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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.

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  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. ↩

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The Topic I Never Thought I Would Write About On Dirty Feed

Published 15th April 2014

TV Comedy

So, the BBC has an interview with Ricky Gervais.

(Sorry.)

It’s about the second series of his “sitcom” Derek – and if you think I’m being mean with the scare quotes, Gervais himself invites them in the interview. Those who know me may be absolutely astounded to know that I have an awful lot of issues with what he says. But let’s skip past all the disability stuff, and just focus on the bit where he insults 50% of the population instead:

“The comic is keen to get under the skin of those “real” people – and one of his favourite themes is ‘men acting childishly’, which he describes as ‘my weakness’.

‘They just should know better, men don’t grow up – that’s always the theme I’ve had, women as adults and men as boys. Women don’t act like that! Proper stupidity is fascinating.'”

Really? Women don’t act like that? Bollocks. Utter horseshit. Some of the most fun times in my life have been spent with women behaving absolutely ridiculously.1. I can’t think of a more boring way to write female characters than “women as adults”. Not allowing women to be silly is not only a fairly fundamental flaw when it comes to writing comedy, but it makes you wonder exactly how Gervais sees the world.

It all reminds me of the very weakest parts of Men Behaving Badly. Gary and Tony get to do all the stupid fun stuff, and then we cut back to Dorothy and Deborah being sensible and tedious. The best moments were when Nye realised the women could be ridiculous too, and that just didn’t happen often enough.

If you want a sitcom that’s an antidote to all this crap, may I recommend Mom? Two lead female characters, doing things that are as stupid and as idiotic and as hilarious as can be. Real characters, not “sensible women” ciphers.

It’s not just how I like my comedy. It’s how people are.

  1. Shut it. ↩

Sitcom Recording Leaflets: Birds of a Feather

Published 6th March 2014

TV Comedy

From the series of “articles” which brought you the programme leaflets for The Brittas Empire, Every Silver Lining, and new Yes Prime Minister, comes this: the last episode in the series of the ITV revival of Birds of a Feather, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.

RX: 24th November 2013, Studio 2, The London Studios.
TX: 6th March 2014, ITV, 8:30pm.

Birds of a Feather leaflet - Cover
Birds of a Feather leaflet - Inside


As I was at the recording of the episode, I can let you into a little secret – they shot the last scene of the episode a number of different ways:

  • Firstly, as broadcast, with Sharon and Tracey just sitting on the sofa realising Dorien is at the door
  • Secondly, with Tracey getting up, opening the door, and Dorien just standing outside.
  • Thirdly, with Tracey answering the door, Dorien stepping in, and them both hugging… to the audience going “Ahhhhhhh”.

Bearing in mind the episode was already too over-sentimental and syrupy at times, you can imagine what I thought of that last ending. (For the record, I also predicted they’d use the ending as broadcast.) Also worthy of note: the episode as we saw recorded didn’t have the final outside shot with everyone saying goodnight. Do I spy a last-minute fix in the edit, perhaps?

For the truly anal amongst you, at this session they also re-recorded the first scene of Episode 2, where Sharon sits down with a nice cup of hot chocolate and is interrupted by the phone. (Who knows what ludicrous catastrophe made the first version unusable?) They also recorded a version with her scraping shavings of Dairy Milk onto the top of it, but used a second take which didn’t include this. Why not impress your friends with this fascinating piece of trivia?

Anyway, I’m always interested in these programme leaflets, so if you have any hanging around, please scan them in and stick them up somewhere. I’ll give you a great big girly kiss on the bottom.

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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.

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Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era

Published 23rd October 2013

TV Comedy

“On the 22nd Nov 93, an event was to happen of such earth-shattering proportions that it was to shatter the earth to its very proportions…”

Or maybe that should be 4th Apr 94. For that was the day Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era was first broadcast on BBC1: a spoof documentary featuring your favourite loveable Radio Fab DJs… acting not quite so loveably. Not that “spoof documentary” feels like an adequate description for this trawl through four decades of British pop culture – which, with absolutely no hyperbole, is one of the funniest, most affecting, most beautifully made pieces of comedy I have ever seen. If Norbert Smith – a Life is the best thing Harry Enfield ever did solo, then this is the best work Enfield and Whitehouse produced together.

Following on from the broadcast, the special was released on VHS: and rather than just the usual odd bit of music substitution, it was actually an entirely different, longer edit – a full five minutes longer, in fact. If you know me or this site even slightly, you can probably see where this is leading. So join me now, as I detail every single last difference between the two versions – and if you never saw the VHS edit, enjoy some extra moments of pure joy.

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On Television.

Published 27th April 2013

Other TV / TV Comedy

From a piece on the Red Bee Media blog, “Is the Golden Age of TV Here To Stay?”:

“What’s behind the rise of the Golden age of television and how are consumer habits tuning into it?

There has been much talk recently about how we are experiencing a ‘Golden Age’ for television. There’s certainly no doubting the quality of the programmes being produced; from Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Walking Dead (to name but a few) in the US to the likes of Downton Abbey, Sherlock and Dr Who right here at home.

But what is it that has made this such a great time for TV and, as business models and viewer behaviours continue to change, how much longer can we expect it to continue?”

Now, I don’t really want to go down the road of debating whether we actually are in a golden age of television, or whether that was in the 60s, or whether it all went downhill once the resolution went past 30 lines. Such discussions have been had endlessly. What I want to examine is how the debate here – and elsewhere – is framed.

Breaking Bad. Mad Men. The Walking Dead. Downton Abbey. Sherlock. Doctor Who. All given as examples of a current golden age of television. And all six examples are drama. Television is not just drama.

Television is sitcom. Television is game shows. Television is chat shows. Television is news. Television is documentaries. Television is sport. Television is entertainment shows. And television is many other things, stretching outside genre boundaries. Whenever this debate comes up, drama is nearly always the focus; and of course, it’s hugely important. But by ignoring everything else that television is, you diminish it. Great TV is so much more than just drama.

The latest series of Saturday Night Takeaway was at times absolutely extraordinary; clearly made by a production team which put stupid amounts of effort into the show. Pointless could be just another mediocre afternoon quiz show; but a ludicrously clever format and the Armstrong & Osman double act turn it into fantastic telly. Peppa Pig is one of the funniest and most heartwarming shows on television, with a line in dry humour a lot of adult drama would kill for. All important. All part of how television can be great.

Discussions about drama on television and the rise of Netflix and the like are hugely valuable. But it’s important to frame that debate as just one part of the wider picture. We mustn’t forget the rest. It all needs attention. It should all be the best it possibly can be. And it should all be appreciated when it is.

Blackadder II: Extended Theme

Published 8th February 2013

Music / TV Comedy

Every so often, a DVD release gives you a lovely surprise. Sometimes, that surprise may be quickly skipped, with most people not even noticing it.

Take, for instance, Blackadder II – and specifically, the opening title music:

Delightfully, the DVD menu of The Complete Blackadder has a clean, extended version used for the main menu of the Blackadder II disc, giving you a good 15 seconds or so extra. Anyone want to have a listen? Of course you do.

[mejsaudio src=”https://dirtyfeed.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BlackadderII-Extended.mp3″]

Download Blackadder II: Extended Theme (1.7MB MP3, 0:52)

AWESOME EXTRA ELECTRIC GUITAR NONSENSE. Somebody, somewhere, went to the effort of tracking down Howard Goodall’s original recording, rather than just lazily ripping it from one of the episodes. Whoever you are: I love you.

(Incidentally, the Blackadder Remastered boxset does not have the extended version of the theme – just a slightly awkward looped version, with sound effects clearly indicating it was ripped from the episode Beer. One of many, many sloppy things about that boxset, but don’t get me started on that one.)

So, my question: anyone got any other examples of extended versions of music only showing up in the DVD menus of film or television releases?

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Sitcom Recording Leaflets: New Yes, Prime Minister

Published 16th January 2013

TV Comedy

As regular readers of this site will know, I have lots of little obsessions – and one of the more obscure ones is the leaflets that used to be handed out to the audience at sitcom recordings. I’ve already detailed such little leaflets for episodes of The Brittas Empire and Every Silver Lining, but sadly these just doesn’t seem to be made any more – I have certainly never been given any since I started attending audience recordings in 1999.

Up until last year, that is. Imagine my delight when I went to see the first episode of the new Yes, Prime Minister series recorded, and a good old-fashioned leaflet was waiting on each audience member’s chair. Whether this was a holdover from the series’s roots as a stage production, or simply because Gareth Gwenlan and Jonathan Lynn like doing things the old way, it was a lovely little souvenir to take home to remember the recording.

Anyone care for a scan?

Yes Prime Minister Episode 1 leaflet - Cover
Yes Prime Minister Episode 1 leaflet - Inside


Lovely stuff. I wish every sitcom recording still did this. I’m still on the lookout for more of these, by the way – if you have any hidden away in drawers, why not hunt them out and scan them in?

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Oh, a magic door! Well, why didn’t you say?

Published 6th December 2012

Computing / TV Comedy

Kryten uses a BBC Micro

It is a truism that fandom has hugely changed over the last twenty years. My favourite example of this is Red Dwarf Series 1: it was only released on VHS in 1993, five years after broadcast. Before then, it was only passed around as grotty nth-generation off-airs. Meanwhile, Red Dwarf X was released on DVD a week-and-a-half after the final episode – and on iTunes throughout the run.

Another thing changed from that time is public domain software libraries. Gone are the days where you could order floppy disc upon floppy disc full of fascinating stuff, and have to wait excitedly for it to arrive. I distinctly remember wanting to order nearly every disc from that BBC Micro public domain library; I could only afford a handful. Now, everything is just a click away.

Out of the whiz-bang demos and, erm, mouse drivers, one disc in particular I did manage to order sticks in the memory. That was BBC PD Disc #165 (formerly a Mad Rabbit PD disc), Red Dwarf Documents – “Answers to ‘Frequently asked’ questions about Red Dwarf, a complete episode guide and other text files of interest to the Red Dwarf fan.” (Proper Red Dwarf fans will realise that the disc number should clearly have been #169.)

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