They apparently made a whole 'comedy' series about an American Hitler and Eva, living next door to a Jewish couple, but for some reason, only the pilot was ever screened...
I don't know about this. It's a British sitcom, with British actors, pretending to be an American sitcom featuring Hitler and Eva living next door to a New York Jewish couple - cue boundless hilarity. But the look of it suggests that it was maybe an unused item from a sketch show, rather than an actual pilot...
The writer was Geoff Atkinson - isn't he Rory Bremner's producer? (Or is that Geoff Posner? I can never remember.)
I was looking at RT the other week and there was some Dan Aykroyd film on late at night that got a bad review. It was about a college prof. living next to an old German who is accused of being a war criminal, or something. And that was meant to be a comedy. Is it a similar idea?
ah - I'm reading up the list....
I've put something about this further down..
Most of us will never have seen this, because it was made for BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting). Geoff Atkinson (who wrote it) went on to produce Rory Bremner Who Else? and The Mark Thomas Comedy Product. So he *must* have known what he was doing, right?
I always used to associate Geoff Atkinson with fairly decent radio comedy in the 80's (though for the life of me can't remember any of them, unless he produced or wrote The Grumbleweeds.. which rather kills my point above..)
Live On Arrival. With Steve Punt.
Atkinson was head writer on Russ Abbot's Madhouse for a good few years.
It was Grant & Naylor who started on The Grumbleweeds in the early 80s. They also wrote for a Radio 2 show around the same time entitled Bernie Clifton's Comedy Shop. Seriously.
Don't know why I know all this.
I've got a copy of this on tape. It's actually not that bad. Patrick Cargill (old sitcom actor) is in it as Neville Chamberlain. It was done I think as a one of spoof of the kind of 1950's American sitcoms ie I Love Lucy etc.
>Atkinson was head writer on Russ Abbot's Madhouse for a good few years.
I'm sure he did some radio stuff too - the name rings lots of bells.
>It was Grant & Naylor who started on The Grumbleweeds in the early 80s. They also wrote for a Radio 2 show around the same time entitled Bernie Clifton's Comedy Shop. Seriously.
I believe you, I've even some tapes of Comedy Shop somewhere! I didn't realise they wrote for it, I've not listened to them in a very long time. El Bandido always stuck in my mind as being amusing though.
Grant/Naylor's best work in my opinion was Son of Cliche, though 1st series of Red Dwarf was pretty good.
>Don't know why I know all this.
You probably had a misspent youth like me, listening to comedy programmes on Radio 2.