From a family farm to a writers’ room: Stanislav Slovák is heading toward his own sitcom

Humour has been part of his life since childhood. At home, he and his sister used to invent little theatre pieces, sketches, and stories. Over time, it became clear that comedy is something that comes naturally to him. “It sounds a bit confident,” he admits, “but the stuff works – people respond to it – so I believe I can do comedy.” He studied film directing at Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín, but even during his studies he realised that writing was what he enjoyed most. He directs mainly his own projects, because visual stylisation interests him less than story, character, and dialogue.

Alongside writing and directing, he also began studying Agricultural Engineering at Mendel University, where he is currently finishing his bachelor’s degree. On one side soil, tangible work, and a very concrete reality. On the other scripts, comedic material, and television formats. It’s precisely this contrast that gives him perspective. “Honestly, I don’t enjoy watching audiovisual work as much,” he says. “I enjoy making it. I don’t care whether it’s film, theatre, or a book – what matters is that I get to invent.”

He first heard about CME Content Academy from a directing teacher in Zlín. What caught his attention was the way the programme connects FAMU and TV Nova and puts a strong focus on fiction – at exactly the moment when he himself was developing a comedy series and looking for where to go next after school. The lecturers’ names were another strong magnet, especially Michal Reitler and Tomáš Feřtek, along with other creators whose work he respects, even as a viewer.

Within the Academy, he is primarily shaping himself as a screenwriter. He knows his strength lies in dialogue – and in his ability to pull humour out of dramatic situations. It’s not pure sitcom mechanics; it’s closer to drama that becomes funny because the characters and situations are observed with precision. That’s also why clients invite him onto advertising projects: they want something that lands comedically, but without cheap, obvious punchlines.

CME has also introduced him to reality and docu formats. Unlike the art-documentary environment he encountered in Zlín, here he’s watching how more commercial projects work and how emotion, ethics, and humour can be handled inside them. At the same time, he’s careful not to spread himself too thin. His main goal remains series writing, such as comedy, but also crime. Right now he’s interning in the writers’ room behind Ulice, where he is gradually getting involved in storylining and has a mentor he writes with regularly and receives concrete feedback from. He’s clarifying not only the craft, but also how a long-running daily series functions – one that has to prove itself to a large audience every single day. Beyond Ulice, the TV Nova project that draws him most is Kriminálka Anděl: that blend of crime and character-based humour suits him.

Looking ahead, he’d like to write his own Oneplay Original, ideally a comedy series built on strong characters and intelligent humour. He senses that traditional art schools sometimes struggle with more audience-facing storytelling, while Content Academy does the opposite: it works directly with the question of how to reach a broad audience without sacrificing quality.

And when he isn’t writing? He plays football. Even there, the logic feels familiar – teamwork, good tempo, and a sense for the moment. Combined with film, agriculture, and comedy, it all adds up to a distinctly unusual authorial profile, someone who remembers exactly where he comes from, and just as clearly knows where he’s going.