Home AboutArchivesBest Of Subscribe

Centrepiece of Municipal Display Stolen

TV Comedy

Having just done a full rewatch of Men Behaving Badly, I thought it was about time to do a multi-part article on the series, really nailing exactly what it is that makes the show tick, what Simon Nye was trying to say about how people worked, and why we seem to find it impossible to make audience sitcom like it today.

Nah, just kidding, I want to poke at a newspaper prop again.

So let’s take a look at “Gary in Love”, the penultimate episode of Men Behaving Badly, broadcast on the 26th December 1998.1 As a reminder, the gang have gone to Worthing, and Gary and Tony steal a massive ornamental fish and stash it in their hotel room, for reasons. Unfortunately, this drunken bender does not go unnoticed, not least by the local paper.

[Read more →]


  1. Incidentally, please appreciate the effort I have gone to in order to provide proper widescreen screengrabs from this episode. Despite the final three episodes being made and broadcast on digital in widescreen, the DVD is a 4:3 centre cutout… and has never been reissued in widescreen format. Later streaming releases, like YouTube, are widescreen… but are half the frame rate they should be, as per all interlaced material released on every streaming site aside from iPlayer. Meaning you cannot actually buy a proper version of the final three episodes of Men Behaving Badly, which is utterly ludicrous.

    We’ll have to hope for an iPlayer boxset at some point. 

Read more about...

,

Rescued.

Internet / Videogames

Jason Dyer’s All the Adventures project – “Wherein I play and blog about every adventure game ever made in (nearly) chronological order” – is undergoing a particularly amazing time at the moment. So far he’s covered 192 full games from 1982 alone – 32 of them since the start of this year – some of them very obscure indeed, and usually in multi-part articles. It brings into sharp focus those people who simply pretend to write blogs.

Jason doesn’t just limit himself to games which were published. For instance, take Time Warden by Simon Wadsworth, a game vaguely inspired by Doctor Who. Simon wrote about it on his own site:

“This was my second full adventure. I submitted it to Bug-Byte, as I had done with The Scepter, but it was never published. It was written using the same source code structure. I’d forgotten all about this game until sorting through a pile of old cassette tapes looking for my copy of The Scepter.

In this adventure you play the Time Warden. While you have been away on vacation and the Key of Time has been lost on the planet Syrius 5. You have 250 turns to recover the key before the end of the Universe.”

Luckily, Simon didn’t just talk about it on his site – he provided a download link to the game, which Jason used to write his post. Not that you can actually directly download it from Simon’s site any more… or, indeed, even read about it. The site went offline at some point in 2019. You can only access it now through the Wayback Machine.

Meaning that when Jason wrote about Time Warden, he’s writing about something rescued twice: firstly, an unpublished game scraped from an old cassette by its author… and then secondly, scraped from a defunct website through the Internet Archive.

Blogs are dead. Apart, of course, from all the amazing blogs out there.

A Slightly Larger Summer Party

TV Comedy

“We are aware that there will be those who say ‘What a shame to show us these characters’, but I would always rather be brave.”

Rob Brydon, The Sunday Telegraph, 2nd September 2001

“You’ve got to carry on swimming. I was really keen not to put this precious character of ours in a cul-de-sac where he only functions in a monologue.”

Hugo Blick, The Sunday Telegraph, 2nd September 2001

A Small Summer Party [is] entirely unnecessary. In advance, this was billed as our chance to “find out how the Marion and Geoff story began”. The trouble was that we already knew.”

James Walton, The Daily Telegraph, 4th September 2001

A Small Summer Party, broadcast on the 3rd September 2001, remains a controversial entry into the Marion & Geoff1 universe. A retelling of that fateful summer barbecue where Keith’s life finally falls apart, I can’t say I really understand complaints that the episode was pointless, simply because we already knew what had happened. I don’t see sitcom as a content-delivery mechanism for plot.

I do have a bit more sympathy with James Walton’s other issues with the show:

“It was in episode six of the original series that Keith (Rob Brydon), speaking more quickly and nervously than usual, told us about the day when it finally became undeniably apparent that his wife was unfaithful and his marriage was finished… As ever, we had to do a bit of thinking to figure out from Keith’s version precisely what had happened – but, as ever, this only made the effect more powerful. Which may be why that 10-minute monologue managed to be funnier, sadder, subtler, and more dramatic than yesterday’s 50-minute fleshing out of the events Keith had described.”

As evidenced by Rob Brydon and Hugo Blick’s comments which opened this article, this is exactly what they were worried about when it came to making A Small Summer Party… and decided it was worth the risk. It’s a risk which I personally think comes off, despite entirely understanding why people fell in love with the monologues. I just think A Small Summer Party has more than enough of interest going on in its own right.

I admit that my favourite thing about the show is fairly obvious: how it plays as a found footage horror movie. A suburban Blair Witch Project, which was a film still relatively fresh in the memory back in 2001. But this surely wasn’t just some clever-clever directorial flourish; framing the show like this was far from an arbitrary choice. To Keith, this really is a horror film: the most horrific day of his life. And to most of the audience watching, this kind of domestic horror is far more likely to be a part of their lives than encountering evil spirits… or even an axe murderer.

A glowering, indistinct Marion in the kitchen doorway

A successful piece of television or not, one thing is true: A Small Summer Party has barely been repeated on the Beeb. It got a couple of BBC Choice showings the week after first transmission, and then nothing. Three years later in 2004, it did get a DVD release as part of Series 2… but not in its original broadcast version. Instead, it was an extended edit – specifically labelled as a Director’s Cut – increasing the 50-minute special up to a full hour.

Which is perhaps a bit of an strange choice. Even if you enjoyed the show, it was surely long enough in its original form, if not a little too long. It’s at times like this that you wish the release had a commentary, so we could hear all of Blick’s reasoning for the changes. As it is, we’ll have to prod the show ourselves.

You know the drill by now. Let’s take a look at every single change made between the original broadcast version of A Small Summer Party, and the extended DVD edit. All timings given are for the broadcast edit, which is also available on iPlayer.

[Read more →]


  1. Marion & Geoff, or Marion and Geoff? I’m going for Marion & Geoff unless I’m quoting someone else, because that’s what it’s called on the show’s title card. Bite me. 

Read more about...

Mixed Grille

TV Comedy

In 1994, two things happened to me which had major implications years down the line. Firstly, my Dad died. Secondly, I got into Red Dwarf. I’m not quite sure which was the most damaging to me in the long run.

Also released in 1994 was a very formative book. The Making of Red Dwarf by Joe Nazzaro came at exactly the right point for me, being all my favourite topics in one volume. It also meant that I could shake my head sadly when people didn’t understand that sitcoms had a real studio audience present. Come on, I’d seen the Red Dwarf set plan with the place marked out for the audience seating for years!1

But what I didn’t know back in 1994 was the troubled route that book had to publication. We only really found out about that three decades later, when Nazzaro published Comedy, Chaos – and Cowboys! The Red Dwarf Companion – his original draft of the Making Of book, which turns out to be vastly different to the final product. It’s a fascinating yet infuriating read, and you can do no better than read this review on Ganymede & Titan to find out why. Sadly, the number of typos and formatting errors in the book is absolutely off-the-charts, and smacks of – and I don’t say this lightly – genuine contempt for the book’s audience.2

And yet for all that, I still managed to wring an absurd amount of joy from the book. For instance, take this sequence from the episode “Psirens”, as one of our eponymous insectoid villains has just forced Kryten into the crusher:

God, Robert Llewellyn is great there. “I’m almost annoyed” is funny. His irritated expression is funnier.

Now, most of the above scene was shot on location at Bankside Power Station, which I already knew about. But what I didn’t know was that some of it was reshot in the studio on the penultimate day’s recording of the series, as part of a day of pick-ups.

Nazzaro quotes Red Dwarf VI‘s director, Andy De Emmony:

“We’re re-doing a compactor scene with Robert in the box. At the last minute, we were doing the shot where he walks away from camera to the edge and looks down. We now have him walking to camera which is funnier. I want to do a shot where he’s walking towards camera, laugh, and then we do an out of camera shot, as he’s walking away to the edge.”

The above doesn’t really give the clearest explanation of what’s happening with this reshoot. The below will probably explain it better. These are two consecutive shots:

Front shot - cubed Kryten walking on a grille

Location: 11th February 1993

Back shot - cubed Kryten walking on a different grille

Studio: 26th March 1993

I have to admit, I find discovering this utterly delightful, for two reasons.

Firstly, I think that mixing location and studio material is interesting in its own right. Once you know, perhaps the reshoot is obvious – the picture quality is slightly different, and the grille Kryten is waddling on changes between shots. But it’s matched up so cleverly with the lighting – particularly with the green glow on the grille itself – that nobody normal would ever notice, and 99.99% of abnormal people would never notice either. It’s a beautiful little piece of production.

But mostly I find it delightful because 30 years after first watching the episode, I’m still finding out fascinating little details about Red Dwarf. Stuff which you would have thought would have come out by now, with everything that’s been written about the series, but somehow never quite did. And while I can still find out new things like this, I just can’t tear my brain away from the show entirely.

Although, y’know, what they really needed to reshoot was Kryten’s fall onto the Psiren. Come on now, you don’t want an awkward bounce. You want a bloody squidge.


  1. Yeah yeah, I know, this doesn’t mean that the audience soundtrack hasn’t been sweetened, but that’s a separate article. 

  2. I read a draft of a TV-related book recently in order to give feedback, and I think I only fed back two or three obvious errors. And that hasn’t even been published yet

Read more about...

Looking for Lise

TV Comedy

The Young Ones was written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, and Lise Mayer, with additional material by Alexei Sayle. One of those names is not like the others.

After all, Ben Elton shows up on-screen in a surprising number of episodes: five, to be exact.1 Alexei Sayle appears in every single episode, mostly as various offshoots of the Balowski Family. And if you don’t know who Rik Mayall played, then please stop reading this article. But what about Lise Mayer? Surely she shows up in at least one episode?

Certainly, the Comedy Connections episode on The Young Ones, broadcast on the 18th July 2006, seems to think so. Take a look at this linking sequence:

[Read more →]


  1. Baz in “Demolition”, the DJ in “Flood”, Kendal Mintcake in “Bambi”, a Grange Hill student in “Sick”, and the man in the Hawk Lager ad in “Summer Holiday”. Five episodes… but at least six roles, because he also plays the cat in “Flood”. “My wife, she’s a terrible cook, though. Well she would be – she’s dead!”

    Can anyone think of any other voice-only roles he had in the series? 

Read more about...

, ,

Strange Anarchic Happenings

TV Comedy

Recently, I’ve been rewatching quite a lot of documentaries about The Young Ones, seeing as I can’t seem to stop writing about that damn show. This is why I find myself watching The Making of The Young Ones from the 2007 DVD release… for the 2000th damn time.

One little section of that documentary stood out in particular to me this time round, about one of the early reviews the show got in the press:

ALEXEI SAYLE: There was a guy called Ray Connolly, he was the TV critic for the Evening Standard. He’d always disliked me, I think, he’d called me “as funny as a funeral” either before or in this review. But he said something really interesting. He said ‘There’s something going on in my house.’ He said ‘My kids are sneaking off to watch this show that I don’t understand at all, called The Young Ones. And yet they find it hilarious. I don’t get it.’ But clearly, it was like this idea that something was going on.

PAUL JACKSON: I think he almost made the analogy – of course, Ray came through as a writer in the 60s music generation I was talking about – I think he almost made the analogy to, you know, we had our music, this feels to me a bit like that. Like we had the Stones, they’ve got The Young Ones. Which was fantastic.

Wouldn’t it be nice to actually read this review, rather than going on Sayle and Jackson’s memories? Of course it would. Luckily, because they got the name of the TV critic correct – it was indeed Ray Connolly – it wasn’t very hard to find.

The review appeared in the Evening Standard on the 8th December 1982. This is the day after the first broadcast of “Interesting” from Series 1, and is a genuinely valuable snapshot of initial reactions to the show, from someone who wasn’t really its target audience.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

The Voice of Youth

TV Comedy

It somehow seems fitting that the very first thing recorded in studio for The Young Ones was one of its most well-remembered sketches. On the 23rd January 1982 at 7:30pm, without a studio audience – it was played in for their reaction the following night – Nozin’ Aroun’ was put in front of the cameras.

“Well, I’m standing up here on this scaffolding because that’s what this programme is all about – shock.”

The inspirations for Nozin’ Aroun’ are clear: a parody of TV “for young adults, made by young adults”, most obviously Something Else (1978-82) and the Oxford Road Show (1981-85). The latter is often mentioned in connection to The Young Ones, as Ben Elton made several appearances on it. A person contributing to the real thing… and also doing a parody of it. The link is irresistible.

Irresistible… and yet often slightly confused, especially when it comes to the chronology. For instance, BFI Screenonline tells the following story:

“But by the late 1980s Elton had decisively emerged from behind the typewriter. Although he had had some onscreen experience (even parodying his Oxford Road Show appearances in The Young Ones‘ mock youth TV programme Nozin’ Aroun’), it wasn’t until he became the regular host of Channel 4’s alternative comedy variety show Saturday Live (1985-87) and its successor Friday Night Live (1988) that his face became as famous as his scripts.”

So the Oxford Road Show appearances came first, and then The Young Ones. And yet on the DVD commentary for “Demolition”, the Young Ones pilot, with Paul Jackson and Geoff Posner1, we get:

PAUL JACKSON: Funnily enough, he [Ben Elton] went on to present the Oxford Road Show of which this is in fact a parody.
GEOFF POSNER: Absolutely. Oxford Road Show used to be a sort of youth show, done from Manchester, Oxford Road studios in Manchester, and he ended up sending himself up.
PAUL JACKSON: And then, having sent himself up, presenting the show.

Jackson and Posner seem to be talking at cross-purposes here; Jackson thinks The Young Ones came before Ben’s Oxford Road Show work, while Posner seems to think it came afterwards. It’s all a bit confusing. After all, how can you send yourself up in this fashion before you’ve appeared on the real show?

Still, the idea that Ben is directly making fun of his own work in Nozin’ Aroun’ is a fun one. It’s not difficult to imagine the thought process here, once you’ve disentangled the temporal confusion. Ben did some embarrassing early appearances on the Oxford Road Show, finally got a show of his own, and used it to mercilessly take the piss out of how awful he was on it. Or at the very least, how awful everybody was around him.

The truth is altogether more interesting.

[Read more →]


  1. Paul Jackson produced the pilot, so is an obvious choice for this commentary. Posner is perhaps slightly odd; he only joined the production for the rest of Series 1, as Associate Producer/Director. But we do get the story of Posner overhearing Jackson editing the pilot of The Young Ones deep within the bowels of the BBC, which probably makes it worth it. 

Read more about...

,

Initiate Computer Search

TV Comedy

For reasons which will become apparent later in the year, I’m currently buried in research on Three of a Kind. It’s a show which I entirely dismissed a few years back on the strength – or otherwise – of its first episode, but now feel a certain amount of affection for. In fact, rarely has a comedy won me over so much from such a bad first impression.1

Fittingly, there were three series of Three of a Kind; the first started transmission in July 1981, the second in November 1982, and the third in September 1983. Also made as part of that final series was a Bank Holiday Special, which aired before the rest of the series, on the 2nd May 1983. It’s the usual mix of stuff that works and stuff which really doesn’t, with the highlight being a eight-minute “Cabaret” sequence near the end.

I’m particularly fond of Gladys Nightly, which is essentially Lenny Henry doing a proper drag act, and features a bonus cameo from Peter Brewis:

That split screen shot near the end of that sequence with the two Lennys is worth any amount of teletext graphics thrown at the screen.

[Read more →]


  1. I blame Gagfax, but that’s a whole other article. 

Read more about...

,

In Place of Helen

TV Comedy

Here’s a question for you. Exactly how many opening title sequences did Drop the Dead Donkey have? I suspect the answer is: more than you think.

After all, to answer the question properly, we can’t just go by the broadcast material. In 2005, the DVD release of the first series contained the unbroadcast pilot, shot a couple of weeks before the series made it to air. These titles had the same visuals as Series 1 of the show as broadcast, but an entirely different theme tune, by Philip Pope:

I remember the utter shock of seeing – well, hearing – those titles for the first time. Truth be told, after that initial shock wore off, I don’t mind them that much. But teletype noises not withstanding, it really feels more like a chat show theme than a news theme. Drop the Dead Donkey is probably unique as a comedy which ended up working better without a theme from Pope.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,