Comedy Archeology - Overlooked Comedy Shows Pt 1

Let’s pick up where we left off back before a Monty Python season and a film festival pretty much took over. Cast your minds back to the dim and distant days of August 2019 when I wittering on about the various types of comedy that had left an impact on me. Yep, that was nearly six months ago now. Time flies, etc, etc. I’d picked out some of the key influences - cartoons, Marx Brothers, Douglas Adams, Spike Milligan, Jim Henson, Monty Python (of course), mockumentaries and more - but, given that I’m a dedicated comedy nerd, that was really only the tip of the funny iceberg.

So far, I’ve dealt with a lot of the big name, obvious comedy works out there. There are, however, a number of 80s and 90s shows that loomed large in my comedy viewing but just don’t seem to get the attention nowadays. In the traditional list-style format of this here blog, let’s take a look at a few of them…

Whose Line Is It Anyway?
It’s easy to forget that a lot of the big names of UK comedy got their first real exposure on this Channel 4 improvisational comedy show.It was also the first TV show to really highlight improv to the viewing nation at large (having been a staple of comedy clubs for some time). Clive Anderson, Paul Merton, Sandi Toksvig and John Sessions all became household names off the back of it while guest stars included Stephen Fry, Johnathan Pryce, George Wendt and Peter Cook to name but a few. It’s still running in the States but disappeared from our screens over twenty years ago (although it arguably lives on in the likes of panel shows like Mock The Week now).

Paul Merton: The Series
At roughly around the same time that Have I Got News For You was starting out over on the BBC, Paul Merton also got two series of his own surreal sketch show back on Channel 4 in 1991. It was surreal too - he’s almost become part of the establishment now on HIGNFY, making it easy to forgot just how silly his sense of humour can be a lot of the time. Often linked by Merton doing pieces to camera from behind a newspaper kiosk inside a Tube station, the show also featured his future wife Caroline Quentin and Ben Miller in the pre-Armstrong & Miller days (plus a recurring dolphin-headed man because why not?)

Chelmsford 123
What’s becoming apparent as I write this is that t he 90s on Channel 4 were a real boom time for comedy. As well as high profile imports like Cheers, Roseanne, Frasier, etc. (more on those later), the sheer volume of homegrown stuff was impressive. I guess that’s why shows like this slightly fall through the cracks. This show somewhat filled the gap left by a show like Blackadder - the historical comedy. This show focussed on the interaction between a group of Romans and the Britons they have occupied. Written by Jimmy Mulville and Rory McGrath*, it’s a superbly silly series running to just 13 episodes over two series and following that UK trend for comedy fo being brought to a close before it can run out of steam.

Come back next time for more of the same but a bit different.


* Two of the three founders along with Denise O’Donoghue  of Hat Trick productions, one of the most successful UK comedy producers, responsible for producing Have I Got News For You, Harry Enfield’s Television Programme, Room 101, Father Ted, Paul Merton The Series, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Drop The Dead Donkey, Fonejacker and many more...