A sketch during a Sketch Show that focuses on the actors preparing for the next segment, or just enjoying their downtime. If these are the majority of the episode, odds are the sketches are just a Show With In A Show.
Examples:
Live-Action TV
- All That: It begins each episode with the cast getting up to wacky hijinks in the green room before the show. The sketches even have their own catchphrase, with the panicked stage manager informing them they have five minutes until the show starts.
- Evening at the Improv: A late 70s/early 80s show that is mostly comprised of stand-up comedians performing at the Improv comedy club. Between the comedians' segments (and commercials) there are backstage-type sketches involving the waitstaff at the club, sometimes interacting with the featured comics and sometimes not, including a young Julie Brown. Every episode ended with one of the waitstaff doing a few jokes onstage at an empty house, presumably working on their craft after the club closed for the night.
- The Kids in the Hall: It often does sketches where the actors play themselves, thus addressing their status as a comedy troupe with a TV show. For example in one sketch, Kevin in his Butt-Monkey role frets that if his next contribution isn't good enough, the others will kick him out of the group.
- The Muppet Show:
- It frequently features sketches backstage where the "talent" would propose new acts, the guest stars would bicker with Kermit over the things they were being asked to do, and zany things went on in the name of pushing the show forward. These would often be intertwined to create a plotline.
- The Jim Henson Hour and Muppets Tonight also have backstage happenings. Muppets Now has a variant with the linking material being Scooter assembling the show on his computer, and being interrupted by other characters.
- Roc: When the episodes began airing live, the show would often open with one of the actors backstage talking to the TV audience.
- Rutland Weekend Television: Eric Idle, Neil Innes, David Battley, Gwen Watford, and Henry Woolf can be seen sitting around a table ostensibly doing read-throughs, commenting on the quality or otherwise of Eric Idle's scriptwriting and generally fracturing the fourth wall.
- Saturday Night Live: A not infrequent occurrence is to show the host preparing in his/her dressing room, cast members interacting with each other or Lorne Michaels, etc.
- SCTV: It usually has backstage plots throughout the show, especially during the 90-minute episodes.
- That Mitchell and Webb Look: The series frequently features the stars lounging around on set in between takes. One particularly memorable instance lampshades how the supposedly documentary-esque content of these sketches was in fact just as scripted as the rest of the show.
- You Can't Do That on Television: It shows the backstage area on occasion, but the best example of this from it is the introduction/theme elaboration sketches on the blue triangle set, which more often than not lapse into being more about the making of said sketches.
Radio
- John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme: It uses these primarily for Lampshade Hanging and Self-Deprecation, and gets increasingly meta with them with every passing series. This perhaps peaked with a series 5 sketch in which Simon Kane complains that Finnemore writes these sketches in such a way as to make the rest of the cast look petty and bullying, and that that includes the lines he's currently reading. He's reduced to tearfully begging John to stop writing the sketch, while John says he doesn't know how to because he can't think of a punchline.
Simon: Look, none of what I'm saying represents what I, Simon Kane, actually think or feel! Not even this!
John: Okay look, you don't think this is all getting a bit self-indulgent do you?
Simon: You have such a cheek. Sitting at your computer, writing that line, for you to ask me as if it's somehow my fault, and then writing this answer for me to say! YES, OF COURSE, IT'S SELF-INDULGENT! MASSIVELY SELF-INDULGENT! So for god's sake, stop it!
Western Animation
- Family Guy: The Saturday Night Live backstage sketches get parodied. Meg loses her virginity to Jimmy Fallon in what she thinks is actually backstage... up until he yells "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night" post-coitus at a previously-unnoticed camera.
