Home • About • Archives • Best Of • Subscribe

A Revised Schedule of Programmes

Published 25th May 2021

TV Comedy

One thing I’ve become vaguely obsessed with over the past year is how often the things that “everyone” knows about a TV show turn out to be incorrect. Of course, by “everyone”, I don’t actually mean everyone. The person on the street doesn’t mutter Brittas Empire TX dates as they go about their shopping. At least not in my local Tesco.

Somewhere which should know its Brittas Empire TX dates is epguides.com, mind you. Here is their page for the show, although I’ve screengrabbed the relevant section below, for reasons which will soon become apparent.

Series 1 Brittas Empire TX dates - don't worry, this is just for illustrative purposes, the actual information you need will be present in the body text

According to epguides.com, Series 1 of The Brittas Empire aired weekly from the 3rd January 1991, ending on the 14th February, skipping a week on the 31st. Wikipedia has the same details, as does The Brittas Empire Wiki. For complete transparency, seeing as I was writing for the site when it was published, Ganymede & Titan‘s guide has the same broad dates, but skips the 10th rather than the 31st; IMDB follows these latter dates too.

Every single guide mentioned above is wrong.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

, ,

How Journalism Works Part #274952

Published 10th July 2015

TV Comedy

So, a new series of The Brittas Empire is apparently in development.

The Mirror:

“The show ran for 53 episodes from 1991 to 1997 and regularly attracted nearly 10 million viewers.”

Mail Online:

“During its six-year run, some 53 episodes of the show were broadcast.”

The Express:

“At the height of its success, The Brittas Empire would draw an estimated 10 million viewers for the BBC, running for 53 episodes between 1991 and 1997.”

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,

Curse of the Dream Sequence

Published 7th August 2014

TV Comedy

Brittas asleep on the trainThe Brittas Empire: “Curse of the Tiger Women”
Written by: Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent
Produced by: Mike Stephens
Directed by: Christine Gernon
TX: 24th February 1997

This is the story of one of my least favourite endings to a sitcom ever. But to figure out what went wrong, we need to skip backwards three years…

In 1994, The Brittas Empire had a pretty incredible run. No less than seventeen episodes were broadcast1, across two series – and amongst those seventeen were some of the show’s very best episodes. Examples include “High Noon”, where the leisure centre is blown up on a sitcom budget (and largely convincingly, to boot); the audacious “The Last Day”, where they kill Brittas off, send him to heaven, and then resurrect him during his burial; and “Not A Good Day”, where… they chain Sebastian Coe to a railing and watch him suffer for half an hour.

[Read more →]

  1. Whilst the oft-quoted “only six episodes a year” for British sitcoms is overstated – check out Keeping Up Appearances or Drop the Dead Donkey – seventeen episodes was still pretty unusual. ↩

Read more about...

, ,

The Brittas Empire: The Trial

Published 13th November 2013

TV Comedy

CLERK: Gordon Welsley Brittas, you are charged that you did on the 13th of November 1992 murder Julio Escobido, Eduardo Ramierz, Juan Mendosa, Robert Penchard, Ian Trahern – also known as Big Gary – and Raymond Watts… That you did have in your possession controlled drugs of class A, namely five kilos of heroin and an unknown quantity of amphetamines, contrary to Section 4 of the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971.. and that you did unlawfully cause Grevious Bodily Harm to Alice Whitely, Grace Beatty, Agnes Swinton and Doreen Lavern-Smith, all of the Whitbury New Town Sunshine Retirement Home, contrary to the Offences of the Person Act 1861.

When The Brittas Empire returned for its third series at the beginning of 1993, it clearly wanted to grab the viewer. Instead of Brittas merely sitting in his office about to start the snowball rolling on another day of calamity, it had him up in the dock on charges of GBH, drug possession, and a murder or six. For most shows, perhaps that would have been enough of an attention-grabbing opener.

Not Brittas.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,

Erm… Just Scan It, Colin?

Published 6th July 2011

TV Comedy

Piss poor. But move on.

I presume it’s not just me who has a list of sitcoms they wish they’d been at recordings of. From Fawlty Towers to Blackadder to Men Behaving Badly, for me the list extends even to specific episodes of a series. The fact I will never see the Red Dwarf episode Back To Reality recorded pains me immensely.

Another sitcom on the list is the vastly underrated The Brittas Empire. A few years back, however, someone eBayed their audience ticket and leaflet given out at the show – and I now present this material which I have refused to allow to become ephemera. Click for bigger versions:

[Read more →]

Read more about...

, ,