PERFORMERS

Rowan Atkinson
Pamela Stephenson
Mel Smith
Griff Rhys Jones
Chris Langham

PRODUCERS Sean Hardie, John Lloyd

PROGRAMMING HISTORY 28 30-minute episodes

BBC
17 October 1979-20 November 1979               6 Episodes 31 March 1980-12 May 1980                          7 Episodes 27 October 1980-15 December 1980               8 Episodes 1 February 1982-12 March 1982                     7 Episodes

This fast paced contemporary satire series launched many successful TV careers and bridged the gap between the surrealist comedy of the Monty Python generation and the anarchic new wave comic revolution of the 1980s. In 1979 radio producer John Lloyd, becoming frustrated that many of the radio shows he had worked on (such as sitcom To the Manor Born) had transferred to television without him, approached BBC TV light entertainment heads and pitched for a TV series. John Howard Davies (head of comedy) and Jimmy Gilbert (head of light entertainment) offered Lloyd a six show slot with no real brief but with a stipulation that he collaborate with current affairs expert Sean Hardie, who had been recommended to the comedy department because of a quirky sense of humour that didn't always sit comfortably within the confines of current affairs programming. Lloyd and Hardie found they worked well together and quickly began developing formats. One possible program was called Sacred Cows and each week would have humorously dissected a modern day trend, e.g. feminism, similar to the way the Frost Report (BBC 1966-67) had operated). However they finally settled on a contemporary sketch show that would take a scatter gun approach peppering all sorts of targets.

A pilot show was produced in March 1979 with the team consisting of Rowan Atkinson, Chris Emmet, Christopher Godwin, John Gorman, Chris Langham, Willoughby Goddard and Johnathan Hyde. The pilot was never transmitted. A general election was imminent, and on viewing the program the BBC was concerned about its overtly political nature. They sent Lloyd and Hardie back to the drawing board and gave them six extra months, which both agreed was a big advantage. Lloyd and Hardie embarked on forming a new team with only Atkinson and Langham surviving from the pilot. Lloyd in particular was keen to get a woman aboard but finding a suitable player was proving difficult. They approached comedienne Victoria Wood who felt (rightly) that her future lay as a solo artiste) and actresses Alison Steadman and Susan George, but to no avail. Finally, John Lloyd met Australian actress Pamela Stephenson at a party and was convinced they had found their woman. Mel Smith was brought in to make up the team and once they were all together the shape of the show became clearer. As a bonus Lloyd found that the cast was willing to become actively involved in moulding the material, helping with the selection of sketches and occasionally writing or rewriting pieces.

The first series aired late in 1979 and attracted just enough of an audience overall to convince the BBC to go ahead with a second series the following year. At the end of the first series it was agreed that Chris Langham didn't quite fit in with the rest of the team and he was replaced by Griff Rhys Jones who had played some of the extra parts in the first series. Pamela Stephenson had discovered an unexpected talent for mimicry and her impressions of the female newsreaders of the day proved to be a highlight of the show. Atkinson excelled at visual comedy as well as verbal gymnastics and Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones brought a naturalistic acting technique to the sketches. The second series firmly established the show and one episode won the Silver Rose for innovation at the Montreaux Festival. The third and fourth series consolidated their success. Some of the written material for the show came from a central team of regular writers but the show also operated an open door policy which meant that virtually anyone could send sketches in and have them read. This policy provided a fertile training ground for new talent and many budding writers had their first televised work via Not the Nine O'Clock News. The show they were writing for may have seemed fairly flexible but Lloyd and Hardie had some firm parameters. The show was contemporary rather than topical, although its recording schedule (taped Sunday evening for transmission the following day) meant that some last minute material could be added to give an extra edge. Short sketches were preferred. (In its entire run only a handful are over a minute and a half). Although it was returning to the idea of using punchlines (a tradition some critics thought had been eradicated for good by the Python team) the show was markedly post-Python and unashamedly modern. If a sketch took place in a pub, it would be a modern day pub with Space Invaders machines instead of dominoes, if a sketch took place in a hospital it would be a modern understaffed hospital with harassed doctors and nurses. This sensibility, combined with the show's pace, its revoicing of bought-in footage, its news-style filming and use of new visual equipment and techniques (such as Quantel), created a unique and recognisable look.

Memorable skits included the parody of the emerging pop video industry ("Nice Video, Shame About the Song"); the satirical comment on the religious furor surrounding Monty Python's Life of Brian in which Pythonists accuse the Bible of blaspheming against the Flying Circus; a beauty contest sketch featuring an unusually candid contestant (Host: "And why do you want to be Miss World?" Contestant: "I want to screw famous people"); and the interview with an intelligent and urbane talking gorilla called Gerald (Trainer: "When we captured Gerald he was of course wild." Gerald: "Wild? I was absolutely livid")

I

n 1982 the team amicably decided to call it a day, feeling that they had gone as far as they could with the format (they had also produced audio recordings of the show which had proved highly popular and spin-off books which sold in vast numbers). Although it only ran for twenty-eight episodes, the intensity and density of each show, some containing as many as thirty sketches, meant they had used a lot of material and covered a lot of ground. The careers of many of the creative personnel from the show continued to flourish afterwards: Pamela Stephenson worked in Hollywood; Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones combined for a number of series of Alias Smith and Jones and independently proved very popular in a number of ventures both in front and behind the screen (Smith has since directed movies in Hollywood); Rowan Atkinson became a household name both sides of the Atlantic scoring heavily in the sitcom Blackadder, the irregular series of Mr. Bean comic films, and in feature films; Producer John Lloyd went on to initiate many hit series, perhaps the most notable being the satirical puppet caricature series Spitting Image; many of the show's writers went on to further successes, including David Renwick who wrote the most popular British sitcom of the 1990s One Foot in the Grave, and Richard Curtis who co-wrote the Blackadder series and scripted the most successful British film in history, Four Weddings and a Funeral. In 1979, although it had finished five years previously, Monty Python's Flying Circus was still exerting a huge influence on British TV comedy; Not the Nine O'Clock News was the first comedy sketch programme to shine successfully in the large shadow that Python cast.

In 1995 the producers returned to the original shows and began the mammoth task of editing them for retransmission and eventual video release. A U.S. version of the series called Not Necessarily the News (Not the Network Co Inc.) was syndicated in the 1980s.

-Dick Fiddy