TV Comedy – Page 18

The Thick Red Line, Part One

Published 31st October 2021

Inspector Fowler at his desk, greeting the audience

How I experienced The Thin Blue Line originally is lost to the mists of time. Did I actually watch it on its first TX in 1995/6?

I can’t help but feel I must have done. But I have no memories of it. I was 14 when it first aired; I was probably too busy worrying about whether anybody would like to touch my testicles. No, my first real memory of watching the show was in 2004 – newly moved in with my girlfriend, and no longer worried about my testicles. I distinctly remember lying on her bed; we had no telly in the bedroom, so we just watched the DVD on her PC. I remember us both absolutely screaming in hysterics. It’s one of my fondest memories.

It perhaps explains why I can occasionally be so defensive about the show: however and whenever I first watched it, it’s now mine.

All of which means that my experience with the show is very much with the version released on DVD. And for Series 2, that version is really quite different from the originally transmitted versions of the show. Indeed, most of the episodes have at least three full minutes of additional material added. These extended versions were first released on VHS in 1997, and have become the generally familiar edits of these shows for most people over the years.¹ Indeed, for a fair amount of time, the original transmitted edits became genuinely obscure.

That is, until the BBC recently decided to upload the whole series to iPlayer. And sure enough, the iPlayer versions are the original broadcast versions, not the extended versions we’ve all been watching on DVD for years. Which gives us a nice easy way of seeing what the extra bits were on the VHS/DVD releases, without having to find off-airs from the time. It also gives us the chance to ask: is either edit clearly a superior version of the show?

Let’s find out. With this piece I’m assuming that people are most familiar with the DVD versions, so I’ve labelled things as [cut for broadcast/iPlayer], even though the broadcast versions were available first. All times are taken from the DVD versions. Programme synopses are taken from the Radio Times. Bad opinions are taken from my head.

[Read more →]

Let’s not discuss the bastardised widescreen versions sitting on Amazon Prime. Not today, anyway. ↩

Read more about...

edits, the thick red line, the thin blue line

“Your Cock-up, My Arse!”

Published 27th October 2021

TV Comedy

The problem with articles getting ever-more-complex on Dirty Feed is that sometimes, a quick video embedded within a piece of writing would be far more useful than 1000 words trying to explain what the bloody hell I’m on about. This issue reached a head recently with a complicated three-part article I’m currently working on, trying to compare the broadcast and DVD edits of a particular show.

Problem is: I can’t edit video. Not properly.

Time I learnt, then. So, what would be a suitable subject to have play with?

I feel publishing this is essentially a net gain for the internet.

Read more about...

the thin blue line

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

Published 24th October 2021

TV Comedy

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.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

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 →]

Read more about...

red dwarf

“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.

Read more about...

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 →]

Read more about...

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.

[Read more →]

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. ↩

Read more about...

fry & laurie

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. ↩

Read more about...

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.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

fry & laurie

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.

Read more about...

fry & laurie, i hate doing research

← Earlier posts

Later posts →