BBC

Eastenders is the only soap I bother to watch these days; Coronation Street and Emmerdale remind me of the prison sentence that was my marriage when I exchanged a hedonistic lifestyle of partying (not to mention my career) for seven nights a week watching the most mind numbing television so I can't bring myself to watch them nowadays. I watched Eastenders before we met so I stuck with it once I managed to escape. People have a go at it for being depressing but there are elements of humour (sometimes rather dark I'll admit) hidden within the bleak storylines. One of the problems the show comes up against is that focussing on the same community for thirty years they inevitably need to re-visit old storylines. The Carter family for example have recycled so many past situations that I'm expecting Mick to get shot by someone carrying a bunch of daffodils any time now and return in a few years time when the writers once again go with a storyline about a dead character not really being dead (they brought in Kathy Beale last week). Not that I am disparaging the actors involved as they have all done a great job, in particular I acknowledge how much I underestimated Danny Dyer when I first wrote about him joining the programme. 

The two episodes that have aired this week seem tame in comparison to last week when they celebrated their thirtieth birthday by inserting live scenes in the lead up to a totally live episode to climax the 'Who Killed Lucy?' storyline. They did a live episode to reveal Archie Mitchell's killer to celebrate twenty five years, my money is on 'Who Killed Bobby?' in five years time and it will probably be Reg Cox who did it.

Lessons have been learned from the last attempt at a live episode, presumably they spent time scrutinising all of the mistakes and not just Scott Maslam's spectacular stumble over his lines. Perhaps staging the odd live scenes throughout the week was good training, with the only fault being the one occasion where they spent too long cutting between a live and pre-recorded scene causing a Police Squad style freeze frame. That and Joy Joyner asking Jane how Adam was, but we are all aware of that by now. Most of the cast are experienced in theatre so performing live is something an actor is supposed to be able to do, the advantage being that Eastenders has people who can act - imagine how chaotic a live Hollyoaks would be, imagine the worst school nativity play you have ever seen. In the early days most television output was live so the actors had no choice but to get on with it.

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February housekeeping

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@SteveOliver76

#RIP Richard 'sugar flavoured snot' Briers from the bloody Good Life. Bloody bloody bloody! #referenceforthecomedyfan
— Steve Oliver(@SteveOliver76) February 18, 2013

To the casual observer, the above tweet might seem disrespectful. I'm sure that it won't have gone over too many heads as a reference to a scene in The Young Ones in which Vyvyan launches into a tirade against the middle class cosiness of The Good Life. It is fair to say that the sitcom as a form of entertainment needed a kick up the arse, (if I thought more than six people would understand the reference I'd of course said that it needed a kick up the eighties), in the same way that punk was much needed to improve the musical landscape of the time. The Young Ones, and indeed the whole alternative comedy boom of the late 1970s, came along at exactly the right time. 

The Young Ones was ever so slightly before my time, my first awareness of it was in 1986 and the release of the first ever Comic Relief single 'Living Doll' with Cliff Richard. I had wanted to watch the Comic Relief concert on television but my mum wouldn't let me because of the language content. When the concert was released as an LP, I wasn't even allowed to use my own pocket money to buy it. I had to wait until I was twelve to see The Young Ones repeated on BBC2, which became the talk of the school the day after, as we were all in the same boat age-wise, and things weren't automatically released on video back then. In fact, (and I hate the fact that my memory allows this in, but not something important that my girlfriend told me two days ago), The Young Ones was shown as a comedy double bill with Police Squad. We were advised to watch Police Squad by a science teacher, who had allowed his guard to slip especially to tell us this. I went to a very strange school that still thought it was one hundred years earlier, the teachers all wore capes and addressed us by our surnames, and we had to keep our uniform intact while walking to and from school, a loose tie with an open top button sent the staff into a rage. Yet here he was asking who liked comedy, and if we did then to watch an old American spoof detective show. Of course we all thanked him at the start of the next lesson.

After tweeting my Young Ones paraphrased tribute to Richard Briers, I watched The Good Life on YouTube, and also found the episode of The Young Ones, (titled Sick, it was the second episode of the second series) that contained the Vyvyan rant. What struck me was that The Young Ones, as much as I love it and can watch it time and time again, has actually been dealt a crueller hand. It looks incredibly dated when viewed next to the very show that it tried to knock down. The Good Life could have been made today. The fact that the world is financially fucked means that more and more people are assessing their outgoings and resorting to such money saving measures as baking their own bread and repairing things rather than throwing them away. If I had the time, I would grow my own vegetables, and keep chickens for eggs.

Incidentally, as an adult I found the Comic Relief LP in a second hand record shop and texted my mum to tell her that I'd bought it. We had a jokey conversation in which she told me I still wasn't allowed to listen to it, but I did anyway, (she won't read this), and it was shite.

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After a rather busy day, I fell asleep in front of the telly last night sometime around eight o'clock. Luckily I woke up in time to make a cup of tea and be ready for two episodes of The Young Ones on GOLD. I was a latecomer to this show, only becoming aware of it through the Comic Relief single 'Living Doll', in which the characters performed a duet with Cliff Richard. Without a commercial video release, and in a time before YouTube, I had to bide my time until the BBC decided to repeat it. It finally happened in 1989, when I was in the third year of senior school. BBC2 repeated it alongside a repeat run of Police Squad, (which was recommended by our science teacher). The day after an episode of The Young Ones, our form were repeating phrases and routines with each other, just like the generation before had done with Monty Python's Flying Circus and later in my schooling the same would happen again with Vic Reeves Big Night Out. By the time I started college in 1992, a home video release ensured an audience all over again. The Young Ones has been with me all of my comedy loving life, part sitcom and part cartoon, it was dangerous, rude and most important of all, very very funny. We all loved Bottom too of course, but The Young Ones was the original and best. Even nowadays I find that I know every word of dialogue word for word.

The Young Ones was of course an ensemble work, with contributions from Mark Arden and Steve Frost, (The Oblivion Brothers to those with a good knowledge of comedy, the blokes from the 1980s Carling Black Label adverts to everyone else), Hale and Pace, French and Saunders, Alexi Sayle and plenty of others. However, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson were the stand out stars of the show in my opinion. They could do no wrong, following The Young Ones with Filthy Rich And Catflap, appearances in The Comic Strip Presents, (many of them written by Edmondson), and of course Bottom, seen by many as a follow on to The Young Ones. Rik Mayall presented Jackanory and The Grimm Tales, and made a Hollywood film, Drop Dead Fred, in which he basically played the part he has been playing since he and Ade became The Dangerous Brothers. Both comedians recorded audio-books of Doctor Seuss books, worth listening to if they're still commercially available.

Rik Mayall was involved in a quad bike accident in 1998, and as a result his reaction wasn't as it once was. This effectively ended the working relationship between Rik and Ade, as he was no longer up to the energetic performances required of him in roles like Richard Richard in Bottom.

Rik Mayall is still working, albeit with a lower profile than before, appearing in roles in Midsomer Murders, Minder, Jonathon Creek, and doing voice over work. The last starring role was All About George. To see a comedy actor of Mayall's calibre appearing in a role that should have been taken on by Robson Green or Nick Berry on an ITV comedy-drama was a sad thing for a longtime fan such as myself to see. Watching The Young Ones is a reminder of Rik Mayall's brilliance as a comedian and actor, which made GOLD broadcasting Rik in an advert for Bombardier all the more upsetting. To be reduced to essentially rehashing the Flashheart role from Blackadder, is a waste of talent and I hope the right vehicle comes along to show Rik Mayall for the talent that he is before it is too late.