The Young Ones

The definitive post-punk sitcom is a wild watch in these future times, it seems dingy, grotty and cheap but the sheer relentless energy of it is breathtaking. It respects nothing, not least the conventions of television sitcom, and takes no prisoners. Certainly the second series is a great deal more consistently funny (as consistent as the Young Ones could ever be at least) but the entire endeavour is foolish, otherworldy and extraordinary. During a recent rewatch I discovered the house where the exteriors were filmed was right around the corner from me, and I went there to look, but that made it seem all the distant and strange. Could this have ever really taken place? Was any of this madness ever real?

Produced in six-episode fits during 1982 and 1984, The Young Ones would have been relegated to the status of a historical curiosity if not for one simple fact - it is a lot funnier even today than a lot of the dross that has been put on television since. This show came long before Australia had pay television, a short while before eMpTyV, and a long, long time before Hollywood's standards fell so low that the likes of Jim Carrey or the brothers Farrelly were given jobs.

Focused upon the daily routines of four British college students, the show came out with all guns blazing, and it didn't let up for a single episode. The first episode pretty much sets the standard for all the others - while Rik is screaming his head off about things that mean very little, Neil is cooking a last supper, and Mike is being his usual bland self, Vyvyan crashes through the kitchen wall and announces that the council have decided to knock down their house. The council are reasoning that the lads are a health hazard, so while Rik is whining, Neil is thinking of hiding within the walls, and Mike is planning to get into the council representative's pants, Vyvyan plans to thwart them by knocking the house down himself. At one point, he even jumps through the wall that seperates the lads' house from their next door neighbours. Classic stuff, and it gets even more over the top in the next five episodes.

My favourite episode... well, it's a tie between Nasty and Bomb. Nasty is just so stupendously funny because Vyvyan is at his nastiest, but Bomb is by far more ridiculous in its premise - who could imagine a bomb landing in front of the fridge, then Vyvyan eating the TV in order to escape the TV license man? As if that last question doesn't date this show enough, Nasty sees Vyvyan and Mike trying to figure out how to operate a VCR that the latter has borrowed from Harry The Bastard. Not a gangster, mind you, but a guy who works at Rhumbalo's (sp?). In this age of DVD-Video, an imminent HD-DVD format, and a standards war between SDTV and HDTV, with Recordable DVD now out in force, those of us who were six years old, or older, when Nasty first transmitted should be experiencing flashbacks now.

The band appearances were quite something too, ranging from Radical Posture and Alexei Sayle doing a real crackup of a song about Dr. Marten's boots to Dexy's Midnight Runners playing Jackie Wilson Said in the dunny, it seemed that every collection of musicians eager for a start or some kind of exposure wanted to get on The Young Ones. It also served to prove that there was a lot more interesting music coming out of England during the 1980s than has come out of America during the entire twentieth century.

Given the political situation in most of the Western, so-called First World, and the advent of entertainment technologies that were considered science fiction when this series went to air, the time could not be better for a new version of The Young Ones, or something that follows in a similar style. The problem there is that The Young Ones set the standard so high that it's going to take a Herculean effort for a new series to simply not be destroyed by comparison to the original. Which is not bad considering some of the crap that was about to hit the airwaves later in the 1980s.

... How fortunate that on this one project the nations foremost figureheads in alternative comedy were gathered together and allowed to give their imaginations free reign. I don't think you'll ever see a sitcom as gleefully silly or unconventional as this one, partly because of the personalities involved in making it and partly due to the regular musical interludes that were thrown in purely to give the team more cash.

Incidentally, "Cash" from series two is my favourite episode, and Neil my favourite member of the gang. What can you say about a scenario where Vyvvian (a bloke) learns that he's pregnant, except that it's utter genius?! Neil's whole demeanour seals it for me; he doesn't even have to say anything, and Nigel Planer's mournful expression will still crack me up, without fail.

It's the absolute opposite of those cosy, easygoing shows where everybody likes one another really. You can't really call it 'The Good Life' when you're living in what most would describe as 'a hole'... As it happens, I don't really have any objection to such a nice '70's comedy, although listening to Vyvvian launch into a verbal tirade against it almost changed my mind, delivered as it was with such unchecked outrage. You can always trust "The Young Ones" to offer some biting political comment, unless you're talking to Rick, that is... !

The Young Ones may be an obscurity in the USA, but here in Australia its fondly remembered. We first heard rumours of it back in about '82, then someone sneaked in a crappy tape of 'Bomb'. We sat and watched it in awe. This was The Great British Surrealist sitcom; the logical next step from The Goons and Monty Python. It was appallingly, daringly head and shoulders above everything else from the 80's (oh, alright, except Black Adder. Especially Black Adder II).

Four students: a hippy, a punk, a would-be anarchist who secretly loves Cliff Richard, and... Mike, 'the cool person' - who appears to be throughly normal. Except he isn't. In fact, when you really take a close look at him, Mike is actually stranger than all the others put together. Half of his lines make little or no sense. He said something once about a sheepdog, which struck me as one of the strangest lines I've ever heard on television. But anyway, he is still nominally the anchor of normality around which all the madness rotates.

Using Python's rapid-cut technique, and employing a similar lack of concern for continuity, a Young Ones episode is a rollercoaster of surrealism, violence and squalor (the latter two elements taken to even greater extremes by Mayall and Edmonson in 'Bottom'). Episodes are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of Benito Mussolini, singing a song called 'Stupid Noises', or by various other manifestations of Russian landlord Alexai Sayle, who is inclined to go into stand up comedy routines and address the audience, much to the confusion of everyone else on set. Images of garden taps or insects are flashed on screen for a fraction of a second, scenes cartwheel off in all directions: a family of peasants in the adjoining room sit huddled round a lamp, a wardrobe leads into the realms of Narnia, an unexploded atomic bomb lands in the middle of the kitchen, vegetables in the fridge talk to each other, and Motorhead just happen to be in the loungeroom, performing 'Ace of Spades'.

Someobody else said that this series hit Britain like bombshell. It's effect was similar in Australia. It never spawned any imitators - the rest of the 80's seemed to be given over to dreary political satire, but it is undeniably one of the great English sitcoms - even if, now and then, it drags its feet just a little.

Like Fawlty Towers, it ran for only two series, but when they were over, it had breached countless boundaries of bad taste and absurdity, introduced the writing talents of Ben Elton, the careers of Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planer, Dawn French and Adrian Edmonson, and made the godawful, bland, mid 80's bearable for a few people like me.

This series can give you hysterics time and time again. Something freakish, surprising or brilliantly silly happens every minute, and the comical appeal never seems to fade. The scripts are loaded with some wonderful, hilarious dialogue, the visual gags are suitably campy and over-the-top, and the plots are filled with surreal and quirky bits of delightful nonsense. This is a treasure trove of unforgettable moments of hilarity, you are urged to seek this out and laugh your head off.