There are, in general, two kinds of TV script books. The first is when the book is based on a draft of the script used in the actual production of the show, such as Father Ted: The Complete Scripts (Boxtree, 1999). The second is when they bodge together a load of transcripts and pretend it was something worth publishing, like with Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty (Penguin, 1998). Perhaps the former is more common than the latter, but damn, that Blackadder one still hurts.
Luckily, The Best of Men Behaving Badly (Headline, 2000) is one of the former, only losing points for not actually including every single episode… but to be fair, with 42 of them, that would have been a big ask. It also includes brilliant introductions to every included episode by Simon Nye, all of which make me want to sit down to tea with him and have a massive chat where we talk about exactly how comedy works.
As for the scripts themselves, they are very specifically described as the versions taken into rehearsals, and include plenty of juicy differences from the televised episodes. So juicy, in fact, that I kinda feel like writing a whole series of articles listing them all. While I try and figure out whether I can be bothered doing that, here’s one of my favourite revelations from the book.
The episode “Watching TV” from Series 6 has a bit of an odd ending as it stands. Here’s what was actually broadcast, on the 27th November 1997:
So as they’ve been watching Star Trek all episode, we do… a beaming-up joke. Which is both a bit crap, and doesn’t fit in with the world of Men Behaving Badly in the slightest.1 The show may be broad at times, but exploding garden sheds can happen in real life. This can’t.
The thing is, Simon Nye knows that. In his introduction to the episode in the script book, he says:
“Difficult endings, part 13: the last line we ended up with, ‘Beam us up, Scotty’ is all wrong, but it’s too late to change it now…”
But there’s a hint in the above: the broadcast version is the last line “we ended up with”. Which wasn’t what they actually took into rehearsal. Which means that the book preserves the originally intended final moments of the show:
Deborah turns the TV back on, in time to hear the end of the theme music for Star Trek. Tutting, rolling of eyes, etc. A silence.
TONY: That was good. What’s on next?
DEBORAH: No, we’re going to talk for a change.
She snatches the remote away and turns off the TV. They sit in silence, trying to think of something to say. A long silence.
DEBORAH/DOROTHY: Okay. / Go on, then.
Tony gratefully turns the TV on again. Gary comes in with the pizzas. They watch TV. Gary puts a Coke down on top of the TV, then tips it accidentally into the back of the set. It explodes, hugely. The smoke clears.
TONY: Well, we don’t watch much telly anyway…
I’d perhaps be wary of proclaiming the above to be the best ending of a sitcom episode ever, but it sure is better than what ended up being broadcast, with Tony’s final line being especially amusing after a whole episode of being slumped in front of the telly.
Sometimes, it’s all too easy to write past where you really should have stopped.
A version of this post was first published in the April issue of my monthly newsletter. But don’t bother signing up, I just killed it.
One of the non-Fegen/Norriss episodes of The Brittas Empire, “Body Language”, broadcast on the 12th March 1996, pulls a similar gag. That doesn’t work either. ↩
