Mr Small Minded Unredeemable Bureaucracy (Brittas Empire, The)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Brittas Empire, The
Date:	10/02/04 (105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Barrie

Disadvantages: Some bland bits

"MISS-TAH BRIH-HASS, MISS-TAH BRIH-HASS," used to go Colin, the pus ridden assistant to the Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre Manager, in one of the most memorable parts of The Brittas Empire. The programme was among the new television sit coms which were produced by the BBC during the 90's (or was it at the very tail end of the 80's?), and after a reasonably average opening and prior to a quite tepid last series, it managed to rise above the general morass and become a very enjoyable and likeable comedy programme. It was undeniably bland, and extremely repetitive, but it was a good country mile ahead of such abominable series as Hi De Hi, You Rang M'Lord and the like.

I don't generally like middle class, nice comedy as The Brittas Empire, but for some reason it struck home with me and became one of my favourites. I think it had something to do with the continual puncturing of the inflated self image and pompous political correctness of Gordon Brittas, the Leisure Centre Manager of the title, played by Christopher Barrie who for a long time swung happily between this and Red Dwarf, in which he played the abhorrent hologram Arnold Rimmer. In both series he was featured as one of the least pleasant examples of humanity (or hologrammity). Except in RD, he had no redeeming features, but in The Brittas Empire he was more just a hapless loser who was so intensely flawed and unlikely to win through that he at least evoked a little sympathy.

Most of the other characters in The Brittas Empire were pretty unmemorable and had little to commend them, with some rather shallow cliches and mannerisms dominating their contribut
ions - The Brittas Empire was all about their fearless leader and his scary wandering through an unusual twilight world, trying to impose order, hierarchy and bureaucracy on a chaotic world and only serving to make things even worse. In that, Brittas was a pretty low key and less inspiring version of Fawlty Towers, although it went on slightly longer and had less interesting and memorable things to tell us. However, it never aspired to be much more than that and its lack of ambition was probably what appealed to me. It contained some pretty farcical and unattractive stories but managed to rise a little above such unpromising beginnings and become eminently watchable.

The secret of its appeal was undoubtedly the complete awfulness of its main character, a pocket Hitler who was convinced he was the only thing standing between a chaotic, horrific world and a descent into Utter Madness and Meaninglessness. There were also the endless delights of Barrie's infeasibly and unimaginably flared nostrils, the most distinctive and worrying ever seen by humanity. Barrie had unpleasant arrogance and errant complacency down to a fine art and could terrify right thinking individuals at fifty paces without turning a hair on his frizzy big head. One knew instinctively that the Leisure Centre would operate so much more efficiently and enjoyable if it could ever free itself from Brittas' vice like grip and systematic torture, but equally well that it would never have the opportunity to do so.

The adjective which is best associated with those around Brittas is long suffering and no one with whom he came in contact emerged unscathed from the dreadful experience. We, of course, were spared from being impacted too personally from his dreadful touch and had the pleasure of seeing his poorly considered schemes and ideas coming to the predictable and dismal conclusion wh
ich had been so gleefully signposted earlier in the post. That said, however, The Brittas Empire was quite smartly written and economic and didn't fall into the trap of opting for the easy laughs or the double entendre. It was written as a clean living, morally upstanding example of middle class life, sharing the qualities with its main protagonist, and refused to offend, even though it could have done with being a touch more appalling and unpleasant than it actually was. In fact, the most terrible thing we experienced with this programme was the abysmal, complacent head shaking and hands gripping perfected so skilfully by Chris Barrie. He was truly the epitome of smugness. He would have been a little bit more bearable if he had only realised that all his attempts to bring order to life in the Lesiure Centre only made things much, much worse.

The Brittas Empire was written by a number of individuals, and I don't recall them, or the production team featuring anywhere else, and ditto for most of the remaining members of the cast:

Pippa Haywood as Helen Brittas
Julia St John as Laura Lancing
Michael Burns as Colin Weatherby
Harriet Thorpe as Carole Parkinson (the one exception)
Russell Porter as Tim Whistler
Tim Marriot as Gavin Featherleigh
Jill Greenacre as Linda Perkin
Anouschka Menzies as Penny Bidmead
Andree Bernard as Angie
Judy Flynn as Julie

The Brittas Empire enjoyed 52 episodes over 7 series between 1991 and 1997. Long may it remain in our consciousness, although strangely it doesn't seem to feature too readily on UK Gold. SHAME (but not for the staff).

Episode List

Series 1 (3 &
#74;an 91 - 14 Feb 91)
Laying The Foundations (3 Jan 91)
"Opening Day" (10 Jan 91)
"Bye Bye Baby" (17 Jan 91)
"Underwater Wedding" (24 Jan 91)
"Stop Thief!" (7 Feb 91)
"Assassin" (14 Feb 91)
Series 2 (2 Jan 92 - 20 Feb 92)
Back From The Dead (2 Jan 92)
Temple Of The Body (9 Jan 92)
An Inspector Calls (16 Jan 92)
Set In Concrete (23 Jan 92)
Mums And Dads (30 Jan 92)
Safety First (13 Feb 92)
New Generations (20 Feb 92)
Series 3 (7 Jan 93 - 11 Feb 93)
The Trial (7 Jan 93)
That Creeping Feeling (14 Jan 93)
Laura's Leaving (21 Jan 93)
Two Little Boys (28 Jan 93)
Sex, Lies and Red Tape (4 Feb 93)
The Stuff of Dreams (11 Feb 93)
Series 4 (10 Jan 94 - 7 Mar 94)
Not A Good Day ... (10 Jan 94)
The Christening (17 Jan 94)
Biggles Tells A Lie (24 Jan 94)
Mr Brittas Changes Trains (31 Jan 94)
Playing With Fire (7 Feb 94)
Shall We Dance? (14 Feb 94)
The Chop (28 Feb 94)
High Noon (7 Mar 94)
Series 5 (31 Oct 94 - 19 Dec 94)
The Old, Old Story (31 Oct 94)
Blind Devotion (7 Nov 94)
Brussels Calling (14 Nov 94)
The Lies Have It (21 Nov 94)
The Boss (28 Nov 94)
Pregnant! (5 Dec 94)
UXB (12 Dec 94)
The Last Day (19 Dec 94)
Special
In the Beginning ... (27
Dec 94)
Series 6 (27 Feb 96 - 23 Apr 96)
Back With A Bang (27 Feb 96)
Body Language (12 Mar 96)
At The Double (26 Mar 96)
A Walk On The Wildside (2 Apr 96)
We All Fall Down (9 Apr 96)
Mr Brittas Falls in Love (16 Apr 96)
Snap Happy (23 Apr 96)
Special
Surviving Christmas (24 Dec 96)
Series 7 (6 Jan 97 - 24 Feb 97)
The Elephant's Child (6 Jan 97)
Reviewing The Situation (13 Jan 97)
http://etc (20 Jan 97)
Wake Up The Lion Within (27 Jan 97)
The Disappearing Act (3 Feb 97)
Gavin Featherly RIP (10 Feb 97)
Exposed (17 Feb 97)
Curse Of The Tiger Women (24 Feb 97)
(with thanks to http://www.phill.co.uk/comedy/brittas/)

Summary: