Tom Baker and Ian Marter wrote a Doctor Who film script called Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, I think, sometime in the mid-70s - that never made it.
I remember getting terribly excited when Absolutely announced it was doing not only a spin off of Don & George (which was a patchy result but not disastrous), but a spin off of Denzil & Gwyneth (John Sparkes & Morwenna Banks) winningly called "Ach Y Fi" (roughly translated as How Unpleasant). Never happened, though. Shame.
(Sparkes later resurfaced on a late-night Friday show for HTV Wales in 1996 called Barry Welsh Is Coming - yawn, another chat show parody, although it did some quite nifty things with bits of old film from the archives (again, not original, but it did look cheap to this viewer). This series was also shown by Paramount comedy, I believe.)
HTV Wales is still making Barry Welsh Is Coming and the programme is being shown locally on Friday nights at 10.30pm.
I think UK Play is showing Vic n' Bob's The Weekenders this month - never saw it myself - was it any good? BTW did Izzard's The Cows ever make it on screen?
>BTW did Izzard's The Cows ever make it on screen?
I saw the pilot, but I don't think it got any further than that.
>>BTW did Izzard's The Cows ever make it on screen?
>
>I saw the pilot, but I don't think it got any further than that.
It didn't - got on in January '97, but was a big disappointment (almost inevitable, given Izzard had been talking about it for about five years).
Let's not forget that the bulk of the plot of Douglas Adams' "Life, The Universe & Everything" came straight from a Doctor Who script he had written years before, but which never got made. All the material concerning the Earth game of cricket, and how it was unintentionally a symbolic re-enactment of the intergalactic battles of the planet Krikit, including the UFO landing in the middle of a Lords Test Match so the aliens could steal the Ashes, was in this original script, rejected as too silly (!) by the Beeb in the early 70's. Their loss... is our loss too, dammit.
Hang Gabbie Roslin was never made, although the thought lingers.
I really don't think hanging should be talked about lightly, especially in respect to Gabi Roslin (who is dumb but harmless.)
Hang Steve fucking Penk.
>I think UK Play is showing Vic n' Bob's The Weekenders this month
I thought it was amusing - obviously too 'Vic and Bob' to become a series then but, now they are more well-known, perhaps there would be more chance now. It's worth watching, even if it is cheaply made, and has a great appearence by A member of the Human League.
Re: The Weekenders
That was an idea for a long time. I remember reading a magazine interview with Paul Whitehouse & Charlie Higson in '88 (when Loadsamoney was taking off, and they were billed as 'Harry Enfield's writers') and they said they wanted to do a sitcom based loosely on 'Deliverance' ('but without the male rape...etc.'). No one had heard of Vic&Bob in those days. Well, no ordinary people anyway.
>I heard Jimmy Perry on 'Desert Island Discs' way back, and he said that he'd always wanted to do a sitcom called 'Gorky St.', which would be like Coronation St only set in a stereotypical version of the Soviet Union (this was in the 80s).
Not a million miles away from 'Comrade Dad', that George Cole thing from the mid-80s - set in a post-Soviet Invasion London of the near future.
I seem to recall a reasonably good pilot/opening show, but it was all downhill from there. There's only so many gags you can make about bread queues.
>Let's not forget that the bulk of the plot
>of Douglas Adams' "Life, The Universe &
>Everything" came straight from a Doctor Who
>script he had written years before, but
>which never got made.
Ditto the first Dirk Gently book.