Whoops Apocalypse

This is one of the best, blackest, most satirical comedies you will ever find. Unfortunately most people will remember the abysmal big screen slapstick version. There are so many great performances, not least from Barry Morse and John Barron as the US president and his advisor; Peter Jones, Geoffrey Palmer and Richard Davies as members of the cabinet when the Labour Party wins the UK election; John Cleese as the terrorist and the brilliant double act of Bruce Montague and David Kelly as the deposed Shah of Iran and Abdab, the Shah's blindfolded manservant. You've got to see this.

This is an undeservedly forgotten gem! I wonder why you can't get this one on video or DVD; it really deserves it. At least it deserves to be aired again. As with all great comedy it is dead serious at bottom, and its message is as urgent as it was in 1982. About the only serious line in the whole film is the very last one, and the effect is really powerful.

FOX Broadcasting had their own version of this show, simply named "Whoops!" which aired sometime in the late 80's or early 90's. In FOX's show, a group of ethnically-diverse people escaped the destruction of WW3 in a bomb shelter. After emerging, they found refuge in an old barn accompanied by a windmill in a lush green valley. To their dismay, they couldn't leave the barn due to the fact that a 3-story tall mutant ant wandered around the area. This show was a 30 minute sitcom, and was a comedy. It lasted for only one season. Although most people don't remember this show, I think of it as a cool TV memory from my childhood.

A hilarious comedy series which is also an shrewd political commentary of the 80s, complete with a brainless US president, a robotic Soviet premier and a British PM who thinks he's a well known comic book hero. You get here John Cleese at his exasperating best, and the inclusion of comic book characters add to the ever increasing pace toward the apocalyptic climax. And watch out, it's not 1982 anymore, but the world's still just as crazy, it could still happen!

The show was made into a cinema movie (1986), but with a different cast and without the same comic flair.

Allow me(...you really might as well, because I'm going to whether you personally approve of it or not) to start this off saying that what watched this as was an edited-together version of the six(?) episodes that renders it a movie of not terribly much more of a run-time than 90 minutes or so. Not having enjoyed all that much of of John Cleese's work outside of the Monty Python team and their projects, I put off my viewing of this for a while. This was purchased for me on VHS, immediately following about an hour and a half of the aforementioned group mercilessly butchering routines they did perfectly fine on their Flying Circus(yet another reason to put this off). I am, however, glad I did put it on. I was more amused, watching, than so much all-out laughing, but there are definitely some biting wit herein. The comedy varies, sometimes involving gross-out comedy. Some of the running gags should perhaps have been jogging at a more leisurely pace, because they kept popping up, and it wasn't always funny. The pacing is, presumably due to the chopping up of the episodes to make this about half as long, from what I can surmise, is wildly mixed, with parts speeding by, and others being slow. Not everything seems to pay off, which may again be caused of the cutting. Editing and cinematography are adequate TV quality. Acting is mostly good. There are some adult things in this, and it should not be seen by children. The writing manages to make fun of so many different countries and cultures that almost everyone can be offended, but they do hit the nail on the head with an awful lot of it, and points in this could easily be classified as satirical. I recommend this to fans of British humor and/or Cleese. 6/10