The Brittas Empire

The Brittas empire kept me in stitches. Chris Barrie is one of the funniest actors I've seen! Pity they stopped the show.

This show was a riot. Chris Barrie as Gordon Brittas was a nightmarish manager come true. For the entire run of the show he had seven or eight people fleeing in terror from his anal minded rules and regulations and following things by the book and sticking to proper procedures and filling out the appropriate forms, and you could count on things to go wrong. The staff always outnumbers the clientele, 3 to 1, as no one will ever come to the centre.

I was surprised when he electrocuted the participants in a baptism in the pool by dropping a light fixture in it, his wife, Helen, calmly observing, wondering if her husband plans on clubbing the stunned victims like her uncle used to do salmon. Then the centre was attacked by Roman legionary re-enactors as the poor staff fought them off as they were pummeled by stones and arrows. The police and fire department will never come when called, they apparently have gotten so many calls from the centre.

Another time, all the heating oil was being stored in a closet and a stray roman candle was fired into said closet. And a gas leak from a drill that punctured a hole in the pipe is ignited by the little figurine that marks off time on the wall clock. Another episode had Brittas charged with murder in a botched up drug deal. Wielding a chainsaw, Brittas screams at his receptionist, Carole, "Stop me before I hurt someone!" He was found innocent in that one.

An emu running amok was one of the more baffling episodes, a shark was released into the company pool, the entire staff, including little Timmy, were found to be pregnant after a medical test, and Brittas had his feet put in a cement block. Carole gives birth to her twins in the empty steam room (later she keeps all her children in cupboards and drawers), Julie the secretary also gives birth in the centre, but Helen, his poor wife, gets trapped in the car while being driven to the hospital to have twins and has them delivered by med students in drag in the middle of the street. You feel sorry for Helen because she struggled so hard to keep from having Gordon take her to the hospital as she knew something like that would happen.

The one that stood out to me the most was when Brittas accidentally, of course, electrocuted happy children holding hands, including his own wife, after they had to witness pigeons flying and frying in the ceremonial torch he just lit. Then there was the 'death' episode, when Gordon is crushed under a falling water tank. He makes it to the pearly gates. This one you have to see to believe. And a future episode showed the staff twenty five years in the futre, all finally having realized their dreams and ambitions, having survived Brittas, they could do anything they wanted and successfully.

Funniest of all is that Gordon never seems to be aware of the chaos and damage. As he said after electrocuting the children and his wife, he has "brought people together, holding hands in intensive care."

With eyes like Joan Crawford, Julie looks at him and says "right, don't go do anything else you can be proud of."

Only Laura, one of his staff, is patient with him and can work around him. The others, like Colin and Linda, are oblivious to him while the rest are wanting him gone, dead or alive. The show reminded me of Sigourney Weaver and the other people running from the alien in the Alien movies, as the staff and Helen literally go out of their way to avoid Gordon Brittas and his ideas and plans. . . and dreams.

The show ran in my area one time, no repeats, and it was a year later before they were shown again. This time I recorded them off.

The final episode was reminescent of Bob Newhart show, which did it better, but I couldn't help but think while this show was airing in England, America was laughing at Tim Allen sticking his finger in a light socket and nominating him for Emmy awards.

Mr Gordon Brittas is chief of Whitbury Newtown Leisure center. He thinks he's brilliant, but in fact everything he does turns into a disaster. The only person in his staff who thinks he's brilliant too, Colin, who's cleaning toilets all the time, is an absolute failure. Brittas's wife is depressed all the time - guess why. No one's coming to the leisure center - guess why. Gordon Brittas has a dream, but it never quite turns out the way he planned it. THE BRITTAS EMPIRE does have its surrealist moments (Carol "Whitbury Newtown Leisure Center how may I help you?" is keeping her children in drawers), it has its "thrilling" moments (like when Santa Claus tries to kill the whole staff during a survival course)... but everything is always funny, like Gordon Brittas when he tells his own dad "don't you SON me" -- or when he tells his wife about a "magical moment" he spent with her but she doesn't know what he's talking about....or the Christian fundamentalists from the U.S. who pronounce Brittas's name as "bright-ass" and want to re-baptize him... THE BRITTAS EMPIRE is, as the man himself, Gordon Brittas, would say, "eeeeeexcellent"....

Gordon Brittas, the manager of Whitbury leisure centre, has a lot in common with the legendary Basil Fawlty of "Fawlty Towers". He lacks any sensitivity to anyone else, never listens to anyone and always knows best what should be done. Of course, the results of his actions are usually similar to the ones Basil gets. Each and every episode ends in some kind of a catastrophe, or to put it in Gordon's words: "I'm proud to say that in the entire history of Whitbury leisure centre, only 23 people were killed and none of them was a staff member" (quoted from memory).

I tried not to like the Brittas Empire, writing it off as just a banal offering churned out from the comedy mill at the BBC. But as I viewed more I began to see Gordon Brittas as a train wreck that you could just not avert your eyes from. Everyone, including the viewers are in the joke except him because he is the joke Gordon is a well-meaning do-it-by-the-book type of manager of a Sports Centre who thinks of everything except doing the one thing that a manager should do and that is to ensure that the customers enjoy themselves. Everyone sees his flaws; his staff, his customers even his hypochondriac wife, everyone except himself and his loyal if somewhat smelly acolyte, Colin. Nonetheless, there is a noble, virtuous streak in him which redeems him and makes him above all else a sympathetic character. After the first season, the writers got to grips with the character and placed him in even more embarrassing scenarios and he continued to grow ever more unaware of his wife's adultery, her pill popping, the staff's gay relationships and the fact that the receptionist is clearly delusional and keeps her two children hidden in a cupboard behind the reception desk. Clearly, the Brittas Empire is not as well observed as the David Brent's Office and is not quite as hopeless and error prone as Frank Spencer but as an iconic representation of post Thatcherite Essex Man you could not wish for more