I saw this in my youth too and have just watched this to reminisce . I did not laugh out loud once. I was so disappointed. Maybe it is just me, I am old school and love watching things from my youth but after watching this I realise that The Inbetweeners , Friday night Dinner, Plebs, The Young Offenders, The Office, Extras and other comedies of the 21st century are so much funnier than the shite we watched back then. I hate to admit it but it is true.
The Internet Killed Music Mmm, first option would be no, but the second option would be yes. I'd take it under both circumstances. I'd be 13 in '81 and I'm not sure I'd want to be that small again but I loved the post-punk time. And as you know the music was great unlike today's nonsense.
I would had liked to had seen it from the very first episode. I've got The Best of... Volumes 1 and 2 on DVD which is an edited compliation of all the best sketches.
I have always had a vivid memory of watching the skit with the petrol pump when I was a child. I don't remember anything else about this at all, apart from that. It's strange what you remember as a child. I'm pleased to have seen it again.
Being a huge Blackadder fan, Atkinson's talent is a given, but Mel Smith was Years ahead of his time. His humour is like it was made yesterday. RIP Mel
This makes me laugh today! I love the silliness of British humour, wonderful piss-take quality to it. Takes me back to younger years of my life... Love the 'fisherdog' - reminds me of a sign I saw in the door of a pub outside Cambridge (well-known, can't remember the name) which read: No children, no dogs, and no long-haired lefties. (Would have been about 1971 I think.)
Mel Smith as Frances Morell is pure genius 23:35 and I love the petrol station sketch, £5.00 worth of petrol would hardly get you home from the bloody petrol station these days.
Still remember the petrol station Sketch myself as I had only started driving. As I'm a lot older now., The dog sketch will take over. Not that I will bring telling anyone about it in forty years. Tomorrow for sure.
Remember watching this on friday nights in Denmark with my parents the four years it was on..Oh watched the reruns to obviously. Mel always made me laugh...RIP.
The sketch featuring the bank is very good. Sometimes I wish the banks had kept our savings in little boxes as they would have been a lot safer. Pamela also did a great job in turning herself from a super attractive babe to a dowdy looking bank clerk. The petrol joke is a classic - how little forecourts have changed (and our attempts to get to the nearest whole number)
It's fun to spot young comic actors ( some serious ones) in old series like these. Jim Carter ( Downton's Carson) is at 9.00. Mad Mike Hoare--was a real mercenary soldier, who was in the news a lot back then. the show was mostly topical of it's time.
BBC 2 Mondays at 21:00 if I recall correctly ? The sketch in the bank was built on the same premise as the 'Gramophone' sketch in the hi-fi electrical shop with Mel Smith again playing the unsuspecting customer being the butt of the jokes of the staff. I love the Rowan Atkinson idea of the shop thief being lured by the tea in the 'Special Offers' section - brilliant !
This was such a good comedy show inventive and really funny. This is Brit humour at its best. It had such a talented group of hilarious individuals. Its a shame it only ran for 3 seasons on British TV and deserved many many more seasons of this gem of British tv comedy from this era which coincided incidentally with the first 3 years of the Thatcher Govt in the UK and jokes about the Thatcher Conservative Govt featured a lot on the show, but the show ending after only just 3 seasons may have something to do with Pamela Stephenson having other plans and wanting to move on and because they were all good friends and tight nit group decided to call it quits if one of them left the show, Pamela Stephenson who was popular in the UK in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s as an actress and being constantly in the UK media at the time in the early 1980s, who was very talented personality herself preparing for an expanded career in America. Because she joined SNL in the mid 1980s and moved to America from the UK after that and has been there ever since after marrying Billy Connolly. I think she has given up acting in the early 1990s after being in several movies and tv shows for memorably appearing in minor role in Superman III but she was in a lot of other movies too not big roles, but she was a good looking lady in the 1980s and she left an impression on me, then she went back to education and studied psychology and became a qualified doctor in the States. How people re invent themselves and change careers and who they are after many decades. Not the nine o clock news showed the good quality of tv shows and the talent that was on British television at this time.
Has anyone got a video of the sketch of a radio controlled model powerboat driven by Rowan Atkinson on a park pond interfering with the electric wheelchair of Mel Smith in the background? Priceless!
The 'punchline' for the spoof "Contact 1,200" advert at about 18:00 (which is cut short in this video) is Rowan Atkinson with a capsule stuck up each nostril.
Francis Morrell: "Well I'm amazed i mean we're sitting here talking about a nuclear holocaust, casually discussing the destruction of the entire planet and ignoring the major issue. Which is the appalling record of this Conservative government and the real tragedy here is that 3 million people will die......unemployed...and here I would like to drone on about Conservative economic policy...." Brilliant.
And thus is over 35 years old? Weirdly relevant in places. I don't know if I should be impressed by the scope or depressed by the evident lack of change in almost 40 years.
That is because school and university do not delevop young people in self thinking subjects any more. The change began in the late seventies. And since the eighties people often even look like today. New technology has only brought even more superficiality.
The show was made at a time when the world seemed to be progressing ahead but somewhere in between, possibly mid to late 90's the world became more corporatised, social media was in its infancy and since then the world has done a u-turn and gone backward without us realising it...that's why the comedy seems relevant...the world has gone nowhere since the 80's...if anything, it's more darker and scarier.
@@zapkvr Sounds like it's too easy for you to not want to know who the bad guys are. Well I'll tell you, The bad guys are a handful of people who own the combined wealth of the world's poorest half. And people like you are compliant and obedient to these handful of people FFS.
This is NOT the full uneditted version. I have them all full unedited and this is not full or uneditted. Once I can get at mine I will upload them, im afraid they are in the store room and I am in a wheelchair, so I cannopt get into there.
Love this stuff. There was a hilarious sketch (I think by these people) about the idiocy of union voting "All those not in favour of rejecting the acceptance of the offer..." but I can't find it anywhere.
Don't forget Kenny Everett, then Comic Strip which gave us Young Ones! Comedy gold. When my son gets a bit older, we are going to watch the Young Ones. Currently going through Red Dwarf!
