The Young Ones
The Young Ones is a British sitcom, broadcast in the United Kingdom from 1982 to 1984 in two six-part series. Shown on BBC2, it featured anarchic, offbeat humour which helped bring alternative comedy to television in the 1980s and made household names of its writers and performers. In 1985, it was shown on MTV, one of the first non-music television shows on the fledgling channel. In a 2004 poll, it ranked at number 31 in the BBC's list of Britain's Best Sitcoms. The title relates to the song, written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, and sung by Cliff Richard and The Shadows, which was a No. 1 UK hit single.
As The Comedy Store became popular, Sayle, 20th Century Coyote, and The Outer Limits, with French and Saunders and Arnold Brown, set up their own club called The Comic Strip in the Raymond Revuebar club in Soho. The Comic Strip became one of the most popular comedy venues in London, and came to the attention of Jeremy Isaacs of Channel 4. Peter Richardson then negotiated a deal for six self-contained half-hour films, using the group as comedy actors rather than stand-up performers. In response, the BBC began negotiations with Edmondson, Mayall, Richardson, Planer and Sayle to star in a sitcom in a similar style. Paul Jackson was installed as a producer. Richardson's project, The Comic Strip Presents..., aired on Channel 4's opening night on 2 November 1982, with The Young Ones following a week later on BBC2.
The main characters were four undergraduate students who were sharing a house: aggressive punk medical student, Vyvyan Basterd (Adrian Edmondson); conceited wannabe anarchist sociology student, Rick (Rik Mayall), oppressed paranoid hippie peace studies student, Neil Wheedon Watkins Pye (Nigel Planer); and the suave, charming would-be underground mob boss, Mike The-Cool-Person (Christopher Ryan). It also featured Alexei Sayle, who played various members of the Balowski family—most often Jerzei Balowski, the quartet's landlord—and occasional independent characters.
The show combined traditional sitcom style with violent slapstick, non-sequitur plot turns, and surrealism. These older styles were mixed with the working and lower-middle class attitudes of the growing 1980s alternative comedy boom, in which all the principal performers except Ryan had been involved. Every episode except one featured a live performance by a band, including Madness, Motörhead, and The Damned. This was a device used to qualify the series for a larger budget, as "variety" shows attracted higher fees than "comedy".
Stories were set in a squalid house where the students lived during their time at Scumbag College. It can be classified as a comedy of manners.
When it was first broadcast, the show gained attention for its violent slapstick, which Mayall and Edmondson had been using in 20th Century Coyote for some time. The show also featured surreal elements, such as puppets playing talking animals or objects. Confusion was added with lengthy cutaways with no relation to the main plot.
The series featured a wide variety of guest appearances by comedians, actors, and singers, including co-creator Ben Elton, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Hale and Pace, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Mark Arden, Stephen Frost, Jools Holland, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, Terry Jones, Chris Barrie, Norman Lovett, Lenny Henry, David Rappaport, Robbie Coltrane, Tony Robinson, Andy De La Tour and Emma Thompson.
The series' theme song featured the cast singing Cliff Richard and The Shadows' UK No. 1 song "The Young Ones" (1961), the title song from the film of the same name. Throughout the series there are many references to Richard, as Mayall's character is a fan.
In 1984, after the second series, Planer (in character as Neil) reached No. 2 in the UK charts with a version of Traffic's "Hole in My Shoe". The accompanying Neil's Heavy Concept Album, a loose collection of songs and spoken comedy, included appearances by The Young Ones alumni Dawn French and Stephen Fry.
Eleven of the twelve episodes had a musical guest performing in the house or street. By including the groups, the show qualified as variety rather than light entertainment by the BBC and was allocated a bigger budget than a sitcom. Groups that appeared included Dexys Midnight Runners, Motörhead, The Damned and Madness, who appeared in two episodes. The one episode that featured no musical act still fulfilled the variety criteria by including a lion tamer, whose presence also directly contributed to the plot.
Mike "The-Cool-Person" portrayed by Christopher Ryan
Mike is the assumed leader of the group (within which Vyvyan is his enforcer) who frequently makes puns, which are either deliberately cheap or humorous. These confusing, profound-sounding phrases baffle the others (for example, when asked by Rick if he stole his half an apple, Mike replies; "Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original.") Mike is supposedly the 'ladies' man' and often brags of his prowess with women, although he is shown to share his bed with an inflatable sex doll and practically admitted his virginity to the others in "Nasty". He makes every attempt at wooing the opposite sex, being both forward and unsuccessful. During "Boring", however, he has an encounter with (and also instigated by) Vyvyan's mother, where (until after a comment made by Rick), he makes progress, although her direct approach initially worries Mike.
Mike is a con artist: he always has some kind of plan to make quick money such as renting out Rick's bedroom as a roller disco and taking bids for the unexploded atomic bomb that fell into the house. He also fancies himself to be a rising underground mob boss. Mike attends Scumbag College only nominally as he has blackmailed his tutor and the Dean of the school for grants and successful grades. This is shown in the title sequence of series 1 in which he is seen to pay a bribe in exchange for a qualification. In "Summer Holiday" he muses, "I think I'll ask for one of those PhDs next year." While it wasn't mentioned what he was studying at the college, when it once came up, in "Sick", by Mrs. Wheedon Watkins Pye when Neil was introducing him, he answers her, "I'm in, what you'd call, a school of life, Mrs. Pye" (before groping her).
While Mike often does things at the expense or detriment of his housemates, he rarely expresses the sort of open hostility that Rick and Vyvyan do, and seems to cause his housemates trouble only when it benefits him, rather than out of sadistic joy. While it is rare for him to be victim to violence, he has been on a few occasions; such as when he was flirting with a Christian, this resulted in her repeatedly kneeing Mike in the crotch. At the end of the "Living Doll" song with Cliff Richard, Vyvyan hit Mike and everyone else over the head with a hammer, knocking them out. Also when Mike was trying to nail plates to the dining table, he managed to nail his own legs to the table in the process. On another occasion, Mike accidentally knocked Neil out during a game of cricket.
Mike has been shown to be helpful to the others on occasion; if any situation becomes problematic he does what he can to try and restore calm. He also tried to teach Vyvyan how to tell time in "Bambi" and in the final episode "Summer Holiday" he comforts Vyvyan when he bursts into tears after wrecking his car when he crashed it and SPG dies.Although generally aloof and laid back mike loses his cool his authority is questioned however small. For example In "summer holiday" when Vyvyan tells everyone to shut up he was very indignant that this included him. Mike is the shortest member of the four, and the best-dressed and groomed out of the lot of them. In the final episode, Summer Holiday, Mike admits that he came from very poor beginnings out on the streets, and had sworn that he would never again go back to that life, thus his leap into a con artist's life in the first place.
Mike's surname is ambiguous, The Bachelor Boys book refers to him as "The Cool Person" several times, but in different styles including quotes.
Rick played by Rik Mayall
Rick is a self-proclaimed anarchist who is studying sociology and/or domestic sciences. Rick writes bad poetry, and styles himself "The People's Poet", believing himself to be the "spokesperson for a generation". He is in fact a hypocritical, tantrum-throwing, attention-seeking Cliff Richard fan, or, as Vyvyan describes him, "The classic example of an only child!" Rick tries to impress the others using wit and humour, despite not having any discernible talent. He insults Neil at every opportunity, using Neil as a target and an outlet, picks fights and bickers with Vyvyan and attempts to impress Mike. He is portrayed as being so self-absorbed that he believes he is the "most popular member of the flat" despite being disliked by virtually everyone he knows; even though his housemates hate him, he says that they "really are terrific friends". This is further emphasised in the episode "Bambi" when Neil reads graffiti aloud from Rick's History 'O' Level text book; "Prick is a wonker- signed, The Rest of the Class" which Rick dismisses as banter until Neil further reads "I agree with the rest of the class – signed, Teacher."
He greatly dislikes Margaret Thatcher, as is noted by his threatening to blow up England with an atomic bomb in the episode "Bomb" if she "doesn't do something to help the kids, by this afternoon", and from negative references to Thatcher and the Conservative Party mentioned in The Young Ones book Bachelor Boys. However, Rick sometimes displays a markedly conservative mindset, contrary to the image he has adopted, as again in "Bomb" while talking to an old man at the DHSS office (which he has mistaken for a post office), and in Summer Holiday comments "That's one thing I'll say for Thatcher, she definitely has put this country back on its feet".
Rick exaggerates or lies about his political activism and class background, which is exposed in the final episode, "Summer Holiday", when it is suggested he comes from a well off family with Conservative beliefs. He is a closet-transvestite, as during "Nasty" Neil finds a dress in Rick's wardrobe with his name stitched in it. In the episode "Cash", Rick admits to Mike that he is unable to tell the time, a trait that he shares with Vyvyan.
Vyvyan Basterd played by Adrian Edmondson
Vyvyan, often referred to as "Vyv", is a psychopathic punk medical student. He has spiked red hair and four metal stars seemingly embedded into his forehead. He wears a denim waistcoat over a black T-shirt, a black studded belt across his denim jeans and bovver boots. In the episode "Interesting", he drinks a pint of blue liquid which makes his hair fall out and the number 666 is visible on the side of his head. He is extremely violent and regularly attacks Neil and Rick with pieces of wood, cricket bats, other large objects or simply his fists. For some reason he looks up to Mike, whom he never attacks and often addresses as "Michael". He despises Rick more than he does Neil; for example when Rick, Mike and Neil meet his mother at a bar in the episode "Boring", he calls both Neil and Mike his friends, but refers to Rick as "a complete bastard." Ironically, this antagonistic relationship between Rick and Vyvyan makes them virtually inseparable, as the two spend by far more time together than with the other housemates, albeit this time is spent fighting.
Vyvyan occasionally displays feats of superhuman strength and resilience, such as surviving a pickaxe through his head, moving entire walls with his bare hands, lifting Neil above his head in a fight with Rick, biting through a brick (making the comment that some of the house's bricks explode) and even being decapitated and re-attaching his own head. He eats just about anything from televisions and dead rats to caviar and cornflakes with ketchup.
Regardless of his violent and mostly simple-minded nature, Vyvyan seems to be the smartest of the group and he has on a couple of occasions demonstrated his talent as a medical student. In the episode "Flood", he develops a potion to transform a person into an "axe-wielding homicidal maniac", claiming that "it's basically a cure... for not being an axe-wielding homicidal maniac... the potential market's enormous!". He also managed to create a bomb using only his pyjama sleeve and a bottle of vodka. On occasion, he has made several eloquent statements regarding subjects ranging from Rick's manifest personality problems to the inherent dulleness of "The Good Life", and the end of "Oil" implies he manipulated the rest of the household, possibly for amusement. Vyvyan also appears to have good knowledge of electrics and technology; on one occasion he wired the doorbell to a bomb "to pep it up a bit" so the housemates would be able to hear it, and he also added a small car engine to the vacuum cleaner as previously it "looked a bit on the tentative side" which then proceeds to suck up the carpet, the floorboards and a friend of Neil's. The vacuum also prompted one of the few clashes between Vyvyan and Mike; when Mike admonished Vyvyan and told him not to use it any more, Vyvyan replied by calling him a "poof". In the episode "Nasty", the boys trap a vampire in their bathroom, and when he denies being a vampire, Vyvyan successfully tricks him into admitting that he is. In "Bambi" Vyvyan displays impressive mathematical talent as he worked out instantly that he has worn his three pairs of knickers 269 times each since their last wash. However, like Rick, he cannot tell the time from a watch.
Although Vyvyan is constantly unruly, he does possess a compassionate side; primarily in the episode "Cash", when he thought he was pregnant he was considering names to call his baby and he also patted his "bump" saying "that's my boy!" when it hit Rick in the face and knocked him into the fireplace. Also when Vyvyan began having "contractions" he appealed to the other housemates for help, this led to Neil getting a job in the police force (it was later revealed that he just had a really bad case of built-up gas). On another occasion, in the last episode "Summer Holiday" Vyvyan dissolved into tears because he crashed his car and also because it caused SPG's death while he was asleep on the car's radiator.Vyvyan is the only member of the group who owns a car, a yellow Ford Anglia with red flames painted along the sides and has "Vyv" written across the back window. He also appears to have exceptional knowledge of driving and road awareness. This was in fact how he managed to trick the vampire in "Nasty" to admitting he was really a vampire rather than a driving instructor as he had initially said. Vyvyan is not the only house member who can drive, however, during the last episode Rick is briefly seen driving the stolen double-decker bus.
Neil Wheedon Watkins Pye played by Nigel Planer
A morose, pacifist, vegetarian environmentalist working toward a Peace Studies degree. He is frequently victimised by the other housemates and forced to do the housework, shopping, cleaning and cooking. He is never acknowledged for it unless it goes wrong. He normally provides tea to drink and cornflakes or lentils for his housemates to eat.
Neil is a pessimist and believes everyone and everything hates him, although he does have three hippie friends; one also named Neil, one named Warlock and a female hippie named Stonehenge.This makes him the second most sociable character behind Vyvyan and also the only character to have a female friend. He dislikes most forms of technology except for televisions and video recorders. He is also an insomniac, believing that sleep causes cancer. Neil frequently demonstrates a very literal interpretation of terms and phrases. For example, when Vivyan says that his mother used to be a shoplifter, Neil responds "She doesn't look strong enough... to lift shops".
Neil wants the others to feel sorry for him, or just acknowledge his presence. He claims "the most interesting thing that ever happens to me is sneezing", the force of which is sufficient to blow a door off its hinges.
In the pilot episode "Demolition", Neil is shown to have suicidal tendencies, attempting to kill himself at least three times. However, this was not carried through for the rest of the series, with the exception of the episode "Boring", in which he attempts to kill himself in a desperate attempt at relieving boredom. On only two occasions has Neil shown any form of aggression; this was when Rick insulted Neil's flares in the episode 'Nasty'. He also seemed to enjoy hitting people with his bludgeon when he became a police officer in "Cash" and did the same to his housemates when he thought they had committed a robbery.In the episode "Sick" in the second series, Neil's parents are introduced as upper middle class Tories who look down on Neil for starring in such a disreputable comedy series. His father wonders why his son cannot be in a nice comedy, such as the ones Neil's mother likes e.g. The Good Life. This provokes an angry tirade from Vyvyan, on his hatred of that show, followed by a parody episode of The Good Life where Neil is killed by Rick and covered with garden fertiliser only for several of him to emerge from the ground later on.
As established in Neil's Heavy Concept Album, Neil comes from Twickenham (his name punning on Eel Pie Island). His middle names are revealed in Neil's Book of the Dead.He is a fan of Hawkwind, Marillion and Steve Hillage. More information about his musical tastes was revealed when the character 'guest v-jayed' on the still young MTV network in ca. 1985, playing several videos (e.g. T. Rex, "Get It On"), including his own hit "Hole in My Shoe", a cover version of the Traffic song which Nigel Planer, as his character "neil", took to number 2 in the UK singles chart in July 1984.
Balowski Family
Jerzei was apparently Russian; however, several times during the series he would break character, or in one case the fourth wall and declare directly to the camera "I'm not really foreign, you know – I just do it to appear more sophisticated!" Also during a discussion between the guys about his nationality Vyv comments "He certainly knows a lot about the Mersey Sound."— implying he is in fact from Liverpool, although he is so worried when Mike lies about a visit from Moscow Dynamo ice hockey squad that he allows the gang to renege on their monthly rent.
In the second series, Sayle's characters also included a train driver, a Benito Mussolini look-alike (by day the head of the local police force, by night an entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest), "Harry the Bastard" (manager of the local Rumbelows electrical goods store, disguised as a South African vampire) and, very briefly in an aside sketch that deliberately bore no relevance to the plot, a man in a bowler hat asking if he was in a cheese shop (a reference to the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch).
Mike is the natural "leader" of the house. Always trying to make himself appear more important and exciting than he really is, he does appear to have done some of the things he claims to have done (such as getting Bambi the "Babycham" Advert in "Bambi"). He experiences little hostility from the other members of the house. If there is any "fruitful" or amicable relationship in the house it is between Mike and Vyvyan. Vyvyan accepts Mike's role as the house leader whereas Mike needs Vyvyan's physique and willingness to act forcibly to enforce his own authority (as was literally shown in "Oil" when Vyvyan became 'Col. Vyvyan', the right-hand-man to Mike's 'El Presidente').
Neil is unpopular, although he is the only one who performs any kind of household chores and is therefore needed by the other three.
Rick is the most disliked although he thinks very highly of himself. He tells poor jokes and stories (but finds them hilarious himself), is a would-be anarchist (although deep-down he is quite conservative), and frequently acts like a child when he does not get his way. He generally vents his frustration (when trying to impress the others) on Neil, since Neil never sticks up for himself and is ignored by the others. The majority of his anger is generated in endless battles with Vyvyan, which he invariably loses.
Rik Mayall once said that the characters in The Young Ones form the basis of a classic nuclear family, comprising Neil as the mother figure, Mike as the father figure and Vyvyan and Rick as the children, Vyvyan the boy and Rick the girl.
In the final episode, the four students steal a red AEC Routemaster after robbing a bank (Special Patrol Group dies during their escape), only to drive it through a billboard with a picture of Cliff Richard on it and then over a cliff, which the bus tumbles down until it comes to rest at the bottom, at which point they proclaim—in unison—"Phew! That was close!", after which the bus explodes. Although Vyvyan and some of the others have had (what should have been) fatal accidents before without suffering any real effects, this time it really signified the end of the series. Even so, it did not stop The Young Ones from occasionally appearing on TV afterwards for charity, such as in Comic Relief in 1986 with a video clip and live performance of Living Doll.
The end of the series was not the last appearance of The Young Ones. For the British charity television appeal Comic Relief, the four recorded a song and video for Cliff Richard's "Living Doll", accompanied by Richard and Shadows guitarist Hank B. Marvin. Alexei Sayle was not involved, as he felt collaborating with Richard was against the alternative ethos of the show, but had already achieved chart success in 1984 with "'Ullo John! Gotta New Motor?".
In 1984, Planer released an album of music and skits in character as Neil, entitled Neil's Heavy Concept Album. Musical direction was by Canterbury scene keyboardist Dave Stewart. It featured Stewart's alums Barbara Gaskin, Jakko Jakszyk, Pip Pyle, Gavin Harrison, Jimmy Hastings and Rick Biddulph. "Hole in My Shoe", a single taken from the LP, reached number 2. Soulwax used "Hello Vegetables" to kick off their Radio Soulwax mix "Introversy."
At the 1986 Comic Relief stage shows, The Young Ones performed "Living Doll" live (following a short skit which involved Rick doing a comic song about showing his underwear and bodily parts, before being ejected from the group by Mike, and Vyvyan supposedly having backstage sex with Kate Bush with Neil as his contraceptive). The skit climaxed with Neil claiming Cliff Richard could not perform with them as he was "doing time" (the musical Time was premiering the following week) and John Craven had been booked as a replacement, only for Cliff to then appear. However he was only available to appear on the second night of the run, with Bob Geldof replacing him on the other two nights.
On one occasion, Edmondson, Mayall and Planer as their "Young Ones" characters did a parody of the song "My Generation" by The Who.
Mayall, Planer, and Edmondson reunited in 1986 for the Elton-written Filthy Rich & Catflap. The series had many of the same characteristics as The Young Ones as did Mayall and Edmondson's next sitcom Bottom. Ryan, for his part, was regularly recruited to play roles on associated series (such as Happy Families, Bottom and Absolutely Fabulous). Mayall, Edmondson and Planer have also appeared in episodes of Blackadder.
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