Saturday Live: Series 1 Episode 6
This blog post is about one show with two names: the show broadcast on the UK's Channel 4 as Saturday Live for two series in 1986 and 1987 and Friday Night Live for a third series in 1988. In the usual way of these things it is not to be confused with the long-running US show Saturday Night live, or I think several other shows with similar names which have created endless trouble in finding the right one on the internet. There were a few later specials or revivals which I'm not going to touch on here so as not to drive myself mad.
There are episodes of all three series on YouTube; it turns out the thing to search is either Friday Night Live or Saturday Live plus the words 'Channel 4' or else 'UK TV series'. It is at times like this that I wish I had taken up the place I had on an information management course.
It has also had some commercial releases by Network DVD, in the form of compilation DVDs from series 1 and 2, and compilations specific to some of the artistes. I have the two series DVD compilations and of course realistically they are the way you are going to get this show in its best quality. However these sets have a considerable shortcoming, in my opinion. This is that being compilations you miss the effect of the actual show, particularly the music numbers which form an integral part. Some of the episodes even have the 1980s ads included and I've been singing along to them. They're obviously only in VHS quality but I would strongly recommend watching whole episodes rather than the compilation DVDs if you don't mind the quality.
For the rest of this post I'm going to concentrate on one episode which I found down the back of the internet: it's Saturday Live Series 1, Episode 6, so it's a fairly early one.
It's presented (or possibly guest presented by comedians Hale and Pace (go and watch their show, no seriously just watch it, it went on for a decade). The show begins with footage of a Rolls Royce driving up but then passing, and we see that a tiny Isetta bubble car is following it, and of course Hale and Pace are in that. It drives right into the studio and they get out of it in their roles of Der Management and announce that the show has started.
After the titles we go straight into a musical number by Madness. This is what you really miss on the compilation DVDs, that it wasn't just a comedy show.
Hale and Pace perform the story of Cinderella in Victorian costume, with completely made up sign language for the hard of hearing.
Then we have (to me) legendary comedian Harry Enfield playing his Stavros character. From a television blogger point of view I am very sad that his nineties TV series Harry Enfield and Chums has missed having a commercial release, but in true TV archaeology tradition there are episodes on the internet.
Stavros introduces another musical number in the form of Roger Daltrey singing Under a Raging Moon. Luckily for us this number happens to be on YouTube on its own so we can see it.
After the interval (this was on Channel 4) Hale and Pace sing a funny song, tumour verruca fever. They do different acts in between the others as punctuation for the rest of the show.
Next an American comedian, A Whitney Brown, does some stand up. I see that he was a fixture, ironically, on Saturday Night Live. C'mon you can all stop doing this now.
Then Alphonse Zepehlmousse (not sure of the spelling and the episode doesn't have closing titles) does a dangerous daredevil physical comedy act with volunteers from the audience who help him leap through a hoop.
A real highlight is some very early stand up from the legendary comedian Jeremy Hardy, sadly no longer with us. Famously he could convulse an audience with anything he said and he actually goes on to do this here.
After an act parodying cults, we have perhaps a high point of the show, at least for me. This is Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall (also sadly no longer with us) as their famous characters The Dangerous Brothers. This act was the basis of their long running partnership beating each other up on stage for years and years. In this act they're asking 'Is torture as fun as it's cracked up to be?' I did call this blog Cult and I think that covers this nicely. It is a great touch that Mayall tortures Edmondson to the accompaniment of The Girl from Ipanema. You can see a bit of their act on this show, although not from this episode, here:
I won't trouble you with the rest of the show because you get the idea. You will readily see from this summary the sheer variety of acts in this show. The other thing which I haven't communicated is the nature of the audience: it's shot in a studio and the audience if not only HUGE but very enthusiastic. Unusually for television it also has the feel of a live show because we see the stage hands moving round props in between the acts. I really like this: it gives the show a real feel of being in a live show.
The other thing it does marvellously is bring back the feel of the 1980s. I think probably the variety of acts would mean that it would be difficult to dislike this: if you don't like the variety of humour you will like the music.
If I have a criticism it is that there are no titles to say who everyone is but I'm sure that was done to make it dead edgy and arty. Also I expect we are expected to know lol.
Saturday Live/Friday Night Live is one of those shows which I recommend without any reservation at all.
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