Comedy is Back in the Building

ITV’s streaming platform, ITVX, launches their new season of available comedies with an aptly timed series of advertisements starring actors from ITVX exclusive shows, namely: Katherine Parkinson and Youssef Kerkour of Significant Other, Arian Nik of Count Abdulla, Jayde Adams of Ruby Speaking, and comedian Alan Carr of Changing Ends. In partnership with creative agency, ITV Creative, the commercial spots are all directed by Phil Morrison and Joe Ventura, collectively known as JILL. The team, who first collaborated on the first season of Comedy Central’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade, were instrumental in guiding the “Comedy is Back in the Building” ad campaign to new, humorous heights.

Setting out to be dead serious about comedy, JILL is unhurried in delivering the jokes in each film, never rushing to the punchline, they let it naturalistically arrive. Each commercial in the campaign centers around office life with one singular absurd aspect: there are clowns at work. The office clowns are all high-end and grandiose in spectacle while behaving like ordinary coworkers. Ridiculous yet subtle, each situation plays out as a joke allowing the spots’ performers to shape out realistic and truthful behaviors - all things considered - to reach naturally strange conclusions.

In “Bathroom,” a row of bathroom stalls is revealed to be occupied by a series of clown shoes jutting out from each cubicle. “Banana Skins” features a man in a suit observing a bowl of unsheathed bananas, then cuts to a clown setting up the peels in a row, like a trail of breadcrumbs. In “Stand Up Desk,” an assistant elevates her boss’s desk to an extreme height because her supervisor is a clown on very tall stilts. “Hanky” sees a sneezing coworker pull a tissue from a box and trailing a string of adjoining clown hankies behind him. Alan Carr stars in “IT Support,” where he bites his tongue after getting deferred to another department in seeking help for his malfunctioning laptop. Throughout, each joke is delivered with a tasteful, deft hand guided by the comedic prowess of JILL.

Joe Ventura of JILL says, “Phil and I largely prefer the style of comedy where it takes place in an ordinary world where jokes happen to crop up organically. We wanted to avoid being hams when it came to this campaign in every sense - from casting to what lenses we used - in order to honor the unique rhythms in British humor. ITV has played such a vital role in the world of comedy in the UK and beyond, so we knew that we had to nail that element in particular.”

Jane Stiller, Chief Marketing Officer of ITV commented on the “Comedy is Back In the Building” campaign, saying: “We are thrilled to be adding such a fantastic range of comedies to the thousands of hours already available to enjoy for free on ITVX. We wanted to bring this to life in a way that will catch in the minds of our viewers, while showcasing key talent from our fresh comedy commissions.”