dramedy

Dramedy, a contraction of drama and comedy, is a genre of movies and television in which the lines between these very different genres were blurred. For a few years beginning about 1969 in the US, there was a brief spate of half-hour shows that purposely alternated between comedy and drama and aired without a laugh track. At the time, these were known as "comedy-dramas." Perhaps the best known was Room 222. Later, the approach of these early shows influenced better-known series such as M*A*S*H and One Day at a Time. However, the term "dramedy" was not invented until a few years after all these series had ended their respective runs. The term first came into vogue in the mid-1980s to describe a new wave of similarly genre-blurring series such as Moonlighting, The Wonder Years and Hooperman. A dramedy may be either an hour-long dramatic series with very strong comedic elements, such as Moonlighting, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Ally McBeal, or a half-hour sitcom with more subtle humour, shot on a closed set or on location instead of in front of an audience, and without the usual laugh track, such as M*A*S*H, Hooperman or The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. However, hour-long comedic dramas have usually proven more successful in the ratings than half-hour dramatic comedies.

Dramedy

See also