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TV: The Young Ones

TV: The Young Ones

TV1 week ago

By the 1980s, BBC2 had, thankfully, started to up its game.

So, at 21.05, November the 9th, 1982, my friends and I were glued to our TVs waiting for the first episode of The Young Ones (TYO).

TYO carried the torch of the surrealist, episodic absurdism of The Goon Show and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but, a first, it focused on young adults.

It is a show about 4 university students who basically hate each other, living in poverty.

Like most British comedies, it lasted for only 2 seasons, for a grand total of 12 episodes. Season One was released in 1982, and Season Two in 1984.

Season Two is a lot more polished, but the rawness of Season One makes it my favourite.

The anarchic comedy is a big plus, but the element that puts TYO over the top is its perfect cast:

THE CHARACTERS

The cast of characters makes the show. Its 4+1 ensemble of main characters work together perfectly. They are:

RICK

Rick is the “people’s poet” and an “anarchist”, but he still adores Cliff Richard. He perfectly embodies the complex moment in our late teens where we try to reconcile our childhood with our adulthood. All of his flatmates hate him, although (P)Rick is completely unaware of this.

VYVYAN

Vyv is a heavy metal/post-punk yobbo, whose approach to life is subtle blend of “psychology and extreme violence.” Whether its entering a room by crashing through wall, setting Rik’s bed on fire, eating the tele, or hitting rick on the head with whatever is available, Vyv always brings anarchy to the show.

NEIL

Neil is the pacifist vegetarian hippy of the group. Constantly depressed, sometimes suicidal, he’s the flat’s dogsbody. His mantra is “vegetable rights and peace.”

MIKE

Mike is the straight guy (comedically speaking). He’s an “older” student who is bribing his way through college. Both a businessman and a ladies man. At least in his own mind.

JERZEI BALOWSKI

Comedian Alexei Sayle plays all ten members of the Balowski family (as well as other characters, including a South African vampire). But primarly, he plays Jerzei the slumlord who owns the lads’ flat.

Guest appearances were made by many up-and-coming comedians, such as Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Lenny Henry, Mel Smith, and Griff Rhys Jones (the latter two, stars of Not The Nine O’clock News). And in the episode University Challenge, we even see big stars before they were:

See the full clip of the University Challenge segment in my post Robbed By An Italian Bastard.

And in deference to this new kind of comedy, we even see Terry Jones of Monty Python fame appear as a drunken priest:

Because Britain loved it’s variety shows in the 70s, a bigger budget was given to them by the TV companies. So TYO added a live performance from a band in each episode.

Bands such as Madness, Motorhead, Rip Rig + Panic, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Amazulu appeared. My personal favourite was the appearance by The Dammed, who wrote the song Nasty specifically for the Season Two episode Nasty:

A prime example of anti-narrative that TYO employed is in the following scene, from the episode Bomb. The main plot of the episode is that an American bomber accidentally loses an atomic bomb. It ends up in the lads’ kitchen.

But in this scene, Mr. Bastard, the television licence enforcer (for those of you not familiar, British people have to pay a yearly licence fee for their TV, and they have people going around enforcing it) interrupts the lads attempt to deal with the bomb. Of course, they don’t have a licence, and Vyv, well watch the scene:

And that’s it. The situation is never resolved and Mr. Bastard never appears again.

But after this episode, every time we were faced with a problem, somebody would always chime in, “It’s alright, lads, I always poo before I get up.”

FOX tried to do an American remake (as always) called Oh, No, Not Them in 1989. Apparently, the American producers couldn’t figure out who’s the hero.

God bless ’em.

So it was, thankfully, shelved.

The running joke in TYO is Cliff Richard. For those of you who don’t know, Cliff Richard started out in the mid 1950s as a British Elvis Presley. And he was definitely not cool in the early 80s.

But the name of the series The Young Ones is a Cliff song. And Rick is obsessed with him. They even joined together with Cliff to do a remake of another of his songs Living Doll. Not sure if Cliff didn’t understand irony or, more likely, he’s just a good sport:

In 1984, Neil released a cover of Traffic’s Hole in my Shoe. You can see it in my blog post Electrical Banana, My Arse.

This show is a must watch. If you haven’t seen it, do so.

And if you have, watch it again.

And you can see the full episodes of The Young Ones here on Youtube.