Little but All powerful! (Little Britain)

Member Name: Feefo

Product:	Little Britain
Date:	27/03/05 (1802 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Catchy and funny, Unique, Creative

Disadvantages: A bit repetitive, Not enough of it, May offend some

Little Britain

I watched series 2 before series one. Then bought the series one dvd. It was on radio previously but I only experienced it on tv. When the second series was shown on BBC1 after it's first screening on BBC3, some of the graphic language used in the Dafydd sketches had to be cut out as it was felt it was too obscene for mainstream viewing. The programme itself runs for 30 minutes.

When Little Britain was on radio 4 initially Graham Lineham heard it and went crazy for it. He wanted to do a tv pilot and did but he basically was too busy to do a whole series so Steve Bendelack came in as director. Steve had worked on League of Gentlemen. Steve saw the pilot, fell in love with it and the rest is history....

Characters

Vicky Pollard
Vicky is perhaps the most famous invention of Little Britain. She is the out of control teenager who lives in Darkly Noone and hates authority figures with a vengeance. Has rather a lot of kids as unfortunately by the time she discovers what sex actually is and what it leads to, it has led to a big family. She talks very very fast and people find she interrupts, is quite aggressive and always has an excuse for why she hasn't done something or why she's done something.

Andy Pipkin & Lou Todd
Lou looks after Andy. Lou is his carer and friend. Andy doesn't say a lot and requires a lot from Lou. Every time Lou thinks he has got it just right and patiently asks a couple of times for the verdict, everything is fine until the task is complete and then Andy rejects Lou or whatever it is that Andy said was ok beforehand. Lou is totally unaware of Andy's flip side which is that as soon as Lou's back is turned on numerous occassions, Andy regains the use of his legs (he uses a wheelchair) and gets up to all sorts of mobile antics before returning to his chair before he can be spotted by Lou.

Marjorie Dawes
The Fat fighters have a leader who runs the meetings. There are no calories in dust she tells them. She cannot understand Meera, one of the ladies in the group, just because she is indian and speaks with an accent. Marjorie herself could be a little thinner..... She mocks and taunts her group especially one of the other women. It doesn't sound nice but it is very funny. You just have to watch it. The only time Marjorie gets friendlier with the group is when one of them has won the lottery......

Samantha & Edward Grant
I really like these two. Susan is an ex pupil at the school where Edward teaches. Unfortunately, being a teacher is something that he cannot leave behind at school and it affects the way he leads his personal life, making him rather regimented and authoritarian.

Daffyd Thomas
(Only gay in the Village.) He lives in Llandewi Brefi and is of the firm belief that no-one else in the village is a homosexual. If this belief is scuppered he ensures that either he or the offending other homosexual leaves the “scene of the crime”.

Anne
A mental patient who loves to touch peoples faces and do her bit for the community. Leaving her alone with animals unsupervised is probably inadvisable. She earns her twenty pounds working in the library but then puts it down the drain. However she has a mobile phone and people call her on it. She talks normally to them telling them she is busy but then reverts to making just one sound the rest of the time. Must be soothing!.

Harvey Pincher (Bitty)
He comes from a decent middle class family but unfortunately the girl he is betrothed to is about to find out that her fiance has a prediliction for an activity which you would think he would have grown out of as a baby!.

Rachel and Nicola
They are two single women who do lunches together discussing the dating scene. They show each other pictures of boyfriends but of not their faces.

Judy and Maggie
One of them cannot bear the influence of a black person, fat person or any other un pc type of non-liking in the making of the food at the village fetes. The result is pretty disgusting but terribly funny also and involves projectile vomit.

Emily Howard
She is a very unconvincing transvestite who is more like a lady in thought, word and deed than any real ladies, that is until she can't resist doing something more masculine like kicking a football and then it's disastrous for her feminine counterpart. She runs a guest house and is easily upset by customers. Her best friend (tranny also) is Florence.

Bubbles de Vere
She is a lady who has spa treatments and many of them but doesn't pay for the treatments and unfortunately grosses up a massive debt.... She is hugely obese. (Lucas wearing a fat suit). Despite eventually finding the means to pay for her usage she wants to offer alternative, more tawdry methods of payment to the spa manager....

Sebastian Love
He is an aide to the PM no less. He is very camp and very gay and holds a torch for the PM. He gets extremely jealous of everyone who even touches the PM and even very jealous of the PM's wife....

Mr Mann
I love this sketch which is a bit like a two Ronnies invention. Mr Mann comes into a different shop each week with the same shop keeper buying something incredibly complicated and specific. The results are fantastic. I think there is quite a lot of Monty Python influence here too. Dead Parrot sketch anyone? This one is quite surreal.

Bernard Chumley
He seems a little sinister when it comes to meeting young male actors as to his intentions and also seems to think his sister Kitty is dead every five minutes when in fact she is not.

Jason
He fancies his friend Gary's granny with rather stomach churning but hillarious results.

Des Kaye
He is an ex childrens' presenter on tv who now works in a B & Q type store but can't quite remove himself from his old job.

Ray McCooney
“Ye know too much”. He is a strange hotel owner (rather like League of Gentlemen) who plays an instrument and talks in riddles in answer to anything.

April and Neville
They are first aiders who have a strange way of nursing the sick.

Denver Mills
He is an ex olympic champion who visits schools and institutions with speeches which he cannot use as they are always inappropriate and his humour totally offends.

Romance Novelist Dame Sally Markham (Barbara Cartland take off)
She rather suspiciously plagiarizes massive chunks out of books or dubiously repeats words for pages and pages in order to get her target number of pages in for publication.

Kenny Craig
He is a hypnotist who uses it to his advantage in his private life and leisure time. Naughty man!.

Liz and Clive
Liz is obsessed with having been Mollie Sugden's bridesmaid.

Peter Andre
He is played by David and is a royal correspondent obsessed with Princess Ann.

Jeremy Rent
He is an agent of a tiny Dennis Waterman who only wants to take acting roles where he sings and writes the theme tune.

Linda
College Counsellor who is rather biased in her descriptions of students over the phone.

Psychiatrist Dr Lowe
He can't resist breaking Dr Client confidentiality and speaks about the client after they have left to his colleagues and friends.

The above are the main characters in Series 1 and 2. There are many other mini sketches and even other mini characters but the above is fairly comprehensive. The characters in general are lovable, memorable and easily find their way into your subconcious. Some people will be more susceptible to this than others but if 30 year olds are at risk, goodness only knows how annoying it is to be in the school yard as a teacher!. Over Xmas, I found myself being unmercifully annoying to my family, going on and on with the catchphrases at every available opportunity. I have stopped now, although occasionally I have a little bout of the problem again!.

There are of course some characters that just don't work. Some are too down beat, depressing or just unfunny. But it is a credit to Walliams and Lucas that they are so brave because if they weren't and didn't take a risk, we would not have the comedy from these two series, so natural, not too overthought which ruins it and loveable.

It is truly amazing also how a different actor in the role can change a part irrevocably. Take the Samantha and Edward sketch. In the deleted scenes section of Series 1 you can see a much younger actress playing Samantha, and Walliams looks too old. The sketches lose their humour as a result but remarkably, get an older actress and make Walliams look more like his usual self and bingo!.

Catchphrases
I am a lady.
Dust, no, anybody?
Heh, heh, heh
I don't like it. I want that one.
I am the only gay in the village.
Yeah but no but yeah but.
I want bitty.

Comedy

This modern comedy has been welcomed alongside more general sitcom fare such as My Family, My Hero of late. After the very modern The Office ended it seemed that nothing original which wasn't a sitcom or a pseudo documentary would help us grieve it's demise. But then this literally became an overnight phenomenon and attacked the screen and viewers' comedic funny bones and won lots of BAFTAs.

Cult
The show is cult because it is non pc and about topics which in the past couldn't be dealt with so openly on tv. The show could have been called Gays and Ladies the fellas say.

Charisma
For me, Walliams has bucket loads. So does Lucas as they are both charming and their comic timing is superb as is the chemistry between them. Walliams is more of the straight guy in every sense of the meaning and Lucas is the funny, fat, hyper bloke quite often.

Comic Relief

Little Britain played a big part in the 2005 RND. There were several sketches in the evening show to keep people watching involving stars such as Elton John and Robbie Williams. They also released a further dvd which cost only five pounds in the shops, the money raised from them going to comic relief. Sadly on Ebay people are selling said dvd for about ten or eleven pounds and the profit of course is going in their pocket not to charity.

Cheap?
My Dvd cost ten pounds 99 I think or thereabouts. It was so cheap as I won it on ebay in an auction.

Chuckles

Caused by watching the repeats whether on dvd or BBC3 or BBC1. Also by having “normal conversations” where inadvertantly a phrase is used which comes from the programme. Plenty of guffaws and inability to keep your face straight.

Creative
By the pens of Walliams and Lucas. It is highly original and almost a necessary and natural progression in the history of comedy. There is something very right about the timing, the writing, the subject matter.

Commentary and other Dvd Extras

The commentary is with Walliams and Lucas with producer Myfanwy Moore on episodes 1-4 and is quite informative about the actors, the makeup, locations, difficulty in shooting etc. Sometimes the guys get a bit caught up in watching themselves but you can't blame them really. They know they are talented!.

The Director joins them for the commentary on Eps 5 - 8, Steve Bendelack.

There is a behind the scenes documentary which was ok. It was called How to make a Little Britain. In 2001 and 2002 they did the radio show. 2003 they rehearsed and shot the tv show (series 1).

Apparently shooting for one Kenny Craig sketch took place in Lucas' garden where loads of cars and stalls for a mock boot fair were placed. If he was serious about this revelation!.

The contact lens and tight fat suit for Boris the babysitter gave David a headache.

Matt looked forward to playing Bernard Chumley as it was his first character he ever played at the comedy festivals.

Herne Bay was used for filming Emily Howard sketches. Some locations filmed were near to where Judge John Deed was filmed and Vicar of Dibley.

Both Walliams and Simon Pegg were lifeguards in real life and went to the same university.

The Composer of the regal theme tune and other music is David Arnold.

4 Live sketches were put on the dvd. They were performed for teenage cancer charity. They were basically same sketches as on the series. Sketch of PM and Sebastian, Lou and Andy, Dafydd and Vicky. Funniest moment was were Lucas as Dafydd began corpsing due to him doing his “coming out” to his parents sketch.


I did see some of the BBC3 idents. They were ok.

I watched all of the deleted scenes which they didn't stint the viewer on. There were loads. Plus they had commentary.

Friday Night Interview with Johnathan Ross was very enjoyable and it's funny I missed it as I am a fan of Ross too. But I missed it when it was on tv. If it was.

Best of Rock Profiles - a programme done with Jamie Theakston as an interviewer in a spoof rock interviews programme prior to Little Britain. I hadn't seen this before the dvd but watched it today. Other people have termed Walliams and Lucas as doing unimpressions of the likes of Elton John, George Michael and Tom Jones to name but a few. This was quite funny and entertaining. Some good ideas in there and it has proved quite popular with fans. It was originally shown on UK Play.

Radio Interview

I gleaned a few bits of info from this. It was entertaining and funny in parts. Graham Lineham wrote Black books and Father Ted. Steve Bendelack directed League of Gentlemen and Royle Family.

Walliams is a big Dr Who fan.

Mark Gatus is the script editor for LB and also starred in League.

The duo write everything together but come up with certain ideas separately.

Dafydd was based on a real person behaving similarly!.

The radio show had two series.

Cast

Matt Lucas - Matt was on Shooting Stars as Baby George Dawes. Marjorie Dawes came from Shooting Stars too. Born 5 March 1974 in London. Matt made his debut on the London comedy circuit in 1992 as the character Bernard Chumley. Things you may not know - Matt has been approached to play Benny Hill and is currently appearing on BBC3 programme Casanova as Villers a gay Duke. Last episode this week.

David Walliams - was born Williams but had to change his name for equity on 20th August 1971. He first enjoyed acting at Reigate Grammar School in Surrey. He went on to study at Bristol University and was in the same year as Simon Pegg (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead). David and Matt met in 1990 at the national youth theatre. They both loved Reeves and Mortimer. When Matt went to university they didn't see each other again until 1995 when a few joint ventures followed mainly at comedy festivals. Watch out for David's solo project Home in 2006 on BBC3 and waking the dead series 5.

Anthony Head - Primeminister (Buffy and that infamous coffee ad) Born 20 February 1954 in Camden, London.

Ruth Jones - Myfanwy

Charu Bala - Meera (Fat Fighters)

Tom Baker - Narrator (Dr Who, Monarch of the Glen) Why was he cast in this role? He says it is because people like ex-Dr Whos!.

To round off, I have seen on the web that Matt Lucas says that no characters have been axed. This means presumably that characters such as the hotelier Ray McCooney seen in the first series played by David should return. Also, a third series is planned which will incorporate some new characters. I cannot believe that this review has taken so long over several days to complete. So much research, looking at web sites and the dvd. Finally finished, I wouldn't be surprised to wake up and find out that I am Little Britain's biggest fan!!!!.

Update - for all LB fans out there you may be interested to know that the weekly series of Casanova began on BBC1 on Monday night at 9pm and is brilliant. Please watch it!.

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