The Glam Metal Detectives

Suddenly remembered this series I saw when I was about eleven when I heard a description of Velvet Underground. Funny and strange series that is, alas, lost to the world. A piece of Nostalgia never to be revisited. It seems too few people saw it to warrant it's release and we live in a world where the British public voted shoddy series The Good Life one our ten best sitcoms. Life can be unfair sometimes.

...or something. Come to think, maybe funkin' wasn't exactly what they had in mind, but I was a dirty-minded child (about 9 or 10 around the time this was showing) and if it was I didn't pick up on it. As far as I can remember, Glam Metal Detectives set itself up as a post-pub trawl through various cable channels and programmes, the main one concerning a troup of old-school, mullets-and-fishnets rockers who toured the world (even reaching London, In-guh-land)solving mysteries. In a van. There was also Bloodsports Live, coming direct to your front room from car parks at kicking-out time nationwide; Betty's Mad Dash, a film about two fraightfully-fraightfully flappers on a NBK-style crime spree; George Yiasoumi, who thought he was the Godfather and was followed everywhere by two thugs who hummed the theme tune; Mick Jagger's Hamlet and, uh, not that many more. It was very funny, very sweet and very strange. Judging from its limited distribution and the fact that no one I've ever met has heard of it, it was also an aquired taste. Maybe I'm just recalling it through the rosy contact lenses of nostalgia but for this up-too-late 9 year old, GMD was a taste well worth aquiring. Besides which, it shoes the hell out of Smack The Pony.

Glam Metal Detectives was great, very funny and extremely watchable. Classic British TV, sadly missed.

As far as I know at least the first three episodes were put onto BBC Video, I have the feeling that it would be very hard to get hold of a copy as I know that it has been deleted.

There was also an album released which had four tracks on it, three different versions of The Glams song Everybody Up and a cover of Crazy Horses. The music was done by Trevor Horn (masquerading as Trelvis Hornsley), Lol Creme and Lol Creme's son Lalo, though as far as I know this has also now been deleted.

The Marvel comic was also good and in the same way as both the video and the album is likely to be extremely hard to find.

Back in 1995 this show looked like it had cult classic written all over it. It had a concept ahead of its time: A disjointed channel surf through cable TV as if you're stuck watching the box with a friend who has a very short attention span and they've got the remote control. You'd be watching one segment of the show and before it reached a conclusion, or even a punchline, it would suddenly switch to a completely different sketch or quickie.

This was ahead of something like The Fast Show but that programme has endured and is remembered fondly and yet GMD isn't. Even when GMD was first broadcast, it wasn't met with the kind of reception other unconventional British comedies of the early '90s were; such as Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Absolutely, Bottom, The Day Today, Harry Enfield and his Chums or even The Fast Show. It was met with a rather lukewarm response despite there being a Marvel comic tie-in and a title song written and performed by Trevor Horn, Godley & Crème and Jeff Beck. The show came and went and is dimly remembered by those who were around at the time.

Looking back on it I think the reason for it just failing (and only just) was that the concept was top notch but the material was just not laugh out loud or memorable. The quickie mock ads, quick clips of something random or very brief links between the bigger sketches were often better than the centrepiece ones. Things such as Betty's Mad Dash and Happy Hour were one joke premises but instead of working towards a punchline they'd come in, do the set up from the previous episode and just end without there having been a build up to something. Colin Corleone required the viewer to have knowledge of the Godfather films to work and GMD itself was kitsch and fun but, again, not many jokes to it. As for the other main strand, Bloodsports, it was something done better by Alan Partridge and The Fast Show.

That's not to say GMD is bad or unwatchable, it isn't. It's so well made, going from the glossy production of the title sketch and Betty's Mad Dash to the horrid looking U-matic VHS video public TV material which made up a lot of the quickies. Some of the brief inserts are triumphs of random and surreal humour. And the cast does well, particularly Doon McKichan, Phil Cornwell and Mark Caven. Shortly after GMD aired, Gary Beadle and Sara Stockbridge went on to Eastenders. Doon and Cornwell have gone on to bigger success but the others haven't reached the same heights. But GMD is very much from the mind of Peter Richardson, who has always been great at concepts and understanding genre, but sometimes struggles with getting jokes into a comedy script.

I have managed to download this from a torrents site and the full episodes are available on youtube but I would dearly love to get hold of the DVD so that I can watch them again in better quality. I don't understand why the BBC did not release one. The show is kind of in the format of somebody sitting and zapping channels on cable TV. There are some wonderful moments but my favourite has to be Colin Corleone (he thinks he's the Godfather). I remember watching these episodes with a friend and she was in stitches even though she had never seen any of the Godfather films. Just as the season finished, the Lumiere in London started to run the three films. I took her to see them and she just started laughing out loud at every scene with Marlon Brando. To me, this was one of the better comedy show on the BBC in the 90s, I really don't understand why it isn't available on DVD or iPlayer. Comic genius.