It must be sweet to be an award-winning television-comedy script writer but maybe not if it's been fifteen years since your last major success and your ideas have dried up. Especially not if your agent is on the phone demanding the next script whilst at the same time shattering your confidence with news of other clients' roaring successes.

It must be sweet to be an award-winning television-comedy script writer ... but maybe not if it's been fifteen years since your last major success and your ideas have dried up. Especially not if your agent is constantly on the phone demanding the next script whilst at the same time shattering your confidence with news of other clients' roaring successes, as well as demanding unswerving loyalty. In fact it's a fragile, nerve-racked existence and one where this writer begins to realise that only the strongest survive. By turns hilariously funny, shockingly honest in its brutal deceptions and full of raw emotion, Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke gets to the core of Hollywood society whilst holding a mirror up to all of our basest desires.

'I love Rob Long. His characters are Hollywood players and possibly the most cynical people on earth, and he captures this cynicism with deadpan precision. But he also manages to humanise these people, to show you how miserable they are. And this makes it even funnier. If you liked Larry Sanders, you'll love this'