The Young Ones is hilarious - If you liked that, you’ll love ‘Bottom’ starring a number af characters from TYO
The Goodies was a VERY surreal children’s show, starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graham <someone> gardner? green? I dunno. It was superb - by far the best kid’s show aired!
<sings>Goodies… goody, goody yum yums…</sings>
Does anyone remember a surreal comedy starring Robert Lindsay, about a bunch of Night Watchmen, called ‘Nightingales’ That was one of my favourites, but has, alas, never been repeated or released on tape
Mmmmm, maybe. However, anything by and with Victoria Wood and including Julie Walters is almost, by definition, superior. Or, at least, more inherently ‘English’. IMHO.
BTW, I liked the French and Saunders film spoof stuff a lot - the ‘Misery’ thing, for example, was excellent. I quite liked ‘Silence of the Lambs’ as well.
Wood & Walters aren’t really a duo - they started out together, but Wood mostly does stand-up and Walters mostly does films/TV. They do often work together, and I would say that either one of them is 10 times funnier than F&S
As long as nobody minds the hijacks on this thread, a long time ago, I remember watching on PBS a 3-parter known as The Norman Conquests. Each episode took place in a different room of a country manor. Norman, the title chracter, manages to seduce his ex-wife and ex sisters-in-law, then get them mad at him again. I would love to see it again. That series was hilarious. Anybody else remember it? More info here.
Two favorites that I watched with my parents are Good Neighbors (aka The Good Life) and All Creatures Great and Small. I haven’t seen those mentioned here yet.
I refer to it as a kid’s show because I was a kid when it was on - it was also, IIRC shown as part of the Children’s TV hour. I’d love to watch again as an adult, and hopefully understand all the subtle nuances that my youthful, innocent self would have missed
My personal favorites were “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”, absolutely fascinating to this Yank. I think of them as “The West Wing” of their day, topical yet able to stand the test of time, extremely well written and acted.
My first exposure to British TV was in the early 70’s when we got “Monty Python” and “The Goodies” on PBS. Since then I’ve watched my share, mostly on PBS, including “Blackadder” and “Red Dwarf”.
My biggest gripe is US networks taking British shows and completely bollocksing them up, such as “Men behaving badly” and the pilot for “Dr Who” and “Red Dwarf”. I hope the version of “Absolutely Fabulous” never gets off the ground. The US has a nasty habit of taking shows with horrible rotten characters and trying to find something redeeming about them.
Nightingales! Yes, ShadowWarrior, someone else remembers that. ‘There’s no-one in here but us chickens.’ (I know, originally from Rebel Without a Cause, but I first heard it in Nightingales). A very underrated comedy, IMHO.
The Goodies wasn’t a kids’ show though. What little I’ve seen of it was VERY funny. It was just overshadowed (npi) by Python.
Thank you so much…I found this show by accident on the British equivalent of AFN TV in Berlin years ago.
It was great!..and the Girls On Top certainly went on to be girls on top of their careers!
I watched the young ones on mtv so much, I have parts memorized. I adored Neil, I wanted to be Vyvyan, but I’m probably more like Rik, the uncoolest of the uncool.
“Darling facist bully-boy, please give me some more money, you bastard. Boom-shanka (may the seed of your loins be fertile in the belly of your woman), Neil”
I love it when everyone was sick and vyv looked at himself in the mirror and said, “Feel better you bastard!” I say that to my reflection all the time, especially when I am depressed.
Ahem Cite? I think that Oddie, Garden and Brooke-Taylor would disagree with you. The BBC wanted to turn it into a family show, the writers fought to do things their way.
Anyway, I’ve found the original transmission times in a book called “The Complete Goodies” by Robert Ross.
Seasons 1-2 were shown around 10-10:30pm.
Season 3 was shown at 8:15 (apart from a special edition - “Superstar” which was shown at 9:50pm).
Season 4 was shown a little earlier. Most episodes were shown at 8pm, the Christmas special “The Goodies and the Beanstalk” was shown at 5:15 and the final two episodes of that season were shown at 6:30 and 6:45.
Seasons 5-7 were shown at 9pm.
Season 8, the final BBC2 series was shown at 8:10pm
Then there was the failed move to ITV, where the show was broadcast around 6:45 on Saturdays.
BTW: I seem to recall that the ‘watershed’ was 8pm in the 1970’s, pushed back to 9pm sometime in the 1980’s - Is that right?
Kal - Who is off to practice Ecky Thump
this one probably didn’t make it across the pond, but i’d love to know if it did. it was called (because that helps!) “Dear John…” and it was about a bunch of no-hopers attending a night-school class for no-hopers. there was the title character who was trying to come to terms with his wife leaving him, a rick-moranis-in-ghostbusters-type, an ultral-cool guy who was “there to pick up chicks” but who was really just putting on an act to hide the fact that he lived with his mum (remember “Sorry!” with ronnie corbet?), a fridged woman, and the consellor who was sex-mad. her favourite request went something along the lines of “tell me about in the bedroom.” i found all this to be, in turns and as a kid, hilarious and disturbing.
I obviously watched way too much TV as a kid. Stimpy, I do remember Dear John too, with that wistful theme tune, and I have the lead actor’s face in my mind but can’t think of his name. I always wanted him to get together with the ‘frigid’ woman.
