Great SOTCAA Articles We Never Got Round To Writing #1
The Unaired ‘And Now, In Colour’ TV pilot
| Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2000 00:29:52 To: SOTCAA From: David Tyler Subject: Re: Reply from SOTCAA: Some Thanks > David, > > Thanks for your kind words re: the Ed Fringe silliness. Has William > Vandyck read it? Please pass on our adoration to himself. We hope > to be running an ‘And Now In Colour’ retro piece on the site soon. > Any words to that effect will be of great help.
Aha. Well now. I was approached by Tiger TV many moons ago to produce a pilot of “And Now In Colour” for BBC TV. I’m not sure what Lissa Evans felt about this - she being its then radio producer, and, of course, not only a mate and a good soul, but a future BAFTA winner for producing “Father Ted”s second series, anyway, as I was saying … The BBC gave us 13p to do it with, so we decided to try and shoot the stuck-in-the-Post-Office-Tower episode, but interspersed with a couple of sketches, like the angry jingle singers song (”Rowena”) and the playing bridge/snap sketch.
We thought it was dead good, and in truth, a very fair representation of the radio show’s personalities; Mike still playing the grumpy Stephen King-reading cynic, Tim De Jongh (Tim Scott) the child, William the put-upon English anal retentive and Tim Firth the mover and shaker (and indeed, it was Tim F who supplied the narrative strand whilst everyone else wrote the sketches alongside him).
The BBC hummed and ha-ad (spelling?) then decided to give us *another* pilot, this time to be transmitted, but demanding a shake-up of the cast. So in stayed Tim De Jongh and William; out went Tim Firth and Mike, who kind of lost interest at that point - not unreasonably. So we cast some other people; you know, relative unknowns like Alistair McGowan and Caroline Aherne, and also Flip Webster, who I’d worked with on Radio 4’s “Live On Arrival”. We called it “It’s A Mad World World World World” after the 60s caper movie “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World”. Yes, so it was the worst title ever, but not as bad as its working title which was, if I remember correctly, “Half A Sixp”. This time, I managed to get Geoff Posner (my other half at Pozzitive) to direct it, although we weren’t allowed to make it a Pozzitive production, and he was halfway through shooting a Victoria Wood special at the same time. We thought it was fab; it had a very good blues-y sig tune by Absolutely’s best baldie, Monsieur Pete Baikie and a couple of really dead good sketches, like the Late Show spoof on a greeting cards poet and William’s Open University mathematician (yes, I did recognise that photo). And I still have some of the Subbuteo men from the Subbuteo sketch at home, if anyone’s interested … Alas, the then Controller of BBC 2, Michael Jackson thought it was good, but not good enough. In truth, sketch shows were in very bad odour at the time; The Fast Show hadn’t happened, and the assumption was that sketches were pointless dead things best left in the bin. And of course, if you saw “TV To Go”, you might think he was right. Now stop it. So there you go. Any pointless obsessive questions (like “What were the lyrics to the “James Bond theme tune as written by Richard Stilgoe”) are welcome, but I probably won’t remember anything. The truth is, that if you showed the pilot again on BBC 1 today, it would blow most of the current efforts out of the water. And yes, I still think William is a talent waiting to happen. We must find the right vehicle!! Lots of love, dave Ps you’re forgiven. They still talk to me you know. –
> Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 00:04:50
> To: SOTCAA > From: David Tyler > Subject: Oh, things … > > Your Edinburgh preview made me laugh like a pig, even though you
> were rude about everyone I’ve ever been friendly with ever. > Do more stuff that funny, and I won’t get cross about you saying I
> fucked up Absolutely … > dave > – > David Tyler
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Postscript: Clips of It’s A Mad World World World World can probably be found on YouTube if you look hard enough and squint a bit. It is indeed fantastic. As for its never-screened precursor, we’ve whacked a crappy old Real Video capture up on Sendspace here (link updated 04/04/09). Not exactly a ‘lost classic’ (it was of course much better on the radio) but a nice enough way to kill half an hour.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
In the interest of dragging up long-forgotten, contentious ruminations: Gordon Kennedy did seem to lay a portion of the blame for s4 Absolutely at Tyler’s feet when we bumped into him, before backtracking and diplomatically blaming his good self and the team for losing interest.
Can Docherty be heard exploding at the sight of the John Major portrait the Nice Family own, on the relevant commentary? I must admit I haven’t heard that yet myself.
Heartening to see a producer saying “it’d blow today’s stuff out of the water”, but I wonder if he’s since recanted? He seems tied to Marcus Brigstocke these days.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Vaguely ‘topical’ observation: I was once at a ‘99p Challenge’ recording, produced by David Tyler. One of the rounds involved police phonecalls or somesuch. Armando Iannucci was on the panel and came out with something approaching this belter:
“Hello. is that the police? We’ve found a nutter. Do you have any unsolved murders of female TV celebrities we can pin on him…?”
Shitkicking satirical invective from a good heart. Got a huge laugh and a round of applause as I recall. Afterwards, at the Crown & Sceptre, I begged Tyler to keep that line in. He sighed “I’m on your side - but I think I already know what the decision will be…” Indeed, I’m pretty sure it was cut.
As for Absolutely, Tyler’s advice - according to a Docherty interview at the time - was that they should ‘cut straight to the joke’, render the show a lot tighter - quite the antithesis of how Absolutely worked, ie as a ponderous, Celtic wander through comedy’s odder side (even S4C continuity namechecked the show’s “bizarre narrative logic” while Series 2 was being broadcast). Docherty seemed quite happy to allow this change of direction at the time though. I daresay they all were, having done three series and still not really ‘broken through’ in a ‘Vic Reeves Big Night Out’ manner.
Watching Series 4 again it actually seems more likely that they may actually have run out of jokes to ‘cut straight to’ anyway… It all seems curiously anaemic, the original characters reduced to base level. Hey ha.
Christ, imagine being literally tied to Marcus Brigstocke…