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.

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.

This was a short lived comic sketch so that was a product of its time. Designed to feel like you were channel surfing through the dreadful satellite and cable TV shows and adverts of the time, some sketches were hilarious and others you just couldn't get at the time. The whole thing was held together of course by the Glam Metal Detectives - saving the planet whilst provide a great rock & roll sound.

Even now, if I am in a rush to do something I would regard it as Betty's Mad Dash, and if someone is very self-obsessed I would refer to them as a Morag Evans, star of the The Big Me - a spoof chat show where the hostess Morag could always steer the conversation back to her. A ladies, if you husband was watching the football, you could always call on the services of Mickey to give you a good time.

A VHS video was released by the BBC in 1995 but only the first three episodes were on it,(it's order number was BBCV5574),I have that one but don't know if a second one was ever made, I also only ever managed to get the first of the comics as I never saw any more for sale.It was a great series and they should have made more. I've talked to a lot of people about the "Glam Metal Detectives" to see if a soundtrack was ever made (there was a lot of brilliant music in it), but no one seems to have heard of them. As it says in the title they were detectives who toured as a rock band so as not to blow their cover as crime fighters. The rest was good as well, what with "The Big Me", "B-Movie TV", "Bloodsports", "Betty's Mad Dash", "Call Mickey", "Colin Corleone" and more, why it ended I don't know.

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.