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Pilots which never got a series.

Started by Hollow, November 28, 2010, 05:06:16 AM

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Hollow

What do you think was the most tragic waste of a good comedy show?, My candidates would be, The Weekenders, Biffovision, and Junkies, which although not funny has a charm about it that I find quite compelling, the bit where Big Al is 'phoning' his Mum and the camera pans down to the frayed broken, not connected telephone wire is great.  Anyway anyone got any others?

Hollow

I keep clicking refresh in the hope of having a natter about this to take my mind off my cunting insomnia, only just realised that the only people up at this time are Americans, and they won't have seen any of the stuff I'm talking about. Jesus I'm bored. I hate this.
Either that ^ or Ive gone and started a boring thread, oh no no no, my wifes gonna kill me!

Willie Nelson

Biffovision was rubbish and half of it was stolen from the Internet. Knife and Wife was rubbish too.

Weekenders would have been incredible, though. I think they were granted a series but gave it up in favour of getting Smell Of.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Was it not that Channel 4 granted them a series of The Weekenders, but only on the proviso that they also make another series of Big Night Out, which they didn't want to do? Hence their defection to the BBC for The Smell Of?

Willie Nelson

You're more likely to be right than I am.

Little Hoover

"Lookwell!" always gets brought up in these threads, but it bears repeating

Pilot starring Adam West written by Conan O'Brienand Robert Smigel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQ3HbB0c8Y

Although to be fair it's hard to know where they could have gone after the pilot without just repeating themselves

And of course a sketch from next! a Pilot featuring some of the Mr Show team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxy6faM1ufk

The full pilot and other bits are floating out there. It's kind of a little too Mr Show though, seems like they hadn't really moved on.

purlieu

I really, really enjoyed Biffovision and wish a series had been made.
I also wish his other two had at least been aired - Too Much Too Young and Now The Weather, as they sounded like they had a lot of promise.

Hollow

I really liked Biffovision too, it was in my opinion a very promising pilot, little touches like the camera sweep at the start showing the whiskey and joint behind the desk.  'Who done that'?. The ghost of Graham Belt in the awesome Scranton K. I liked it, I suppose It can't hurt to have been a massive fan of Digitiser.


Jake Thingray

Poor Graham Chapman seemed to specialise in pilots that crash-landed in latter years. OUT OF THE TREES at least exists, in a BFI-rescued version, but as he claimed, was only ever shown once, on a Saturday night on BBC2 and beaten in the ratings by MATCH OF THE DAY. The bits of the script for the Ringo Starr special for American TV, with Douglas Adams involved, that the American nebbish Jim Yoakum pasted together for one of his cash-in books don't seem up to much. JAKE'S JOURNEY still hasn't been publicly shown, despite the deaths of Chapman, Cook and Hal Ashby; sorry to say, but my sixteen-year-old self, reading an article about it in US geek magazine STARLOG that quoted Chapman on the periods of history that would have been featured, thought "hmmm, he's been watching BLACKADDER hasn't he?" At a pinch, you could also include STILL CRAZY LIKE A FOX, intended to revive a forgotten series and which, with supposedly British characters using terns like "bellhop" and "talking with", silly names like Agatha Trundle, and the American actors laying stress on the wrong syllable when saying 'Beachy Head', made COLUMBO IN LONDON seem like NIL BY MOUTH. Chapman's casting, with a missing-finger gimmick nicked from THE 39 STEPS, was perhaps an early sign that Americans immediately associate "England" with "Py-THON".

On first perusing Lewisohn's RADIO TIMES GUIDE TO TV COMEDY, I noticed that all the COMEDY PLAYHOUSE segments that didn't go to series seemed to star either Ronald Fraser or Bernard Cribbins.

Dead kate moss

My friend was Graham Chapman's gardener, so I went round his (Chapman's) house a couple of times. Lovely, squash court, indoor swimming pool. He seemed a bit nervous/haunted, but then he died so maybe that was why. Then my other friend's fuck off rich family bought his house.

madhair60

Meebox.  Really enjoyed Meebox, kicked the shit out of the BBC3 comedy that was favoured over it.

Jake Thingray

Quote from: Dead kate moss on November 28, 2010, 08:18:44 PM
My friend was Graham Chapman's gardener, so I went round his (Chapman's) house a couple of times. Lovely, squash court, indoor swimming pool. He seemed a bit nervous/haunted, but then he died so maybe that was why. Then my other friend's fuck off rich family bought his house.

I take it that was in Maidstone.


Jake Thingray

Do you listen to Roger Day on radio in the evenings? (Sorry.)

mycroft

I seem to remember a series of pilots on BBC2 in the late '90s which included a Jack Docherty/McGlashan vehicle and another based on Felix Dexter's "Douglas" character from The Real McCoy. Not sure what programmes from that series, if any, made it to a series, but I was disappointed neither of those did.

Quote from: mycroft on November 28, 2010, 10:08:02 PM
I seem to remember a series of pilots on BBC2 in the late '90s which included a Jack Docherty/McGlashan vehicle and another based on Felix Dexter's "Douglas" character from The Real McCoy. Not sure what programmes from that series, if any, made it to a series, but I was disappointed neither of those did.

Comic Asides! The Felix Dexter pilot was strange because he had a sketch show pilot as part of this run (in 1995, fact fans) which was script edited by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, but I didn't think was very good (Lewisohn points out that the sketches were all too long, which was right). But then in early 1996 he was on the cover of Comedy Review, talking about the upcoming series of it, and they talked to Whitehouse and Higson about it, and then the whole thing never happened. But then they showed Douglas, a sitcom, as a one-off a year later, erroneously billed as a repeat in the Radio Times.

Also in that pilot series was Mac, as you say, plus a TV version of The Nick Revell Show, and Pulp Video, a BBC Scotland sketch show which was the only one that became a series. The pilot of that featured Mark and Lard, doing a parody of How called, yes, What, but they weren't in the series.

Around 1995 too I remember Mike Yarwood makig a comeback, he was on HIGNFY of course plus he did All The Best For Christmas, this clip compilation on Christmas Eve BBC1 (they did that for a couple of years, with different presenters), but I remember they announced he would be getting his own series and they even put out adverts asking for budding amateur impressionists to be on it. But it never appeared.

Can't remember the exact title, Stephanie Princess of Power or something, starred the woman from Flight of The Conchords as a girl who could talk to puppet animals. I thought it looked like it could develop into something really interesting if given a series.

mycroft

Quote from: Steve Williams on November 29, 2010, 09:57:21 AM
Pulp Video

Oh now that one really was bad. And it occurred around the same time as viewers in Scotland were treated to Athletico Partick AFC (the pilot for which actually wasn't that bad from what I remember, but the series was dreadful).

Dead kate moss

Quote from: Jake Thingray on November 28, 2010, 09:51:13 PM
Do you listen to Roger Day on radio in the evenings? (Sorry.)

I don't understand. Is that an Invicta radio reference?  I don't live in Maidstone anymore and listening to the radio in the evenings is for nerds.

Serge

Quote from: Dead kate moss on November 28, 2010, 08:18:44 PM
My friend was Graham Chapman's gardener, so I went round his (Chapman's) house a couple of times. Lovely, squash court, indoor swimming pool. He seemed a bit nervous/haunted, but then he died so maybe that was why. Then my other friend's fuck off rich family bought his house.

Your friend isn't called Francis, is he? My old boss (of that name) did some gardening for him too.

Dead kate moss

No he was/is called Mark. He would be about 43 now I suppose.

Absorb the anus burn

In The Incredible Robert Baldrick with Robert Hardy would have made a fine series, but Terry Nation was given a red light by the BBC - it did lead to the 1970s incarnation of Survivors though.

Serge

Quote from: Dead kate moss on November 29, 2010, 12:36:20 PMNo he was/is called Mark. He would be about 43 now I suppose.

Thought it would be a bit of a long shot! And if I remember rightly, my boss was his gardener when he lived in London, though it's years since I've even seen him, let alone had this conversation! CaB: Friends Of Graham Chapman's Gardeners United.


Jemble Fred

Quote from: Absorb the anus burn on November 29, 2010, 12:41:00 PM
In The Incredible Robert Baldrick with Robert Hardy would have made a fine series, but Terry Nation was given a red light by the BBC - it did lead to the 1970s incarnation of Survivors though.

Just looked that up and it does sound somewhat awesome, would love to see it. Maybe they can attempt some kind of complete rebirth of the idea... if RTD is up for it. (RUN!)

Pepotamo1985

I remember the Cluub Zarathustra pilot was one of the first things I nicked off here, and I thought it could've potentially been an innovative, unique series, but I can equally see why it was never commissioned.

Christ I'm interesting. Other people - do my discussing for me please.

SOTCAA summed it up much better than I ever could; http://www.sotcaa.net/hiddenarchive/cluubz.html

Oh, and you can even watch it here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtwCkqla1PA

Quote from: mycroft on November 29, 2010, 10:47:38 AM
Oh now that one really was bad. And it occurred around the same time as viewers in Scotland were treated to Athletico Partick AFC (the pilot for which actually wasn't that bad from what I remember, but the series was dreadful).

Viewers everywhere were treated to Athletico Partick, alas. In fact the pilot for that and Mac were shown in the same week, I remember Gordon Kennedy being on The Big Breakfast and plugging both. It plummeted down the schedules, though, initially it got a 10pm slot straight after Men Behaving Badly, to give it a leg-up, then when MBB finished it moved to 9.30 but flopped so badly it was shoved at 11pm for the last few weeks.

I never really understood the point of Pulp Video, right down to the name, what the hell does that mean? They may as well have just called it Naked Video again. In fact, I remember someone phoning up Mark and Lard on Radio 1 a few years later and asking what the name of the programme they were in was, and they said they couldn't remember, but they thought it was Naked Video.

You always used to find videos of the likes of IM Jolly and Only An Excuse in bargain bins in WH Smiths all over England, they can't have sold any copies south of Berwick. All those BBC Scotland comedies used to have a writer called Tex Winchester, that name really stuck with me.

mycroft

Quote from: Steve Williams on November 29, 2010, 02:02:54 PM
All those BBC Scotland comedies used to have a writer called Tex Winchester

Pseudonym for Whitehouse and Higson, maybe? According to Wikipedia, they did contribute material to Naked Video, as did Rik Mayall. Easy money, I suppose, like Rikki Fulton taking in the Two Ronnies' castoffs. Your mention of cheap VHS copies of Scottish output also reminds me of every video shop in Scotland having those compilation tapes of Scotch and Wry with the lurid tartan covers.

Hmm, should we maybe have another thread for the discussion of poor Scottish comedy? All this has also brought to mind BBC Scotland's terrible All Along the Watchtower, which was used by the Daily Record as a way of having a go at Angus Deayton, who had turned down the lead role, and was then hyped as being the Scottish Dad's Army...

Jemble Fred

One mention of Velvet Soup and someone dies.

Jake Thingray

Quote from: Dead kate moss on November 29, 2010, 12:19:06 PM
I don't understand. Is that an Invicta radio reference?  I don't live in Maidstone anymore and listening to the radio in the evenings is for nerds.

I was trying to be friendly, honestly. It may make me a nerd, but I do have a soft spot for Day, "the Twiglet" and his show, when I'm depressed it's a reassuring fixed point despite his Daily Mail-ish Clarkson/Littlejohn type views. Do like Monday nights, where he plays stuff from campy musicals, in particular.

Dead kate moss

Quote from: Jake Thingray on November 29, 2010, 09:18:32 PM
I was trying to be friendly, honestly. It may make me a nerd, but I do have a soft spot for Day, "the Twiglet" and his show, when I'm depressed it's a reassuring fixed point despite his Daily Mail-ish Clarkson/Littlejohn type views. Do like Monday nights, where he plays stuff from campy musicals, in particular.

I didn't mean to sound unfriendly, just curious as to the reference. Twiglet? Still confused. When I was fifteen I phoned up a bunch of record companies pretending to be from Invicta Radio and saying have you got our new address, send all your free records here. It worked for about a month.