A series of 39 short British TV comedy films, mostly produced in the 1980s and early 1990s but running intermittently until 2016. A retrospective was produced in 2005. The programmes were originally shown on Channel 4 (the first aired on the channel's opening night), though one season aired on The BBC and the most recent episode appeared on Gold.
Most episodes are standalone shorts, although some are connected, such as the two Famous Five parodies, and Bad News Tour / More Bad News. Many episodes are pastiches of one or more standard genres, for example British sex comedies (Dirty Movie), spaghetti westerns (A Fistful Of Travellers' Cheques, about British holidaymakers in Spain) or post-apocalyptic dramas (The Slags). As such, a lot of the humour is of the "clever" variety rather than the laugh-out-loud funny variety. Other episodes, such as Five Go Mad In Dorset and Five Go Mad On Mescalin are more direct parodies. Yet others, such as Bad News Tour and Eddie Monsoon, A Life are mockumentaries. The episodes are usually well shot in a cinematic, artistic style that echoes that of the genre in question.
The core cast was a group of alternative comedians including Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Peter Richardson, Robbie Coltrane, and Keith Allen. As a result, a lot of the episodes were heavily satirical in nature.
Led to the feature films The Supergrass, Eat the Rich, The Pope Must Die and Churchill: The Hollywood Years.
Many of the tropes used in pastiche episodes are exaggerated and parodied.
By the way, not related to the 1987 The Comic Strip animated series.
Includes examples of:
- Abandoned Area: Parodied in "Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown" when our heroes find the Docklands are being redeveloped.Bonehead: Where's all the wasteland and the disused factories, Foyle?Foyle: Where's all the rusty girders?Bonehead: Dammit, there's no puddles to run through!
- Affectionate Parody:
- Five Go Mad in Dorset was such a spot-on parody of The Famous Five that Enid Blyton's estate loved it.
- Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a mostly loving parody of the various cliches of 1970s detective shows (mainly the meandering plots interspersed with lots of pointless car chases, shooting and people shouting "Guv!" at each other). Specifically, the main detectives are basically loving rip-offs of The Professionals (The Bullshitters), Jack Regan from The Sweeney (Shouting George from "The Weeny"), and Jason King (Jason Bentley). It's less affectionate towards 1990s detective shows; the 1970s shows might be hokey, but they don't put people to sleep.
- Apathetic Teacher: The titular Susie is so disinterested in her small town life that she thinks nothing of telling her young pupils about polygamy as she lounges around the classroom in her bare feet.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In Didn't You Kill My Brother, gangster Sterling Moss talks about the day he's had - extortion, blackmail, pimping and loitering with intent.
- As Himself: Nicholas Parsons in Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, who is the target for assassination and the prize of a competition.
- Author Appeal:
- Peter Richardson was a huge fan of spaghetti westerns, which really comes out in A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques. In GLC: The Carnage Continues, he plays Lee Van Cleef as Tony Benn.
- Several episodes written by Adrian Edmondson feature his long-term work partner Rik Mayall in various stages of makeup and femininity, a trope often seen in their other works.
- Keith Allen co-wrote The Yob' and The Crying Game'', both of which involve football.
- Black Dude Dies First: In GLC: The Carnage Continues, Gary Beadle's character is the first one to die during the climactic shoot-out.
- Blackface: An in-universe example. In The Yob, Peter Wyngarde appears as a yob's father who attends a fancy dress party in blackface, while dressed as a Nazi.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: In Space Virgins From the Planet Sex the kidnapped earthmen are informed that they will not be referred to as sex slaves, although until every woman aboard the ship is pregnant they will be forced to have sex with those who have yet to conceive.
- Blah, Blah, Blah: Five Go Mad In Dorset features several scenes where characters walk past the members of the Famous Five muttering "Blah blah blah, stolen plans, blah blah blah, missing scientist, blah blah blah," and so forth, with only the "important" parts of the conversation breaking through the endless "blah blah blah".
- Bolivian Army Ending: A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques, where the ending is a homage/parody of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There is a wonderful pause before the ending where the viewer wonders whether it's really going to happen...
- Bumbling Henchmen Duo: Mig and Mog, the incompetent hitmen in Spaghetti Hoops assigned to kill the banker protagonist. They're so dense that they struggle to remember their previous victims.
- Cacophony Cover Up: Mr. Jolly of Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door hacks his victims to death with a meat cleaver while playing classic Tom Jones tunes to drown their cries.
- Casting Gag: The Strike and Red Nose of Courage both feature Rik Mayall playing a politician, a nod to his role in The New Statesman.
- Censorship by Spelling:
- In The Beat Generation:
Girl: I'm having my P-E-R-I-O-D.
Boy: Pernod?- In Susie, the titular teacher accuses one of her pupils of being pernickety.
Pupil: How do you spell pernickety, miss?Susie: F-U-C-K-O-double-F, okay?! - Chained Heat: Queen of the Wild Frontier features a pair of escaped convicts (one white, one black) handcuffed together in a clear nod to The Defiant Ones.
- Christmas Special: Wild Turkey was broadcast on Christmas Eve 1992. It features a married couple about to enjoy a Christmas dinner, when their turkey comes alive and takes them hostage.
- Circus Brat: Red Nose of Courage tells the story of John Major, who runs away from the circus to become an accountant and leads a double life as a politician by day and a clown by night. In reality, Major's father was a circus performer.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- A brilliant lampshading in Five Go Mad in Dorset, when the Five see the villains must have vanished into a secret passage and are wondering how to open it. "I'll try tugging this branch three times!" says Julian, selecting a random branch and doing so, which of course works.
- In Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown the most effective detective turns out to be Jason Bentley, whose technique is to drive around at random sipping claret, yet always manages to end up in exactly the right place to solve the mystery.
- Creepy Housekeeper: The titular Consuela, who is a parody of Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca.
- Crosscast Role: Robbie Coltrane appears in Five Go Mad in Dorset as a female shopkeeper and in Five Go Mad on Mescaline as Janie's mother.
- Deal with the Devil: In Demonella the devil (Jennifer Saunders) offers a record producer success, power and fame in exchange for his mother's recipe for chicken soup.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The Enid Blyton Famous Five parodies lampoon the racist, sexist, and classist elements in the original works, such as having the Five mock a black baggage handler ("That man looks foreign!" "Yes, I expect his name's Golliwog!") and comment on how the villains are thick-lipped and bearded or have lower-class accents.
- Deliberately Monochrome:
- The Beat Generation is shot this way in keeping with the French New Wave style, complete with jazz score.
- The Hunt for Tony Blair in keeping with the fifties noir vibe.
- Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: In South Atlantic Raiders, one of the characters is trapped in a prison cell with a huge prisoner who says, threateningly, "Oh dear, you're going to get a very sore botty." (In the original broadcast version the hero takes one look at the big guy's genitalia and cries "oh, God, no!", but the line appears to have been cut from the DVD release.) However, the prisoner then offers the hero the choice of being "the man or the woman", and then our hero escapes before he can be raped.
- Dreadful Musician: All the members of Bad News: Vim (vocals and lead guitar), Den (rhythm guitar), Spider (drums), and Collin (bass) are individually examples of this, as well as the band being self described as "the worst rock and roll band in the world". There were two episodes made about them and they also released an album, which was mostly the band bickering and included one and a half takes of the worst version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" as well as some deliberately awful original songs.
- Dying Dream: Les Dogs has a man crashing his car at the very start of the episode; he then goes to a surreal wedding where he seduces the bride, starting a 10-year affair. Just as they are about to have sex, her eyes turn into headlights —there is a screeching sound and the film cuts to black.
- Evil Matriarch: The Moss twins' mother in Didn't You Kill My Brother? She appears quite sweet and dotty, but is actually quite ruthless. She casually asks Sterling if he's killed his father yet.
- Exact Eavesdropping: In Five Go Mad In Dorset, the Famous Five overhear two villains conspiring: "Blah Blah Blah kidnapped scientist blah blah. Blah blah Kneecap Hill blah blah. Blah blah atom bomb blah." That's right - the villains actually say "Blah blah".
- Fake Band: Bad News actually performed real shows (including opening for Iron Maiden) and released two albums - Bad News and Bootleg. The former contains a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that hit No. 44 in the UK Singles Chart. The latter is largely a spoken word album consisting of the band arguing. In 1989, a CD reissue of their first album combined tracks from both albums; 1992's The Cash in Compilation compiled many of the same tracks.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: Consuela. Happy ending, credits roll, needle zip, more stuff, sad ending, credits roll.
- Fauxreigner: War features a group of Mexican bandits who are in fact Englishmen.
- Feuding Families: Les Dogs features a wedding where both families hate each other. Eventually, the tension erupts into a full-on Wild West shoot-out.
- Fingore: In Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, Mr. Lovebucket cuts one of his henchman's fingers off with shears for writing "Mr. Lovebucket is a wanker" on the window of his car.
- Fluffy the Terrible: "Jayne" is the title character from Mr Jolly Lives Next Door - he's a hitman.
- Football Hooligans: The Yob sees a pretentious music producer and a working class Arsenal supporter swap places through science.
- Fruit of the Loon: Jennifer Saunders as "Meryl Streep" as Mrs. Scargill in The Strike is never seen without an orange. Why? No reason, it's just...part of her character.
- Gargle Blaster: In Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, Rik and Ade brew their own beer, with Fairy Liquid added for fizz.
- High-Class Cannibal: In "Eat The Rich", a disgruntled waiter kills the wealthy clientele of the high-end restaurant he works at and feeds them to the other patrons.
- Historical Recreation: "Summer School" is an early send-up of the genre. The premise for the title institution is an attempt at historical recreation of a Stone Age/Bronze Age settlement that ends disastrously when one of the students is mistaken for having died and an attempt to burn his body on a funeral pyre leads the entire settlement to be burned to the ground.
- Hot as Hell: The titular Demonella. She's played by a young Jennifer Saunders wearing a corset, after all.
- I'll Take Two Beers Too: A Fistful of Travellers' Checks does it with steaks. One of the cowboy wannabes orders two steaks and his friend immediately also orders two steaks in an attempt to out-macho him. This escalates until they are ordering ten steaks apiece.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Spoofed in Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown, when Shouting George's aiming skills stop working because he's shooting at a Nineties TV detective who uses different conventions.
- Instrumental Theme Tune: The series had a brief, cheery organ passage, played against a title card depicting an atomic bomb with "Have A Nice Day" spray-painted on the side falling toward a dot on a road map marked "You Are Here".
- Jewish Mother: Miriam Margolyes plays the main character's mother in Demonella. She constantly nags him to move back in with her and get rid of his secretary, whom he has a thing for. She also makes chicken soup so good the Devil wants the recipe.
- Just Plane Wrong: In Four Men in a Plane, our heroes take off for the middle east in a four-engined airliner, but when they land it's only got two engines. It's not the plane of the title, by the way — that is a single-engined light aircraft.
- Latin Lover: Julio in Consuela (Or, The New Mrs. Saunders). He's Counsuela's son who is installed as waiter against Jessica's wishes and embodies the stereotypes by being flirty and personal. He's even introduced with Spanish guitar music.
- Left It In: In More Bad News, Vim/Alan breaks the fourth wall and threatens to sue the producers if they leave in a particularly embarrassing item about him. Unfortunately for him he later gets beaten up and left in a coma, so the item stays in.
- Let's Meet the Meat: Wild Turkey is about a couple's Christmas turkey that comes alive and seeks freedom.
- London Gangster: Didn't You Kill My Brother? stars Alexei Sayle as Carl and Sterling Moss, gangster twins loosely modeled on the Kray twins. During The '70s, they masterminded a string of protection rackets, gambling clubs and dress hire shops.
- Lower-Class Lout: The Yob sees a music producer undergo a transformation into a football hooligan. He becomes a crude, violent, drunken, racist thug.
- Luck-Based Search Technique:
- In Five Go Mad In Dorset, the titular protagonists open a concealed door by yanking three times on a random tree-branch.
- In Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the most effective detective turns out to be Jason Bentley, whose technique is to drive around at random sipping claret, yet always manages to end up in exactly the right place to solve the mystery.
- Mars Needs Women — The premise behind Space Virgins From the Planet Sex is that the last man on an alien world is too old to procreate but they have been lucky enough to find the voyager probe with its illustration of what naked human look like and it seems their men will suffice.
- Mistaken Message:Mr Jolly Lives Next Door features an escort agency accidentally receiving a letter meant for a hitman. The message? "Take out Nicholas Parsons".
- Mockumentary: Eddie Monsoon, A Life is a mockumentary about an insane, failed TV host.
- Morally Bankrupt Banker: Spaghetti Hoops is about an Italian who banker goes on the run after embezzling $200 million. This was loosely based on scandals in the Vatican.
- Mystery Magnet: Lamented by Dick in Five Go Mad in Dorset. This greatly upsets Julian, who lives for their adventures.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed:
- Didn't You Kill My Brother? is about twin gangsters and their mother, an obvious parody of the Kray twins.
- The comedian Steve Wild in Oxford was based on Steve Martin, whom Peter Richardson and Pete Richens met. They liked him, but were surprised by how seriously he took life and his work.
- The Crying Game features an Irish talk-show host named Wiggy, a parody of Terry Wogan.
- Nonchalant Dodge: From Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown:Spanker: What are you going to do about it, old man?Jason Bentley: Well first I'm going to lean this way... [dodges punch] lean that way... [dodges punch] have a glass of wine... [elbows Spanker as he drinks] and then scratch my knee. [knees him in groin]
- Not Afraid to Die: In Oxford, the gun-toting bad guy is confronted by a group of elderly professors who aren't afraid to die because they're all over 60.
- Obfuscating Disability:
- In Dirty Movie, Rik Mayall's cinema managager Terry Toadstool has his wife push him out of the house in a wheelchair to the car and to the cinema, all the while he shouts "Ow, I'm disabled".
- In Four Men in a Plane, Mayall's character pretends to be disabled so he can get driven round the airport.
- Offscreen Teleportation: In Consuela (Or, The New Mrs. Saunders), Counsuela has a creepy habit of magically appearing to Jessica, even while she's swimming in the lake.
- The Oner:
- Wild Turkey opens with an uninterrupted take lasting just shy of two minutes, which starts as a close-up of Sue hanging up Christmas decorations and nicely develops as Jim returns home. The first cut only comes when we see that Turkey is alive.
- Four Men in a Plane opens with a 111-second, uninterrupted take in Stansted Airport's main concourse that introduces the main characters.
- Orphaned Punchline: This joke Mayall tells in Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door:And she said, "Well, I don't think you're a fishmonger. I think you've done a plop in the wrong lavatory".
- Painful Transformation: Parodied in The Yob when the main character, a yuppie music producer, transforms into a football hooligan.
- Parody Episode: Five Go Mad in Dorset and its sequels parody The Famous Five; The Bullshitters - Roll Out the Gunbarrel is a parody of The Professionals; Consuela, (or The New Mrs Saunders) is a parody of Rebecca; The Yob is a parody of The Fly (1986); and Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase is a parody of The Silence of the Lambs. "Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" parodies an entire genre, as it riffs on cop shows from the glam camp of Jason King and the 'fast cars, guns and shouting macho men' action thrillers of The Sweeney and The Professionals from the 1970s, to the "broody kitchen sink psychological dramas" of 1990s shows like Spender. They even throw in a bit of The Singing Detective.
- Polar Opposite Twins: In Didn't You Kill My Brother?, Sterling and Carl Moss are in many ways parodies of opposing political positions - opportunistic capitalism and idealistic socialism. The rehabilitated, self-educated Carl is community-focused and wants to build a better world, whereas his unrepentant criminal brother Sterling is simply interested in profit.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: The French and Saunders-penned "Consuela (or, The New Mrs Saunders)" feels like a precursor to the parodies on their own series.
- Pop-Star Composer: Kate Bush wrote and performed the instrumental score and theme song to GLC: The Carnage Continues. Said theme song is a parody of the Shaft theme, only it's about Ken Livingston.
- The Precious, Precious Car: In Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, Mr. Lovebucket's abiding love is his Citroën DS car. It gets rammed into and a telephone pole falls on it.
- Professional Killer: In Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, Peter Cook plays the titular Mr. Jolly, a contract killer who lives next door to the main characters and spends his days carving up his victims. A gangster hires him to kill Nicholas Parsons.
- Putting the Band Back Together: More Bad News sees the titular metal band reunite for a one-off gig at The Monsters of Rock Festival in Castle Donington. Lead singer Vim Fuego works as a painter/decorator and plays some low-key gigs in wine bars; drummer Spider Webb has settled down with a family; rhythm guitarist Den Dennis has been working for Vim’s painting/decorating business; and bassist Colin Grigson went back to college and works as a bank clerk.
- Real Dreams are Weirder: From Didn't You Kill My Brother?:I had a dream, my friends, oh yes, I had a dream — then suddenly my dream changed, and I was standing in a swimming pool full of small brown puppies — and each of the puppies had the face of a 19th-century politician — and then one of the puppies, that had the face of Lord Palmerston, suddenly started screaming at me, "Where's the spoons, where's the spoons, where's the bloody spoons?"...Any questions?
- Reformed Criminal: In Didn't You Kill My Brother, gangster Karl Moss gets an education while in prison and becomes Britain's most qualified criminal, with 428 educational awards, 147 O levels, 41 A levels, and a Liverpool accent. Upon leaving prison, he tries to help a group of youths who are behind a string of bicycle thefts.
- Rockumentary: Bad News Tour and More Bad News follow the worst metal band in Britain. The team were inspired by Mark Kidel's 1976 BBC documentary So You Wanna Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star? that followed The Kursaal Flyers around Scotland and northeast England.
- Russian Roulette: War features a group of characters engaged in this in a parody of The Deer Hunter.
- Sad Clown: Subverted in Oxford. Lenny Henry plays American comedian Steve Wild, who is bored, listless, melancholy and takes comedy very seriously. It turns out that he's a spy for the KGB and this persona is just an act.Steve: Well, the professor, he recruited me in 1968. I went to Russia for assessment and because of my natural comic timing, I was sent to the KGB Comedy Training Camp in Minsk. When I returned to the West, I realised, like so many other Soviet-trained comics, that if my cover as a comedian was gonna hold, not only did it have to be hilariously funny, but a paranoid, manic-depressive as well.
- Sequel Episode:
- Five Go Mad in Dorset was so successful it got two follow-ups - Five Go Mad on Mescalin and Five Go to Rehab.
- Bad News Tour was followed by More Bad News.
- The Strike has a joke where Charles Bronson plays Ken Livingstone in a film about the TLC. Sure enough, this was followed up in GLC: The Carnage Continues.
- Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown brings back Bonehead and Foyle from The Bullshitters: Roll Out the Gunbarrel.
- The special Four Men in a Car was followed two years later by Four Men in a Plane.
- Serial Killer: Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase features a Hannibal Lecter parody called Dr. Genghis. The titular Desmond tries to be one, but fails miserably.
- So Unfunny, It's Funny: A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques had the following "joke":Cafe Owner: Aw, come on guys. Ten steaks each? Are you joking?Miguel: Do we look like comedians?Cafe Owner exhales wordlessly.Carlos: What do you call a man with his ding-a-ling in a piece of melon?Cafe Owner: I don't know.Carlos: Christopher.Miguel laughs raucously. No-one else reacts.Carlos: See what I mean? Now get the steaks amigo!
- Soundtrack Dissonance: In Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, the eponymous and misnamed Mr. Jolly was a hit man who would invite his victims to his flat and then play upbeat Tom Jones records very loudly — to drown out the sound of their screams.
- Special Guest: Among those who made guest appearances were Kate Bush, Peter Capaldi, Peter Cook, Elvis Costello, Lenny Henry, Paul McCartney, Ozzy Osbourne, Leslie Phillips, Miranda Richardson and Peter Wyngarde.
- Spit Take: A woman does this in The Yob when the protagonist asks a waiter to get her moist.
- Studio Chatter: Bad News' debut album Bad News has more of this and Hilarious Outtakes than finished music.
- Take That!: Lots.
- The Five Go Mad... episodes aren't particularly kind to the works of Enid Blyton.
- The Bullshitters: Roll Out the Gunbarrel portrays Martin Shaw as a pretentious luvvie. Keith Allen and Peter Richardson were annoyed at how he'd view The Professionals as beneath him.
- Strike parodies Hollywood in general by featuring a writer's gritty Kitchen Sink Drama about the 1984 Miner's Strike gradually become an over-the-top melodrama starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep when Hollywood adapts it.
- In Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, Nicholas Parsons is so appalled by Rik and Ade's behaviour that he rings his agent and asks if they're Terry Scott fans.
- While Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is more of an Affectionate Parody to the 1970s cop show it riffs on, it's less affectionate towards the 1990s cop shows it spoofs. In particular, the dour Northern copper who's constantly Wangsting about the fact that "there's no more ships on the Tyne" is an overt piss-take of Spender, a contemporary cop show which starred Jimmy Nail pretty much doing exactly the same thing, except played entirely seriously. His fate at the end is to be transformed from a headlining detective to an anonymous uniformed officer who is apparently an extra on The Bill, which is treated by all as a Fate Worse than Death ("Shoot me!" "Oh, you will be, mate... on tape.")
- Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase parodies The Silence of the Lambs, as well as other psychological thrillers based around insane serial killers, by contrasting the flashy, glamourised Hollywood take on a serial killer with the squalid reality of a deeply disturbed man who genuinely needs help.
- The Hunt for Tony Blair is pretty affectionate to the old 1950s-1960s style Film Noirs it parodies, but is not particularly affectionate towards Tony Blair himself.
- Teleporter Accident: The Yob parodies The Fly (1986) by having a scientist accidentally merged with a soccer hooligan. Also, at the end of the episode, a macho stud ends up with the lower body of a tomcat.
- This Is Reality: Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown had Shouting George shooting at Spanker and missing, whereupon Spanker points out that reality has now taken over the Cop Show genre and you can't rely on Improbable Aiming Skills any more. Promptly subverted when a sixties policeman points out that the Rule of Funny is still in effect.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist:
- The group's take on The Famous Five depicts them as arrogant, gluttenous, elitist, entitled, racist wankers.
- The titular Susie is an unfaithful wife, a negligent mother, an apathetic teacher and an all-round selfish bitch.
- Mayall and Edmonsdon's characters from Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door, who go from drunken louts to murderers.
- The four salesmen in Four Men in a Car and Four Men in Plane are arrogant, obnoxious, selfish and highly-strung wankers.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Many episodes. Not a good program for emetophobes.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Eddie Monsoon of Eddie Monsoon – A Life?. A drunken, drug-addicted, self-destructive television presenter who is interviewed while in rehab. His star has fallen so badly that when he interviews random people in the street, none of them even know who he is (the sole exception being his uncle).
- Yellowface: War has Robbie Coltrane as a Japanese businessman-cum-prison warden named Harry Kiri in a parody of Tenko's Major Yamauchi if he were a capitalist.
