'81 Take 2 - 40 year old NYE comedy

[studpuppet]

An amazing cast in this - a weird concoction of Not The Nine O'Clock News and Death to 20xx. Anyway, enjoy.

[Gurke and Hare]

Yeah, they've definitely seen Not The Nine O'Clock News, haven't they? The Rik bit at the end was the best thing by miles, and it wasn't that good though obviously it's ace to see a bit of Rik for the first time.

Was the MP with a moustache supposed to be anyone in particular, or just a generic MP?

[jamiefairlie]

I saw this at the time. It felt like an extension of 'A Kick Up The Eighties' which had just finished and featured Rik as Kevin Turvey, the first time I'd seen him.

[PammySpacek]

Funnily enough, the final few seconds reveal that this was produced by Sean Hardie, who was also the producer of Not The Nine O'Clock News. Hardie happened to have produced the first series of A Kick Up The Eighties as well - a second series eventually followed, though produced by someone else (and if IMDB is to be believed, there were four further episodes in 1984).

Seeing as NTNON was known to be coming to an end the following year, I wonder if this was a tryout to do essentially the same kind of thing but with a different name, and including some of the Kick Up The Eighties cast? I would usually guess this was a differently titled New Years special of the latter, but there's loads of cast members who weren't in that show, like Celia Imrie and The Hee Bee Gee Bees (circa early Radio Active).

Speaking of which, Imrie seems to be doing an accidental Pamela Stephenson impersonation via a generic newsreader character, which closely hews to how Stephenson performed those similar headline gags in NTNOCN.