'Raph' and Jack Miller plays 'Jack', started off as a web-series, with short webisodes on YouTube. But when these also became popular, the decision was made to create a TV pilot for the show. On the difficulty of transforming it into a half-hour show, von Blumenthal notes, “although the show is kind of an 'anti-sitcom', for example we get the entire 'rom-com' relationship out of the way in the first ten minutes and the girl is seemingly out of the show pretty much before the first advert break, it actually fits the half-hour format really nicely.” Baron adds, “It's definitely got its own new style and tone, against genre conventions, and it's been received really well so far and that risk seems to be paying off”. The show is an amusing look at student life and the bizarre side of friendship.

Watch the pilot episode at www.sambaron.com/tv.