'Cause We May Not Be The Young Ones Very Long

08/30/07 | by sammymaudlin

The great Citizen Mom shares this. Originally posted on her blog here. (I only hope she forgives me for not making it look as good as she did.)

It took a good five years after its debut on BBC2 for "The Young Ones" to make it all the way across the pond, to where a kid in Philly could finally watch. And even then, it was work -- these were the days before the city had cable, necessitating a VCR deal with the kid who sat next to me in homeroom and got MTV at his house in Lafayette Hill.

But dammit, I'd been reading about the British comedy series for years in the import Smash Hits magazines I bought on South Street, and it was time to see what all the fuss was about.

Follow up:

The first episode I laid eyes on was Demolition in which the lads face eviction by the wrecking ball. They each respond according to what I would soon learn was their character's typical bent: Neil attempted suicide, Rick composed poetry, Vyvyan set about knocking the house down himself, and Mike tried to seduce the female bureaucrat who came to serve the eviction notice.

It was, without question, the most punk rock thing I'd ever seen. You can watch it here.

A few episodes later, Lemmy shows up.

See, there were musical guests, but the show proceeded around them. Sometimes, as in this turn by Madness, they're central to the plot (they're performing in a pub where Vyvyan runs into his long-lost mother, who's a barmaid there).

I mean, I grew up on "Monty Python's Flying Circus" reruns on Channel 12, and thought I had a pretty good grip on absurdist sketch comedy. "The Young Ones" had the abusurdist thing down cold, but the action took place in the present-day, real-life world, not within a sketch on a sound stage. I'm not sure exactly what could have prepared me for the show's overall mindset, which seemed to be that yes, life and the act of living is just that absurd and fucked up, and don't even bother trying to make sense of it all.

There was no Ministry of Silly Walks, but there might be a middle-class anarchist who worships Cliff Richard. No dead parrots, but a crazy landlord of sketchy Eastern European extraction. A special shout-out here for Alexei Sayle, who played a whole passel of different parts -- including, in one episode, Benito Mussolini singing Italy's Eurovision Song Contest entry, "Stupid Noises" -- but is most memorable as landlord Jerzy Balowsky, a sort of bald proto-Borat.

The episode "Nasty," in which the guys try to watch a porn video but end up being chased by a vampire posing as a South African driving instructor (Sayle) was maybe my favorite. YES, we've got a video!

Somewhere in all this, The Damned appear to sing "Video Nasty."

This is the kind of thing I could go on about all day, but the clips are all out there on YouTube for you to check out. This fall marks 25 years since "The Young Ones." Definitely a source of many memorable musical moments.

20 comments » •

20 comments

Comment from: BigSteve [Member]

I loved the Young Ones too. I haven't seen them in years, but I must have watched them dozens of times on MTV. Jennifer Saunders, of Absolutely Fabulous fame, was part of that whole comedy scene and appears in at least one episode. She's now married to the actor who played Vyvyan.

The downfall of the show was the character Mike. Either he wasn't funny, or I didn't get it. (He also appears in AbFab as one of Edwina's ex-husbands.)

The Motorhead clip rules. For me, Ace of Spades is all the Motorhead I'll ever need, but it's a perfect example of what it is.

08/30/07 @ 12:32

Comment from: sammymaudlin [Member]

Jennifer Saunders slays me. I didn't know she married Vyv. Nifty.

08/30/07 @ 12:51

Comment from: BigSteve [Member]

To bring in a little rock content, Adrian Edmondson, the actor who played Vyvyan, sang the AbFab theme (Dylan's This Wheel's on Fire) as a duet with 60s icon Julie Driscoll, who had had a British hit with the song in 68 as the vocalist with Brian Auger's Trinity.

08/30/07 @ 13:48

Comment from: the great 48 [Member]

Nerd trivia: Adrian Edmondson also directed the video for Squeeze's sole major US hit, "Hourglass."

08/30/07 @ 14:06

Comment from: dr. john [Member]

I always liked Mike; his deadpan tone worked perfectly off of Neil's hippie demeanor.

One of my favorite exchanges:

Mike: Neil, it is very rare you interest me, but today you have. Why do you keep coming in here, carrying a cake, and saying surprise?

Neil: It's my birthday.

Mike: Now you knew that anyway, and we don't care, so where's the surprise?

Oh, and don't forget the great line by Rick: I'm so bored, I might as well be listening to Genesis.

I thought the Young Ones were sort of Monty Python for the punk age.

08/30/07 @ 14:32

Comment from: hrrundivbakshi [Member]

I never liked the Young Ones -- just seemed, I dunno... is it possible to be anarchically self-obssessed? They just always bugged the shit out of me, and I couldn't find them funny no matter how hard I tried.

08/30/07 @ 15:59

Comment from: 2000 man [Member]

· http://www.whammoblammo.blogspot.com/

I loved them. Enough so that a few years ago one of the kids got me the DVD set called Every Stoopid Episode. It truly is every stupid episode, too. I loved the Nasty episode, but my favorite is probably Bambi, where they go on the Academic Challenge type of game show. Someone puts a "P" in front of Rick's name card, and the host of the show, Bambi, calls him Prick. Yeah, it's stupid. The train ride there is the stupidest thing I ever saw, where Vyvyan gets his head chopped off and screams at his body. I can watch them over and over.

08/30/07 @ 16:54

Comment from: the great 48 [Member]

I think Bambi had to have been my first exposure to the Footlights crowd as well...

08/30/07 @ 18:11

Comment from: mwall [Member]

... is it possible to be anarchically self-obssessed?

Don't you think this is a question that you and a lot of the rest of us should be asking our mirrors?

08/30/07 @ 21:02

Comment from: saturnismine [Member]

not sure what "anarchically self-obsessed" means.

i loved 'em.

my fave moments were when mike discovers buddy holly, still alive, hanging upside down in his room, fresh from the plane crash, tangled amidst the attic's spider webs (and maybe a parachute?). he tells mike he wrote a new song: "kinky daddy long legs". he proceeds to sing it while hanging upside down. mike does nothing to help him get rightside up. he leaves.

i also remember the neil birthday episode, and the one where neil grows the many arms of vishnu...

and of course, there's madness's appearance, doing 'house of fun'.

08/31/07 @ 16:51

Comment from: hrrundivbakshi [Member]

"anarchically self-obsessed" is a lazy bit of shorthand, trying to mush together two aspects of the undergroundy humor of our youth that really bug the shit out of me. These are: 1.) the proposition that anarchy *in and of itself* is FUNNY, and 2.) that self-absorption is something that's supposed to resonate with me, seeing as how I, too, must be a proudly self-absorbed member of my doughy, teevee-enslaved, pop culture-obsessed generation.

My patience for Monty Python is limited, as well -- but at least they seemed less willfully obnoxious than the Young Ones.

08/31/07 @ 17:37

Comment from: the great 48 [Member]

If you hate Boomers and Gen Xers equally, what generation is there that you can get behind?

08/31/07 @ 18:01

Comment from: hrrundivbakshi [Member]

Oh, I dunno. I always kind of thought my Grandfather was pretty cool, and he was born in 1901. Whatever generation *that* was, I'm all for!

08/31/07 @ 18:12

Comment from: mwall [Member]

You're into necrophilia, it seems. The only good generation is a dead generation.

08/31/07 @ 23:12

Comment from: dr. john [Member]

Well, I think they were making fun of the idea that "anarchy is cool" as much as anything.

09/01/07 @ 17:01

Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]

I've only seen this show a handful of times. Sometimes I liked it a lot. I should revisit it. Is the actor who now stars in that show House an alum of this show? I always think that's the case for some reason.

Awesome Rock Nerd knowledge was displayed regarding the AbFab tie-in to the theme song and husband! You guys have kept up your edge in my absence. Bravo!

09/04/07 @ 14:14

Comment from: BigSteve [Member]

I was going to say no about Hugh Laurie (Dr. House), that you were thinking of his portrayal of Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves in the Jeeves & Wooster series (highly recommended) or possibly of his apprearances in the Blackadder series. But I decided I should look it up just in case at imdb, and there it was: "The Young Ones" - Bambi (1984) TV Episode .... Lord Monty.

So it was probably just a brief appearance, but he was "an alum" of The Young Ones.

09/04/07 @ 14:49

Comment from: mockcarr [Member]

Laurie also teamed up for several short sets with Fry with a similarly unimaginative title - A Bit Of Fry and Laurie. Lots of wordplay. His House shows impressive range given how great he was as an idiotic twit in Black Adder.

09/04/07 @ 16:13

Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]

Black Adder! That's where I knew him from before seeing him in those Stuart Little movies with our kids. I probably had no idea he was on a single episode of The Young Ones. That's funny.

09/04/07 @ 17:20

Comment from: the great 48 [Member]

So it was probably just a brief appearance, but he was "an alum" of The Young Ones.

Brief to the point where I believe he only had one line. From memory, so I can't vouch for its accuracy:

BAMBI: Who is the richest man in the world?

[buzzer]

LORD MONTY: It's me, isn't it?

BAMBI: No, sorry, your father's company went bankrupt this morning.

09/04/07 @ 18:05

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