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This is an interview with one of the Cast Members, Justin Quirk, and he details the impact/legacy of The Young Ones on traditional humor. This was written in 2007, over 30 years after the launch date of the show, which allows for a significant time period to reflect upon the shows impact.

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"Yes, we've got a video!"

"A package from the Transvaal ... how strange!"

"Bad for society ... when the kids start to get into it!"

It'll be difficult for readers under the age of 30 to believe, but if you were watching TV between 1982 and 1984, these phrases are like "Garlic bread!", "I'm Rick James, bitch!" and Andy Pipkin's "Yeah, I know" all rolled into one. They helped cement The Young Ones' reputation as the high watermark of 1980s comedy. This month marks 25 years since the airing of the first episode, Demolition, and sees the rerelease of all 12 shows on DVD. In a fittingly iconoclastic gesture, that episode ended with the entire cast being wiped out in a plane crash; but then logic and continuity were never the show's strong points. Rather, it was their disregard for convention that people found most endearing about The Young Ones, and this stemmed largely from producer Paul Jackson, who cobbled together the best new acts appearing at The Comedy Store, then London's pivotal alternative comedy venue. Bar the 1980 BBC2 showcase Boom Boom ... Out Go The Lights, the cast and crew had virtually no TV experience, which Jackson turned to his advantage.

"I told them 'don't worry about budgets or technical constraints. Just write what's in your imagination and if we can't film it I'll tell you.'"

So, it was out with jokes about mother-in-laws and black people, and in with atomic weapons, talking Glaswegian hamsters and Motorhead playing in the front room. The anarchic mixture of violence, explosions, authority-bating and alternative music proved a hit, but not with the target audience. The intended 18 to 30s were slow on the uptake, while 10 to 14 year olds instantly warmed to a show where a hippy had nails driven into his skull and a ginger punk drove "a yellow Ford Anglia with flames up the sides". The Evening Standard's TV critic Ray Connelly summed up the cultural sea change when he wrote: "There's something going on in my house. My kids are sneaking off to watch this show that I don't get but they find hilarious."

Crucially, these were the first generation of technologically-literate children with access to VCRs. By the show's second series 18 months later, obsessive taping, lending and replaying of the first six episodes had swelled their popularity. The short-term impact was seismic: with the Comic Strip films running concurrently on Channel 4, the comedians showcased in The Young Ones spread across sketch shows, films and rival channels like a rash. As well as the original cast, French & Saunders, Keith Allen, Hale & Pace, Robbie Coltrane, Tony Robinson, Fry & Laurie, Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton and Smith & Jones all cropped up in the show. And the phones of an entire generation of older, less-PC comics suddenly stopped ringing.

In truth, the show hasn't aged brilliantly. The first series feels particularly unstructured, with the surreal interludes dragging on. There is also the problem for any programme of this age that the washed-out film stock and studio sets instantly date it. The lightweight cameras and lack of laughter track that gave The Office its documentary feel belong to the modern age. The Young Ones came at the tail end of the pre-digital period when technical constraints - namely, two massive fixed cameras and a live audience - made televisual comedy closer to the theatre. The declamatory speeches and pauses for laughter make even a show as energetic as this seem rather slow.

There is also the uncomfortable truth that for a programme so fondly remembered as revolutionary, it changed nothing in the long run. Most of the cast themselves became cosily ensconced in the establishment with unseemly haste. Alexei Sayle is the only member who pretty much stuck to his principles, and pinpoints the first episode of series two - when Emma Thompson and Fry & Laurie appeared as Scumbag College's University Challenge rivals - as an inkling of the future. "These people were the enemy and everyone else was like 'Stephen's looovely '," he recalls, grumpily. "I'd have been out there cutting their brake cables."

Indeed, for all its anarchy and iconoclasm, the show was still a comfortably white, middle-class proposition that dealt with the familiar baby-boomer touchstones of university life and liberal politics. With hindsight, the early series of Only Fools And Horses from the same year - with their portrayal of an otherwise unseen, hand-to-mouth Thatcherite London - now looks like the more radical proposition.

Glance around the current entertainment landscape and light entertainment is once again predicated on talent shows and ballroom dancing, just like Gary Bushell always said it should be. Jimmy Carr cracks gags about Gypsies and gets endless Channel 4 gigs. Ricky Gervais tours the country with a routine that even Kelvin MacKenzie damned as "both unfunny and offensive ... basically Jim Davidson from two decades ago." The Young Ones may have played a crucial role in the development of a generation of comedians and had plenty of flashes of genius, but ultimately it won the battle and lost the war. If you watched it first time around, remember it fondly. Just don't expect any genuine young ones to find it as funny as you.

· The Young Ones: 25th Anniversary Complete Series Box Set is out on Monday
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Justin Quirk on The Young Ones legacy 25 years on

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"Yes, we've got a video!" "A package from the Transvaal ... how strange!" "Bad for society ... when the kids start to get into it!" It'll be difficult for readers under the age of 30 to believe, but if you were watching TV between 1982 and 1984, these phrases are like "Garlic bread!", "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

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This article by Business Insider details some of the major themes and motifs of The Young Ones. In this,  the article discusses some of the major ideas that were presented in the show - comedy and tragedy, and places them in the context of the time period. For instance, a vivid attempt at suicide was acceptable then, yet could not air now.

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This week, two major discoveries were made centred on things that have been hiding in plain sight all along.

One was this enormous flat spot near the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. The other was in my bedroom, where I chanced across a YouTube video called "The Young Ones - The 5th Roommate".

"The Young Ones" was on the telly most likely before many reading this were born - 1982 and 1983. It was an outrageous, violent, funny, shocking, and bewildering sitcom centred on four wildly different housemates - Rick, Mike, Neil and Vyvyan - living in an increasingly battered house.

Giant sandwiches dropped by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would crash through the roof:

Demons would materialise in stinking clouds and try to drag the housemates back to Hell so they could torture them with endless loops of Barry Manilow:

There was a lot of swearing, dismemberment and what would now be called "mature content".

I was allowed to watch it as a 10-year-old - it came through to Australia a year or two after the UK, think about that - and it changed every standard I had for what I considered entertainment, forever.

I know every catchphrase, every moment of extreme violence, and every answer to all the University Challenge questions. But in 33 years of rarely missing a late-night replay, I have never seen this person before:

In case you missed it, here he/she is again at the bottom of the stairs in "Boring":

And lurking behind Rick in "Demolition", the first episode:

Mind blown.

It's clearly someone living in the house, although the housemates aren't aware of it. We know that because in the episode above, Neil tells the housemates he's off to kill himself and Rick's only consideration is "that's put the rent up by a third".

It's also very creepy, with more than a touch of "The Ring" about it.

There's a minimal amount of references online to it, with some saying the extra housemate appears in at least five episodes in the first series.

The only way to find out for sure was to contact the writers - Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, Lise Mayer or Alexei Sayle. Mayall, sadly, died last year, but Elton, as far as I knew, was living in Fremantle, Western Australia.

So, via his agent in Australia, I sent Elton an email, just on a whim. And to my shock - mainly because Elton has been a creative hero of mine since I first saw "The Young Ones" - I got this reply just over an hour later:

Boring

As it turned out, I'd asked way too flippantly if he could tell us who the fifth housemate was. I really should have sent him a picture and felt like I'd blown my one chance to chat meaningfully with Ben Elton.

I'd sent a couple more feelers out that day, to various cast members and crew, but after several days of silence, I began to think it might be a hoax. A very elaborate hoax targeting a very small handful of pre-digital couch potatoes.

Until a couple of days later, when I received this email from Geoff Posner, one of three directors of "The Young Ones":

The fifth housemate was real. And Ben Elton wasn't aware of it.

(I still prefer to think Elton was totally aware of the fifth housemate, and is sticking to an official line.)

But then I thought it's not surprising Elton doesn't remember what was probably just a running gag shared by Posner, Jackson and the production crew.

Time

So maybe the fifth housemate idea wasn't such a big deal to the cast and crew back then.

Often what artists think of their own work is only half of the story. The other is what impact it has on the audience and its legacy and in this regard, "The Young Ones" still stands up incredibly well 34 years after it first aired. The appearance of the running "fifth housemate" gag is a great example, which we'll get to in a minute.

A stellar cast of great comedians, including Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Robbie Coltrane and Alexei Sayle virtually began their careers with cameos on "The Young Ones".

When Scumbag College took on Footlights in University Challenge, the opposition consisted of Elton, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie:

And creators Elton, Mayall and Lisa Mayer threw a live music performance into each episode, so the show could technically be classified "light entertainment" and thus gain them better funding from the BBC. That produced memorable performances from the likes of Madness, The Damned, Dexy's Midnight Runners and most famously, Motorhead, who performed "The Ace of Spades" in the housemates' lounge.

But Christopher Ryan - Mike The Cool Person - says he's never watched it, and in fact, doesn't even own a telly or computer.

And in 2010, Adrian Edmondson, who played violent skinhead Vyvyan, told The Scotsman: "You watch The Young Ones now and really, it's not very funny."

Edmondson is wrong because it still is, very. The big laughs, at the time, came for the slapstick violence and ridiculous fantasy elements, both of which were ramped up in the second series and are probably the cheap devices Edmondson and critics of the show concentrate on when dismissing any genius "The Young Ones" might claim.

Yes, it's easy to overanalyse these things. So let's do that, starting with the fifth housemate. Here's another appearance, this time in "Bomb":

As a replicant which appeared in slightly different situations in at least five episodes in the first series, it could arguably be described as one of the first popular culture memes. (The term "meme" had only been coined six years earlier, by Richard Dawkins.)

Interesting

It's groundbreaking, but it's not accidental genius. Looking back on "The Young Ones" and you soon realise it's jammed full of devices - tropes - at every turn. (In fact, the TV Tropes Wiki has picked out no less than 172, and they're excellent fun to check off.)

Of course, there's never been a shortage of experimental comedians, particularly out of the UK. But 34 years ago, "The Young Ones" simply tried everything to see what worked.

They broke the fourth wall, in "Sick", when Neil's parents talk about him starring in a sitcom:

At the end of the show, the house is shown getting pulled apart so the BBC can reuse it for a light entertainment show.

And most notably in "Nasty", where a cutaway shows Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Chris Ryan IRL insulting Alexei Sayle:

Vyvyan is also pointing out things that don't exist, aka:

Vyvyan: Look, here comes the postman.
Mike: Vyvyan, why do you keep telling us what's just about to happen next?
Vyvyan: Because it's a studio set, Michael, and they can't afford any long shots.

It tackled social issues that nobody else was brave enough to take on, especially in a light entertainment format.

Policemen came in for particularly harsh treatment. "Flood" pushed the boundaries with Rick fantasising about confronting two cops hassling "gay black bastards". It also featured Elton's scorn for The Black and White Minstrel Show - which had only ended on the BBC five years previously - by dressing up as a cat to entertain a working men's club.

The stabs at authority and racist attitudes were too hot to handle in later years. One scene in "Boring", where a policeman tells a man at the front door "That's white man's electricity you're burning" before taking off his sunglasses to say "Oh sorry John, I thought you was a n....." was cut from DVD re-releases.

In a cutaway scene in "Bomb", three old ladies can be seen vandalising a phonebox, spraypainting "Wogs Out" and saying the hope young people get the blame which might "stop them raping old ladies".

Mike the Cool Person wishes education was abolished. ("That's the only reason I voted Tory.")

Another meme featured all the ways Neil tried to kill himself, to nobody's dismay, apart from the fact he always failed at it. Heavy, as he would say, and not something that would easily pass a censorship board 34 years later.

And the second series featured flashes of random single frames. Viewers quick on the pause button caught glimpses of a seagull, a tree frog, a gurning man, a dripping tap and the end credits of the film "Carry On Cowboy", none of which seemed to make any sense in the spots they were inserted.

That was seen to be the show's way of making fun of concerns at the time about "dangerous" subliminal messaging.

Nothing was sacred and, from an outsider's perspective, creativity wasn't checked by concerns over how it would go down with a target audience.

That's probably why we haven't seen anything like "The Young Ones" on our small screens since. A handful of complaints on Twitter can have executives running for the kill button before the first episode is finished.

Cash

These days, pretty much everyone involved in the show has gone on to "serious" careers. Edmondson and Mayall recreated the magic for three series of "Bottom" in the early 90s, but it was straight up and down violent slapstick - hilarious, but nowhere near the wild creativity of "The Young Ones".

Edmondson actually won a version of Celebrity Masterchef recently, is now lead singer of The Idiot Bastard Band and is reportedly joining the cast of "Star Wars: Episode VIII".

Nigel Planer - Neil - became a popular theatre performer in numerous West End productions and still gets regular film and TV roles. Chris Ryan - Mike - is also treading the boards.

And Elton, who as noted, now lives in Fremantle with his Australian wife, has written 15 bestselling novels to increasing acclaim, and the hit musical "We Will Rock You".

He bombed with the sitcom "The Wright Way" in 2013, but there's signs he's back on form - his Shakespearean sitcom experiment with David Mitchell, "Upstart Crow", was recently green-lit for series two.

But he hasn't taken a standup comedy gig on the road for 10 years.

Mayer continued as a writer for around a decade after the series aired.

The only actor who was determined to be a comedic tour de force to the end, Mayall, went on to steal scenes in various series of "Blackadder" as Mad Gerald, Lord Flashheart and Robin Hood, and wreck childhoods in "Drop Dead Fred", "Grim Tales" and "George's Marvellous Medicine".

But in 1998, he fractured his skull in a quad bike accident and was on life support for five days. Edmondson says Mayall never fully recovered and was left "strangely more emotional; still very funny".

Even so, Mayall brought vile MP Alan B'Stard for a triumphant two-year stage run of "The New Statesman" in 2006. He continually badgered Edmondson for a return to "Bottom" and in 2013, got "Hooligan's Island" to the stage where it was announced by the BBC before Edmondson pulled out.

Mayall died of a heart attack nearly two years ago.

Like a broken beer bottle over the back of the head from Vyvyan, no one saw that coming either.

EXTRA REVEAL: For those who made it this far, Posner also sent me a heads-up about something else fans may have missed:

"Do you notice the tiny fart in Boring at 1815. Mike delivered this comic gem in rehearsals in the studio, and cracked everybody up so much that they couldn't face recording the scenes, putting us further behind schedule than we always were (because of the over-ambition of the scenes. But then I say again, we were young then...)"

I had noticed, but always figured Mike voiced the sound himself to relieve the boredom:

But while thoroughly checking that episode, I think I found a real one, when Mike sits down at The Kebab and Calculator:
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REVEALED: There really was a creepy fifth housemate lurking in cult British TV show The Young Ones

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This week, two major discoveries were made centred on things that have been hiding in plain sight all along. One was this enormous flat spot near the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. The other was in my bedroom, where I chanced across a YouTube video called "The Young Ones - The 5th Roommate".

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Ade Edmondson and Nigel Planer: They'll always be The Young Ones

The following is a visual interview with Ade Edmonson and Nigel Planer on the longevity of The Young Ones. Although they discuss how much of the humor used in the show is not acceptable today, Edmonson and Planer continue to detail how The Young Ones introduces global themes that have withstood the test of time.

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Ade Edmondson and Nigel Planer: They'll always be The Young Ones | ITV News

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New Times revisited: Britain in the 1980s

This is a journal article that provides historical context to the 1980s in Great Britain, the location and time period of which The Young Ones first aired. National Identity, for instance, is a major theme explored in this article that may provides justification behind some of the themes explored in the show.

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The following is a summary of the general plotline of The Young Ones. More importantly, this source provides details as to the reasoning behind the creation of the show, some of the shows distinct features, and general opinions of the show from the British public.

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In 1982, The Young Ones somehow slipped through the cracks of BBC's notoriously reserved program executives. It became an instant cult favourite and drew a torrent of criticisms. Many even went as far as calling it the worse show on TV. But that's not true. In fact, it is arguably one of the finest sitcoms in British history. Not for the acting, writing or direction, but for its senseless anarchy, irreverence and ground-breaking interpretation of teenage angst.

Lise Mayer, one of the writers of the show, stated that "We were absolutely, blissfully ignorant of how to write, you know, of our TV drama, how to structure it," before adding "I mean that's why it's sort of as chaotic as it is really."

And chaotic it was. The haphazardly written show would occasionally include puppet shows, musical performances, cartoons and sketches with had absolutely no relevance to the main storyline, while the outrageous plots include a nuclear missile, a time warp and an inflatable sex doll.

The Young Ones is the story of four students of Scumbag College - self-professed People's Poet Rick, bipolar hippy and serial failed suicider Neil, medical student and resident punk Vyvyan, and wannabe ladies' man Mike - who all live in a squalid North London council house. Each episode is a bizarre and surreal reimagining of life in in Thatcher's UK, and is filled with an unending stream of insults and weirdness that threatens to nudge even the stiffest of upper lips.

The antics of the four, who incidentally, were never seen studying, attending class or holding a textbook even once during the series, would go on to inspire many budding filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic and has been cited as a comedic and storytelling influence in many films and TV shows during the last couple of decades. After all, how many other shows in the history television have plotlines involving an amputated leg, a South African vampire or an oil well in a basement?
BBC Television
Copyright 2017 phill.co.uk

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In 1982, The Young Ones somehow slipped through the cracks of BBC's notoriously reserved program executives. It became an instant cult favourite and drew a torrent of criticisms. Many even went as far as calling it the worse show on TV. But that's not true.

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The following source was created by a fan and details 10 interesting facts about The Young Ones. The publisher of this article is 'Eighties Kids' which was the target audience of the original show, thereby providing insight into how the show was received by the British public.

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The Young Ones was one of the weirdest, strangest, oddest, yet funniest comedy shows of the 1980s. To say that it had a unique sense of humour was an understatement and it really did know no boundaries, as one minute it would be fairly normal, then a devil would appear, or an alien spaceship, with no explanation!

It had a wonderful cast, including the amazing Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, and they realised their student characters perfectly, injecting humour, wit and real charisma in to them all! Let's take a look back at this classic show with some amazing facts...

1. It wasn't a sit-com!

In spite of what you may think, the show was not a Sit-com! Why not I hear you cry, well have you ever wondered why there would be random segments with music played by top bands of the time? This was to get the show classified as "Light Entertainment" as the BBC had no remaining budget for a new Sit-com!

2. Rik Mayall was upset by some of the fans

As you will know if you have seen the program, it has some jokes that poke direct fun at 1980s police men and their sterotypes, who are often either stupid, overly violent or racist. The fact that police men actually loved The Young Ones is said to have upset Rik Mayall greatly!

3. The Young Ones were a family... kind of!

Rik Mayall once said that the Young Ones were actually the definition of the Nuclear Family, with Mike as the father figure, Neil as the mother, Vyvyan as the rebellious teenage son and Rik as the daughter (hence the pig tails!).

4. Madness nearly had their own series!

There were many hit pop acts that appeared in The Young Ones over the series' run, but Madness appeared twice, performing both Our House and House of Fun. The reason they appeared twice was that the BBC were thinking of giving Madness their own TV show in the same vein as the Monkees, but this never ended up happening.

5. Rik Mayall had more than one role

Remember Vyvyan's pet hamster, Special Patrol Group? He ended up badly when Vyvyan crashed his car in to a lamp post and SPG had been asleep on the bumper, but did you know that SPG was actually voiced by none other than Rik Mayall?

6. This London show was not filmed in London

In spite of the fact that The Young Ones was set in London, most of the outdoor shots were not filmed in London at all, but were filmed in Bristol as that was where the show's producer, Paul Jackson, was living at the time. Even the house used in the external scenes was Bristol, on Codrington Road to be precise!

7. It had many up and coming famous TV faces

The Young Ones gave many opportunities for up and coming stars to appear in guest cameo roles, and some of these would go on to have glittering TV careers of their own. The likes of Lenny Henry, Hugh Laurie, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones all appeared on the show.

8. It also had some people who became huge hits in Hollywood

As well as many future TV faces, The Young Ones gave cameos to some stars who would make it big in Hollywood, including Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane who would both go on to star in the Harry Potter series of movies!

9. It was ended so it didn't go stale

Rik Mayall, Ben Elton and Lise Mayer could not think of enough new jokes and material in the vein needed for The Young Ones' unique sense of humour, and so they decided to end the show after its second series by killing off the whole of the main cast of characters instead.

10. One episode had to be cut

There are some very dodgy moments in the Young Ones, we see people in the bath, on the toilet, in some very strange situations and some fairly graphic (but very silly) violence for the time, yet one scene in the episode "Nasty" had to be cut, when they included a sequence in which two teddy bears are seen having sex!

The Young Ones was a true classic and redefined a genre by daring to do something very different, and very few series have ever managed to create the same kind of unique feel. Has this brought back loads of memories and made you want to re-watch the show? I know I'm now off to my DVD room to get the two boxsets and watch both series back to back, so I'll see you soon! In the meantime make sure to leave us plenty of comments on your favourite shows, characters and scenes from the series, there are plenty to choose from!

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Check Out These 10 Facts About The Young Ones!

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The Young Ones was one of the weirdest, strangest, oddest, yet funniest comedy shows of the 1980s.

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The following article by UKTV illustrates the premiere of a television program detailing the impact of The Young Ones on British Television. The article engages in a variety of aspects of the show's impact, including its legacy, the influence of comedians at that time, as well as the impact these comedians had on future comics. The article details the airing of the programme, which will provide valuable insight into The Young Ones.

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Friday 9 March 2018

The nation's favourite comedy channel, Gold will explore the impact of one of the most influential British sitcoms of all time with two brand new UKTV Original retrospectives, How The Young Ones Changed Comedy (1x120) and The Young Ones' 20 Greatest Moments (1x60'). Produced by North One, they will examine the anarchic show's enduring legacy, its success in opening the floodgates for an entire generation of household name comedians and how it inspired many of today's comic stars.

How The Young Ones Changed Comedy will combine archive footage with revelations from many of the stars who were involved both in front of and behind the camera, such as Nigel Planer, Alexei Sayle, John Lloyd, Paul Jackson, Lise Mayer, while comedians that followed in its wake such as David Baddiel, Charlie Higson, Clive Anderson and Richard Herring will discuss how it influenced them and galvanised the British comedy scene. Meanwhile, The Young Ones' 20 Greatest Moments will count down the finest scenes from the show, as selected by comedians and industry experts.

How The Young Ones Changed Comedy and The Young Ones' 20 Greatest Moments are commissioned by Joe McVey, commissioning executive, and ordered by Richard Watsham, director of commissioning and Steve North, genre general manager, comedy and entertainment. Executive producer for North One is John Quinn and the series is directed by Sean Doherty.

Joe McVey said:

I can think of no other sit-com that has had a larger influence on modern comedy than The Young Ones. And while watching it in glorious HD may not have the same illicit thrill as watching it on some dodgy VHS passed around the playground most fans of the show's eyesight isn't what it was so it's probably for the best. For true fans of the show may I suggest watching it with a youngster and enjoy the repetition of the phrase 'so that's where that comes from.

Steve North said:

We know Gold viewers loved our retrospective on Only Fools and Horses and are eagerly awaiting our forthcoming documentary about dinnerladies. With The Young Ones proving to be a real shot in the arm for British comedy, it will be fascinating to revisit.

John Quinn said:

Terrifyingly, I am old enough to remember watching the first episode go out as a kid. I had no idea what it was, but the moment Rik Mayall launched into a poetic eulogy to Cliff and Vyvyan made his crashing entrance through the kitchen wall screaming 'I've been down the morgue - I got a leg!', I knew I would never look at comedy the same way again. It's a thing of sheer joy to be making this overdue tribute to a genuine game-changer.

How The Young Ones Changed Comedy and The Young Ones' 20 Greatest Moments are just the latest UKTV Original retrospectives for Gold, following the huge success of The Story of Only Fools and Horses and the upcoming dinnerladies diaries. Gold continues to commission programming from and about the cream of British comedy, with last year's UKTV Original Murder on The Blackpool Express becoming the channel's highest ever rating show.

How The Young Ones Changed Comedy and The Young Ones' 20 Greatest Moments will both air on Gold in the spring.

For more information please contact:
Ben Duncan, Publicist, UKTV

About Gold
Sky 110, Virgin 124, BT and TalkTalk 310 On demand on Sky, Virgin and Now TV

Dedicated to celebrating the best of British comedy, Gold is the nation's favourite comedy channel. Much-loved comedy series such as Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family sit alongside an array of successful UKTV Originals including David Jason: My Life on Screen, The Rebel, The Story of Only Fools and Horses, and Murder on the Blackpool Express, which stars a stunning cast including Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson. The feature length UKTV Original attracted 1.72 million viewers in its first week in 2017, making it Gold's highest ever rating show.
The perfect tonic to make you laugh whatever the time of day, Gold shows universally funny content that everyone can enjoy.

gold.uktv.co.uk | @goldchannel

About UKTV
UKTV is a commercial broadcaster reaching over 40m viewers every month.

The award-winning independent has eleven imaginative brands - UKTV Play, Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home, Eden and Good Food. These include the two most popular non-PSB channels in the UK and account for nearly 10% of the British commercial TV market.

The network delivers inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView, Freesat, Amazon Fire and UKTV Play, and distributes its highly valued original programmes to 200 territories. Now celebrating over 20 years at the forefront of digital television, UKTV - an independent commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Discovery, Inc. - is proud to be the first British television broadcaster in The Sunday Times top 100 companies list.
corporate.uktv.co.uk | press.uktv.co.uk | @uktvpress

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Gold to reveal How The Young Ones Changed Comedy | News | UKTV Corporate Site

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The nation's favourite comedy channel, Gold will explore the impact of one of the most influential British sitcoms of all time with two brand new UKTV Original retrospectives, How The Young Ones Changed Comedy (1x120) and The Young Ones' 20 Greatest Moments (1x60').

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This interview may be the most useful article when writing the critical analysis. The interview is with Ben Elton, a start of the show and of future comedy sketches. Elton demonstrates how the humor enlisted in The Young Ones would no longer be deemed acceptable in todays society, due to increase political and social awareness and scrutiny.

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Updated April 19, 2019 11:29:23

Acclaimed British comedian and writer Ben Elton says his shows like Blackadder and The Young Ones would not work today because of a massive shift in the way people view the world.

Gone are the days when people would gather in front of the TV to watch a sitcom based around national identity, he said.

Instead the man who made a screeching London punk and a scheming manservant part of the '80s mainstream said we had found ourselves in a "watershed moment".

"Clearly with something like Blackadder, it really entered the culture, and you don't get many opportunities to do that," Elton said this week.

"I don't think it will ever happen again either, because clearly the focus of audiences has completely changed.

"You cannot have a national focus anymore, so I think the days when everyone knew about ... Blackadder are gone."

The way we view ourselves appears to be something Elton has given much thought to of late.

He has just released his 16th novel, Identity Crisis, which follows an old-school detective thrown into a world of sex, politics and identity groups that he struggles to comprehend.

"Why are we all so hostile? So quick to take offence? Truly we are living in the age of outrage," the book's blurb asserts.

It has prompted some to ask whether Elton has joined the chorus of those who say the world has become too politically correct.

He stressed this was far from the case.

"This keeps coming up and I'm fighting a losing battle to avoid hashtag 'Ben rails against political correctness'," he said.

"I don't at all. Most political correctness I strongly approve of.

"Back in the '80s, I was the king of PC and doing routines about tampon poverty and even a bit of gender fluidity."

Elton co-wrote Blackadder and The Young Ones - among other British sitcoms - which sit alongside an illustrious list of UK classics.

Earlier this month the Radio Times magazine ranked the top 20 British sitcoms of all time, as judged by a panel of television experts, with Elton's work featuring prominently.

1. Fawlty Towers

2. Father Ted

3. I'm Alan Partridge

4. Blackadder

5. Dad's Army

6. Only Fools and Horses

7. Porridge

8. The Royle Family

9. Absolutely Fabulous

10. Dinnerladies

11. The Thick of It

12. The Office

13. Peep Show

14. The Vicar of Dibley

15. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

16. The Young Ones

17. Gavin & Stacey

18. The Good Life

19. Detectorists

20. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

Elton said The Young Ones in particular was a "crazy show" to be part of, and Vyvyan's arrival through the kitchen wall was one his favourite moments.

"I was very proud of that - one of the great entrances in sitcom," he said.

Yet, Elton said things had changed since The Young Ones shocked the sensibilities of 1980s England.

"We are in a real watershed moment in cultural history," he said.

"We're still talking about national boundaries, Donald Trump is building a wall around America and Britain is breaking up as we speak.

"And yet actually the communities people seem to really care about is not the national community anymore, not the geographical community, not their street, not their school, not their town, but it's their identity community.

"It's what is their sexuality, what's their gender, what's their race.

"And those communities are virtual, they're online, and that changes human discourse completely."

As Elton prepares for his first stand-up comedy tour in more than a decade, he fears the world has passed him by just a bit.

Or perhaps, Elton wonders, is he is the very thing the world needs?

"The ideas of the enlightenment - for 300 years the primacy of evidence and the rejection of superstition and rejection of blind faith - suddenly all that has gone in the 15 years I have been off the road," he said.

"I wonder if it is my fault? I think probably the world needs me and that's why I'm doing it again."

Topics: books-literature, arts-and-entertainment, television, australia

First posted April 19, 2019 08:52:05

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'The world has changed': Why shows like Blackadder, Young Ones wouldn't work today

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Updated April 19, 2019 11:29:23 Acclaimed British comedian and writer Ben Elton says his shows like Blackadder and The Young Ones would not work today because of a massive shift in the way people view the world. Gone are the days when people would gather in front of the TV to watch a sitcom based around national identity, he said.

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This source provides transcripts for all of the episodes pertaining to The Young Ones. In this, stage directions can be seen which provides contextual clues to the movements of the actors, as well as quotes from the episodes that can be utilized in the critical analysis.

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This primary source is the first pilot episode of The Young Ones. It is important to watch the first episode as it details the initial response of the show to the target audience. Upon watching this first episode, some of the major themes, such as serious political issues through light entertaimnent, start to make sense.

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The Young Ones Season 1 Episode 01   Demolition