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Ade Edmundson & Marks and Gran Channel 4 Snakes and Ladders

Started by cairnsi, February 19, 2004, 06:44:03 PM

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cairnsi

Does anyone remember Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, Ade Edmundson vehicle, Snakes and Ladders for Channel 4. It was up against Nightingales for commission but the Robert Lyndsey vehicle won out, although Snakes and Ladders was blacker and funnier.

It was a comedy of errors, set in the future (nearly all sci-fi has a cult following but this doesnt seem to get a mention)


Snakes And Ladders
UK, C4 (Yorkshire), Sitcom, Colour, 1989
Starring: John Gordon-Sinclair, Adrian Edmondson, Christopher Godwin
A satirical Marks and Gran sitcom with Orwellian and Twainian overtones, combining nightmare visions of 1984 with the role-reversal of The Prince And The Pauper.

Snakes And Ladders was set in the Britain of 1999 (ten years beyond at the time of screening), where Thatcherism rules, Lord Branson is revered, television is called Murdochvision, profit is everything, rampant inflation means that the mortgage interest rate falls to 37.5 per cent, the Queen has resigned and Charles is king, there are psychiatric 'hospitals' for political detainees, and, most tellingly of all, Britain has a real north/south divide, with security guards manning the border posts and identity papers required to pass from the enslaved north to the idyllic south. In the Northern Sector the weather is perpetually cold and food rationing is de rigueur; South Britain enjoys year-round hot weather because of a conveniently-placed hole in the ozone layer.


Into this situation two young men are thrust. Scotsman Gavin (John Gordon-Sinclair) is lucky to get a job as a trainee slave in the Paisley factory of International Entirety, the biggest private company in Britain. It is such a breakthrough that his tenement block throws a communal party to congratulate one of their number being in employment - the first time in seven years; they sing 'We Shall Overcome', albeit half-heartedly, and the Lord Provost comes along to make a speech. Englishman Giles (Adrian Edmondson) is a philandering upper-class oik, relentlessly snotty and stultifyingly snobbish. As the son of the Australian baron Lord Tewkesbury (a title obtained by palm-greasing), the owner of International Entirety, Giles has spent ten years on holiday at Oxford University. To his astonishment, however, Daddy cruelly decides to send him on a company traineeship, to learn every facet of his organisation from the bottom up. To keep his identity a secret Giles is given a pseudonym, Alexander G St Clair, but this is mis-entered into the computer and - enter the role-reversal scenario - Scotsman Gavin suddenly finds himself posted down south, amid extreme wealth, while ghastly Giles experiences life in the northern wastes.

Directed & Produced by:
Baz Taylor

Transmission Details
Number of episodes: 7
Length: 30 mins
17 Oct-28 Nov 1989 · Tue 10pm

Channel 4
Yorkshire Television

Marks and Gran went on to have more success on ITV with a vehicle for Ades partner Rik Mayall - The New Statesman.

To my knowledge its never been repeated so the question does anyone have it to encode?

benthalo

Select TV showed it a number of times in the mid-90s. I never really got into it, but I have a couple of episodes knocking around.

Paul Makin's certainly a better writer.

cairnsi

select TV

ummm. Sky Channel only,, brings to mind "Murdochvision"

Dont suppose youve seen it encoded anywhere?Id love to see it again