Not Nine O'Clock News

It was a daring innovative idea when the first series of Not The Nine O'Clock News was shown as it was scheduled at nine o'clock right up against the main news bulletin. The programme has been repeated on BBC and is sometimes on the satellite channels. Having watched it again I was surprised at how many of the punchlines and gags I remembered and perhaps that is testament to the quality of writing and its continued relevance today. The main core of the presenters have all gone on to be in major series of their own. Though Pamela Stephenson is no longer in show business she is married to Billy Connelly and is a successful psychologist working in America. ...  Read the complete review

Not Nine O Clock News is a comedy satire programme that I have only seen as my boyfriend had a video tape of the series. Itwas the launch pad for some very successful careers in comedy espcially as it starred Rowan Atkinson who went on to do Mr Baen and Blackadder. The show was a series of clips featuring four new wave comedians, as well as Atkinson there was Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones who went on to have their own show togather and also Pamela Stevenson who married Billy Connolly. Many of the clips were very satirical and picked on topical news items of the time while some were really surreal, either way the show was fast paced. Perhaps my ...  Read the complete review

To me, ?NTNOCN? seems a fairly mediocre sketch show between the surreal days of Python and the fast-paced character sketch shows of the 90s, from the likes of the Fast Show and Harry Enfield?s shows. Being much more a fan of the earlier example, I don?t find this show too bad, but it certainly has more than its share of poor sketches. The series is occasionally repeated by the BBC every few years, but as almost everything they satirised is no longer relevant it essentially serves as a ?Rowan Atkinson before Blackadder? and ?Do you remember Smith and Jones? The fat one was ...  Read the complete review

The 1960's were a classic period for television comedy, with the arrival of satire on the small screen, as most famously exemplified by That Was The Week That Was (normally termed TW3) and the brave new breed of comedians from the Oxbridge school, David Frost, Willie Rushton, John Cleese, Peter Cook and many more. From those brave beginnings an endless stream of successors followed on as British comedy took on a far more subtle and intelligent approach to spiking its chosen targets. Progress was pretty remarkable during that golden period, but as the end of the decade approached, an even more radical movement came to the fore when John Cleese, Michael ...  Read the complete review

There were only four, all-too-short, series of the post-punk satire Not The Nine O'Clock News (NT9OCN), and they were first shown between October 1979 and March 1982. The pilot show was originally scheduled for April 1979, inheriting the nine o'clock timeslot on BBC2 from Fawlty Towers, which had ended prematurely the week before - industrial action prevented the last episode (Basil The Rat) from being filmed in time. NT9OCN was to be introduced by John Cleese saying that his show wasn't ready, and suggesting the BBC put on a 'cheap tatty revue show' instead. However, it was shelved at the last minute when the General Election was ...  Read the complete review