Transitions Genre Research

Genre Research

The Wrong Mans is a Comedy Drama and therefore I will be looking at other comedy dramas to find things that they have in common as well as things we could incorporate into our project.


The best comedy-drama TV shows, also known as dramadies, provide not only laughs but also heartfelt storylines. They have been television staples for years, but that’s probably because people love the merging of those two genres. What makes the combination of comedy and drama so successful? In large part, it’s because one minute you could be laughing out loud and the next on the verge of tears. Thankfully, most comedy-drama TV shows prioritize laughs over sadness, so you’re never a puddle of tears for long. In the show Chuck for instance, the majority of the episodes maintain a level of brevity and only sometimes dip into emotional scenes.

Another great show that straddles the line between comedy and drama is Scrubs. In what may be the most emotional episode of the series, My Screw Up, we get a lighthearted episode until halfway through. From that point, the episode dips into complete and utter sob territory by revealing that one of the show’s most liked characters was actually dead the entire episode.

Content however is not the part of The Wrong Mans that we will be changing. What we will be focusing on is how the scenes are shot, the colour grading they receive, and the subtle messages within the visuals.


Two shows that I have chosen to take inspiration from for our project regarding colour grading and how they are filmed are Castle and Brooklyn nine-nine. For Castle, I will be talking about a hotel scene in which there is clearly lots of yellow light yet the Cinematographer seems to be able to capture that yellow light in the background whilst maintain clean light in the foreground.

The reasoning behind the choice of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is how they shoot their exterior night scenes. It is a built-up city so there will almost always be street light of some kind, however they stage the light so well that it doesn't cast obvious shadows or stand out enough to break the audiences emersion in the scene.