A tongue-in-cheek "behind the scenes" look at the Comic Strip comedy club in the early 1980s, which gave rise to 'The Comic Strip Presents'
Julian, Dick, George, and Anne are four children with a taste for adventure, as well as for lashings of ginger beer. They set out on a bicycle ride through the country, having picnics aplenty and exposing heinous crimes such as homosexuality.
It's 1985 and the Communist Warsaw Pact countries have seized control of England. A young married couple retreats to a countryside cottage, but they soon find themselves hopelessly separated and swept up in the chaos of a war-torn nation
A group of Beatnik artists and poets convene for a weekend of debauchery, destructive behavior, and clever conversation at the house of naive young wannabe Desmond while his parents are out of town.
Fifth-rate heavy metal band Bad News is the subject of a rock documentary. Band members Vim Fuego, Den Dennis, Colin Grigson, and Spider Webb take to the road in search of lager, gigs, and schoolgirls.
Summer school students taking a course on the Iron Age construct a primitive village in the center of a university campus, where they must learn to fend for themselves without modern conveniences.
Child adventurers Julian, Dick, George, Anne, and their dog Timmy return to the countryside for the holidays, only to learn that Uncle Quentin, the well known scientist and homosexual, has escaped from prison. The children set out to unlock the mysteries of Love Island.
A theater owner waits for the mail to deliver his dirty movie
A lascivious schoolteacher has grown hopelessly bored with her bland small-town existence. Her world takes a sudden turn, however, when a wealthy, impetuous pop star moves to town to get a taste of country life. Suddenly, she must choose between her tedious but adoring husband, her indifferent but steady lover, and this intriguing, unpredictable new man in her life.
Carlos and Miguel are Englishmen obsessed with the mystique of the Old West-- would-be gunmen ever in search of a brawl. Traveling the countryside by public rail on a fantasy holiday, in costumes straight out of a Spaghetti Western, they hook up with spunky Australian tourists, a hippie hitchhiker, and a mass-murderer who works in an abattoir but dresses as a matador.
A small-time thief on the run from the law is pursued by over-zealous police officers masquerading as milkmen and postmen, framed for murder by a homicidal housewife, and built up by the media to sound like an infamous criminal mastermind. Every step he takes carries him further into a life of crime, and it looks like there's no way out for Gino, but when he teams up with a gutsy typist on the run from her own unfulfilling life, the two of them may find a way to turn the media attention to their advantage.
Relentless alcoholic, drug addict, and fame-obsessed TV personality Eddie Monsoon is the subject of a Channel 4 expose that looks back over his life and loves, while he lies bedridden in a rehab hospital.
Feared street leaders Passion and Little Sister are released from prison, whereupon they learn that their gang the Slags has disbanded during their incarceration, having been driven out of its territory by rival gang The Hawaiians. Bent on revenge, they reunite the Slags for a rumble with The Hawaiians to reclaim their turf. This grim tale set in a bizarre, apocalyptic world is West Side Story with a gruesome twist.
Bonehead and Foyle reunite to find the police chief's kidnapped daughter. A parody of 'The Professionals'.
In an effort to impress the girl of his dreams, compulsive liar Dennis Carter contrives a far-fetched story, professing his involvement in an international drug ring. When the police take his claims seriously, he finds there are considerable benefits to the pampered life of a supergrass.
In this parody of Rebecca a young bride arrives at her husband's vast estate to find that she is left to fend for herself, at the mercy of a mysterious and sinister Spanish maid who she suspects does not have her best interests at heart.
When a toilet paper delivery van driver and small-time con man chances upon a demo tape by a defunct no-name band, he decides to pass himself off as a rock musician, in his most enterprising money-making scheme yet.
Alex, a disgruntled waiter is subject to daily contempt and disgust of the upper class customers and gets fired for being obnoxious and rude to the clientèle. After witnessing an act of terrorism on an embassy, he robs a benefits office and with his new friend goes on the run.
Al Pacino (Peter Richardson) and Meryl Streep (Jennifer Saunders) star as Arthur Scargill and his wife in an overly-dramatized Hollywood epic about the 1984 miners' strike.
Five years after their far-from-amicable break-up, the members of heavy metal band Bad News reunite when they are offered a record deal and a chance to play the festival at Castle Donington.
Two boozers who run the Dreamytime Escort agency are in for the night of their lives when they accept a job to "take out" popular TV entertainer Nicholas Parsons.
A trendy music video director has his brain crossed with that of a football hooligan in a freak accident resulting when he mistakes a cerebral teleportational machine for a portable toilet. He begins a slow and painful transition from artsy high-fashion connoisseur to violent Neanderthal thug, finding himself physically incapable of suppressing his newfound urges to drink lager and vandalize public lavatories. This episode pays tribute to David Cronenberg's film classic The Fly.
Carl Moss, a convicted murder, is released early from prison and is confronted by his brother who framed him.
A social loser goes to a sleazy holiday resort in Spain for under-30s.
A security service driver for a British bank meets and falls in love over the radio with a woman stranded on a bird watching expedition in the South Atlantic. When he is tricked into thinking the Falklands are under attack by an enemy army, he takes drastic measures to finance a rescue mission to save his new girlfriend.
Having robbed a bank and hijacked a plane to travel to the South Atlantic to protect Frances, the woman he loves, Stan finds himself at the mercy of Argentinian soldiers plotting to recapture the Falkland Islands.
Charles Bronson (Robbie Coltrane) stars in a big-budget Hollywood film as Ken Livingstone, a man of the people and elected leader of the GLC. After successfully preventing the Tories from flooding South London to turn it into a yacht club, Livingstone makes it his one-man mission to stop ""The Ice Maiden"" Margaret Thatcher from beheading the Prince of Wales and taking over the kingdom.
Hannah is a street-wise American woman with a passion for Lord Byron's poetry who is prepared to do anything it takes to get into a course at Oxford, and she means anything. Also eager to study Byron is Caroline, the quiet-natured girlfriend of narcissistic mega-star comedian Steve ""Zoo Zoo Zoo Off Come My Pants"" Wild. When he disapproves of her aspirations, Caroline must go behind her boyfriend's back to take the course, unaware that she's not the only one doing the deceiving.
Bank chairman Aldo Vini, who is suspected of embezzling $200 million from his bank in Rome, is pursued across Europe by incompetent assassins.
A wedding between feuding upper-class families turns into an all-out war zone. In the midst of the chaos and bloodshed, the wedding photographer becomes enraptured by the bride's beatific beauty, and the story drifts into the surreal realm of his imagination, where the lines between fantasy, dream, and reality become hopelessly blurred.
John Major rises above his humble beginnings as a mediocre clown in a circus family when he sets out to pursue his dream of becoming a Tory bureaucrat and forges a career in the political circus. Torn between two worlds, his life becomes a balancing act.
All Roy Brush wants is to be the greatest footballer in the world. When he rises to national hero status after saving a young man from drowning and secures a European Cup Final trophy for England, it seems the sky's the limit to the fame he can achieve. But one painful secret-- and one astute newspaper reporter from The Scum-- stand between him and his goal.
A turkey that's about to become Christmas dinner takes hostages.
In a sequel to The Bullshitters, Bonehead and Foyle are called in to solve a 70s-style murder. Unfortunately, so are 70s detectives Shouting George of The Weeney and Jason Bentley of Department Z, and 90s Northern detective Dave Spanker.
Beautiful space aliens on a mission to repopulate their planet use their feminine wiles to capture healthy, intelligent specimens of Earthmen as sex slaves. It's up to decidedly non-feminist secret agent James Blond to shut down the Space Rats' baby factory and free Earth men from unspeakable sexual oppression.
Two escaped convicts hide in a country house owned by two women.
In this none-too-subtle parody of the film The Silence of the Lambs, a rookie police cadet falls prey to the sexual allure of imprisoned cannibalistic serial killer Dr Ghengis; meanwhile, aspiring serial killer Gregory Dawson makes a video diary of his botched attempts to stalk and imprison a woman in his homemade torture chamber.
A struggling music producer accepts a song from the Devil that is guaranteed to win him riches and fame. In exchange, he must obtain his mother's top-secret chicken soup recipe so the Devil can impress finicky dinner guests in Hell.
A jealous husband is consumed to the point of madness with suspicions about his wife's extracurricular activities.
The cast and crew of The Comic Strip look back at how the group drew the attention of the fledgling Channel 4 producers, and won airtime on its opening night.
Four rivals on their way to a meeting find themselves in a tricky situation.
Stranded in the desert, some men will do whatever it takes to survive.
Churchill: The Hollywood Years is a 2004 film, directed by Peter Richardson. It stars Christian Slater as Winston Churchill, and Neve Campbell as Queen Elizabeth II. Miranda Richardson and Antony Sher also co star. The film is a satire on the Hollywood take on history, such as U-571 (portraying the capture of an Enigma machine as being by the Americans rather than the British) and Pearl Harbor (where American participation in the Battle of Britain was exaggerated).
Comprising of interviews with Dawn French, Adrian Edmondson, Peter Richardson, Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planer, OPeter Richens, Lenny Henry, Leslie Philips, Julie T Wallace, Gary Beadle, and Phil cornwell, about their Comic Strip experiences.
The neighbours in a seemingly quiet street may be more than they at first appear.
The Hunt for Tony Blair is a one-off episode of The Comic Strip Presents…, a British television comedy, which will air on Channel 4 in Autumn 2011. The 60 minute film was written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens and presented in the style of a 1950s film noir. It stars Stephen Mangan as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is wanted for murder and on the run as a fugitive from justice. The film received its world premier at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August 2011. Shot as a 1950s-style black comedy, the film imagines former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a fugitive on the run from the police having been accused of a series of murders. These include the killing of his former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, although he is also implicated in the death of his predecessor as Labour Party leader John Smith. Determined to clear his name, Blair escapes from 10 Downing Street, but he is a man with no friends willing to give him sanctuary and a fervent media demanding his capture. He is pursued across a fog-bound London by Inspector Hutton and his sergeant who are helped in their investigation by Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown. Blair is eventually aided by Margaret Thatcher who promptly seduces him. But it gradually emerges that Blair may be innocent of the crime he is accused of committing.
A special programme celebrating 'The Comic Strip Presents', and its major influence on British comedy. Featuring some famous fans and many of the original team.
In 1982, The Comic Strip Presents debuted with Five Go Mad In Dorset, an establishment-shaking parody of the Famous Five stories, complete with lashings of ginger beer. As well as poking fun at cosy Middle England, it also heralded the emergence of comedians that went onto shape the British comedy landscape for the next 20 years. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series, original writer Peter Richardson has returned to the English countryside for a brand-new Comic Strip adventure, starring himself, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Robbie Coltrane and Stephen Mangan. Set against a backdrop of rolling hills and ruined castles, the Five have failed to live up to their puritanical ideals and must now confront today's modern world
Behinds the scenes of the brand new special of this classic series, Five Go To Rehab.
Comic fantasy telling the story of Rebekah, an innocent and beguiling Northern girl who accidentally becomes Chief Executive of News International and gets caught up in a seventies Watergate-style scandal.
