There was an inevitability about an anniversary documentary about Not the Nine O'Clock News this Christmas. There had been one in 1999, another in 2004 (to mark its 25th anniversary) and now a third: Not Again (BBC2, 28/12/2009). No-one does 'Happy 35th anniversary' documentaries, not even ones on Monty Python, so that'll probably be it now on Not until the eve of 2020. Over 90 minutes, four of the five principal cast, its two producers, its musical director and a smattering of writers and (mostly uninformed) fans guided us through a sometimes enlightening but very selective story about why and how it was so damn popular. It's strange to witness a parade of people who were already successful 30 years ago, and who are somehow many times more successful now, thanks to a collective mix of TalkBack Productions, Blackadder, Mr Bean, QI, Spitting Image, Big Bangs, Four Weddings and a Funeral, bad psychotherapy, and Griff Rhys Jones Prods Some Silt in Cumbria.
The anal bits of my head sighed as some contentious guesses were dressed up as statistics. Fan and occasional scriptwriter Stephen Fry burbled that the first series 'only got a million viewers, probably', and while the LPs did indeed often reach the top ten, no-one sells half-a-million albums in a week. Never mind, let's put that down to seasonal excitement. What concerned me more was the complete absence of information surrounding the planned first series, due to begin on Monday 2 April 1979 (in a slot that had housed the second and last series of Fawlty Towers), but removed and cancelled due to the announcement of the General Election. It's probably just as well, because the original cast of that series was a very unlikely mix of people: Willoughby Goddard, John Gorman (The Scaffold, Tiswas), Australian-born actor Jonathan Hyde, Christopher Godwin, Chris Langham (already acclaimed for his work with Spike Milligan) and 23-year-old Rowan Atkinson.
I've seen a scrappy pilot of Not, and it's fascinating but not at all good. It's a soup of revue, current affairs and corny gags, with a cast which interacts awkwardly, and produced by two men - John Lloyd and Sean Hardie - who by their own subsequent admission were learning on the job how to set up and manage a high-pressure weekly comedy show. Lloyd had spent five years as a radio comedy producer and whose only TV experience was slipping a few newslines under the radar of The Two Ronnies. Hardie had considerable experience in BBC Current Affairs, but had no comedy to speak of on his cv.
The first transmitted series - screened, unlike the others, on Tuesday nights (from 16 October 1979) - retained Atkinson and Langham, but ditched the others in favour of Pamela Stephenson and Mel Smith. For some reason, until Not Again!, I had never considered the connection between the Life of Python sketch (penned by Colin Bostock-Smith) and the fact that Langham had been in Life of Brian. Lloyd and Hardie now claim - and I was previously unaware of this - that Langham had got annoyed at the item, and that this drove a wedge between the cast. It's hard to say to what extent Langham did not gel with the other cast members as so little of series one is even allowed to draw breath on the compilations. But sacked he was, and replaced by Griff Rhys Jones. It's a pity that because of more recent troubles in his life, his own view of what happened could not be included here. At least Radio 4's The Reunion (2005) found Langham and Lloyd discussing the issue. I must dig out my copy.
If the chronology of Not Again was all over the place, at least there were fresh anecdotes abounding: the tensions between Rowan and Pam, the reminder that those two really were the stars of the show, and Lloyd's discomfort at having to watch a whole original episode, which is probably why complete series DVDs are extremely unlikely to appear. Whether it's just unease about material like The Ayatollah Song (lyrics by Richard Curtis and released as a SINGLE in November 1980), or acknowledgement that some of the jokes really weren't that good, it's hard to tell. What the compilations miss, though, is an inspired messiness and spotaneity that tends to occur when you're steering a topical comedy show and you start every single week with no script. It was strangely touching when the originally transmitted episode of 15/12/80 (the last of series three) had run its closing credits over a black screen while 'In My Life' by The Beatles played. Jokes about Lennon's death may have occurred in my school playground, but there was little doubting the sincerity of Not's team.
Following the documentary was the screening of 'a classic episode', which was, as usual, a compilation of very very good sketches (assembled by Lloyd for broadcast and video release in 1995). What came across most clearly was: the writing was sometimes sloppy, the acting was frequently brilliant (Smith in particular), and the producers did well to keep the show on track. The fact that a compilation of 30-year-old sketches is watchable at all is quite something, as anyone who's seen any of the BAFTA-winning Three of a Kind during that time can testify.
And one last thing. Is HBO's Not Necessarily the News (1983-90) really the American version of Not the Nine? That's worth a documentary in itself if so, what with Rich Hall in the cast, and a team of writers including Simpsons scribes Al Jean and Mike Reiss, King of the Hill co-creator Greg Daniels, Seinfeld writer Elaine Pope, and future chat show king Conan O'Brien.
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