TV Comedy – Page 15

“You Wanna Sing That Song, Right Here on MY Show?”

Published 24th October 2021

Old TV shows gather anecdotes over the years. They gather anecdotes until it’s sometimes difficult to see the real story through the detritus. It’s not really anybody’s fault. It just happens.

A case in point. Why were there bands in The Young Ones? If you’ve read much about the show or watched any documentaries, you already know the answer. Take the second episode of A History of Alternative Comedy (TX: 17/1/99):

PAUL JACKSON: It had kinds of quirky elements in it already in that first script, but I said if we could just put a band in or something, because then we’ll be a variety show, and we’ll get slightly more money. So we put Nine Below Zero in, playing in the boys room.

Nearly two decades later, in Gold’s How The Young Ones Changed Comedy (TX: 26/05/18), this story is still being repeated:

ADRIAN EDMONDSON: It got funding from the variety arm of the BBC budget, which meant it had to have a band in each week. So it wasn’t us putting a band in: it had to have a band in.

The best and most comprehensive version of the tale is also told by Paul Jackson, in this BFI panel from 2018. (To his credit, he labels it as an old story by now.)

PAUL JACKSON: By having a band in, we came under the Variety department, and the Variety shows – Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise and so on – used to get two days in the studio, and more money. We never knew how much money, because the BBC didn’t tell you at the time, but bigger budgets, two days in the studio. A standard sitcom had one day in the studio… so we had a much bigger canvas.

Certainly, it is true that The Young Ones was made by the Variety department, rather than Comedy. Let’s take an obvious example: the day that BBC2 first broadcast “Oil” (TX: 16/11/82), the Terry and June episode “Playing Pool” was premiering over on BBC1. Let’s take a quick look at the programme numbers:

LLV indicates a programme was made as part of the Variety department at the Beeb, and LLC indicates that it was made by Comedy. As we can see, The Young Ones gets an LLV code, and Terry and June gets an LLC. Moreover, it’s clearly stated that The Young Ones got two days in the studio, while Terry and June only got one. Everything matches up nicely.

Well sort of, anyway. Let me throw a couple more programme numbers into the mix. Firstly for Filthy, Rich & Catflap, and secondly for Bottom.

Both of these were made under the auspices of Variety, with an LLV code, and with two days in the studio. And yet you never hear, for instance, people talking about bands being forced into episodes of Bottom. Because it didn’t happen.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that the anecdote about why bands are in The Young Ones is false. Nor am I saying that Bottom et al being made under the auspices of Variety without there being bands in the show is inexplicable. Far from it, in fact. I can imagine a situation where unproven talent needs to be beholden to certain rules that proven talent does not. I can also think of ten other possible reasons.

I’m merely arguing that the way this anecdote is usually told gives an incomplete picture. Which is absolutely fine for a while… but when the same story keeps being told over and over again, it deserves a bit of a poke with a large stick every so often.

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best of, the young ones

By the Book

Published 17th October 2021

TV Comedy

Reshoots. The problem is always damn reshoots.

Let me explain. Over the last few years, I’ve been doing various bits of research into some of the nitty gritty about Red Dwarf‘s production. (Stuff like this article on the BBC Manchester studios is the result of that.) And once you get into the really complex stuff, knowing exactly when a scene was shot starts to become important.

But no problem, right? By this point, the production dates of Red Dwarf – at least for most of the studio material – are widely known. When telling the story of Series III, for instance, we can easily thread our way through the production order of the episodes, rather than the transmission order.

The issue: reshoots. Just because the majority of an episode was shot on a particular date, it doesn’t mean all of it was. Because productions have this nasty tendency to reshoot things they think they can do a better job of, weeks down the line. Damn them.

[Read more →]

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“The Queen Had Been Hogging the Iron”

Published 13th October 2021

TV Comedy

It’s always nice when a suspicion of yours is finally proved correct.

This one has been lingering in my head for a while. Back in 2016, I published this examination of the script for the Men Behaving Badly episode “Stag Night”. This detailed all the material which was changed or cut between the second draft script of the episode, and the final broadcast programme. And out of all this changed or cut dialogue, one section really stood out to me.

Straight after the opening titles, we were originally supposed to see the following:

A FEW WEEKS LATER. TONY AND GARY ARE SITTING IN A SIMILAR POSITION ON THE SOFA WATCHING THE TV, LAGER PROBABLY IN HAND. GARY IS IDLY LEAFING THROUGH A COPY OF BRIDES MAGAZINE.

TONY: You know Mark Phillips married Princess Anne in his uniform. Do you reckon he’d forgotten to pick his suit up from the dry cleaners so he thought, oh bugger I’ll have to wear what I had on yesterday?
GARY: Yeah. Still, it could have been worse, he could have ended up in a tank top.
TONY: Yeah. And you know Princess Di’s dress was all creased when she went up the aisle, I reckon that was because the Queen had been hogging the iron.
GARY: Uh huh.
TONY: ‘Cos you’re not telling me, when you’re nineteen odd, you’ve got the confidence to barge over to a Queen and say “How long are you going to be ironing that… top? Queen.”
GARY: No.
TONY: So is Dorothy going to wear white?

If that doesn’t raise alarm bells for you, let me throw a few dates at you. The second draft script for “Stag Night” is dated 7th May 1997, and the episode was first broadcast on the 6th November 1997. Right bang in the middle of those two dates was the death of Princess Diana, on the 31st August 1997. It always seemed very likely to me that this dialogue was shot, and then removed before broadcast due to Diana’s death.

Very likely… but that’s all the information I had to go on, back in 2016. I had no access to any documentation which might prove or disprove this. And as we all know, when you assume, you make a twat out of you and me. It seemed destined to just be one of those things which just seemed almost certainly true, but would never actually be properly nailed down.

Well, it’s now 2021, and I do have access to a little more information than I did five years ago. And the first pertinent piece of information we have is the studio recording date. As stated before, that second draft script is dated 7th May 1997; we also now know that the studio date was the 22nd June 1997. In other words: the episode was definitely recorded before Diana’s death.

And then I struck gold. Buried away among the paperwork for the episode is the following:

“Recorded on location and in Studio 1, Teddington on BetaSP with OB and Tape Inserts
Edited to DigiBeta and transferred to D3 for TX

TX Tape No: DGN401307
Total Duration: 28.40″

NB Original version exists on DGN233507 – 29.10″ – edited for ‘Diana’ reference”

So there we have it. Not only was that dialogue shot, but it made it into the first edit of the show, which of course never aired. Once Diana’s death occured, there was a second edit made to remove this dialogue, which became the version which was initially broadcast. Case closed.

Another little sitcom mystery ticked off the list. Just another 10,284 to go.

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edits, men behaving badly

A Very Important Article Examining the Contents of Victor Meldrew’s Kitchen Cabinets

Published 26th September 2021

TV Comedy

I blame David Renwick entirely for this one.

Let me explain. Series 5 of One Foot in the Grave starts with one of the best episodes they ever made: “The Man Who Blew Away”. First broadcast on Christmas Day 1994, the unfortunate fate of Mr. Foskett surely has to be one of the grimmest things ever radiated to the nation under the guise of festive fun and frolics.

But Mr. Foskett – and Brian Murphy’s brilliant performance – isn’t what concerns us today. Instead, we want to focus on the opening scene in the kitchen between Victor and Margaret, where Victor rants about people being bad at comedy. A scene which plays out in my own kitchen daily, of course.

Now, the DVD release of Series 5 contains a commentary for “The Man Who Blew Away” from David Renwick and Richard Wilson. And among all his examinations about the nature of comedy, Renwick has this to say on the opening scene of the episode:

RENWICK: Another thing I remember here was: didn’t we have to do a retake of half this scene? I think for the eagle-eyed one of those china chickens goes missing from the corner of the shelf unit there in the kitchen between takes… I’ve got a feeling we had to redo some of it, something to do with the framing of the camera. There’s a little jug there just behind his right shoulder… and I’ve got a feeling in some of the shots there’s a chicken. (laughs)

And indeed, this is entirely correct. Just before the scene ends, a chicken magically appears in the cabinet as Margaret walks past it:

The kitchen, with a chicken in the cabinet

But there is one thing which Renwick fails to mention about this scene, because he’s not a complete loony about this kind of thing. Unfortunately, I am. So: can we figure out exactly when this scene was reshot?

Spoiler: yes.

[Read more →]

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one foot in the grave

Raw, Trembling, Naked Sketches

Published 10th September 2021

TV Comedy

It’s official: I talk about Red Dwarf too much on here. But sometimes it’s just too difficult to resist, if only to make a point about how absurdly lucky Red Dwarf fans actually are.

For example, with Dwarf‘s first series, glimpses of footage beyond the actual episodes themselves are plentiful. Across various VHS and DVD releases over the years, we can see an earlier version of the opening scene of the show… and an outtake from the closing moments of the final episode in that first run too. Both ends of the series, represented with extra footage giving insight into the production of the show.

Rimmer and Lister in corridor — Alternative opening…

Danny John-Jules, Craig Charles, and Chris Barrie in Drive Room set — …and an outtake from the last show

Sadly, with the first series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie – shot and broadcast just a year later – we’re not so lucky. There are no DVDs full of deleted scenes available here, nor any outtakes. Indeed, the only bit of extra footage beyond the the broadcast shows that I’m aware of for Series 1 is this trail, shown in the week leading up to broadcast.¹

To get our deleted scenes for A Bit of Fry & Laurie, we have to work a little harder. And yet they exist, at least in written form. The script book for Series 1, first published in 1990, might frustrate some completists a little, as not every sketch from the series was included. I confess to being mildly irritated that it doesn’t contain a single sketch from the 1987 pilot, which is one of my favourite single shows Fry & Laurie ever did.²

But that is tremendously unfair, when I’d kill for a book like this for most shows. It’s worth it for the brilliant stage directions alone – these are the actual scripts, not dodgy transcripts. Moreover, the vast majority of sketches in Series 1 are there, along with plenty of sketches which never made the broadcast episodes. So while we may not have our deleted scenes in video form, we do have them, sort of. And while I suggest you pick up a secondhand copy of the book if you don’t have one – Fry & Laurie practically demands to be read in a civilised manner – all the sketches have been transcribed and are available online, albeit extremely unofficially.

Having wallowed in Series 1 of Fry & Laurie for the last month, the unused sketches spring out at me like a… spring. So if you love the series but have never read the book, I’ll say that you should be reading “Operations”, “Toaster”, “Maternity Ward Ten”, “Remembering Lines”, “Little Chat”, “Sex Change”, “Forward to the Past”, “The Old Folks”, “Ignorance”, “A Bit of a Pain in the Bottom”, “Orthodoxy”, “A Frank Talk”, “Café”, “Fascism”, “Jeremiah Beadle”, “Architect”, “Naked”, and – most famously – “Spies Five”. And that’s plenty to be getting on with.

Still, what interests me today is: can we imagine what any of these sketches actually looked like on the screen, rather than merely on the page? Indeed, can we figure out which audience sessions they might have been recorded in? In two cases³, I think we can get a pretty damn good idea.

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From the Boat Show 89 slide, we can ascertain that this particular broadcast of the trail was on the 10th January 1989, at around 7:25pm – just before The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years. As for when it was shot, the set is the same as “Gordon & Stuart Eat Greek”, so it was almost certainly done during the very first recording session of the series, on the 10th December 1988.

The mention of “January and February” is a little odd for a series when you’re already in January; it would have made a lot more sense broadcast in December. Productions providing material for trails which doesn’t quite fit with what’s required is an evergreen problem, it seems. ↩
“Blimey, you’re ugly.” ↩
In fact, more than two, but we’ve covered “Inspector Venice” and “Naked” before. ↩

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I’d Like Some Information, Please

Published 30th August 2021

TV Comedy

Stephen Fry next to a camera, from Series 1 of Fry & Laurie

Something sets Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie apart from every other run of the show, you know. Something which, unless you actually went to a recording of the series, is entirely invisible.

In true Dirty Feed style, let me throw a bunch of exciting dates at you, and see if it becomes apparent.¹

Pilot. RX: 8th and 9th December 1987. TX: 26th December 1987.
Series 1. RX: 10th December 1988 – 1st February 1989. TX: 13th January – 17th February 1989.
Series 2. RX: 14th January – 20th February 1990. TX: 9th March – 13th April 1990.
Series 3. RX: 20th July – 24th August 1991. TX: 9th January – 13th February 1992.
Series 4. RX: 14th March – 19th April 1994. TX: 12th February – 2nd April 1995.

Sorry, that’s a bit too exciting. Just give me a minute…

…right, all done. Now, the obvious tale concerning these dates is Series 4, with the programmes having been recorded nearly a full year before transmission. Which lead plenty of people watching the episodes at the time to speculate on Stephen Fry’s current mental condition, from material shot a year previously. But we have better things to do than climb into Stephen Fry’s head. At least today.

No, the real story here is: Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie is the only series of the show to start transmitting while the shows were still being recorded. The pilot was shot a shade over two weeks before TX; similarly, Series 2 finished shooting two weeks before the transmission of its first episode. Series 3 had a longer wait of a few months before making it to air. Series 4, as we already said, had a whole year. But Series 1 only gets halfway through its audience recording sessions before it starts being broadcast to the nation.

[Read more →]

The recording dates here are for the studio sessions, not the location material – which was, of course, recorded earlier. ↩

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best of, fry & laurie

Inspector Venice

Published 22nd August 2021

TV Comedy

As I continue my trawl through recording dates for the first series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie, I can hear some of you plaintively cry: what is the fucking point, you utter moron?

Whether I have an actual answer, I shall leave to your extremely capable judgement. I think the following is at least vaguely interesting, though. Let’s take a look at Series 1, Episode 4, broadcast on the 3rd February 1989. Nearly eight minutes into the show, we get what appears to be a normal restaurant sketch. That is, until a member of the audience pipes up and claims authorship of the routine. Well, Benjamin Whitrow pipes up, to be exact.

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I Hate Doing Research, Part Two

Published 31st July 2021

Meta / TV Comedy

Gather round, hardcore comedy scholars. This isn’t one of those nice articles I write where everything is tied up with a neat bow at the end. Instead, it’s a cry for help into the void.

Let’s take a look at a few pictures from A Bit of Fry & Laurie on Getty Images. Firstly, Series 4:

This is from Episode 2 – the episode featuring Fiona Gillies and Kevin McNally. Getty suggests that this picture was taken on 22nd March 1994. A quick check I have of the paperwork for the show does indeed have this listed as the recording date. So far, so good.

Oddly, Getty doesn’t seem to have any pictures at all from Series 3. But if we look for Series 2, we have this:

Ah, The Rhodes Boysons. This one is a little more tricksy; the sketch was broadcast as part of Episode 5, but the paperwork I have here indicates it was actually shot during the first audience session for Series 2. That was on the 14th January 1990… and Getty agrees. We’re doing well, yes?

Too well, unfortunately. Things had to go wrong eventually. Finally, take a look at this brilliant photo from Series 1:

Comic actors Stephen Fry (left) and Hugh Laurie (on a television screen) on the set of a television show, December 17th 1988. (Photo by Don Smith/Radio Times/Getty Images)

This looks like it was taken from the sketch “Censored”, shown as part of Episode 1. Let’s take a look at a couple of screengrabs of the sketch in question.

At first glance, you’ll notice a few oddities. Both Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s hair looks different, the framing of Laurie on the TV screen is also different, and even the border round the TV set seems to have changed. Perhaps all this can be explained by the fact that the picture was almost certainly taken during rehearsal, rather than the shooting of the sketch itself. This was standard practice; take a look at this publicity photo from The Young Ones, for instance, and note Ryan’s attire.

There is still a problem with this picture, however. The paperwork I have here indicates that the sketch “Censored” was not only broadcast as part of the first episode of the show, but was actually shot as part of the first audience session, on the 10th December 1988. Why then, does Getty claim the picture was taken on the 17th December 1988, the date of the second audience session of the series?

You may choose from the following possibilities:

Getty has the wrong information, the production paperwork is correct, and this was shot on the 10th December 1988. After all, Getty has been known to be wrong before.
The production paperwork has the wrong information, Getty is correct, and this was shot on the 17th December 1988. After all, the production paperwork has been known to be wrong before.
Both Getty and the production paperwork are correct, and the “Censored” sketch was shot on the 10th, reshot on the 17th, and then they decided to use the original version shot on the 10th in the final show.
Both Getty and the production paperwork are correct, and this is a different sketch entirely, shot using the same setup of Fry on the stage and Laurie on the monitor, which they then decided to cut before broadcast.
Some random mix of the above.
Something else entirely.

Sometimes, things are just impossible to nail down, at least with the information we have available at the moment. Bung me a camera script for the 10th and 17th recordings of the show, and I’ll know for sure.

As things stand, my best guess is based on the following description of the picture on the Getty Images site:

“Comic actors Stephen Fry (left) and Hugh Laurie (on a television screen) on the set of a television show, December 17th 1988. (Photo by Don Smith/Radio Times/Getty Images)”

If you don’t even know what the TV show is called when writing the metadata, I’m willing to bet you might get the date wrong too. I’ll stick with the production paperwork date of the 10th for now.

But I’ll definitely lie awake worrying about it.

UPDATE (1/9/21): Well, now. I’m not sure we have an exact answer to this conundrum yet. But while browsing through the script book for Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie, I found the following unused sketch titled “Naked”, with an alarmingly familiar setup:

Stephen and Hugh are in a black limbo area. Hugh is on a monitor, Stephen is really there.

STEPHEN: I’m afraid that we’ve now got to ask you to do some work, and help us a bit, ladies and gentlemen. Use your imagination, as it were.
HUGH: That’s right. For the purposes of this next sketch, ladies and gentlemen, we want you all to imagine that we’re both naked.
STEPHEN: Yes. I’m sorry to have to ask this of you. Speaking for ourselves, Hugh and I really wanted to go the whole way, and actually be naked for this one but, unfortunately, we ran out of money.
HUGH: That’s right. The budget simply wouldn’t stretch that far, I’m afraid. Never mind.
STEPHEN: Now to help you build up the picture in your minds, I should tell you that the sketch is set in a church.
HUGH: That’s right. Stephen will be playing a Bishop.
STEPHEN: And Hugh will be playing the organ.
HUGH: The organist.
STEPHEN: What?
HUGH: I’ll be playing the organist.
STEPHEN: The organist. Yes. But you’ll be playing the organ as well?
HUGH: No. No. That’s the whole point. I play an organist who can’t play the organ.
STEPHEN: Oh God I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Of course. Have I ruined it?
HUGH: Yes, frankly.
STEPHEN: I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen.
HUGH: You’d better all stop imagining that we’re naked.
STEPHEN: Yes stop. Hold it. It’s all my fault. I’m sorry. Damn.

I would now remind you that one of the possibilities I mentioned in my original article was that the publicity photo on Getty is of a different sketch to “Censored” entirely. This suddenly seems an awful lot more likely.

So I propose the following. “Censored” was shot on the 10th and was broadcast, and “Naked” was shot on the 17th, is the sketch seen in the Getty picture, and eventually went unbroadcast. I have no proof, but this seems the most likely option at this point.

Someone send me every single camera script for A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and I’ll nail this bugger down for sure.

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fry & laurie, i hate doing research

Mike, You Bastard!

Published 27th July 2021

TV Comedy

In a stunning break with tradition for Dirty Feed, who’s up for an obscure fact about The Young Ones?

So let’s poke our head in and see what the gang’s up to. Ah, that’s rather unpleasant. Rick has just found out that his bedroom has been turned into a roller disco by Mike. Unfortunately, Mike was clever enough to hire a bouncer.

SLOBBER: Sorry, guv’nor. Apples and pears, tit for tat, I love London Town, AAAAAAAAAAND I was at Violet’s funeral…

Quick quiz, and no cheating: what exactly does “Violet’s funeral” refer to?

If you know, you can give yourself a good pat on the back and feel very clever. If you don’t, you are far from alone. In this spectacularly unscientific survey I conducted yesterday, over 80% of people didn’t understand the reference. And I didn’t get it myself until I looked it up a few years ago.

The answer, then: “Violet’s funeral” refers to the funeral of Violet Kray, mother of the Kray twins. This was a newsworthy event, not least because both Krays were actually allowed out of prison in order to attend. This report from Thames News sums up the day’s events.¹

But there’s more to this story than what has become a slightly obscure reference. What I’m really interested in is the timing of all this, back in 1982. Because when I first started researching all this, I had assumed that the reference was at least a few years old, even then. It sounds like something that Slobber would boast about in order to prove his long standing in the community of the slightly dodgy.

It doesn’t take much poking for this theory to disintegrate, though. The Young Ones reference to “Violet’s funeral” appears in “Oil”, which was transmitted on the 16th November 1982. The funeral of Violet Kray took place on the 11th August 1982; just three months previously. This already makes it a topical reference for a sitcom.

If we look at when “Oil” was actually recorded, however, things get even more startling. Because “Oil” was recorded on the 25th and 26th August 1982. The funeral itself had only taken place two weeks previously. So far from this being an ancient thing at the time, it had literally just been part of the news agenda. And for the studio audience watching it that night, instead of it being a mouldy old reference, it was as burningly topical as a sitcom could really get. Which is a delightful thing to discover.

Which just leaves us with one final thought. What did the script originally say, before the “Violet’s funeral” reference was bunged in at the last minute – possibly in rehearsal the week before? Was there another gangster reference, swiftly replaced with something more current?

I seriously suggest you check out the official Thames News YouTube channel. It’s an absolute treasure trove of stuff, and it doesn’t seem to be widely known about. ↩

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the young ones

Northern Star

Published 22nd July 2021

TV Comedy

Sometimes, finding out the true story about an old sitcom legend gets very complicated. But not always.

For instance, take this old Londonist article from 2008, as rumours swirled about the potential sale of a certain Television Centre. But don’t worry! They have an interesting “fact”.

Interesting Television Centre fact no. 1: Studio 1 is the biggest and most expensive studio in television centre. For the early series of Red Dwarf, there was no budget for any set after the production team hired it for filming so they had the hapless space team running around the exposed lighting rigs and gangways, which worked brilliantly (and cheaply) for convincing us they were on board a massive spaceship.

It’s difficult to know where to start with that paragraph. I mean, the idea that early Red Dwarf had “no budget for any set” is not even remotely true. It is also the case that the show was never recorded in Studio 1 at TV Centre. Or let’s get right to the point: Red Dwarf never recorded a single frame of material at TV Centre full stop.

To be fair to Londonist, I think I know where they got this particular misinformation from: the BBC itself. Back in 2013, I went on a tour of the soon-to-be-closed TV Centre, and sure enough, a version of this anecdote was told to me as well: the series was shot at TVC, and you could see the lighting gantries used in the finished episodes as part of the ship. Believe it or not, no, I didn’t start an argument with the tour guide. I just went back home and wrote a passive-aggressive article, obviously.

So, if Red Dwarf was never recorded at TV Centre, where was it recorded? For its first three series, the answer is: New Broadcasting House. Not the current NBH in London; this was Manchester’s New Broadcasting House, on Oxford Road.

Picture of New Broadcasting House in Manchester

To be more specific: Red Dwarf was shot in Studio A at Oxford Road: the network production studio.¹ Over the years, a great many nationally-broadcast programmes originated there; among others, the Oxford Road Show, A Question of Sport, Filthy Rich & Catflap, Cheggers Plays Pop, some editions of The Old Grey Whistle Test², and a particular childhood favourite, The Satellite Show. And that’s only scraping the surface. Oxford Road Show aside, I expect plenty of viewers had no idea any of those series came from Manchester.

Still, for all the misinformation about Red Dwarf being shot at TV Centre, or having “no budget for any set”, the tales from the BBC tour guides were correct in one respect: certain scenes from the show really were shot on the lighting gantries in Studio A, standing in for the ship itself. Which is indeed an actual INTERESTING FACT.

Let’s take a look.

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Studio B was the smaller regional production studio, although this was also used for some daytime network programming such as Open Air and Daytime UK. ↩
I have to be honest, before researching this article, I thought that The Old Grey Whistle Test always came from TV Centre. But no. Here’s one of the first television performances by Dire Straits, transmitted live from Manchester’s Studio A. ↩

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best of, red dwarf, red dwarf sets

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