History Radio / BleakExpectations

* WorstAid: Doctor Curesomebychance, whom Pip employs to save Flora Diesearly from her bizarre fainting disease. His attempts include crossing his fingers and hoping it went away, crossing Flora's fingers and hoping it went away, just generally going away, having a good long think about it, and... [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers beef]]. Predictably, Flora Diesearly dies.

Creator Mark Evans released a novelization of the first series in November 2012, accompanying the beginning of the final series. A TV SpiritualSuccessor, ''Series/TheBleakOldShopOfStuff'', was broadcast on BBC 2 in 2011.

* DistressedDamsel: Although they'll put up a fight (even against zombies) in other scenes, whenever Gently Benevolent decides to kidnap Pippa or Ripley they're kidnapped, as though there's no possibility of resistance. Ripley also requires being rescued from Russia even though nobody's holding her captive, although at that point she mainly wants Pip to prioritize her over fighting his nemesis.

* ChristmasCake: Pip, and Ripely's father, consider her beyond marriageable age at ''twenty-two''. Pip and Ripely end up hitched all the same.

* NarratingTheObvious: NecessaryWeasel for a radio show, of course, the characters occasionally tell each other exactly what's going on right in front of them. Mostly averted by having the narrator do it, though.

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: Mr. Benevolent finds a volcanic dessert (sic) island filled with them, and then transfers the brains of Harry's ninety-three ex-wives into them.

** At the end of series three, we are introduced to the Harshsmackers, all five of whom serves the Benevolents. Come series four, there's only the Grimpunches, and the Harshsmackers are just gone. Though given what happened to their [[KillEmAll relatives]] the answer seems obvious...

* IllGirl: Flora Diesearly, whose fainting spells turn out to be the sign of a dread illness known technically as "Nonspecific Weakness".

* CrapsackWorld: The exploitation, repression, pestilence, and pollution of the early 1800's UpToEleven, with [[spoiler: Martians and zombies]] thrown in.

** Taken UpToEleven in the final ever episode. [[spoiler: Sir Philip describes how he, as he is now, was [[TimeTravel sent back in time]] to help his younger self by throwing himself in the universe-destroying machine, and then describes his final battle with Mr Benevolent, his gaining all the knowledge of the universe, and his ''actual death''. Even Sourquil says "Are you having me on?", but Sir Philip explains TheGrimReaper [[PosthumousNarration returned him to finish his story]], and now he must go, [[TearJerker and join Harry, Pippa and Ripely]]. Then it turns out he [[BackFromTheDead cheated the Reaper]], and [[MoodWhiplash now it's time for a Christmas party]]!]]

* SeasonFinale: Not only does each series' finale (from the second one on) involve a SaveTheWorldClimax from an OutsideGenreFoe (and ratchet the series' levels of RefugeInAudacity UpToEleven), but the characters are also [[MetaGuy more prone]] to LampshadeHanging and LeaningOnTheFourthWall. The GrandFinale even more so.

* {{Corpsing}}: You can hear some of the actors doing their best not to laugh through their lines from time to time.

* IncorruptiblePurePureness: Sweetly Delightful, to extremes Ripely finds [[TastesLikeDiabetes nauseating]].

--->'Til Isabella destroyed his brain!"