the young ones (tv series)

The Young Ones was a British sitcom about four male students sharing a house. It was written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, and Lise Mayer, with additional contributions by Alexei Sayle (usually involving his own performances). The show was directed by Geoff Posner.

Synopsis

The series was recorded in 1982 and 1984 and produced by Paul Jackson for the BBC. It was noted at the time of its first airing for its violent humour: jokes often involved the main characters hitting each other with various objects within reach. The show managed to satirize many of the stereotypes of early 1980's British university archetypes (hippie, punk, anarchist, etc.). With the use of these stock characters as well as gags based around class issues and keeping up appearances, it can be classified as a comedy of manners. The series originally ran to 35 minutes per episode, and many episodes were cut for timing when repeated on the BBC or satellite channels. There was a large amount of surrealism, with each episode also including scenes with puppets playing the part of talking animals or objects. Another notable aspect of the show was that famous bands would play, for no apparent reason, in the house or the street. In fact the reason was that by including the groups, the show qualified as light entertainment and therefore got a higher budget than a mere sitcom - useful considering the amount of set that got smashed up every week. Some of these performances were omitted from the DVDs for lack of music copyright clearance.

Music

The theme tune to the series was the cast singing the Cliff Richard song "The Young Ones" and many references to Cliff were included in the show since he is Rik's idol, despite Rik's claim to be an anarchist. The four housemates even got to sing with Cliff for a Comic Relief special in 1986 (despite being "dead") - the song "Living Doll" was a number one hit in the UK. Two years earlier, in the aftermath of the second series, Planer got to No.2 in the UK charts as Neil with a version of "Hole In My Shoe".

Characters

The main characters and housemates were the hippie Neil (Nigel Planer), the prat/new waver Rick (Rik Mayall), the punk med student Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson) and Mike the Cool Person (Christopher Ryan, the only non-comedian of the four - he was roped in at the last minute after original actor Peter Richardson fell out with Jackson). Alexei Sayle played various different roles, including the students' Polish landlord, Jerzi Balowski, and members of his family (nephew Alexei, a protest singer; son Danny, a car salesman; brother Billy, a taxi driver; and cousin Tommy, a drunk), as well as other characters in the second series which included a train driver, a Mussolini cabaret act, a vampire from South Africa, an escaped convict and a medieval jester. He would routinely interject his own material into the program. There was also a regular puppet character - Vyvyan's pet hamster, SPG (Special Patrol Group). Many episodes originally included "flash frames" lasting only a fraction of a second, but these were edited out of most reruns.

Finale

The last episode kills off the landlord Balowski and later the four students, when they become bored during the summer holiday period and decide to rob a bank. They make their escape in a red London double-decker bus, only for them to shout 'Cliff!' as they crash through a giant billboard advertising Cliff Richard and go over a real seaside cliff, with the bus exploding into flames at the bottom. This was typical of many sitcom writers, as it ended the show's popularity on a high, without a loss of good ideas, storylines or jokes, and allowed the cast and writers to move on to new projects before they became too typecast.

Links with other series

Mayall and Edmondson elaborated on some of the series' concepts later in their sitcoms Filthy, Rich and Catflap (written by Elton) and Bottom (written by themselves). Most of the regular cast (and several of the guests) also appeared in Channel 4's anthology of comedy films, The Comic Strip Presents. All four main actors have gained fine reputations as dramatic actors as well as comedy performers.