Chelmsford 123

Chelmsford 123 is one of the great but little known gems from the heyday of British comedy. Set in Romano-Britain in the days when things were still settling in, the show revolves around the interplay between the Roman Governor Aulus Paulinus and the local Celtic Chieftain Badvoc.

With a superb cast, excellent comic timing and a brilliant array of (mostly) original jokes, this show remains as hilarious today as it was back in 1988/90. Some of the cliché jokes are a tad tired perhaps, but they are handled well and the clever humour of the rest of the episode always makes up for it.

Chelmsford is not an over the top pratfall comedy like Faulty Towers, relying more on overacting and miscommunication to pass for humour. The humour here is both visual and linguistic, utilising puns at times, but more often simply clever dialogue and body language to carry the joke, which provides for clever humour, which certainly carries a lot of cultural references, and yet is still easily accessible to anyone. It is similar to the humour of Blackadder IV, yet more restrained.

The sort of comedy it produces can be likened to that of another gem, Maid Marian and her Merry Men, however Chelmsford 123 is not a children's program as it contains many blatant sexual references, some bestial in nature, as well as several sex scenes.

There are some elements of "dramatic necessity" that really make absolutely no sense and the vanishing of Gargamadua (Erica Hoffman) between seasons could use some explanation, but these can be ignored in the face of the laughter.

While some episodes are undoubtedly weaker than others, the final one in particular being rather cliché and disappointing, all episodes contain excellent jokes and most of the series will have you genuinely guffawing.

This series is definitely worth buying to re-watch time and again.

I can't believe there are no comments about this show. Set in Chelmsford, Britania, in the year 123 AD, it tells the story of Roman Governor Aulus Paulinus's everlasting struggle against a bunch of savage and occasionally philosophical group of Brittons led by badvoc, the man who hasn't had a haircut in 25 years. Marvelously zany humor, superb acting and writing, a true gem from Channel four and "Hat trick" (who is also responsible for the original, and still the best, "who's line is it anyway"). This show is a british comedy extraordinaire, second only to FAWLTY TOWERS, if you have a chance to watch it, or maybe find it in a video store, it's worth every minute.

Not to be missed!

Found this on a streaming service and gave it a shot because I love shows set in historical periods of time.

From the first episode I was hooked, especially with the scenes with closed captions, it was clever how they used them as part of the jokes.

All in all I would recommend this because it mixes history and humor with innocent (sometimes raunchy, it's not a family show) good fun.

Added it to my "Comedies that are actually funny" list, check it out if you want more.

Chelmsford 123 came on the back of the success of "Who dares wins" a comedy scetch show which starred three of the cast of Chelmsford 123 as well as Tony Robinson who went on to be Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Who Dares Wins was never released on VHS and apparently never will be as a letter to Channel 4 about this said that the series was "lost". I did like Chelmsford 123 but I feel some of the jokes would be lost on an American audience. Luckily I am in Canada and happen to be on of the few in North America who doesn't think Benny Hill was funny but that this series was. If you get a chance to watch it then give it a look. The writing is top quality.

This is one of the most entertaining comedy series ever produced -- agreed, maybe some of the humour would be strange to American audiences, but there are very few British-specific jokes, it's just the style that would be rather foreign. But for all that, it's brilliant. Perhaps there were episodes of Fawlty Towers or Yes, Minister that made me laugh more, but not only is this right up with them, I can keep re-watching Chelmsford 123 and it'll always make me laugh. It's no more than every few years that I can turn to an episode of Fawlty Towers and there are ones I just don't like. There isn't an episode of Chelmsford 123 that I don't like, and I turn to it every couple of months and always have a great laugh, though I probably know a lot of the scripts by heart. Yes, it's that good. Terrifically underrated, just a pity that so few episodes were made. I got my copy of both series from a friend in the UK, although I expect you might be able to find it on ebay or filesharing networks.