You seem to have this uncanny knack of rubbing people up the wrong way. (Brittas Empire, The)

Member Name: defiler

Product:	Brittas Empire, The
Date:	05/06/01 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's very funny, It doesn't cost anything to watch (unless you decide to buy cable just for this)

Disadvantages: The last 2 series'

This is one series that people have very mixed opinions on, some like it, some hate it, some don't mind it and some love it. I'm one of the people who really enjoyed watching it and though I felt it started better than it ended the show ranks among my favourite for this type of TV programme.

--Story--
The program mainly centres on Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre and in particular the managed of the centre Gordon Brittas (Chris Barrie) and to a lesser extent the rest of the staff. In trying to improve things for everyone he almost always ends up making things much worse and the result of most episodes is some kind of disaster, the series relies on the fact that it is completely unrealistic and filled with interesting characters, many of which would never exist in real life.

--Characters--
By far the best character is Gordon Brittas, played very well by Chris Barrie, his character is interesting and although it's taken to an extreme form it is probably a character that will remind many people of someone they know. His character is always trying to help, has the dream of bringing the world together through leisure but unfortunatly is useless as achieving his goals and without realising it irritates just about everyone.

Although she wasn't in the last few series that were made his deputy managed Laura (Julia St John) is one of the more normal members of the staff and despite having to put up with Brittas actually likes him.

His wife Helen (Pippa Haywood) is another intersting character, addicted to taking just about any drug she can come across and cheating on him at just about any opportunity (without him knowing) she still somehow loves him even though she can barely tolerate him most of the time, most of this is completely unknown to him of course.

There are a host of other regular characters but to describe them all here would take too long but a brief list of who else is in the show is: Gavi
n (Tim Marriot), Colin (Michael Burns), Carole (Harriet Thorpe), Tim (Russell Porter), Linda (Jill Greenacre) and Julie (Judy Flynn). In a few series other characters existed, but these seemed to be fairly unpopular and the majority of them only seemed to last a single series before disappearing.

--Creators/Writers--
The show was created and mainly written by Richard Fegen and Andrew Norris although a variety of other people also helped in the writing, the idea and the characters are well written and I feel the only way in which the series failed in what it intended to do was by ending later than it really should have.

--Episodes--
54 episodes in total were made, 50 of these were the normal 30 minutes episodes that would be shown weekly on BBC1 and the other 2 were short specials done for charity (I think it was for Children In Need but I'm not certain) and there were 2 special episodes done.

The episodes were transmitted between 1991 and 1997 on BBC1.

Between series 1 and series 5 I felt episodes seemed to just get better and better but it might have been best if it was left there, although the special episodes made after this were good series 6 was terrible in comparison to normal and while series 7 seemed better than series 6 it was still nowhere near as good as it has been at its best. After series 5 a few characters left, the storylines appeared to get stupider than they were and a new character was tried to be introduced that just seemed annoying, all in all I think it might have been best if they had ended at the end of series 5 and made no more episodes as much as I like the series.

--Videos--
2 videos of the series have been made, one has since been deleted but the other video entitled "Laying The Foundation" is still available and sold at blackstar.co.uk for £5.29. It contains 1 episode from series 1, 1 from series 3 and the 3 are from series 2, worth buying if you are a fan as the p
rice is fairly reasonable and the episodes are great. The deleted video contained just 3 episodes and appears to contain worse episodes so probably isn't worth you looking for unless you are a serious fan and must own everything connected to the series.

--Showings--
The show is regularly repeated on UK Gold and if you want to watch it this is probably the best place to try, especially if you want to watch it from the beginning as they repeat it from then far more often than most channels do.

If you cannot get UK Gold however BBC 1 is probably your best bet, unfortunatly they rarely seem to repeat it now but every now and then it does appear, usually either during a daytime showing such as after the first showing of neighbours or on an evening around 7-9pm.

---Conclusion---
If you haven't seen it you may as well watch it, but if you are thinking about watching it try and get an episode within the first 5 series. I won't guarentee you'll like it though as many people hate it, but it's well worth watching at least once to find out.

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