From ‘Orrible to The Office (BBC2 Comedy Zone in the 00s, Part Two: 2001)
LAST TIME we learned that in the Year 2000:
- Have I Got News For You was then more popular on BBC2 than it would ever be on BBC1
- Gimme Gimme Gimme was more popular then than EastEnders is now
- The Fitz could get into a top ten of Most Watched BBC2 Comedy Shows In 2000, while Human Remains couldn’t
- Jarvis Cocker was fully grow-oh-oh-own.
Now it’s time to take a look at the year 2001, but first, what else was happening in British TV that year?
- Digital channel E4 launches, and is a big success or a massive failure, depending on which article you read.
- Confusion in the Catalan capital, as the Barcelona v Liverpool UEFA Cup tie is delayed by 15 minutes due to important breaking news in the UK that the person who shot Phil Mitchell is to be revealed.
- ITV finally arrives on Sky Digital boxes, after three years of Sky boxes showing a “press ‘tv’ then 3 for ITV” message on channel 103. Very much the 1979 ITV Strike Caption of a generation. ITV subsequently rebrands as ‘ITV1’, only for everyone to keep referring to it as ‘ITV’.
But it’s the comedy we’re here for. So, as determined by seven day ratings on Barb, the top most popular programmes (through the filter of Comedy Shows Broadcast on BBC2 Between 9pm and 10.30pm On A Weeknight, or ‘CSBiBBC2B9a10.30oaW’ from now on) from that there 2001:
Many of the individual episodes featured on that list may only be a distant memory to many people. Which is a surprise, as — ignore your calculator, it’s wrong — 2001 was actually only ten years ago. However, it’s more than likely the Room 101 episode topping this list will be familiar, if only to those west of Offa’s Dyke. Yep, it’s the Anne Robinson episode. The Weakest Link ice queen and previous bête noir of Them Upstairs had “shouty TV presenters, Big Mouth Billy Bass, Media Training Courses and 24 Hour TV News” successfully consigned to Paul Merton’s trap door o’ doom, and they’re all choices that seem reasonable enough. But it’s the pick that was rejected from Merton’s Orwellian opening that made headlines — The Welsh. It wasn’t even that she’d come up with any genuine reasoning for her Cymruphobia, that the people in the flat upstairs played Datblygu records at all hours or she’d once choked on a hedgehog crisp. She’d simply “never taken to them. What are they for?”. Ych a fi.
While the Broadcasting Standards Commission would ultimately dismiss complaints that Robinson’s comments were racist (displaying a decent amount of self-restraint by not merely pointing out the the Welsh aren’t a race, they’re a nationality), it did seem to signal a sea change in “the Welsh” being a lazy go-to punchline. And as un-technically-racist as those comments ultimately were, Robinson was certainly guilty of displaying a crap level of patter. From that point on, it seemed like “the Welsh” as a recognisable shorthand for being a bit shit, even used by the likes of Men Behaving Badly, And Now In Colour and Jeremy Hardy, all but disappeared. So, you know, at least Anne Robinson did that. Nowadays, of course, we realise that all Britons are equally a bit rubbish.
BONUS FACT: When Jessica Stevenson appeared on the series a year later and successfully put Anne Robinson into Room 101, it made the front page of the Daily Mirror’s Welsh edition. EXTRA BONUS FACT: There was briefly a Welsh edition of the Daily Mirror.
The Never Mind the Buzzcocks bullet train showed little sign of stopping in 2001, with the top-rating episode at least being a new one this year. Not that any of the guests were particularly in vogue (or even in Vogue) at the time, with Dane Bowers and Glenn Tilbrook accompanying Phill, while Sean was joined by Vic Henley and Darius. It’s more that, between the two of them, Room 101 and Buzzcocks had an effective duopoly of the BBC2 comedy market in 2001. Counting individual episodes, the top 21 broadcasts of comedy programmes on BBC2 in 2001 were all episodes of either 101 or ‘Cocks, eleven of the former, ten of the latter. Oof.
The debut episode of the Kumars at No 42 was the only episode of a comedy series that broke into that R101/Buzzcocks stranglehold, a premise explained to Radio Times readers as “a tongue-in-cheek chat show in the middle of a domestic sitcom”. It’s easy to see why this was such a popular programme, at a time when the cynicism and nastiness of late 90s TV was still present — The 11 O’Clock Show still stalked the TV schedules at the time, Big Brother became less of a social experiment having entered its “who do we hate this year” phase and the BBC decided Anne Robinson should become the global face of the corporation — this proved the perfect antidote, with the host Sanjeev Kumar (Sanjeev Bhaskar) frequently upstaged by his intrusive but well-meaning family, and any guests — Richard E Grant and Michael Parkinson — largely there for the ride. One in the eye for all the commissioning editors who kept copying the wrong bits of Brass Eye.
Two Pints of Lager and a Title Too Long to Fit Properly in the Table Above was, much like Gimme Gimme Gimme, frequently a target for the comedy fora of the day — churned out scripts, phoned-in performances, too puerile, Hollyoaks: The Sitcom, etc etc et-cet-era. In some corners, it certainly seemed that series creator Susan Nickson was being targeted for not having put in the requisite years of graft at the Radio 4 coalface before landing a TV sitcom. But hey, while it seemed odd to some that an 18-year-old woman was able to get her sitcom idea made and onto BBC2, it’s wasn’t just some internal equal opportunities committee that had spotted Nickson’s potential and offered help to bring her idea to fruition. It was esteemed producer Geoffrey Perkins. Sir Geoffrey Bloody Hitchhikers Radio Active KYTV Harry Enfield’s Television Programme Perkins, to use his full title. And while Two Pints might have tasted a little flat to many, there was undoubtedly an audience waiting for it — as nine series and eighty episodes would prove.
If you’re not in the mood for a couple of pints, there’s always some Porridge. Used as makeshift grouting for odd holes in the summer schedule, Fletch and company subsequently popped up on various days of the week (on every weeknight aside from the standard Comedy Zone X day) , with 18 of the series’ 21 episode run appearing between June and October. All but two of those prison outings made the weekly BARB Top Thirty for BBC2 — and the top ten on five occasions. It was the Christmas Eve helping of Porridge that attracted the most viewers, with 1975 Christmas episode ‘No Way Out’ appearing in the festive listings, as it frequently has since. FUN RATINGS FACT! Porridge has made the BBC1 top 30 as recently as 2017.
Another repeat run in sixth place, The Thin Blue Line arguably fared relatively well in the ratings here thanks to no longer being burdened by lofty expectations of being anywhere near as good as Blackadder. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Blackadder, but hey — what is? At least it was better than The Blackadder Five undoubtedly would have been. You know, given the way the pull-out here’s-how-good-it-was-going-to-be joke whenever the never-made 60s ‘Adder was referred to was: Tony Robinson’s character being called Bald Rick. And yet we all expected Back and Forth to be worth watching. Such fools were we. Anyway, The Thin Blue Line has a special place in my heart as of a few days ago — and the reason for that will be revealed in a future Medium post.
Coupling returned for a second series in September, this time going against the standard sitcom grain with an order of nine episodes. Perhaps a little early for that to be a step towards the US syndication market, so presumably that’s down to popularity alone. A repeat run of the first series earlier in the year failed to trouble the compilers of the BARB Weekly Top 30, but the new episodes certainly did, all but two episodes of the new series making the chart.
Formerly a breakout star of the channel — from French and Saunders sketch to BBC2 standalone sitcom, to BBC1 sitcom royalty (seriously, the scene with a helicopter by Central Park is easily one of the most impressive single shots in a British sitcom) Absolutely Fabulous wasn’t afraid of coming back to its old haunt for a few repeats. A brief repeat run here — just three episodes — but it would come back plenty of times over the coming years.
If you’re ever compiling a list of nominative deterministic sitcoms, ‘Orrible should probably be one of the first in the list. Come 2001, the BBC had trundled a wheelbarrow of cash to Big Breakfast presenter Johnny Vaughan in one of those ill-judged golden handcuff deals that means they quickly need to think of something for them to do — the proposed ‘US-style chat show’ mentioned in that Campaign link wouldn’t come to fruition until Johnny Vaughan Tonight hit BBC Three in 2003. So, what then? A sitcom? A sitcom! All about the wacky japes of small-time wrong ‘un Paul and his various capers. It can’t fail to be the next Fools and Horses.
Reader, it was not the next Fools and Horses. While Vaughan isn’t anywhere near as bad as some might make out (his C4 series Here’s Johnny was a delight, you fools), a sitcom was probably the wrong vehicle for him. Despite being blessed with some plum scheduling (betwixt the hugely popular Never Mind The Buzzcocks at 9pm and the very popular Coupling at 10pm), there was a notable ratings dip while ‘Orrible was on. Look:
Perfect World returned for a second series during May and June, surely as a result of a channel controller being so confident of success a recommission was awarded before s01e01 hit the analogue airwaves. Or maybe that’s a little harsh — here it is in the top ten once more, after all. And what’s more, most of its episodes made BARB’s Weekly Top 30 for the channel (six of the seven episodes, compared to three from six for series one). And, it’s not even that it enjoyed a large lead-in audience — Perfect World S2 went out on Monday nights after repeats of Harry Enfield’s Television Programme and before repeats of Coupling (repeats of Room 101 after a few weeks), with Perfect World attracting the biggest audience each night. So: go figure. Though in fairness to those that said Perfect World was rubbish… it was. Doesn’t get repeated anywhere, does it?
Okay, that’s the ten. Here’s a Full Genre Breakdown of all the comedy shows (on BBC2 from 9pm etc etc) from 2001. A few points of note just after the table.
Just look at all those sitcoms. Including a little one by the name of The Office, which given the reputation it’s since built is a bit of a glaring omission from the top ten for the year. But here’s an even more surprising thing — the ratings high for series one of The Office (2.04m) is quite a lot below the high for another entry up there, Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible (2.49m). Tellingly though, the high point for House of Horrible was in episode one — for the remainder of the series, viewing figures weren’t high enough to make BBC2’s Weekly Top Thirty. Equally tellingly, the ratings high points for The Office were the final two episodes. In short, and this is conjecture (definitely true conjecture), one had an audience disappointed that a series starring Steve “I’m Alan Partridge” Coogan wasn’t what they’d hoped, while one had an audience pleasantly surprised that a series starring Ricky “Meet Ricky Gervais” Gervais wasn’t what they’d feared.
“What’s The Suicidal Dog?” You ask. Why, it’s a “short comedy film — Paul Merton’s directorial debut — follows the breakdown of a marriage from the perspective of the couple’s jaundiced pet dog”, according to Genome. Not on YouTube, but it does have a listing on the BFI. And no, it isn’t a sitcom, but there are only so many subgenres I can cram into a pivot table.
Anyway, that’ll do for now. If I get drawn into defending my choice of subgenre for each programme this’ll be another long read, and nobody wants that. Thanks for reading, you gorgeous fools — see you next time for 2002.
