Strong women and quality sitcoms.

I recently thought about how important roles female characters have played lately in sitcoms.

I thought about this because for some reason we don't really have strong women in quality sitcoms anymore.

The only exception, I think, is Tina Fey as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock. Other than that, it's not good to be a sitcom actress nowadays.

Ten years ago, things were quite different. We had among others:

Roz Doyle and Daphne Moon in Frasier.

Ally (and the rest) in Ally Mcbeal.
Debra and Marie in Everybody Loves Raymond.
Rachel, Phoebe and Monica in Friends.
Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte in Sex and The City.

That's a pretty almighty list. Can you believe that Peri Gilpin as Roz Doyle was never even nominated for an Emmy? Today she would be a slam dunk for a win.

Last year it got so bad in the supporting actress category that Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig were nominated for Saturday Night Live - a sketch show. I mean, how much worse can it get than that?

In my opinion, not having well written female characters on sitcoms reflects pretty accurately how the quality of sitcoms in general has deteriorated lately.

The reality is that when you don't have characters like Marge Simpson, you don't have shows like The Simpsons either.

So, if I were thinking about developing a new sitcom, I would probably start with the female characters.

I would think that this is how a show like Modern Family was actually conceived.