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Contrast-set candidates: real-world low-craft two-hander comedy

Source: research dispatch 2026-05-03 (firecrawl + web search). Goal — replace / supplement the synthetic JSON contrast fixtures under data/contrasts/ with real audio at lower craft tiers so we can confirm the autorater discriminates Finnemore from real-world weaker comedy, not just from strawmen.

Categories of "weak" worth covering

For an autorater calibrated on Finnemore, the failure modes most worth probing are:

  1. Flat or interchangeable characters — radio sitcom where both voices read the same on the page.
  2. No engine — rambling chat that never sets up a payoff (most low-budget two-host podcasts).
  3. Mechanical / over-explained jokes with telegraphed punchlines (much pre-1955 American radio comedy).
  4. Tonal mismatch — heavy script + light delivery, common in AI-generated voiceover comedy.
  5. AI-generated comedy — defensible autoraters need to recognise their own family's failure mode (LLM-written jokes tend to be conceptually correct but rhythmically dead, with regular line lengths and absent surprise).
  6. Bickering loop — sitcom couple repeating the same beat for 12 minutes.
  7. Under-produced amateur — single-mic, no foley, dead room.

Recommended fill order: AI-generated → mechanical/over-explained → bickering loop → amateur podcast rambling. Tonal mismatch is hardest to source cleanly and may be best constructed than found.

Curated sources

# Title Length URL Why useful contrast Licensing
1 The Bickersons ("Blanche Has a Stomach Ache", 1947) ~12 min archive.org Real two-hander; Don Ameche + Frances Langford. Mechanical bickering loop — same beat (he sleeps, she nags) for 12 min. Pure category 3 + 6. US public-domain era.
2 Easy Aces (Goodman + Jane Ace, 1930-45) ~15 min archive.org Husband-wife two-hander, conversational, no studio audience — closest structural analogue to Finnemore but older / weaker setup-payoff. Categories 1 + 3. Public domain.
3 Vic and Sade (Paul Rhymer) ~15 min archive.org Small-cast domestic comedy, often slow / plotless. Useful category-2 (no engine) example, slightly higher craft than Bickersons — shows the rater can grade within the contrast tier. Public domain.
4 Lum and Abner (1646 eps, 1931-54) ~13 min archive.org Two-character small-town radio. Heavy on accent comedy + plotlessness; very telegraphed jokes. Categories 3 + 1. Public domain.
5 Take It From Here (Muir/Norden, BBC, 1948-59) ~30 min (clip individual sketches) archive.org BBC radio comedy older than the corpus; often two-handers. UK-side comparison point — same lineage, lower craft tier than Finnemore. Public domain (UK 50-yr expired).
6 Burns and Allen Show ~25-30 min (clip a sketch) archive.org Classic two-hander, but with the canonical "dumb wife / patient straight man" engine that's now read as flat character work. Category 1. Public domain.
7 AI OR DIE — "First 100% AI Sketch Comedy Show" ~3-6 min/episode @aiordieshow (e.g. EP01, EP03) Exactly the AI-generated category. Multi-character but most scenes are 2-handers; visual-AI + AI script + AI voice. Debuted Aug 2024. YouTube standard licence; clip use is fair-use commentary/research.
8 Door Monster — "AI Wrote This Comedy Sketch" (2022) ~3-5 min YouTube Human performers reading AI-generated dialogue — isolates the script as the AI-bad variable. Good A/B against AI OR DIE. YouTube standard licence.
9 CollegeHumor — "A Computer Wrote This Sketch" (Botnik) ~2-3 min YouTube search: CollegeHumor Botnik "A Computer Wrote This Sketch" Pre-LLM AI comedy (Botnik predictive-text, ~2018). The failure mode is much more mechanical than 2024-era LLMs. YouTube standard licence; treat as fair-use clip.
10 The Goon Show (BBC, 1951-60, Milligan/Sellers/Secombe) ~30 min archive.org NOT actually low-craft — useful adjacent-genre contrast: very high BBC craft, but tonally and structurally further from Finnemore. Should score below corpus on Finnemore-specific axes (cast taxonomy, opener) even though general comedy quality is high. Verifies the rater isn't just "good vs bad" but Finnemore-specific. Public domain (UK 50-yr expired).

Two leads where I won't fabricate a stable URL

  1. Amateur sketch-comedy YouTube channels at low view counts — search youtube.com for "sketch comedy" "two person" with view filters under 1,000. Channel pages are stable handles even when individual videos churn. Densest source of category 2 (rambling, no engine) and category 7 (under-produced).
  2. NotebookLM-style AI podcasts — Google NotebookLM "Audio Overview" produces hours of two-host AI-voice content monthly. Not comedy, but exhibits the rhythm signature of AI-generated dialogue (over-regular line length, fake "haha"s, no callbacks). Strategy: generate two or three from public-domain source documents and store under data/contrasts/audio/ai_overview/.

If you want to fill the biggest gaps fastest, in priority order:

  1. #7 AI OR DIE — AI-generated category
  2. #1 Bickersons — bickering loop / mechanical
  3. #3 Vic and Sade — no-engine rambling
  4. #6 Burns and Allen — flat character work
  5. #10 Goon Show — high-craft-but-not-Finnemore calibration anchor

Caveats