Abigoliah: Hello there. This is the new podcast All British Comedy Explained. I’m Abigoliah Schamaun and with me is Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello there. Okay, so we’re going to talk about comedy.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Specifically British comedy television series. Because despite the fact that I’ve lived in the UK for now, just over 11 years, I am woefully ignorant on British television.
Tom: So tell me about growing up in America and watching American comedy.
Abigoliah: So I grew up in the Midwest, in Ohio. And on American television, there’s a channel called Nick at Night, which airs all older sitcoms, right, sitcoms from days gone by.
Tom: So, you’re watching The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy and Gilligan’s Island…?
Abigoliah: Yeah, and I loved that channel. I have been told from my siblings it now plays sitcoms from our childhood, which I’m like, that’s no, it’s supposed to play the Dick Van Dyke Show. So as far as, like older sitcoms like, like the OGs, I Love Lucy was by far my favourite show in the world. One time they did an I Love Lucy marathon, and my dad taped all of them for me so I could go back and watch them. I think she’s a comedy genius. She was who I wanted to be when I grew up. She was never a stand up comedian, which is what I became. But, you know, I tried, I tried. And then as far as more modern sitcoms, like as a teenager, I really liked The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I am a Saved by the Bell person. I watched that religiously growing up. There was something on television called TGIF. Thank God It’s Friday, which I can’t remember what channel that was on, but that showed all of the sitcoms for like families. Maybe it was on ABC. That sounds like an ABC thing. So that’s like your Step by Step, your Growing Pains your Full House – everywhere where there is a dad who is widowed and is now raising children with someone who’s not their initial spouse. And then when I got older, there was Must-See TV. So it was all about broadcast back then. This is this is I think I’m quite young. I’m turning 40 in November, but I’m like, listen, kids, there used to be something called television channels. It was very different.
Tom: Programmes started at particular times. You had to be there to watch them. Otherwise you missed them.
Abigoliah: Yeah. NBC’s must See TV, and that was Seinfeld and Friends and they were both on at the same time. And either you were Seinfeld person or you were a friends person. You had to pick an allegiance. I was always outwardly a Seinfeld person, which I am truly a Seinfeld person. But I do like Friends. Everyone liked Friends. People pretend they didn’t, but we all freaking loved it. And then as I got older you know, 30 Rock, which happened while I was in college. And I really did like Parks and Rec, which I recently watched. I actually kind of stopped watching comedy when I moved to New York. For the first year I was there, I didn’t have a TV. Oh, and then I was just out in New York.
Tom: Is that when you’re beginning to start a career as a stand up comedian?
Abigoliah: I wasn’t starting, I was going to school for acting. So for quite a few years I was just like doing that. So I would like go to plays or, you know, go out with friends. I wasn’t like at home watching television. I feel like when it comes to sitcoms, I mostly think about growing up in rural Ohio and like the television was a centrepiece of the house, like everyone sat down to watch Must-See TV or think, you know, TGIF. Those nights were, like, the big television nights and again, that’s like not a thing anymore. That you know, what about you? What are your big influences growing up?
Tom: So I was growing up a little bit earlier than you. I was growing up in the 80s. And that’s a really exciting time because as we will come to quite quickly, in fact in the 70s, everything had kind of become a bit dull. And I will get into this in episode two, in fact. But then there’s this alternative comedy explosion in the 80s, which was kicked off, actually, by a British guy who’d seen stand up comedy – I think it was the Comedy Store in New York and thought, well, London should have one of these. And so opened it. So I’m growing up watching The Young Ones and Saturday Live. And also things like Monty Python and Fawlty Towers you could get on VHS, you could rent them on VHS tapes. So I remember the first four episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus series two were on one tape, and then the next three were on the next tape. And then my local video shop just stopped getting them.
Abigoliah: Oh no!
Tom: So I know those first seven episodes really well because I rented those tapes multiple times. I was just so hungry to get more of it. And then eventually they got repeated and I was able to watch them. I’m also watching this stage, things like Harold Lloyd and the Marx Brothers – old movies being shown on TV. There was a regular slot on BBC two where they’d show these half hour Harold Lloyd compilations.
Abigoliah: Oh, cool.
Tom: So all that kind of stuff fed in, and then I really wanted to do some of this myself. So when I’m at university, I am part of the comedy group there, and we start sending material in to BBC Radio Four’s Week Ending, which doesn’t exist anymore. But was this like proving ground for new writers, because it was a satirical sketch show that was written and recorded in the week of its broadcast. So you literally come in on a Tuesday and throw ideas around for what had been in the news that week, and then it would be recorded on, I think, Friday morning and go out Friday evening. So that was exciting.
Abigoliah: So that’s like your own little SNL pattern as far as write-produce. That had to be really fun.
Tom: Yeah. And and then I got seduced by improvisation and did lots and lots of improvisation.
Abigoliah: Easier!
Tom: Well, in some ways.
Abigoliah: I did improv for a long time.
Tom: And our improvisation got as far as a TV pilot, but no further than that. And then since then, lots of playwriting and some of which are very broad comedies and others are more drama based.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I’ve seen your plays. They’re wonderful. They’re wonderful.
Tom: But yeah, all this stuff fed in and in particular those like 70s shows like Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, sitcoms like Dad’s Army, which was endlessly repeated. We’ll come to that at some point. I’m not quite sure when, but there’s a whole kind of collection of comedies written by a loose collection of people who are all kind of overlapping. And Dad’s Army was the first one, and it’s the one that keeps getting repeated. And others, for various reasons, don’t get shown so often.
Abigoliah: When you say it keeps getting repeated, do you mean it keeps getting repeated on air or people keep.
Tom: No, no, it’s getting repeated. Yeah. They fill the schedules with old episodes…
Abigoliah: I thought you meant it keeps having, like, people keep writing on it like it’s been going for…
Tom: No, no, no.
Abigoliah: Okay, cool.
Tom: No. Well, Dad’s Army was about old men. And that does set a certain shelf life for the number of episodes you’re going to be able to produce.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Fair enough. They just keep having to bring in new, old men every 20 years. Just like. Yeah.
Tom: It’s like MASH, which famously ran longer than the war it depicted.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Yeah. Great. The first play I ever saw in in Dayton, Ohio. And it was a one woman play called Shirley Valentine. And I was in the second grade, so I think I must have been 7 or 8. Way too young to be watching. If you’ve never seen Shirley Valentine, it’s about a woman who’s in an unhappy marriage and has a vision of going to Greece. But Loretta Swit.
Tom: Oh my God.
Abigoliah: Played Shirley Valentine.
Tom: With the North of England accent?
Abigoliah: No. Oh wait, maybe she did. I don’t remember an accent.
Tom: Pauline Collins did the film version, which is tremendous.
Abigoliah: I’ve never watched the film version.
Tom: It’s hard to get. I’ve got a really ropey DVD copy, but it’s a beautiful film and it’s a wonderful script.
Abigoliah: My mom once gave it to me and I don’t think I ever watched it. I can’t, I can’t explain why, but like, it was given to me in like, my late teenage years. Maybe it was when I didn’t have, like a VHS. No, I would have been at home, so I would have had a VHS. I don’t know. Here’s my question for you. Are you a boxset person? Are you have you been like, collecting comedies and sitcoms all through the years and still have them, because in the streaming world, like, I don’t even own a DVD player now, I don’t if I can’t stream it, I can’t watch it.
Tom: I own lots of box sets and have been collecting them forever, and I don’t have a DVD player. But what I do have is a big old hard drive. So when I buy a new box set, all the contents get ripped and now I can just watch them on my Apple TV.
Abigoliah: So you’re basically buying box sets and then creating a digital library?
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: How many do you think you have now?
Tom: Individual DVDs?
Abigoliah: No no no. Like, how many series do you think you own? Like rough estimate.
Tom: Well, I mean, I’ve got all of Doctor Who and all of Star Trek for a start.
Abigoliah: Okay, that’s a lot. That’s an entire hard drive right there. I don’t care how big your hard drive is.
Tom: And lots of movies as well. And then comedy shows, I don’t know, maybe 50.
Abigoliah: That’s so many. That’s so cool, though. That means we can do this show forever.
Tom: Yeah. Oh, no. There’s no shortage, believe me. And a) we can buy the ones that we want to watch, and I don’t currently have, but also b) the ones that haven’t been released… I have some ways and means of getting hold of some hard to find material which may come in useful.
Abigoliah: Okay, here are the two things I was thinking about American sitcoms, and I wonder if British sitcoms are the same. So when you think of the theme music for sitcoms from like the 90s and say later, they are iconic. Cheers, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Mary Tyler Moore. They’re like tunes you can sing to friends. Yeah, Friends. They had to write the whole song because they – fun fact about Friends. The – what were they called? The Rembrandts? I think only wrote enough for the title of the show. They only wrote, like, enough for a ditty. And then radio stations kept getting calls asking to play the friend song, so they had to go back and write the whole song because it didn’t exist. So are the theme songs for British comedy series as like, catchy and beloved as American series?
Tom: When you go back to the 70s and 80s, one thing, one of the things you see a lot is existing pieces of music that have been repurposed for use as a theme tune. So yes, there are some that are written, especially a man called Ronnie Hazlehurst was known for writing a great many theme tunes for British sitcoms, sketch shows, variety shows, and so on in a kind of plinky plonky style. Spitting Image, which is a series I think we’ll cover at some point, which was the satirical puppet show with these incredible caricatures, did an amazingly funny take off of the South Bank Show. So the South Bank Show was this very kind of serious arts and culture show fronted by academic Melvyn Bragg. But instead of doing Pinter or Brahms or someone like that, they did an imagined episode of the South Bank Show focusing on the life and work of Ronnie Hazlehurst.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Which is just brilliantly funny. And one of their in-house composers composed new melodies in sort of his style. But Monty Python’s Flying Circus, for example, uses an existing piece of music, John Philip Sousa’s Liberty Bell. But now when people hear it, they only think of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It’s a bit like Also Sprach Zarathustra with 2001. That’s just become the 2001 music. But it existed before Kubrick got it out of the record archives. But at least half of the shows were doing in the first series have existing library music as their theme songs.
Abigoliah: Okay, cool. I wonder, too, if that’s just cheaper, because John Philip Sousa would have been in the public domain.
Tom: Yes, exactly.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah, they might have had to license the recording, but it’s still cheaper than getting a new composition, of course.
Abigoliah: My second question is specifically in sitcoms geared at teenagers and kids. There was always a very special episode where we learned about something. So in Saved By The Bell, we learn not to take speed because Jesse was in a dance show or a singing show, and she took some speed and it messed her up. Do you guys have very special episodes where there is a lesson?
Tom: Really not. No it’s not. It’s something which would strike British audiences as very American.
Abigoliah: In Boy Meets World, because I was at my sister’s a while back and she was rewatching Boy Meets World, which was like, favourite show of ours when we were kids. There is an episode where the friend, not Corey, but the friend like, joins a cult and then gets out of the cult in 22 minutes. But that was like a very special episode that was like, cults are bad in soaps.
Tom: That happened. And I’m thinking particularly of a show called Grange Hill.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Which was basically a soap, but it was set in a comprehensive school. Okay. So it was shown in the afternoon. It was for kids and the lives of the teachers, but mainly focused on the lives of the kids. And in the 80s, there was a famous strand running through that where one of the kids starts doing drugs, and in fact, they even put out a record Just Say no, and there are hilarious stories about all these kids who are kind of basically because they have to grow up over the course of the show, they are basically the age that they’re playing. Yeah. You know, if you’re casting a 15 year old for a movie, often you’ll find a young looking 18 or 19 year old because that’s easier. But if you’ve got someone who’s going to grow up over the course of the show and you want them to go from 11 to 16, you kind of have to start with an 11 year old. Yeah. So all these like 15, 16 year olds going around on this bus, doing this tour, doing this song. And apparently they were all doing all of the drugs.
Abigoliah: Of course they were, because they were famous children. That’s amazing.
Tom: The comedy shows, not so much. Again, we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves here, but the second show, we’re watching The Young Ones, was conceived as a show for grown ups. It came out of this late night comedy show. It was very violent. It was like really pushing the envelope in all sorts of ways. But one of the reasons it was such a smash was because 12 and 13 year olds thought it was hilarious. Okay, so there’s much more, I think, in Britain of younger people being drawn to those taboos. Yeah. Than there is sitting down in front of the television. Now we’re going to all learn something about ourselves.
Abigoliah: Yeah. And then like, in, like, say, Must See TV, say friends, for example. They included drama with like, say, Rachel and Ross will they won’t they? Their breakup and all this. And it got very sad and serious. I predict that British comedies never did this. They were just like, we will always be silly.
Tom: Not, never. There are definitely some I remember, and this isn’t on the list yet, I don’t think, but I would love to include it at some point. There’s a terrific series called Just Good Friends, which was about a couple. And one of the issues, because what you’ll see in a lot of these is class, but we might even do a whole series on class at one point. But he’s a bit working class, and she’s middle class to upper middle class. And so one of the comedy engines of the show is that their parents don’t get on. Okay, but he left her at the altar, and then years later, they meet up by chance and they rekindle their romance. And so that was quite episodic. That was quite serialized. And it was, you know, you were invested in whether Vince and Penny would get back together or not. So they exist. There’s also a writer called Carla Lane who wrote a series called Butterflies, which was recorded in front of a studio audience, as was Just Good Friends. But it had that slight kind of comedy drama feel to it. Okay. And then that was very successful. And then a later one with the star power of Felicity Kendal called The Mistress, which didn’t do quite so well. I remember there was a Smith and Jones sketch just at the end of that episode, which was a trailer for Carla Lane’s new series The Mattress, featuring poignancy, long lingering looks off into camera, and a joke in episode four. So yeah, that does happen. There’s a lot of silly and there’s a lot of satire. So a show like Yes Minister, one of my absolute favourites, which I’m going to try and get to as soon as we can.
Abigoliah: Is that what Veep is based on?
Tom: It’s sort of.
Abigoliah: Because I’ve heard people be like, oh, Veep is based on this British show.
Tom: Veep, I think is. No, I think Veep is more closely based on The Thick of It.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: But when the BBC some years ago commissioned a show about Britain’s most beloved sitcoms and they got individual comedy luminaries to defend each of the choices, I think it was the top ten after the voting had been done. Incredible comedy producer Armando Iannucci picked Yes Minister and then, having spent several weeks or months, I don’t know, talking about and thinking about Yes Minister, which had been on in there like early 80s, he started thinking, why isn’t there a Yes Minister for today? And so he created The Thick Of It.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And Veep is the American The Thick Of It.
Abigoliah: Okay. So in a way.
Tom: So in. Yes, Minister.
Abigoliah: The grandfather of Veep is…
Tom: Yes Minister. You see, the characters develop a little bit over the course of I think it’s five seasons, and there would be some social issues that would be discussed, but nobody learned anything. Heavens, no. It’s not silly. It’s quite satirical. It’s quite sharp and pointed. But that’s the tone.
Abigoliah: I have one more question before we get to our list. So again, if we’re talking about American broadcast sitcoms, there would be 23-24 episodes in a season because everything went out weekly for British sitcoms of that same era. So the broadcast era, not like the streaming era. Are they still like eight episodes?
Tom: Usually six.
Abigoliah: Six!
Tom: Six is typical.
Abigoliah: Wow.
Tom: And I think one of the reasons for that is it’s just a whole different model. So the model in America is you have an audience of something like 200 million adults who could watch your show, and everything is driven by advertising. So once you have that bigger population, it makes economic sense to have ten writers on staff for nine months of the year, whose only job is to come up with gags. Yeah. And then you just churn these things out. You make 20 episodes over 39 weeks or something like that, and then you take a little summer break, then you come back and you start all over again. But, you know, a population of 30 or 40 million adults suddenly doesn’t make quite so much economic sense. And the tradition has just always been that rather than having a room full of writers, you have one lone genius or occasionally two lone geniuses scribbling away on their own. And it’s a lot to ask one person to produce more than about six scripts a year and expect the quality to remain high. Yeah. So that would be typical. So a few shows would get more like 7 or 8. Some sketch shows would get more like 9 or 10. But six was the standard. And most of these shows will come in six episode seasons.
Abigoliah: Okay. All right. Wow. So it’s so easy to finish like a British sitcom because if even if they have ten, if they did it for ten years, that’s 60 episodes that are a half hour each.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: I could do that in a day.
Tom: I think arithmetically you can’t. But anyway, yeah in America, of course, you’re trying to get 100 episodes to get into syndication.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I forgot about the syndication.
Tom: And that doesn’t exist here either. Yeah. So again, as satellite and multi-channel TV became the norm. Yes. It was nice to have a package of episodes that you could put out on UK gold, which would keep repeating forever. So those long running shows like Dad’s Army, which did rack up, I don’t know how many episodes of Dad’s Army were made or how many still exist, which is also an issue. Not all of them were kept. Oh, wow. There’s probably about off the top of my head, 70 or 80 episodes of Dad’s Army because it ran for a long time around for about ten years.
Abigoliah: You could do that in an afternoon.
Tom: You absolutely couldn’t. But you could then make a package and put that out on on UK gold and have it run in the same slot Monday to Friday. Yeah. For like a year or two. But famously, there were only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers, for example. And that’s something.
Abigoliah: There’s only 12. Okay, we’ll talk about that when we get to it. Let’s, by the way, our podcast just listeners, as this is the first one, you should know that maybe British sitcom series only do six American sitcoms do 24. We’ve come right in the middle eight episodes. That’s what you’ll get eight episodes.
Tom: 8 at a time. So I created various rules for myself.
Abigoliah: Yes, I was gonna ask.
Tom: All of which, by the way, I am going to ignore, if it becomes – one rule we are going to bend before we get to the end of this season.
Abigoliah: I really thought we’d make it to at least season two before you were like – to hell with the rules.
Tom: There’s lots of things that could be watched. So my rules…
Abigoliah: To just say it again. As Tom mentioned, he came up with these rules. I am not curating. I am not giving feedback. I am not choosing these. He has come up with these rules on his own. No one asked him to have rules for himself.
Tom: All right. No kids shows.
Abigoliah: No kids shows.
Tom: No animated shows.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: No quiz shows.
Abigoliah: That I agree with.
Tom: No films.
Abigoliah: Yeah, well, it is a this is a podcast about TV.
Tom: No adaptations.
Abigoliah: Okay. Well. Okay. All right.
Tom: If it was, if it was a book, if it was something else before then and it got turned into a TV show, it’s out.
Abigoliah: In my head. I was like, Isn’t Blackadder and adaptation of Ye Old Days? But it’s…
Tom: It’s not based on pre-existing art.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: It’s based on things, but everything’s based on things. Yeah. No comedy dramas.
Abigoliah: Okay, so no very special episodes.
Tom: Exactly. Mainly TV, a little bit of radio I’m gonna sneak in there.
Abigoliah: I think the radio, the history of radio in the UK is fascinating. And the fact that it’s still beloved and listened to in a way that, like America’s never really had.
Tom: Is in the 50s, there were comedians cutting their teeth on radio.
Abigoliah: Sorry, let me rephrase. That has never been had in my lifetime. You know what I mean? Like radio has existed, but not in a in a sitcom fashion as big as it is here. Anyway, I’m very excited to look at radio programs.
Tom: But also no streaming shows.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: If a show has been made for a streamer, then you could have watched it. That’s not my fault.
Abigoliah: You have to have some responsibility for yourself. If it is now on a streamer…
Tom: Oh, yeah. That’s fine. A lot of these will be on streamers now, but they were made for broadcast television. So I would include I mean we’re gonna bias this towards older shows.
Abigoliah: Yeah I was gonna say do you have a cut off year?
Tom: Not explicitly, but I’m thinking that maybe just to have a kind of fuzzy cutoff, I’m thinking like, Ghosts might be around the most recent.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So, yeah, definitely made in the era of streaming, but made for the BBC and shown on BBC broadcast channels. But that’s quite recent, but that’s an interesting one. I think we would I would like to tackle those at some point because it has done very, very well. And it also is representative of a school of comedian, comedy actors, comedy writers who are really interesting and doing lots and lots of stuff. So that’s probably about as recent as we’re going to get. But a lot of these are going to be old. Some of them are going to be older than me, which is really old, and that has other consequences, or one of which is you’re gonna see a lot of dudes.
Abigoliah: I was going to say, if we don’t do ghosts, it’s going to be two women in all white people.
Tom: It’s going to be lots of men, lots of white men, because we just didn’t make women and people who weren’t white famous.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: From 1950 to 1990. So sorry about that. But there’s some really, really good shows that I don’t want to omit for that reason.
Abigoliah: And on that note, as we go through these comedies, you’re going to maybe, dear listener, we might say, hey, we’re going to cover this sitcom and you’ll go, why would you cover that? The person who wrote it is a baddie. And here’s the thing about art and culture. You cannot talk about art and culture without talking about bad people. People with really questionable politics and have shown their ass, as we might say, now that they have Twitter made brilliant things. So it will be acknowledged as we go. But yeah.
Tom: It’s also worth saying I’m going to show you a lot of things I like. I’m going to show you a lot of things that are kind of important to know about, whether they happen to be personal favourites of mine or not. And I might say show you some stuff that nobody likes, okay. Just to see. Okay. Because you’ll make the choice at the end of each episode as to whether it’s a personal favourite of yours or not. Yeah. So I’d be really interested to hear from listeners. What do they think we should include? So we’ll do these themed series. We’ll let you know at the beginning of each series what we’re covering. But I’m sure I have blind spots. Yeah. I mean, one that just leaps out to me, which I will, we will cover this, but in our house, I don’t know why we never watched Only Fools and Horses. Oh, okay. I have nothing against Only Fools and Horses. Everything I’ve seen, it looks terrific. I just don’t know it.
Abigoliah: I’ve got a counter to that. In my house, we didn’t watch The Simpsons.
Tom: Oh my god.
Abigoliah: Talk about a hole in your comedy education. That’s another one that when my friends bring up The Simpsons. Britain, America doesn’t matter. Everyone’s seen it but me. I have to just be like, oh, yeah, that episode is great.
Tom: But there’s some really obscure things I want to show you as well. Like one of my favourite sitcoms of all time is called Nightingales. And nobody has ever heard of Nightingales. Everyone has forgotten all about it, even though it has this powerhouse cast, these amazing actors. But even the writer doesn’t have his own Wikipedia page, and it ran for two seasons.
Abigoliah: Two?
Tom: Yeah. It got two seasons.
Abigoliah: Wow.
Tom: I think 14 episodes total. I think it was two times seven rather than two times six.
Abigoliah: So many episodes!
Tom: An abundance of episodes.
Abigoliah: Whoa!
Tom: So we’ll definitely do Nightingales at some point. But there are landmarks we have to cover first.
Abigoliah: Yes. So the first season of our podcast is called landmarks. And these. Tom, am I right? Are like the foundation. I have to know about these.
Tom: Well, nothing else will make sense.
Abigoliah: Or nothing else will make sense. These are the most important starting points in British comedy television. Now, listeners, we want to know. Write in comment. If you see this on the internet, comment in your Podcatcher app. Write us an email. Did Tom pick right or did he really mess this up? So tell us. Tell us what we’re going to watch this season.
Tom: So for each of these let me know. Have you seen it?
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Because I didn’t check with you. I’m just assuming you’ve seen nothing. Yeah, but you might have seen bits and pieces here and there. Have you heard of it? What are you expecting? So we’re going to start with Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Abigoliah: I’ve never seen Flying Circus. I have seen Life of Brian, I have seen Spamalot, and I’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That’s what it’s called, right? Yeah. Yeah. For a moment, I was like, wait a minute. Is that right? Yeah. But I’ve never seen Flying Circus.
Tom: Great. Okay. Then we’re going to go to the Young Ones.
Abigoliah: No, but it sounds like a soap opera.
Tom: It does, doesn’t it? The Best Years Of Our Lives. Yeah, yeah.
Abigoliah: Only time will tell. The Young Ones.
Tom: Then we’re going to do Not Only But Also.
Abigoliah: But also which is such a British title. Because what does that mean? And no, I have no clue what that is.
Tom: So obviously we’ll get to this at the time. But that was a vehicle for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Those names mean anything to you?
Abigoliah: Yeah, I’ve heard them bandied about.
Tom: Okay. All right, then we’ll do The Goon Show. Our first radio show.
Abigoliah: That’s very exciting. And it sounds racist.
Tom: I mean, it was made in the 50s, so it’s a little bit racist.
Abigoliah: It is a little bit.
Tom: That’s not the point of it.
Abigoliah: But it’s okay because it was on the radio. So the visual racism, it’s not there.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Cool. Then we’ll do Victoria Wood as seen on TV.
Abigoliah: I wonder if I’ve seen a clip of this. I did a show for channel five years ago where we watched clips of British television and talked about why they were brilliant, and I was hired to be a talking head on that, which I then had to fake my way through because as. But hey, if there’s money involved, I know about everything. I wonder if I’ve seen it. I know who Victoria Wood is. I’m very excited that you found a woman to put in landmarks.
Tom: Who knew? Then we’ll do The Office.
Abigoliah: I’ve seen the American version. I’ve never seen the British version.
Tom: Okay. And then we’ll do The Day Today.
Abigoliah: I have no clue again. That sounds like a soap opera to me.
Tom: So the reason The Day Today is included is, again, it represents the work of a particular group of writers, actors, producers who all came through at the same time. The most long lasting output from that group is a character called Alan Partridge.
Abigoliah: I know who he is.
Tom: Excellent. Okay, so The Day Today is Alan Partridge’s first appearance on television.
Abigoliah: Okay. And I’ve never seen Alan Partridge, but I have seen The Trip several times.
Tom: Okay. All right. Good. Helpful. And then we’ll finish season one with I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.
Abigoliah: It’s okay. You’ll come up with something.
Tom: I know, I know, I’ll figure it out. Have you been sitting on that for a while?
Abigoliah: Yeah, I’ve been literally like. I was really hoping we could do it longer and have a who’s on first. But you were like, I know what you did there.
Abigoliah: I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Also radio?
Tom: Also radio.
Abigoliah: I know that because Tom has written it in the notes, I have no clue what it is. That sounds like a quiz show.
Tom: I’m breaking a rule already. But the other thing that’s noteworthy about I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is that it started in 1972 and it’s still on the air.
Abigoliah: Really? Can I ask? And I mean, we’re not going to do it for weeks and weeks. Have you picked, like, one of the first episodes and one of the most recent episodes?
Tom: I’m still debating, but that’s kind of roughly the plan.
Abigoliah: We might have to watch. Three, you know what I mean? Like watch two of the greats and then watch one from like, last week to be like, this is what it is now. I think that’d be very interesting. Cool. Okay.
Tom: All right. So episode one is going to be in your feed next week, and we’re starting with Monty Python’s Flying Circus. So what we’ll do for each of these, if you want to do homework listeners, if you want to think about joining us on this journey, I will let you know exactly what we’re going to watch. So next week, I’m going to make Abigail watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus series two, episode two and series three, episode ten, and I’ll talk about why I’ve chosen those next week. Tweak, but if you want to watch those, they’re not currently on iPlayer, which is annoying. DVDs are readily available if you really want to, you can buy them on Apple TV+, but there are other ways you can find them if you do a little bit of searching.
Abigoliah: I’m going to go out on a limb and think this might be something people can find at a public library.
Tom: Oh, very probably yes.
Abigoliah: Yeah. This sounds like a public library. And support your libraries, people. They also do DVDs. Another thing that I think might be interesting about this is, as we were talking before we turned on the mics, is how certain TV shows really find their feet in their second season. I’m really curious if at any point you’re like, no, we have to watch episode one of series one.
Tom: Well, well, the narrative ones, I mean, The Office, for example, which is quite narrative, I think we’ll just do. I haven’t finally made up my mind, but I think we’ll just do series one, episodes one and two, because it’s a story over 14 episodes and you kind of have to start at the beginning. So yeah, sometimes. Series one. Episode two is often an interesting place to start because series one, episode one is often where they’re like setting everything up and it can feel a bit laborious. And episode two is where you finally get into the swing of it. I’ve heard the advice before if you’re writing a sitcom, write episode two first so you don’t have to worry. As the writer, getting to know the characters about all the the heavy lifting, all the scaffolding needed to set everything up. So I think for the young ones, for example, I think we’re going to do series one, episode two, because series one, episode one is the pilot and things weren’t quite slotting into place. And there’s a little bit of a restart with series one, episode two anyway, so I think we’ll probably do that then. But yeah, I’ll talk a bit more about why I’ve chosen those episodes next week.
Abigoliah: Awesome. And after next week, the podcast will come out fortnightly and.
Tom: Look at you with your britishisms! “Fortnightly”.
Abigoliah: Took me two years to learn what fortnightly meant. But, I think it sounds really cool. Now I know this is just the intro and you’re just getting to know me and Tom, but while you’re in your favourite podcast app, why don’t you go on already? Leave us a little five star review. It would mean a lot to us. Or, you know, if you have a friend who’s into British television or like me, doesn’t know anything about British television and they need a place to start, why don’t you tell a friend about the podcast? It’d mean a lot to us because this is our first one ever, and we want lots of people to listen.
Tom: Lovely.
Abigoliah: Cool. Awesome.
Tom: All right. See you next week.
Abigoliah: All right.