A scene from MyMusic's second series, which has started airing on YouTube. Photo: The Fine Brothers
Where will the next wave of great sitcoms come from? Traditional broadcasters, perhaps. Netflix or Amazon even? Or perhaps YouTube, with its $300m Original Channels initiative?
The answer is likely all of the above: writers and directors of scripted comedy have more ways to find an audience than ever before, and while many still see established TV channels as the likeliest route, some are forging their paths online.
One example is MyMusic, a sitcom about a music production company – it's pitched as The Office meets 30 Rock, with bands – that notched up 30m views for its 34-episode first season last year.
The second series kicks off today, now hosted on the main channel of its creators The Fine Brothers – producers Benny and Rafi Fine – who boast 5.6m subscribers and 987m total views for their shows, including Kids react and Emo Dad.
"We've been doing this for 10 years online. We're not bloggers, we make shows," says Benny Fine, in an interview with The Guardian ahead of the new season's premiere episode.
"It's very rare for the internet to have a successful narrative show like MyMusic. It's really a case study for what is the future of the sitcom."
That includes transmedia elements stretching the storylines and characters into other parts of the web. There are social media accounts for the characters, a spin-off music news blog ("one part BuzzFeed, one part The Onion"), podcasts, extra interactive Q&A shows on YouTube, and concerts in the real world hosted by MyMusic actors staying in character.
"That's part of the MyMusic idea: things that work online are the things that don't stop. If you go off the air for a long time, there's a concern about losing certain fans and momentum," says Fine.
"Last season, we had more than 250k people following these fictional people on social networks and interacting with them as if they were real. It allows us to be a real-time sitcom, which is the future of things like scripted programming: finding ways to engage people so they spend more time in your show."
The new series was filmed at the YouTube Space LA, 41,000 square feet of studios opened by YouTube this summer for the use of creators averaging 100,000 monthly views or more.
"We've upped the game in terms of production value. We're taking it further and making it as big as it can possibly be in terms of production designs and the technical side of things," says Fine, who stresses that the writing has stepped up a notch too.
"With this being the second season with a huge fanbase, we're able to dive much more into stories and other elements. It looks like an absurd comedy with lots of heart, which it'll always be, but this season is going to surprise some fans in terms of where we'll take the show."
As creators funded by the Original Channels initiative, the Fine Brothers would be expected to be fairly positive about YouTube's role as a platform for new shows.
"It's been an incredible last 15-18 months. YouTube is still the place where there's an actual audience in a quantifiable way anywhere online," says Fine.
However, he admits to having had low expectations about YouTube's potential for the kind of content he and his brother wanted to make when they joined the site in 2007.
"A few years ago, it was solely about personalities and bloggers, and we thought we were never going to be able to rise to the top on this site, because we made shows, and that wasn't how this operated," he says.
"But it's shifted more towards series in the last couple of years, to the point where one of our shows – Kids React – now has three spin-offs. Here we are now with four versions of a format, and there's a real audience here in ways there hasn't been before."
The Fine Brothers – Benny and Rafi – on the set of MyMusic
In some quarters, YouTube's growth and its move into original content is causing tension about its likely impact on the traditional television world – something parent company Google has done its bit to fuel by regularly talking about how young people in particular are watching more YouTube and less TV.
Fine declines to pick a side, pointing again to the brothers' filmmaking background, and suggesting that neither YouTube nor TV has to "win" in the near future.
"We've always felt kind of in the middle. Even right now we're in the process of having television conversations and thinking about wherever this is going to evolve to," says Fine.
"Whatever television is will probably still exist: it's two separate mediums that can be used in very similar ways, but both will exist and both will still be very valuable. As a creator, I want my content to be where people can watch it. I don't think either medium is going away."
He thinks there are plenty of opportunities for younger writers and directors with ideas that might work as online series, although Fine's main advice to them is to immerse themselves in the world of online video to understand what's working already.
"Really study what types of formats have been working online that you resonate with: get a feel for what works in the current ecosystem of online video. Sometimes that passion-project you really want to do is not the way to start," he says.
"Come up with formats that are sustainable and easy for you to produce, and start gathering an audience for yourself. If you start right away with the long-form thing, the audience won't be there. You need to get your feet off the ground."
Fine adds that there are a growing number of channel owners – including the Fine Brothers – actively looking to give new talent their first break in the business. "We are a growing studio that needs content," he says.
But before snapping up more shows, there's the second season of MyMusic to launch, with all those transmedia offshoots. The show may have been made in America, but Fine hopes it will find fans across the Atlantic too.
"There are huge influences on MyMusic from British comedy. The IT Crowd is an inspiration to us," says Fine. "When we hired writers, we forced them all to watch it! It's that combination of very heightened characters, but still reality-based inside that world."
Does the show's second season live up to its inspiration? The first episode is embedded below for you to make up your own mind:
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